Auchia doesn't look like a butcher. Pretty, in her early 20s, dressed in an elegant purple jalaba she is always smiling and nearly always laughing. In truth she almost never touches a chicken. Rather, she commands a staff of four and touches only money and the computer on which she registers and tracks each sale in a business that grosses around 750,000 US dollars a year. This, in Ait Melloul, a populaire suburb of Agadir, where few make more than $10 a day.

Every neighborhood in Morocco has at least one chicken butcher who will kill and butcher to the clients order. Auchia's shop distinguishes itself by making every step visible, ensuring hygiene and selling at about 5% lower than the others.
The shop is divided into three sections. The largest, to the left, is where the live chickens are kept. Able to move around freely they have food and water and don't seem to notice that this is the last stop before being someones' dinner.

The second is where the chickens are killed, bled, de-feathered and butchered before being handed to the clients in the small waiting area in front of the counter. In the evenings the customers have considerably less space to move around than the chickens.

Customers demand a chicken based on approximate weight. The smallest weigh a little less than a kilo and the largest can exceed three kilos. The picker grabs a bird, pins its wings back and after showing it to the customer puts it on a scale to be weighed. After being weighed the chicken has a tag attached to its leg which ensures the customer receives the chicken he paid for.

The chicken is then given to another man who pulls the head back and with a quick slice of the knife slits its throat and puts it head down into a funnel to bleed.

After a few minutes, he dips the carcass in boiling water to loosen the feathers and then de-feathers it in a machine consisting of a turning drum with rubber nobs that quickly denude the chicken.

I wasn't able to take any photos of the finishing process because the women who finish butchering the bird didn't want to be photographed. But they chop off the head, remove the entrails (leaving the heart, gizzard, liver and lungs), cut the chicken up if the customer desires and wrap the bird in a plastic bag before handing it off to the customer. The whole process takes about 20 minutes even when busy.

Our bird weighed about a bit less than 2 kilos and cost 21 dirhams or about $2.60. With another 10 Dirhams of vegetables and spices we made a Tagine and 15 Dirhams to cook it at a café down the street it comfortably served 5.

Ibrahim sat down with us after he got off work and over a joint and pot of tea helped fill in the details of the operation.

They sell at a minimum 800 kilos of chicken a day. If they have a wedding order they can sell up to 2000 kilos in a day. Most days though they average between 1000 and 1500 kilos. The market price of chicken changes but when we bought ours, the rate for a live chicken was 11.50 Dh/kilo or about 65 US cents a pound.

There are four such shops in the Agadir area and the three proprietors raise the chickens from eggs and send them to the retail locations when they're 40 days old.
Achia has a degree in information science and earns 100 Dirhams a day.

Ibrahim and the other man earn 50 Dirhams a day ($7) and work 07:00 to 13:00 and 15:00-21:00. The women about 33 Dirhams a day. Once a week they each get an afternoon off. They don't get any employee discount let alone a free chicken though every two weeks or so they each manage to sneak one home.

Mauritanian Visa

After a few years of distributing Visas to Mauritania in Casablanca, they have been given out at the Mauritanian Embassy in Rabat for the last two years. 1 Avenue de Normandie in the Souissi neighborhood. It used to be possible to get a transit visa at the frontier between Morocco and Mauritania but that has been discontinued since the most recent kidnappings and attacks against foreigners. You MUST get your Visa in Rabat. This will most likely change though.

You can walk to the embassy quite easily in about 45 minutes from the Rabat Ville train station.
Take Avenue Mohamed V (which becomes Ave Yocoub El Mansour) South until the roundabout outside the city walls. Bear right onto Ave John Kennedy and go SW for about 3 km past the embassy signs of Venezuela, and Senegal. At the interception of Ave Kennedy and Ave Imam Malek is a large CMH petrol station. On your left will be a small commercial center (with photocopier) followed by 3 banks. The first available right is 1 Ave de Normandy. If you pass the
Angolan Embassy you've gone too far.

For 3.5Dh bus 1 will take you to the embassy from near the train station and 2,4,8,21,43 and 44 will get you close. Get off if the bus tuns off Ave Kennedy. If you take a taxi as the driver to take you to SuperMarche Souissi. The fare should be less than 20 Dhs from Gare Rabat Ville. The Embassy is just across the street.

The office opens about 9h but this tends to vary. Be there before 11h. You need your passport, 2 visa photos, 340Dh (up from 200 two years ago)and a photocopy of the first pages of your passport. At the gate you'll be directed down to a little office. Fill out a straight forward two-page form in French, give an official the items mentioned above and come back later the same day 15h and 16h, earlier on Fridays. They did not ask for proof of financial support nor of onward travel.

A few hundred meters before the embassy on Ave John Kennedy is the Souissi Boulangerie and Patisieri with an attached restaurant. It is a classy joint with free wifi. A café noir cost 12Dh.

About 3 am they kicked me out of the train station. I'd had about 4 hours of sleep in the last three days and was to tired to wander for the next 3 hours. I sat down in the doorway of a bank, covered myself with my sleeping bag and dozed off until I awoke an hour later aware that someone was next to me. I threw off the bag and someone ran off. I chased them a few feet until they ran into the dark alleys and went back to my bag and discover they'd unzipped my side pocket and gotten my gray ditty bag with my sewing kit, boot polish, bug repellent, string, candles etc. Nothing irreplaceable or of any real monetary value but I need that shit and was bummed that I'd been so careless.

So I walked around, got another pot if tea and studied my French and Arabic On my way to the internet cafe to find out if I had an address to send the card yet I met Lotfi, a 19 yo kid I'd spoken to briefly the day before. He invited me to walk with him and we spent the next few hours talking and him guiding me through the souks and medina. I wasn't nearly as enthusiastic about that stuff as he thought I should be (you know how boring I find standard touristic shit) but invited me to eat lunch at a friend's place. So we ate and talked He's a cabinet maker. His father a grand taxi driver.



After dinner we went out and wandered around. Lotfi and Anass showing me the different souks and neighborhoods, talking mostly about love and girls. according to Lotfi 90 percent of marriages are not for love. If you have money there is no problem getting girls or a wife but if not its impossible. He is right of course. One thing apparent everywhere is the number of young men who have no prospects of getting married because they don't have the money. A huge percent I'm sure are virgins well into their 20s and 30s. The amount of underground homosexual activity must be enormous.

Related is that especially among the poorest, the young are segregated by gender in a way westerners, even devoutly religious, must find quaint. Nonetheless, they spend hours on-line chatting. The closest one finds gender equality are in cyber-cafés. Boys and girls both spend hours on msn chat, doubtless flirting with their crushes hidden from the eyes of their family and neighbors.

Later, Atfi and esp Assan wanted to drink wine. As little money as I had, I couldn't refuse the 35 Dh to get a liter of rouge. We went into an unlit park to drink it and ended up settling for a rather too well lit tree stump, every bench taken by young couples.

Just as we finished the bottle, two plainclothes police came up and demanded IDs. While producing my passport, I was told me drinking alcohol is prohibited to Muslims. I explained the situation and that having been all over in Morocco and that I find wonderful people everywhere these two were perhaps the best I've met. That the wine was mine and I'd invited them. The wine turned out not to be a problem as much as that I had not registered where I was staying. For our security, they emphasized, all foreigners must register where the are staying each night. Every hotel fills out a form with name, passport info etc. Evidently the same is required if your staying with someone.

Lotfi had pointed out the Central commissariat earlier in the day. Now we got to visit it. I won't go into the details but after being politely shuffled around the station several times, the story retold over and over they had Anass' address and that I was staying there for one night. All that was left was to look up my passport on the computer for some reason. This became a problem. First because the entry number on my visa was faint and difficult to read. After trying all possibilities they tried looking me up by name. Not there either. After spending a good hour trying to find me by nationality, passport number etc. the officer resorted to scrolling through the ship manifests of the days I arrived (literally thousands of names). I laid my head on the table, I fell asleep and some time later was woken up and told that I didn't exist but was free to go with my friends. I've taken a few trips to police stations and they are always boring but as far as trips to police stations go it wasn't bad.

Had I not been there; had Lotfi and Anass been drinking alone in the same park, they'd have been taken to jail for 48 hours until seeing a judge and likely being released without further charges. But that is still 48 hours in a literal dungeon without food bed or blankets.

The next night after talking to my Dad, who instructed me to get a beer on him, I went to the Montana Bar near the gare and there talked to the interesting and informed proprietor of a Camping a few kms north of Meknes named Abdul who explained that yes, technically its illegal but the law typically is only enforced in more "populaire" areas; the poor would become uncontrollable if not kept a little bit fearful.

Happy New Year

After losing my phone on the 30th at a cybercafé in Larache, (where I also visited the grave of Jean Genet-the main reason I was there-losing my phone was just a bonus) I met a guy named Hicham who offered me a place to sleep, cooked me dinner and smoked an amazing amount of hash.

Nice guy but profoundly unhappy because he claims to have lost 2 million Euro when his partners in hash smuggling burned him. I put about as much stock in that story as I do in his chances of winning the lottery-though Allah knows he plays enough. The entire house is covered in spent football forms, lottery tickets and molding dishes. At one point he lost one of the football forms he was playing that night and and spent the next 5 hours searching and worrying about it.

But he was extremely kind and generous with me and I was grateful for his help. So often people that help me seem to need to reassure themselves that they are good people. It seems a sad but I suppose that is one way I pay my way; people ache for the opportunity to do good. Travelers like me supply that opportunity.

I left his place in the afternoon and by the time I got to a decent hitching spot it was almost dark. I tried a bit but figured hell its New Years Eve in the grain belt of Morocco. A party let alone Champagne is gonna be hard to find why not just walk. So, under a full moon and in heavy wind and scattered showers, I hiked the 40 kms to Ksar-el-Kbar-the next decent size town heading south.

Along the way, resting in a bus shelter after a couple kms slogging through a muddy field, two guys rode up on motorbikes and after explaining in bad French, Spanish and mime what they invited me to share a bottle of wine. We rode down to another bus shelter where the gendarmes wouldn't bother us and proceeded to drink the bottle and look at maps (I've a pretty handy little pocket atlas of the world). I left and kept on my way.

Midnight found me under a cork tree next to a pond filled with frogs. I gave a yelp, took a big swallow of water and smoked a cigarette as dogs for miles joined in to mark the new year.

I finally got to Ksar-el-Kbir (never did get the hang of pronouncing it-there are a few phonemes in Arabic I can't wrap my throat around) about 2:30 and found a bench to sleep on. Should have known better. Less than two hours later Ahmed and Ussay woke me up. Ussay, a flat faced kid dressed in 2 dollar Dolce & Gabana and a baseball cap on the side was blasting 50 cent or some other insipid hip-pop on his mp3 player and spoke decent French. Unfortunately Ahmed spoke no French at all. Instead he spoke terribly accented, grammatically disastrous, almost unintelligible English. All of which he learned from listening to American hip-hop and Death Metal. Literally every other word was either "Bro" or "fuck". They were both very drunk.

I only wanted to sleep a few more hours and get on my way at the crack of dawn. That was not to be. I had lazily lain in slow waters where strange things attach themselves in the wee hours of the morning.

Ahmed was concerned for me in the way that only very drunk people tend to be. I waved them off when he invited me to stay at his place. But they decided then to keep guard over me. Tired enough that I probably could have slept through the drivel pumping full-blast out of the half-inch speaker but every thirty seconds Ahmed said something like,
"Hey Bro. Fuck. You eit mi hoos. sleep bed bro. I slip flar Bro. Fuck mutherfuckers here. Niggers yo. Motherfuckers Bro. i from big family bro. mi father juges in Rabat. I no seeko killer Bro. Good man yo."
I tried to ignore him but then he'd come over, shake me. and say
"Bro. Fuck. You want Vodka Bro. Drink Bro."
I'd demure and he'd go talk with Ussay for a minute or two then start in again, albeit changing around the fucks and bros a little bit.

It didn't take long to realize that sleep wasn't an option there and I might as well go with them to a bed and they promised, breakfast. hadn't eaten anything since midday before and then only some bread and olive oil with cheese. They also had a big bag of Kif.

Kif is the ground-up buds of pot and the first step in making hashish. Its smoked out of long, collapsible wooden pipes with a small clay bowl at the end. In all of the more "populaire" cafés in the north of Maroc, old men wearing djalabas sit and smoke their kif pipes while drinking coffee or tea. It gets you stoned but is a much milder high than hash.

Somewhere along the way Ussay lost the clay bowl and we made a detour to where another poor soul was sleeping outside a cafe. Ahmed woke him up and after a few words in Arabic the old man reached below his Jalaba and gave up the little clay piece off his pipe.

Ksar-El-Kbir sits on some of the most fertile land in Maroc. Its a fairly new city though and despite a few hundred thousand people has absolutely nothing in the way of culture, nightlife or architectural beauty. Every block is exactly the same boxy decaying concrete as every other boxy decaying block in Morocco built after 1950.

Ahmed lives with his mother who he said was an Arabic teacher. His father, a judge, lives in the capital Rabat about 160 kms south. His room on the roof was disgusting in only the way a young man's (or junkie's) can be. The floor was wet and dirty, small piles or cigarette butts strewn about, an aging computer covered in grime in the corner, 3 scattered pieces of a black leather sofa and a bed with dirty sheets and blankets piled on a soiled mattress.

I sat down on a chair and tried to nod off. I explained I was extremely tired but they insisted in talking to me, Ussay telling me in French what a great guy Ahmed was and Ahmed, in his English insisting he was going to come with me on the rest of my trip, " Bro I come wit yo. I be yo protection Bro." Once I finally figured out what he was saying. I explained as patiently as I could that I traveled alone. No exceptions. At some point Ussay and & Ahmed started arguing in Arabic and I managed to nod off for a few minutes. When I woke up Ussay was gone and Ahmed was free to show me his favorite videos from YNC.com. Each consisted of a Death Metal soundtrack over a montage of banned-from-tv video of war zones, car crashes etc. I was sorry Ussay and his 2pac were gone. Ahmed for his part was amazed I, being American, didn't know the site or the music. Over the next 3 hours, Ahmed made me a little food and we smoked more Kif. The conversation consisted of him repeatedly asking "why me no come wit yo Bro. Fuck Bro. I need coom wit yo". And me explaining over and over again that he could travel without me and that I travel solely with God. This exchanged repleted itself literally dozens of times and only by becoming angry was I able to get a break...for about 5 minutes before, "Fuck Bro. why yo no take me wit yo?"! or Yo hav dinner wit us here"

"No, I have to be in Rabat at 2pm. I'm leaving at 9".
Finally, at 9am, as I had been telling him for hours, I got up to leave. I hadn't been able to get any sleep but had eaten and was ready to be away from him. He threw a little fit when I put my bag on and tried to take away my boots. He wasn't happy about me going but insisted on walking me to the highway about 6 kms away. I relented and offered to buy us some tea in town, again hoping to separate from him then.

No luck there. The first cafe wouldn't serve us after Ahmed insisted on bringing out the pipe and a big bag of kif on the terrace in full view of 10am traffic. The police largely tolerate the smoking of kif but discretion is the mother of tolerance. Ahmed though was drunk, stupid and showing off. The second cafe was the same and only by standing up and making to leave was I able to get him to put the pipe away.

We drank our tea and walked another few kms before I was able to get rid of him. Throughout it all him whining,"Bro, Fuck, Bro, I need go wit yo. Why yo no take me wit you Bro"?

Finally free of him I walked down the road, hitched a donkey cart for a few miles and sat along the river for an hour or so before walking another 10 kms before getting picked up by Omar and Omar who dropped me off in Meknes.

Kittens

Several weeks ago I was walking out of Tirana at night. I was on my way to Greece to find a job and wanted to make an early start. Knowing my propensity for procrastination, I left Mariah and the hostel just before dark, intending to hike a few kilometers out of town, camp near the road and start hitching first thing in the morning.

All was going well until I stopped across the street from a gravel pit to smoke and drink a bit of water about five kilometers down the road. I heard a meow and looked up to see a tiny kitten scampering across the road towards me. Four, maybe five weeks old, friendly and adorable, he was with his much smaller, more subdued sister. No mother was in sight and I thought maybe she was out hunting for food. But after 20 minutes of playing and feeding them some chicken from the sandwich 'Riah had made me and giving them a bit of water none had shown up and there was an dead adult not too far down the road. Maybe the mother maybe not; dead animals are not uncommon in Albania. In any case they were filthy and hungry. The female was considerably smaller and less vigorous than her brother and even with a mother probably wouldn't live if she had to compete with him for food.

So I did the only thing I could and carried them back to the hostel cradled in my no longer white t-shirt. Mariah was up and immediately sprung into mother mode. We bathed them and fed them and they slept curled-up with me in my sleeping bag that night.

Edwin, the owner of the hostel was surprised to see me in the morning and less than pleased with his new charges. A kind, big-hearted man he'd learned the dangers of taking in strays the hard way. But Mariah promised to take care of them and find them homes and he wasn't about to kick them out.

They have since been adopted by friends of the hostel workers. I'm told they are doing very well, attacking everything that moves, growing fast, eating anything left unlocked and generally behaving like normal kittens.


Last night walking into town from the boat yard here in Rovinj I passed the security guard gently picking an orange and white kitten off a fence. He's been friendly to us and seems harmless if usually drunk and keeps two completely ineffective guard dogs. In his broken but comprehensible English he explained that the "bebe cata" was for the dogs to kill.

Last week he told my boss that the young male German Shepard had killed a mother cat and her two kittens the night before and was quite proud of him. Brutal perhaps but this is a fishing town and stray cats must be a constant problem. But his carefully and deliberately bringing in a cat for the dogs to kill horrifies me. Of course I wished him a good night and continued into town. Come to think of it, that was the first cat I've seen in the 10 days I've been here.

Possibly the Worst Place on Earth

Across the street a short, balding and Greek Tom Jones impersonator is serenading the English patrons in quarter-full bar. The patrons are some of the more attractive people I've seen here-Mostly youngish with a minimum of paunch. One blond girl is even quite pretty if you can ignore the wide set eyes characteristic of Fetal Alcohol Syndrome. At least at this bar there aren't any children nodding off in wheelchairs. No joke, in my first 30 minutes here I saw 3 kids matching that despription. The lyrics are quite appropriate right now..."please...please release me."

Sidari is the the most English town on an island filled with with English tourists. This is the place Brits come on package tours for 2 weeks in August. Ignoring the monstrous hotels, it is one street in mostly faux British colonial style and you can hear music blasting everywhere. Not that anyone is dancing.Mostly they're sitting with 2 Euro pints watching Karaoke singers or one of the tribute acts. So far I've seen an Amy Winehouse, a Meatloaf and fat drag queen in a sequined nun's habit. Advertised for later this week is Freddy Mercury, Niel Diamond and someone called the "Chinese Elvis".

Other touristic places in Greece I've visted like Mytlini and Athens feature the usual assortment of souvenier shops filled with Chinese made crap like sunglasses, commermerative beach towels and Parthenon snow globes interspersed with locally made goods like leather sandals, first class olive oil and ouzo. None of the later here. Its all crap. The gold painted wrap-around sandals look that like they belong in a porno film about 2nd century streetwalkers you see in the cheap shoe shops in Greece, all the skinny girls are wearing them. The fat girls seem partial to 4 inch heels and skin tight dresses giving the overall effect of gaudey pears balanced on roofing nails. How they stay upright is boggling. The night though is young. We'll see how they do after 3 or 4 Russian Periods, Headfuckers or Tropical Cunts (actual drink names).

No overpriced baklava or souvlaki here either. All the restaurants feature adds for "full english breakfast just 4.50". Here too is perhaps he only resturant in the world that proudly advertises a "Real Scottish Chef!"

I feared this place was something like Spring Break or Bourbon Street filled with drunk, obnoxious British college students. Its so much worse than that. Its Spring Break if people brought their inbred families. And no one here seems to have even the beginnings of a college education.

Asking around I've found the jobs are scarce. This is a slow year and plenty of the British kids who came to work here aren't making it either. The bartending jobs are filled by Greeks for the most part and most of the waiters look bored. I can probably get job doing PR. Which involves standing outside bars handing out flyers from 20:00-03:30 for 20 Euros a night. We'll see.

I heard on the other end of the island...Kavos is much busier this year so if I can put 20 EUro in my pocket tonight I'll go there. Down to 5euro70 so I need to get some cash.

On Tuesday I went to Gouvia Bay which has one of the larger marina's in the Mediterranean. Again, no one hiring and everyone scrapping for work. I did talk to A1 services which staffs for charter boats and I chatted for a while with the manager there, a Brit named Chris, who took my resume and said he'd keep me in mind. Day labor pays 12Euro an hour and sometimes people come looking for crew. He didn't promise anything but pointedly declined to offer anymore suggestions about where to look for work. Hopefully that's a good sign.

kizkardesem evleninyor

A few blocks east of Istikal, it is slightly raining outside my sister's appartment on a not-so-steep-for-Istanbul-street. One week ago today I was supposed to leave Paris again for Africa but just before I left Mariah sent me the following email:

Eli.
I'm getting married.
I tried to call your French phone, but there was nothing.
So, I have to tell you in this email.
I told Mom and Dad. He told his family.
He? You wonder? His name is Sezayi Erken.
Have we known each other long? No.
We made this decision prior to any kiss, and dating, etc.
I will write more soon. Just so you know.

I love you and wish you a wonderful journey.

Love,
Mariah

I believe my SMS response was “Congrats...WTF?!?! I'm coming”. I wanted to visit her again before I left for Africa but money and an unwillingness to spend any more time in the safe sterility of Europe pushed me south. One's priorities change when one's only and younger sister announces her engagement, a continent suddenly doesn't seem very big.