Solar and Angel Wings

So, here we are. Still in Morocco, actually still at Hassan’s. Not the Aourir Hassan but the south of Gouilmim Hassan (sorry the spelling keeps changing but this is a multi-spelling town that I cant be bothered to have a consistency of influences for my spelling – by the way thank you for reading my spelling disclaimer).

It is hard to leave a place when the hospitality is so full and rich. With a great big smile Hassan will say time and time again, “It is your home. You are at home here”. You just gotta love the Moroccan hospitality!

Really enjoying having a dongle, by the way, having this handy, dandy little maroc telecom appendage that enables internet access and me to keep blogging, even in the most isolated corners of our journey in the south of Morocco – who knows why it took us so long to pay the money to get one. The only problem we can see with it is that it is selective on what it will talk to on the internet. The only major inconvenience is it istruggling with google, gmail, youtube, and totally BLOCKING blogspot which is annoying to say the least. Sorry Kerstin and Barbara (with blogspot blogs) and other friends. I have been trying to take a look at what you are up to but have been unable. Also, Barbara, if you are reading this some friends might be coming your direction as we have been telling them wonderful things about you. Another note on dongles. You have to show your passport to buy your own personal tracking device, ooops internet dongle. DUDE!

Hassan has gone into town with me and Sergio for the last couple of days looking at cloth. Bless him, I think we are exhausting him. Hassan is great. He seems to know half of the men in Gouilmim. As we walk down the street we keep hearing his name yelled from shops, moving cars and passers by. Of course these are met with kisses and handshakes and a few words. I love seeing this. I love seeing the affection between men here as well. It is not unusual to see 2 men embracing, kissing cheeks, arms around each other or holding hands as 2 good friends.

Poor Sergio with his list of 20 things to get done today. Nothing seems to bother him. He just keeps opening up his little folder, looking at his list, no ticks yet, smiles, shrugs his shoulders and gives me a hug while we hear another “Hassan” from another friend of his from down the street. Now, back to the cloth. If you know me you know I am in heaven. I want to make stuff to give away and perhaps, if I can get my act together enough I might even make some extra stuff . I have been having images of making colourful angel wings and frilly skirts/tutus, halos. To me the best treasure chest would be one filled with colourful cloth and beads and wool just waiting to be transformed by a small group of men and women into strange and wonderful expressions of individuality. Oh the strange things that dance through my head.

The fabrics that the women wear draped around them, that btw miraculously stay in place through the gales, is an unusual mix of tie dye and a little old ladies apron. Heck I can’t even get my neck scarf to withstand gravity without declaring mutiny every 5 minutes much less an entire body covering in the Saharan winds. I tell you, if I were to decide to wear one of those body wrap fabric things it would not help me appear more modest but would make me into a flasher. We will go in again today to finish our buying before Sergio and Pavla head off for the raw-food rainbow somewhere in Spain.

Andrew, in the meantime, is not having as much fun as me as he is working on the solar with Melchior. Roadtesting our 2 Tenesol T2000 solar panels. We kinda expected having 2 impressively huge solar panels on our roof would have given us enough power to run our little fridge or maybe even charge up a couple of laptops in the Saharan sun. Dang maybe we should have bought the Sharpe ones. Maybe these German solar panels that we bought in Morocco weren’t such a great deal after all. We’ll see, we are in touch with the manufacturer. We’ll keep you posted. Hope we can work it all out. Well, as we always say, it helps to have a friend who is really smart and just happens to be a dutch geek with way too much higher education to help with your solar energy when you get into trouble.