I'Mo roccan in Morocco

So I ended up taking a slight detour thru Morocco while travelling thru the south of Spain. I found a trip through this really cool company in Sevilla while I was chillin in Granada, and bam, 2 days later I was in Morocco with a bunch of cool people (mostly US study abroad students)

Moral of the story, Morocco is bad on the digestive system...and no one even drank the water!

It is really funny how people seem to bond over mutual suffering...in this case, pooping, the runs, having to pee outside, and to a lesser extent some puking also. I know I'm painting a fantastic picture here, but this was the "A- #1" icebreaker the morning after our first day... "So did you get sick last night?...most people answered yes to some degree" Some people politely covered it up by referring to the Moroccan D, or the Full Moroccan Experience. I thought it was interesting. It was also an interesting social study into how people in a group go about solving problems.

People always seem to gravitate towards an answer that is finite and specific. For example... I wonder what made everyone sick last night, I've heard the Vegetarians don't get sick as much, so it probably has something to do with the meat, and you drank the tea last night, but I didn't so it must not have been the tea, I bet it was those tomatoes you ate, because they washed them in the water, or that apple because you didn't peel it or wash it with bottled water.

My theory,
a) much of Moroccan food is veggie based, which has more fiber and gives you the shits (also Vegetatians' systems are more used to this and it effects them less) b)travelling in a bus for many hours a day sitting and being uncomfortable does a number on the digestion
c) they do grow things differently and the sanitary conditions are not as good in Morocco, so it is going to effect you a little, your body just isn't used to it...

so keep popping those imodiums, the only way to avoid getting sick is to have a stomach of steel or a goat, or import your water from Europe in bottles, don't eat the food, don't breathe the air,don't touch anything... or smoke a lot of pot.. I hear its good for nausea.
**crotch hole update, see the patch in the hookah picture, yeah, I salvaged my pants MacGuyver style...or I borrowed some Canadian dude's needle and thread in Granada.. that his mom told him to bring and he was happy it actually went to some sort of use. Just thought I'd throw that in there in case any of you were thinking I went completely hippie chic.

I loved Morocco though, it was so much more than I expected. Yeah,we rode camels in the desert and jumped around on the sand dunes in the Sahara and camped out with a Berber tribe and played bongos around the camp fire with crazy Moroccan drummer guys, smoked some hookah... but Morocco is a very culturally and topographically/climaticly diverse nation also. Case in point, in one day we went from Desert to Oasis, to high plateau and SNOW.. yes, my first experience with snow the 06-07 winter season was in AFRICA... blows your mind doesn't it? We went thru mountian ranges, rain forest, played with Apes outside of Chefchouan in the Reef Mountians (I later learned that this is where 90%of the marijuana crop from Morocco is grown, hence the term "reefer" given to marijuana by some hippies in the 60s) and saw a developing country struggling to become modern while still holding onto tradition. (and in many cases traditional ways are easier and more economical) I was however impressed with the infrastructure of the highways, they were large, wide, had modern toll booths. It was pretty funny to see a random Moroccan farmer riding a donkey down the modern toll road. Lessons in modernization, I guess. All in all it was a very eye opening and awesome experience!