You know how in Bridget Jones Diary she keeps a tally of how many units of alcohol and cigarettes she’s had? I was thinking that for this blog I could keep a running tally of how many times I’ve been puked and shat on. At present: three and two, respectively. And we’re only 36 hours in. To be fair, Wilder shit his pants both times but it still somehow managed to end up on me. And not just on my hands, which actually isn’t a bad place for shit to go since they’re so easily washable, but on my clothes, so that I wasn’t even aware of it until a half hour later when I realized that the lingering shit smell wasn’t just the olfactory equivalent of an aftershock, it was the real deal, patty-caked into the back of my jeans.
The drive to the Marrakesh medina (1000+ year-old walled city where we’re staying) was comfortingly insane. After so many years looking at the madness of New York City outside of a cab window I almost felt at home. Except for the fact that there are no camels, no donkeys and (comparatively speaking) no motorbikes. It also reminded me of Vietnam, where the cars and gazillions of motorbikes carry on a running dialogue with one another via the language of the almighty horn. It’s all offensive driving. I’d say it’s aggressive but everyone is so casual about it- the driver carrying on a pleasant conversation with us about the charms of the countryside while gunning down a hollowed-out minivan like it was lunch.
We were dropped off at the walls of the medina where the hosts of our riad/bed and breakfast met us. The medina is a labyrinth of narrow alleyways and chaotic souks in which, thanks to the lack of space for cars, motorbikes rule. Now instead of watching the driver pick his line from the safety of the backseat, we become the hollowed out minivan. Thank god we didn’t bring the doublewide stroller- whichever kid drew the outside seat would’ve surely been clipped off by now.
For 50 dirham a grinning man with kind eyes carted our mountain of luggage through the streets while we did our best to piece together a conversation with our French-speaking hosts.
(this pic was taken at the end of stay. The good man brought a bigger cart.)
The shame of having packed such a towering pile of crap and the inability to utter even the most basic phrase in French overpowered any self-consciousness about the fact that I was dripping with sweat and Lara-bar chunks of vomit. Would casually singing Frére Jacques right now make me look like more or less of a moron, I wondered…
Oh, what’s that? Vomit, you ask? Let me back up.
The moment we stepped foot outside of the car it was, as every tired guidebook will tell you, an assault on our senses; the smell of wood-burning smoke and reasonably priced cigarettes, delicate orange blossoms and feral cat urine. I squeezed Nakota to my chest and closed my eyes, listening to the soft thump of donkey hooves, the distant melodic laughter, an argument in another language I didn’t understand and then, suddenly, something…familiar. I’ve heard that sound before, I thought. And before I could home in on the fact that what I was hearing was that old illusive mistress, the gag-hiccup, Nakota’s vomit was spilling out of her mouth and down my shirt.
An assault on the senses indeed. The poor girl had had enough.
So yeah, we’re asking a lot of them. But I think it’s gonna be okay. We got to our riad and all climbed into the king-size together – family bed style, just like Angelina and Brad used to do before the tragic split - and zoned out to that fucking pro, Mister Rogers reincarnated, Daniel Tiger. Wilder knocked off first, then Billy, then Nakota and finally, after 30 hours of wondering what was going to happen next, I closed my eyes and tumbled into a dreamless, death sleep.
Some pics of our riad below.
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