oh shit 10/28/09

should you decide to visit morocco, there are a few things that you should know before your arrival. the first thing is that morocco runs on moroccan time. this has nothing to do with time zones. what this means is that time does not exist here and all estimated time frames are savagely wild guesses and should be doubled. if your taxi is arriving in 15 minutes, sit down and watch an episode of Friends, because you have at least 30 minutes to kill.

inaccurate time frames don't really bother me since i was raised on jewish standard time, but knowing that everything takes twice as long as it's estimated caused a collective sigh of "oh shit" when we were told to follow a donkey up a mountain for "30 minutes" to eat lunch.

we all marched forward, not really knowing when we might arrive. we passed children playing in trees, majestic mountains and orchards of fruit trees, in awe of the beauty, but also in awe of how blissfully unaware our guide was of how long 30 minutes is, exactly.

as we diverged from the main road to a dirt path that wound along a hillside, we knew that walking into a michelin-rated restaurant was now pretty unlikely. we came to a staircase that led up to a berber village and we lined up behind our guide for the ascent. as we rounded a corner, the staircase came to an end- right in front of a cow chewing her cud.

moooooooooooooooooooooo, bessie said, shocked to see a group of white people at her home.

moooooooooooooooooooooo, i wanted to reply, shocked to see a cow at our restaurant.

unfazed, our guide walked up to bessie and slapped her upside the head. jolted, or maybe just depressed and with broken spirit, she moved a few inches to the right, allowing us passage. we walked past the bovine baker and her stack of pies, toward another staircase that cut straight up the mountain side. we certainly weren't in oz anymore.

we were led up the stairs into a concrete room with a table at its center. we took our seats on pillows and waited to see what would happen.

first came a tray of nuts and biscuits, followed by a tray of tea. we were then served salads of chopped tomatoes, onions and peppers, followed by skewers of meat and a tajine of onions, potato and chunks of some kind of meat. our hosts accommodated my vegetarianism by bringing me a plate of the onion and potato from the tajine with a side of sauteed peppers and onions and a mound of lightly seasoned grated carrots. we were also given a basket of dense bread that i loved.

dessert was a bowl of glassy-skinned grapes with tangerines and apples.

since i was too busy absorbing the experience, i forgot to document it except for one photo.

the deal was that our guide had taken us to the home of some of the village people -heh heh- who cook for tourists who make the trek to their village.

village children ran upstairs as we ate to get a glimpse of us, only to run away the second we noticed them.

the master of the house came in at the end and told us about his family and to get a handle on the new people in his home. he was nice and after we communicated for several minutes in shattered french and non-existent english, we all rose from the table to head out.

since no one was eager to trek back down the mountain, we asked that a car pick us up where the dirt path met the main road. once we were back in the car, we observed several minutes of silence.

it was decided that this was what we refer to in whitespeak as an experience. it's imperative to inhale deeply and then exhale while articulating the syllables in descending cadence.

the funny thing is that the food was actually very good, we just didn't expect a mountain trek and a trip through old macdonald's farm before having it. none of us was bitter, though. the beauty of the trip was breathtaking:

anyway, if you'll excuse me, i have to get ready for lunch now. we're going to eat at 1 o'clock and since it's 12:30 now, i only have two and a half hours to get ready.