December 4, 1980

EL JADIDA - CASABLANCA, MOROCCO
Did a tour of the medina this morning and although it seems to be a friendly, pleasant little town, I didn't think there was enough to keep me interested for two days. Sat by the beach, reading the International Herald Tribune and a nice, sincere (believe it or not) young guy stopped and timidly told me he was going to school in the States next month and would like to know everything about it. I did my best to tell him everything about my country in ten minutes. He'll be arriving in New York on New Year's Eve, so naturally I directed him to Times Square.

My wishes came true when Mahomed didn't show up at noon-- undoubtedly it finally got through to him that 1) I wasn't going to buy any hash and 2) I was about as far from being his type as could be. As I left the hotel to get lunch, another guy grabbed me and brought me to his favorite restaurant and offered his services for dope dealing, tourism, etc. I must have been not too appealing a prospect since I was getting the next bus out, so he gave up quickly.

Got shuffled from one bus to another in the pre-departure mayhem. Passed nice looking farmland and some that was really poor and stony. Gradually, the scenery urbanized as we approached Casablanca. Ended up at a bus depot which was not the one I knew and it was ½ hour before I found myself in familiar territory. I decided that as long as I'm back in the city where I started, I'd go back to the hotel where I started, and they offered me the same room I had my first night in Africa-- some round trip!

For some reason, I had been thinking of Kramer vs. Kramer this morning and of how I'd like to see it again. Goldang it if I didn't walk right by a theater showing it. Hawkers were selling tickets at almost double rate, so after dinner, I bought a legit ticket two hours in advance and hung out in my room until nine.

I'd forgotten about the quaint French custom of showing 45 minutes of idiotic documentaries followed by a 15-minute intermission before the film. I'd hoped it would be in English with subtitles but, my luck, it was dubbed in French, harder to follow. Got out at 12:15, way past my bedtime.

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December 3, 1980

SAFI - EL JADIDA, MOROCCO
My enthusiasm for the alleged "open road" was somewhat tempered after the first 2-1/2 hours of wagging my thumb. By noon, I decided to head back into town for lunch and I met someone who told me there's a bus to El Jadida (midway between Safi and Casablanca) for $2.25. Now why didn't I think of that? You have to pay when you hitch-hike anyway (ah America, land of the free hitch!)

Squeezed into the 2:30 bus-- uneventful ride-- reached El Jadida about 6pm. To my anguish, I was found by one of those won't-take-no-for-an-answer types who insisted on finding me a hotel, bringing me to the room himself, dragging me out for a beer (my treat, of course), offering some hashish, demanding a detailed explanation of why I didn't want it, dragging me to his cousin's record shop, insisting I go in with him on some hash, sitting around with nothing to say, insisting that I stay anyway, (mortally offended that I didn't want to hang around while everyone got high), offering me some grass, borrowing 10 dirham (inevitable), etc., etc., etc., etc. This is the kind of experience that always bums me out. Luckily, I spoke with several other young Moroccans in Safi who were friendly, helpful, but not oppressive, and wished me a good trip. This pushy type, though, has no conception of why I would mistrust an instantaneous friendship-- I distrust it by nature AND by experience.

By 8:30 I finally broke away, after putting off our next appointment until noon (Mahomed gets up at 6 and could meet me anytime after that.) Went to bed slightly peeved.

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December 2, 1980

SAFI, MOROCCO
Though my ticket is for Casablanca, I've got four days before my flight and I've already done Casablanca, so when we docked at Safi, Morocco this morning, I abandoned ship. Though most of the ship emptied out for one tour or another, I think I was the only one ending his trip here and because it's so unusual, no one knew what to do with me and I had to do two hours of office-bouncing in order to do two minutes worth of customs paperwork.

When I reached Bamako two weeks ago, I felt a great relief in having my transportation all reserved for a while, but now that I'm fully rested from my rough-riding, I'm even more enthusiastic about having the open road ahead of me, having to rely on luck. It shouldn't, however, take an incredible amount of luck to cover the 200 miles or so to Casa in three days.

Safi seems like a great little city: colorful, condensed marketplace, the cheap hotels I've missed so much, the hubbub of the port. I'd barely been off the boat for a minute when a young policeman of some kind asked me where I was from, how long I'd been in Safi and didn't I want to stay at his house and he could drive me to Casa tomorrow. This was altogether too fast a friendship for a born & bred heterosexual like myself and I begged off with some excuse.

After my six-month summer, it looks like I'm in for a four-day autumn-- it's quite chilly and as soon as I'd changed my money (shuffled between no fewer than five banks) and dropped my load in a hotel, I bought myself a sweater. My loyal denim shirt had deteriorated to a point where I was stitching up and patching 4-inch tears every day. Finally I gave up and just wore my dirty undershirt around, but now with my pull (pullover), I feel like a million dirhams.

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Six hours have passed since I wrote the above paragraph-- so has the autumn that I thought would last four days. It's freezing! Maybe it's worse for me having just come from a tropical climate, but I never expected it to be this cold-- I thought I'd be able to go swimming, but skating would be more like it. To think that four days ago I would have leapt at a glass of ice water—now the sight of it would turn me to stone. And it's worse instead of better in my room, which is in a drafty stone building and has never seen the sun. If New York is worse than this next Saturday, I'm going into hibernation.

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December 1, 1980

TENERIFE, CANARY ISLANDS
Difficult to believe it's December, though the weather at sea is a little chilly in the morning and evening. Got up today as we were pulling into Tenerife, one of the cities of the Canary Islands. The luxury-class passengers, who lead a life totally unknown to us in Economique, took a three-hour excursion to one of the many volcanic craters on the island. I walked around the port, watching sailors unload their cargo, scrub their ships, etc.

We pulled out while I was eating lunch and my recently troublesome digestive system made me too queasy to finish a fabulous lamb dish. I decided to lie down afterwards and when I awoke, we were riding rough seas. This, combined with my previous condition, finally did me in and I spent the dinner hour barfing up my lunch.

There was no choice but to go to bed early, though still much awake. I'm surprised that a gigantic ship like this can be so battered by the waves. Though it doesn't really look so bad outside, we sometimes take a knocking that feels like we've been rammed by a battleship or hit a rock. If there'd been anything left in my guts, I'd have lost it during that.

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