The Sahara Trip

Jackson Bentley: What attracts you personally to the desert? T.E. Lawrence: It's clean.

It may be clean, but after sweating, riding camels and not showering, I was not. When I got back there was sand coming from my clothes and bags for days. Such a cool trip. We got back from the Sahara (at 6 this morning). It was incredible. We rode camels through the Sahara (ouch!), ate delicious Friday couscous at Hassan’s ( Hassan=a palace worker/desert marathon runner), went off-roading in the desert, danced with our Berber guides to Berber music, slept under the stars, witnessed rain (!), witnessed a sandstorm (!), played marco polo at a hotel pool, climbed a huge sand dune (Well, some of us did. Of course I was there….), took a horse carriage ride out to a "forest" where we ate rabbit, enjoyed a backrub train, and practically bathed in a cold well, and finally, last but certainly not least, we saw Youssef “lose his cool” (FUNNY). I’ll tell you that story:

So we are at the very end of our trip, pretty much just waiting to embark on the 9 hour ride back to Rabat. Now, you have to consider that Youssef, our Moroccan friend who was leading all of us helpless and hapless trainees, had not slept in two nights and led us around and arranged EVERYTHING for us. He was loosely nicknamed the Moroccan Kramer bc he would always be popping up somewhat unexpectedly and he always had amazing amounts of excess positive energy even when the rest of us were wilting under the heat. We left for the desert on Friday night around 9PM and arrived in the morning at 6ish, and it was really tough to sleep on the bus. I sat by Youssef. He didn’t sleep (unfortunately I know). Then the next night we spent in the 110 degree heat. At night when everyone else was absolutely exhausted, Youssef couldn’t sleep. We were all lying on carpets laid out on the sand, and there were cats all over the place allegedly protecting us from alleged desert animals (scorpions, spiders…ick), and they were meowing and playing all night. As we were trying to fall asleep, every two minutes we’d hear, “Sssshhh! Get away from me! Fuck! Get! Shoo! I HATE them!” and something would be thrown or bug spray would be dispersed at a cat. After this went on for an hour or so, Michel and I invited Youssef to sleep in the middle, away from the edge of the carpet so that cats wouldn’t bother him. He did, but he kept up the anti-cat rally pretty much all night. When I went to bed he was sitting up shooing the cats. When I woke up, he was shooing the cats. He says he didn’t sleep because they were “crawling all over him” (they weren’t crawling on me, but hey). I have no reason to doubt that he didn’t sleep. So anyway, we’re getting ready to board the bus. Youssef says we are in a super shady area in Erfoud and we should stay in a group. He asked who needed to use a bathroom. No one said anything, but there were some people who wanted water. Youssef led some people to get water, but then (and I am one of these people, I admit it) some people realized they did, in fact, need to go to the bathroom and should go before the long bus ride back began in about 13 minutes (much searching, Turkish toilette, no lights, Michel buckled under the pressure of the decision. We had to hold it)…So we left. We didn’t get to go to the bathroom, but we did meet a frazzled Youssef who couldn’t find a trainee and his friend. They too had wandered off, and he had expected the worst. When they showed up mere moments before the bus left, Youssef said something along the lines of, “Where the hell were you guys? Don’t you know you can’t wander off like that?” He apologized the rest of the night for being so harsh with them. Hilarious. I seriously admire his patience. Even when he gets impatient, he is a model of togetherness. I sat next to him on the bus ride back. I am happy to report that he did eventually doze off.