The school where I work organizes tours for the volunteers every Monday-Tuesday, our days off. I don’t take them, they are either too pricey or I don’t feel like it for some reason or I really look forward to being “home alone” with most of everyone gone and the kitchen quiet.

On this “week-end” I feel giddy as I arrange my own tour, my own plans, hah! Me too, I will go out of town! I will see things! I feel like it has been ages since I planned or did anything, but I am still in a new country and I still get to tourist. I have found a couch host for three nights and it all feels big.

Having been in Morocco for two months makes me forget that many things I do here are still for the first time.

My main reason for going to Rabat for a few days is to arrange a visa to Mauritania. I have heard, people have told me, I don’t remember who or in which bar or on what street, that if I get the visa at the embassy in Rabat it is much cheaper and better than getting it at the border.
“There is nothing at the border! You will have to wait in the sun, in the desert!” I am told.

And this face-less voice and my zero knowledge of the desert brings me to imagine it as a yellow and dry death, unforgiving, no of course I don’t want that! Of course I will be smart and make my visa at the embassy, on top of that I will get to see the capital of Morocco, that’s probably something I should do, right?

And so I take the train and I only pack my sleeping bag and toothbrush and in the morning I share a taxi to the station with a friend who is off to have her own adventure in Marrakesh. It’s wild. We part and I sit on the platform and wait for my train for two hours.

…

I arrive in Rabat right in the middle of some football game and I’ve agreed to meet with my host after it has finished. Already when I exit the station I am caught off-guard by how different it is. Only a 40-minute train ride but here the streets are wide and empty, clean and quiet. Compared to Casablanca’s constant blaring and broken sidewalks and cat piss and trash. I wonder how it is possible. People are strolling slowly, the sky is bright blue. The Moroccan flag is swaying above the majestic-looking houses and from the full bars I can hear people cheering as they follow the match.

The Medina is different too, how can it be? The streets are wider and the white houses go beautifully with the brown of the wooden sunshades. The Kasbah lies on top of the hill and after I walk through it I am met by an open space and a view of the ocean, strong wind and seagulls leisurely floating above. The sun goes down and turns the Kasbah walls an even warmer shade of brown.

…

Soon I meet my host and I feel like I know the type; he is energetic, talkative and eager. I am just coming out from a three-day fast and can not keep up with his energy. He wants to show me a million things and tell me all about them; he wants to make the most of my time, a perfect guide, but I ask him to take me somewhere where we can eat tajin and so that’s what he does.

He has worked all over Europe with something business-y. He speaks both German and Spanish besides his French, English, classic Arabic and Darija. He knows my reason for coming to Rabat and he offers to help me with the visa.

“Have you ever been on a motorcycle?” he asks me.

I have never.

…

The following morning my host equips me with a leather jacket, jeans, shoes and helmet. The jacket is tight and it creaks and contains me and to be honest I am scared but I don’t tell him that and just hope that he will be a responsible driver. The bike turns out to be a beast, a huge road thing with bags on the sides. It looks heavy. I know nothing about motorbikes (I have only driven this kind of bike in GTA SA) but my host shows me where I can put my feet and he puts on music and we’re driving through the morning and onto the highway towards the Mauritanian embassy and after just a few blocks I feel at home. I am having a great time.

…

We run the embassy errand; they need to keep the passport overnight so that the visa can magically grow into one of the pages. The woman behind the desk asks me what date I am planning to enter the country and I swallow. In a way I was ready for this. I had been toying with the idea of prolonging my Moroccan visa and I was hoping the visa would be open and that I could enter whenever. Staying is easy. But the situation demands a decision and so I ask her to make it for the day before my Moroccan visa ends. Squeezing out the last drop.
Placing a punctuation mark.

Outside of the embassy I speak with two women, a mother and a daughter. They are dressed in what I learn are traditional Mauritanian fabrics, colorful and bright, wrapping their whole bodies and heads beautifully. The daughter speaks perfect English and lets me in on the secret of how these tie with just two small knots on the shoulders. I ask about this distant country bordering in the south; the food, the people, the culture, and they tell me about the rice and the fish and the kindness.
“You will like it,” the daughter says.
“When I go, I want to wear a fabric like this too,” I say, though having already forgotten the name.
“Insha’allah,” she says.
Her mother doesn’t speak English but she looks at me, smiling.

…

Besides the embassy business we are tourists.

I get properly hosted.

Plans are arranged for me, I am taken to restaurants, someone else thinks about what would be interesting for me to see and experience and when I loosely say that I feel like eating a donut, my host finds a place where we can buy them late in the evening. We go to see the fortress, the tomb, the Medina. We take laps and laps around town on the motorcycle and I stare at the architecture and rows of palm trees passing us by. I ask to get my photo taken and in between my host patiently practices French with me and teaches me words in Darija. We play and bicker. For the ride home he chooses the road along the sea and I watch the sun set and paint the city dreamy-yellow. On the other side of us I see tombstones lined up by the beach and I just look and look and look.

…

We almost miss the train on my last evening and we run up to the platform and my host ushers me in and we say our good-byes through the closing doors. Accidentally my host has put me on the wrong train. I meant to go into Rabat one last time to enjoy a dance event. Instead the train is bound for Casa and that is lucky, but it wraps up my stay quicker than intended and I worry that I will get in trouble for not paying the proper ticket price. I don’t.

Looking out on the darkness outside I try to wrap my mind around everything. I am happy to have come out from Casa but it’s been a lot. I am leaving Morocco, it is decided now. I can feel the decision taking shape and shifting my own. I have only a few weeks left here. Gradually I need to start planning on how I will make the long way south to the border, to a country I know nothing about other than that most of it is desert and that it’s very religious.

…

I am noticing smaller and smaller shifts in my becomings. I have spoken more French these two days and I can’t believe that there’s another language I am filling my sack with, catching up on like a wolf on a rabbit, biting at its heels. Placing the vowels between my cheeks, moving them around with my tongue. The fast pouring stream of speech gradually taking shape and revealing single words more and more often. Me starting to be able to express my self, choosing words and tonalities out of several options to better reflect what I mean, becoming yet another self.

Who would that be?

…

I could not imagine this a year ago. I have no idea what I’m doing and I keep repeating it, yet every time finding more and more depth in this life-hole I am digging for myself.

Is it possible to live like this? Am I taking enough notes? What if I miss it when I blink? Can a life be spent like this? The privilege of this is so un-just that at times it rips me apart, yet I want it like this, I am loving it, it is magnificent.

…

Back in Casa I call a friend who meets me at the station, takes me to his favorite place and treats me to a sandwitch with fried liver and onions before I get into the familiar taxi and arrive back at the school. Tomorrow I will work as usual, maybe for another two weeks or so, but already everything is different. Slowly I will start to study the map again and ask around for the bus routes, border situations and what to expect from this next country that I will be in a month from now.

Mauritania.

The light from the screen forms a familiar rectangle in the dark room where everyone else is sleeping as I lay in my bed and look at the map. It looks far away, all yellow on the satellite view: sand. The desert. I can not imagine it.

As I close my eyes for sleep I hear a familiar inner voice whispering: south, south south…

…

(This story told in pictures.)