Urban donkeys

As excited as we were to get into a town after three weeks of donkey traveling in the bush, it was not without problems. We expected Tan Tan to be very pro-donkey, after all, they even had signs on the streets warning drivers of the abundance of donkey carts in town. But when we parked on a side street, and tried to go into a restaurant for lunch, we were told we couldn’t park our cart there. This was pretty shocking, as it seemed that everyone else was parking their carts wherever they wanted.
After we managed to eat a disappointing meal (our camp food had gotten pretty good by now), we found a garbage-strewn field for me to park the cart in, while Jonathan and Susan went to the market to buy some things and run some errands. While I waited, a fellow donkey driver passed. His donkey caught scent of our donkeys, and Rough and he started hee-hawing to each other, which give the man’s donkey a turbo boost. The man waved to me as a thank you. Unsurprisingly, several police vehicles (actually, police, gendarmerie and military) stopped to have a chat with me. None of them had a problem with us, and I asked where we could camp. They said we could camp in this field, but it would be safer for us to go to the edge of town and camp in the bush.
While I waited, Shuwya Shuwya got her head stuck in a tree. The tree she was tied to split into two trunks about four feet up, and she dropped her head into the gap and got stuck. She panicked, and when I saw what was going on, I just laughed. I grabbed her firmly around the neck, pushed her head forward and lifted her free.
By the time Jonathan and Susan got back, I was feeling weak, and on the verge of being sick. We walked out of town, and, under the cover of dark, turned off the road and found a spot 200 meters from the road, hidden behind a large mound of dirt. A light drizzle turned to heavy rain, and I developed a fever. I set up my tent in a panic, which led to a very wet tent, backpack, and clothes. I got in my tent immediately and tried to get dry. I felt awful and couldn’t sleep. The night seemed to drag out for days.
The next day I barely moved, except to let the diarrhea pour every 20 or 30 minutes. Our camp was quickly surrounded by a minefield created by my sickness. Jonathan and Susan spent a lot of these two days to run more errands in town. They took Shuwya Shuwya with saddlebags so they could bring water back. While they were eating lunch, a police officer told them to keep the donkeys off the main roads, as it was illegal. They argued that other donkey drivers have their carts all over the main roads, and there are even signs showing that they are allowed. He didn’t accept their argument, and just told them again to stay off the main roads.
We discussed selling our donkeys and wrapping up our trip in Tan Tan. It was a far cry from our original destination, Dakhla, another 1200 km south, which we now estimated could take up to six months. Even going on to the next sizeable town, Tarfaya, would take at least another week, and was even smaller than Tan Tan. We didn’t want to get trapped in a town too small to sell our donkeys in. Most people told us the best way to sell the donkeys in Tan Tan would be to just go to the market area and have a for sale sign. Luckily, though, Jonathan and Susan heard that on Sunday there would be an animal market that we could go to. It was Thursday, though, so we had some time to wait.
Friday was Jonathan’s birthday, and I was starting to feel better from my sickness. Susan and I went to town on a water run with Shuwya Shuwya. We had the worst timing possible. First, we passed by a hotelerie school just as classes were getting out. This meant lots of attention toward Susan from the young, well-dressed men. Some of them spoke with me in English and French, and while they were not rude, I just was not in the mood to address everyone’s curiosities right now. One guy, Said, who spoke very good English, got into a discussion with me. He was having difficulty understanding why we would choose to travel with donkeys, the poor man’s vehicle, when most foreign tourists brought their own vehicles. We are not Moroccan, so why would we try to act like it? His tone was mildly critical, but he seemed to genuinely want to understand what we were all about.

Our camp outside of Tan Tan

We got to the military post, where Susan had gotten water before. Unfortunately, though, it seemed that somebody important was present, and they said we would have to come back in two hours if we wanted to fill our jugs. We asked around for where to fill our jugs, and we were directed to a mosque. Some young boys helped us out and filled up the jugs in the area where the men were performing ablutions. We loaded the 4 jugs, totaling 100 liters into the saddlebags, and Susan started to tie it up. She is very handy with knots, and is far better than I am at rigging the saddlebags. Unfortunately, though, the boys and young men hanging around couldn’t comprehend that she could possibly do this task correctly. They forced their way in, took the ropes, and fought over how best to tie it up. I was annoyed, but Susan was angry. It was even worse when the whole mess started to fall off after moving 20 meters. So she started it over on her own, and we had to force people away. It was really shocking to see them act so rude, by my standards, but it seemed normal to them. I repeatedly explained that she knows what she is doing, and has tied these up many times. When we finally got the people to listen, a taxi pulled over, and an adult man got out and scattered the cloud of children that had formed around us. He then tried to take the ropes from Susan to finish tying it up. We argued, but he insisted.
On the way back, a school got out just as we were passing, and we had to deal with even more children, yelling at us and asking for cadeauxs (gifts). After the water mission, Susan hitchhiked to Tan Tan Plage, a beach town 30 km away, to buy some beer. It was impossible to find in Tan Tan, but there was a Korean restaurant in Tan Tan Plage that sold alcohol at ridiculously inflated prices.
Meanwhile, I went to the market to buy supplies for Jonathan’s party. Good friends and serious blog followers might know the stories of the last time I was with Jonathan on his birthday on the border of Bhutan. Considering this, I couldn’t disappoint him by not sticking to tradition. This meant that I had to seek out and buy party hats. It was not as easy as in India, but after a few hours of searching in the market area, I found not only party hats, but also noisemakers (the kind you blow into and it unfurls into a magical sparkly blue tube) and Disney masks. I also bought him a gift of a toy violin, a large amount of camel meat, and lots of fruits and vegetables for a birthday tajine.
Susan doesn’t like party hats, but we made her wear one against her will. We also put them on Shuwya Shuwya and Rough and Ready, who fully enjoyed them. They even seemed to like the noisemakers. We made a tajine that, to this day is far and away the best tajine that we, or probably all of Morocco has ever tasted. And we didn’t even stray too far from Moroccan tradition. The meat was camel and the vegetables were all normal. The only liberties we took were too add some of the mitmita (Ethiopian spice blend) that I carried for heat, and added some golden raisins, which I imagine some people must do anyway. And of course there were plenty of whole garlic cloves and large orange slices. Susan also got a bottle of whisky, which was a nice addition. The meal was so heavy, though, that Jonathan got too tired to continue too far into the whiskey and he went to bed early. Susan and I went on midnight donkey rides into the desert. Shuwya Shuwya, hesitant at first to wander, was a great companion, and it was a perfect and tranquil end to a good birthday night.
On Saturday, we had everything in order, and we just had to wait for the market on Sunday. Jonathan and I had each had a day alone at the camp so it was Susan’s turn. Jonathan and I decided to do something that we should have done much more often and that was to take the donkeys out on an adventure. I rode Shuwya Shuwya in front, to keep Rough on a good pace and to keep him from straying. We rode them for a couple of km aimlessly into the desert. Eventually we came to what looked like a mix of a ghost town and ruins. It was a small settlement of maybe 10 or 15 homes or buildings, but there was no sign that anyone had been living there recently. They were mostly made from mud bricks, which there was little of, if any, in this part of Morocco. It was quite eerie. We also found something else that we didn’t think existed in this part of Morocco: trees. There was a small area of palm trees and large bushes. We went into it, found a clearing, and indulged in the shade. We tied up Rough, but not Shuwya Shuwya, as she had been so calm that there was no threat of her running off if we kept an eye on her. This was a mistake, though, because when Rough and Ready got loose, she was able to run away. We chased them out of the trees, and eventually Rough caught her, and pinned her down. Jonathan and I tried to push him off, but he already had is mouth clamped around her neck. So we started punching, but to no avail. I tried a nice eye gouge, which helped along with Jonathan’s kicking. When we finally separated them, I realized my hand hurt really badly. We realized that Jonathan, in the panic had been punching my hand that was on Rough’s neck.
Our plan for that night was to move our donkey cart into town and stay with Mohamed, a friend that Jonathan and Susan had made when I was sick. He said he had room for the cart and the donkeys and places for us to sleep, so we finally took him up on the offer. When we got to the police checkpoint at the edge of town, they said we could not pass. They said it was illegal to bring the cart into town. This was obviously a ridiculous thing to say, and we went around and around telling them there was no way it was illegal for us to have donkeys in town. But the bottom line was that they would not let us through, they said we had to go to Tan Tan Plage, 30 km away. We said we had to be at the animal market the next morning to sell the donkeys, and they said there was no animal market, but there was a big one in Tan Tan Plage. For some reason the police had decided that our presence in town had become a problem, and they were trying to pass us off to the next town. Mohamed met us at the checkpoint, and spoke with the police, but was unable to persuade them. So we went back to camp.
We needed water, so Jonathan and Mohamed took Shuwya Shuwya through the bush into town to circumvent the police. When Jonathan returned, we formulated our plan for the next day.