Along the coast of Morocco

It was getting dark. I turned on the running lights but soon realized that the battery was low. We had to sail without them. The moon wasn’t up yet, it was pitching black. I couldn’t see any other boats in the area.

The coastline seemed deserted except for several vehicles with strong searchlights, driving back and forth. I could tell by the wobbly light that the terrain were rough. They kept climbing up and down, searching the area.

There was almost no wind. I could hear an engine crank up somewhere in the dark. The sound resonated under the cliffs and narrowed in as they came straight for us. The motor boat didn’t have any lights. I guessed it was the coast guard, or some sort of military, and turned on our lights. Nina came up to have a look.

We could barely make out the black shape of the boat as they turned slowly around in a big circle. Okay. Back to sleep. Back to nothing.

The fishermen in Morocco had the most gallant salute I’ve ever seen; they would put their hand on their heart and give us a short bow with their head. It was a custom we quickly picked up. I simply loved to do that salute, and could hardly wait for another boat to pass.

It was still Ramadan. No eating, drinking or smoking between sunrise and sunset. Otherwise it seemed to be business as usual, except people were a bit edgy around their daily chores. It could easily flare up an argument in the crowd at the fish marked.

After sunset we often got visited by an old man who used to sit in silence and smile, and later on he would climb out in the cockpit for a joint. We couldn’t communicate, but we understood he’d been a sailor of some sort. He always sat back and smoked the joint down to his fingernails. Then he would lean forward and turn his head like a heavy crane towards me and Nina in the cabin. He would say something in French and beam another smile.

Morocco

The medina in Safi has been one of the biggest surprises on our journey. We were just taking a shortcut to town, but entering the portals was like an instant travel back in time. The walls were so massive it felt like walking inside a mountain, in a labyrint of narrow pathways. We walked on huge slabs of stone, weared down by countless generations.

It turned out that we were popular, being (maybe) the only western tourists in Safi at the time. The teachings of the Quran, and the culture of Muslims, is to welcome strangers, but we didn’t manage to talk much to the two lovely women in the medina, since we didn’t understand neither Arabic nor French.

In Safi harbour, at dusk, Nina noticed a kid that seemed to be checking us out. I came out to the cockpit. He was clearly keeping an eye on us, but he wasn’t more than 10-12 years old and we didn’t take the threat too seriously. The next morning he was still there, swept up in a grey blanket, and we thought he was a homeless.

In Essouira we saw a similar kid. I managed to take this picture before we left for the Canary Islands; the boy had been sitting under a blanket the whole night, it was a very cold night, and he walked in his dirty clothes under the morning sun, trying to get the warmth back.

We later learned that he was the guardsman. Old enough to ring the bell, but not old enough for a decent salary. But still, his body language was that of an old man. He seemed to have a lot on his mind.