We got up to catch the 5:30 minivan back to Rissani. Our glue guy was up and ready for us, with a fresh bottle of cold water and many smiles (and kisses! yikes!) to settle our bill and usher us on our way. We certainly were pampered!
We loaded into a mini-van (after stepping over the hotel staff sleeping outside the kasbah entryway) with some mellow Arabic music to greet us, bench seats that were not bolted down to the floor of the van, a sliding door that didn’t close, and two teenage boys that were traveling to school at this ungodly hour. We weren’t sure if we were part of the school bus or not, but we determined as we stopped every 5 minutes for locals and kids in and about different streets off of bumpy, dusty dirt roads that this was the only scheduled minivan run into town. It was an interesting sight seeing Berber women in the villages, clearing paths through chickens and not wearing the full fabric that going out in public entails. The outfits are just as colorful. I decided interesting as the sight was, it certainly looks to be a tough life, living without running water, electricity, meaning… brace yourself… no washing machines or dishwashers or electric can openers!
We picked up a few more teenagers, a few packages with instructions, stopped to drop money off for someone (must of been a delivery from the previous day). Everyone seemed to know everyone else. A middle aged Berber couple were scooped up. The lady was wearing a lime green patterned wrap that sort of had an extra level of glow to it given the Mars colored landscape surrounding us. She was a sweet lady, as she went to climb out at a later loop, she stopped climbed back in just to smile and nod goodbye to us.
After a bumpy hour, we finally started seeing palm trees and buildings with a spattering of mosaic tiles indicating we were getting near Rissani. The adobe look started to meld back in with the Moorish architecture.
We were dropped off at the Grand Taxi stand and landed a taxi with two other men headed Er-Rachidia (a good hour ride plus). The beaten up Mercedes taxis usually holds three people in the front seat (yes, the car has a stick shift, so the front passengers better be skinny) and four people in the back seats (again, one of you is stuck sitting forward). We opted to pay for two extra spaces so we could use the vehicle as it was designed, two in the front, three in the back. The other two passengers were quite pleased when the realized that we didn’t expect them to share the front passenger seat and made an ordeal of discussing who should have the prized front seat. Our taxi driver was an odd one, he had the radio on for a bit, then pressed in a cassette tape that was a woman speaking in theatrical Arabic. This was played for the entire trip, the guy next to me finally leaned over and asked if we understood the tape. I said no, not in the slightest. So, he went on to explain it was a story about a man and a woman and their lives. He sort of rolled his eyes. We heard a chapter and a half of the story over the course of the trip, so I imagine our fellow passengers were more annoyed with the driver than we were at the racket, since they came into the story in the middle and were left dangling after an hour of listening. To top off the oddness, the speaker behind Derrell was cutting in and out the entire time and the tape deck would stop about every 5 minutes until the driver whacked it and it started playing again. Derrell and I concluded that we must still be in Morocco.
The taxi driver dropped us off at the bus station after driving by the taxi queue and getting onto the clipboard of the guy handling the taxi queue. There was a ‘Cafe de The’ that must have been doing quite a business on the drivers and the passengers waiting for a taxi to fill up so it could leave. An unusual transportation system, or so it seemed to us, but good for the tea business.
We braced ourselves as we entered the ‘evil’ Er-Rachidia bus station, but there wasn’t a tout in sight. We sauntered over to the counter and caught a bus to Meknes with no hassle.
The most memorable aspect of the return bus ride was a live Infomercial that appeared in the aisle of the bus and lasted a full hour. The guy was peddling, in a loud booming voice, Wild Tiger balm (complete with asian fold out instructions.. good for r-r-r-r-rheumetism) and Magic Oil (good for toothaches). He had the entire speil going, “You might think this costs 20 dirhams, or maybe 10 dirhams, but no this is only 2 dirhams!” This being bellowed with all the intonations of a professional infomercial actor complete with demonstrations of use and dispensing drops of the green Magic Oil on all the passengers hands. Derrell was laughing so hard he almost had tears in his eyes. The guy would not abide not smearing some of the green oil on Derrell’s hand for him to try, doubled over in laughter made it a bit tough, but the guy was quite pleased with additional material to work with from his audience. A number of passengers went for the magic oil. And right they should, in a land of 1 dentist for every 80,000 citizens, and not many sparkling looking smiles, or for that matter complete mouthfuls of teeth, the ambesol property of the oil is true magic.
Well that was about it, the ride was rather calm after that. We had a long discussion with the passenger next to us. He was traveling to Meknes to take a teaching exam. There are no universities in the south of Morocco. He is teaching math in one of the Berber towns that had Peace Corps volunteers for a few years. He was well spoken and many opinions on the United States and Iraq, most of which we heartily agreed, some of which left Derrell trying in vain to bite his tongue. We ended up talking to him, since I rolled my eyes at the music that was playing. He said it was a popular Berber group, and you can’t get Berber music in the north end of the country. The tape had been on repeat (a 35 minute tape) for the entire 5 hour bus ride. He was curious if we had the words down yet. He figured he’d be singing them in his sleep.
To keep the contrast tilted on full, we checked into an Ibis hotel (chain hotel similar to Best Western in quality) and felt like we had walked out of Morocco completely. Europop in the courtyard by the pool surrounded by Hibiscus bushes in bloom, a flurry of swallows zooming in for a drive-by drink from the pool and a large expanse of grass. Grass looks really out of place in Morocco.. and Europop sounds bizare after a week or so listening to acoustic Arabic music.
So, in summary, we survived the bus ride without an earth shattering shower of glass, and therefore, considered it a very successful day.
