11/27/2023 Bikepacking Morocco Day 111 : The Petty Pilferer

I had to stock up for another long haul in the desert. I found a one-stop shop - behind the counter there were my usual food picks. In front, half a dozen men were sitting and drinking tea. In front of that, a few dodgy looking guys in the street - the first I’ve seen in Morocco.

Usually I’ll go to one of the many cafes for an espresso shot because it is one-and-done, but today I opted for tea. For one thing, I like the way tea makes me feel - I don’t know if it is the other chemicals or the additional hydration - but the tea buzz is worth the cost of having to spend time drinking the extra volume.

Tea also gives me the opportunity to sit, observe, and momentarily participate in the local life. Across from me, a lone young man sat by himself with his tea. He had voluntarily helped translate my French to Arabic for the guy across the counter as I pointed to the items I wanted to buy.

When you get tea here, you receive a pot, two glasses per person (one upside down) and a huge block of sugar. I watched as the 3 men at the table to my left poured the tea from 20” above into the first glass. Next, another high altitude pour into the second glass. The block of sugar is then placed into the pot, and the two glasses are decanted back into the pot. After a brief waiting period, this process can be repeated. I read online that the height of the pour signifies your respect for the other people with you. A bride in an unwanted arranged marriage might do a low pour, for example. I was drinking alone, so as I copied their behavior, I decided to respect everyone around me with a modest 6” pour height - “respectfully” not baptizing my neighbors with hot tea.

Before I could get too engaged in the pouring project, one of the dodgy guys from outside walked right up to my table. He mumbled something, but then made a face that I could understand clearly. It was kind of a puppy dog face, which reads “I need something, can you help?” He was doing a pretty good job of moving my heart, but I could see the lone young tea drinker behind him kind of rolling his eyes. His face read, “oh great, here we go again.” I looked back and forth between tea-eye-roll-man and puppy-face-man, and before I could take any action, puppy-face-man pirouetted and stepped to tea-man’s table. He grabbed one glass of tea from the table, and one of tea-man’s loaves of bread; promptly walking back out front of the store to enjoy the meal. Tea-man made a face of disgust, but he still had one round loaf and one glass of tea at the table. You can do your own analysis on what just happened.

Back at the 3 man tea table, there were stacks of that round bread I have been telling you about. As puppy-face-man exited, a new man entered, pulling a bagged bottle from inside the lapels of his coat. I peered carefully - was this contraband alcohol in Morocco? The man uncapped the mysterious bottle and poured a thin syrup into a small dish at the 3-tea-man table. It looked like a blend of honey and olive oil. The men began to dip their bread in this substance - just as another guy emerged from behind the counter wielding a fancy tray with a carefully decorated crepe-thin omelette as a centerpiece. They would share the bits of the little omelette, mostly filling up on the hunks of bread dipped into the honey oil.

I sat back and sipped my tea and contemplated how unifying this is. You probably think I’m going to say it’s unifying that they shared the little omelette… but no: I’m thinking of the shared human experience. Possibly a world apart from this ramshackle store, in the USA, one could go to an opulent restaurant and similarly fill up on bread and oil; the “real meal” being a highly decorated but very small token centerpiece.

Juggling these thoughts, I rode off into the side-headwind, optimistic that the flow would eventually become favorable. The first 55 miles, they were still building a new highway, meaning that I always had my own designated paved bike path. That was good. I stopped in a small town at mile 55 and bought more supplies. The young man amplified the music and danced behind the counter for me. “C’est bon?” He smiled asked over and over. His dancing was kind of distracting and made me nervous for some reason… it took a long time for me to point out the foods because he kept dancing between retrievals. I thought he might grab me and make me dance too. I took the items outside to pack the bike, and I could see the man in the pharmacy smiling at me, patting his heart, and waving. It feels like these guys just want to spread the love or something. I get so much friendly attention from men; I wonder if it has anything to do with the male-female restrictions here.

Unfortunately, the wind was mostly a side wind - acting as a headwind in some places - but a tailwind too. Then, I got sick a third time. I don’t keep statistics for this, but if I had a chart for number of times vomited per days in the country, Morocco would rise to the top. Concurrently, I developed hypoglycemia - 47mg/dL all in a pretty forsaken place (but luckily the ONLY place with bushes I saw all day). Imagine being required to force down food to avoid going unconscious - right after your body just rejected the previous meal. Bad stuff. Plus, the Achilles screams at me all day long. My body felt like a wreck. But through what felt like a miracle, the sugars absorbed, I eventually was able to continue rolling, slowly becoming stronger again. By the time I finished the ride, the nausea was gone - only to relapse the moment I stopped. Ugh. Sometimes I wish I could repair this body like a bike or a computer.