11/15/2023 Bikepacking Morocco Day 99 : Muad’dib

Remember when you were a kid and you wanted to write a secret message to your friend? Maybe you made a secret code like I did where A=Z, B=Y, C=X… no adult could ever figure that out! Well, today I found the secret decryption code for sugar on the back of a 7UP can (see my photo). Up until today, these were “hidden sugars” for me! This is the first word I can read in Arabic.. well, basically I just look for the two “l” things at the end.

Every day, I feel like a child. I speak French like a child, can’t read like a child, stumble like a child with my weak Achilles, and I speak mostly to children. I am going backwards. Any day now, I am expecting my gray hairs to turn back to black.

As I exited the small grocery store with a can of mushrooms, a can of sardines, and a tiny nugget of expensive cheese, A woman and her son approached me close. Both made sad faces and the woman made the universal symbol for food by bunching her fingers together and tapping her mouth. Here I was, with food in my hands, and these poor people were hungry. Of my 3 items, I decided to offer them my can of sardines. The woman wagged her finger, “no.”

I should have known, a modern young mother; she must be worried about the BPA in the can or maybe the mercury content of the fish. I reluctantly held out the small piece of cheese towards them. This was to be my main source of calories tonight, but I was thinking it would be rude to offer the mushrooms. The mother wagged her finger again. No.

What, are they dairy free too?!

Here the son took over and pointed through the clear refrigerator doors behind me - at a 1.5 liter bottle of coke. The mother nodded in approval.

Hunger is no joke, but this looks more like a drug deal to me than hunger. If I ain’t eating sugar, kid, neither are you!

This gave me an idea… when kids ask for “Bon bon” (candy in French) I offer up a can of sardines instead. So far, I haven’t managed to give any out to my little trick-or-treater friends. Morocco is suddenly getting better as I learn how to make it work. If people are actually hungry, I can help them.

Speaking of making it work, I changed my route again today, and had a pensive and peaceful jaunt through the mountains. I have been brightening back up on Morocco. There are so many things to like about bike packing here. This rocky but quiet route gave me time to think.

But not as much time as you might think. I’ve become quite a busy correspondent, having added nearly one Moroccan per day to my contacts list. I stop riding periodically to reply to messages from some of the good people I have met along the way. Remember that young teen named Redwane that I met walking alone in the desert? I had asked him what he is studying, and he replied with this:

“Of course my friend,I study the course of poetry from the Abbasid era to our time, which has undergone a relative change in terms of content and form. As a weapon that the Arab tribes used to raise their value”

Ok, buddy! (I’m making the airplane flying over my head gesture since you can’t see me). I asked some more questions, and then shot his very polite replies to my friend Josh in Pennsylvania for decryption. Josh is a professor of Arabic philosophy. My 7UP can trick isn’t going to work here.

This brings me to my point for the day (yes, today has an actual point).

In Spanish, there is an adjective for our word “polite.” That word is “cortez.” It lives in the dictionary, but I’ve never heard anyone use it in a real-life sentence. Instead, in Spanish, to say someone is polite, you say they are “educado,” which means “educated.” It’s the same in Portuguese, “educado”…. And guess how you say polite in Arabic? “Maudib.” I did some research on this today, and “Muad'dib” means “a person who educates.”

I’m now riding along, juxtaposing Redwane with his slightly younger colleagues. The kids in these towns don’t need aid-workers who come and toss them pens, candies, and balloons like a rolling piñata. What they really need is a Muad'dib. A teacher. Pens, candies and stupid gifts are cheap and easy. Being a teacher, especially a good one: That is hard, and it’s a vocation I increasingly admire.

So, when a kid threw his shoe at me today (and hit me in the back) I turned around with the hopes of teaching him a lesson. He bolted up the dirt hill alone - wearing only one shoe. The other kids stuck around, ratting him out with their fingers - as if I needed to know which one was guilty. The kid vanished over the top of the hill. Man can these kids run. Today I failed as a teacher. But I commend all the teachers (and homeschoolers) out there. This is tough work. I call you Muad'dib.