Up early again at 6.00am to pack up camp and be on the road by 8.00. Drove the four hour journey to the small town of Meknes. By now, everyone has their 'preferred' possie on the truck. The Princesses (five girls from Oz, nice enough on their own but scary as a pack) down the back, others in the middle all hoping they don't pick the side with the extra person on it as then it's a pretty tight fit, and me, right at the front next to the wall, in control of the beer eski and the cassettes. The Princesses issue me orders for which music they want, which I don't mind as I seem to be the only one on the truck who can figure out how to work the casette deck.
At this point, it must be noted that two distinct factions have formed. The Princesses; Kirsty and Sam (beautiful, boarding-school prefects, worked together as swimwear designers in Sydney , Angela (gorgeous, witty, always wears tight keen-length skirts), Lauren 1 (laughs a lot and very sweet), Gina (tall with chicken-legs, very opinionated but nice girl), Lauren 2 (strangly a very nice girl but with the worst taste in best friends) and Nicole (best friend of Lauren 2, screws up her nose at everything, picks arguments, foul-mouthed and basically a complete bitch)/ These girls are never seen apart... not sure if they were afraid they'd be ostricised if they dared to do something different or what. We all found them a very interesting study in the nature of group dynamics. Individually they were lovely girls, but en masse they were just a wee bit scary.... with some back-stabbing going on behind each other's backs.
The second faction was what I call the Normal People, comprised of the rest of the group. Apparantly no-one but myself and a couple of others had bothered to learn everyone's names, so I had a lot of people coming up to me whispering 'what's her name again? I'm in her group and we have to cook tomorrow'.
When we got to Meknes, we only had an hour to look around the small medina. It reminded me of the Indonesian markets throughout Java.. a lot of beef and chicken (no pork as most are muslims), all hanging from their heads or tails, tougues lolling and in various stages of death. Men carving up huge hunks of liver and intestines dangling. Piles of fruit and vegetables - peeled lemons and olives which they slick with oil to make them look more apetizing.
Took a great close up picture of the inner workings of a cow's neck, almost making myself sick. I had to move on to the sweet section. Here the french influence becomes very apparant with dozens of different types of tiny pastries and patissaries piled triangular-high on beautiful ceremic plates. Bought a small box of several for my lunch, along with some figs, but really I had no apetite after the meat market.
There were also men selling baby turtles and lizards, various other animals, musk pieces, expensive saffron and all the spices. All were attempting to do the hard sell on us. But what, for heaven's sake, do they imagine a backpacker would do with a baby chamaleon and some cumin seeds?
I emerged from the indoor market and with about 10 minutes to spare before the truck pulled away and made my way over to the tablecloths in the outdoor market (actually the parking lot) that I had spotted earlier. It was then that I inadvertantly began an enourmous catfight between two women. I had the idea that I wanted an oval-shaped table cloth for Mum's table. But all the women only appeared to have square, rectangular or round shapes. When I ask how much for a large one, I think they took me for a stupid rich tourist. This guy eyes me up, sees my camera around my neck (big mistake Jane) and writes '300' on a scrap of paper. Then he squints at me, pen hovering, sees no reaction, whispers to his cohorts, then slowly adds another zero!! That's about 300 Euro!! I knew they were worth maybe 10-20 Euro so I just waved my hand like 'don't be ridiculous!' and walked away - he didn't even try to stop me - he knew he had gone too far.
Thing is, I really wanted one. So when he became side-tracked, I went back to another lady and indicated that I wanted an oval-shaped one which she assured me she had and that she would need to run get it. I said ok, even though I was really running out of time. In the meantime, inadvertantly got locked into bargaining with another woman. When the Tablecloth Woman Number 1 hadn't returned in 5 minutes, I then decided to buy one and was locked into bargaining with Tablecloth Woman Number 2 when TWN1 finally returned. But it was too late.... I was toast. TWN2 wanted 150 Dirhum (about 15 Euro, a much fairer price, and she would throw in not eigh, but TEN matching serviettes for FREE. Whohoo!!). Immediately, I turned to TWN1 to buy the oval shaped cloth, but she had come back empty-handed. Seeing that I was about to buy from TWN2, she screamed at her in arabic. A man then appeared who spoke English and we stood there in the car park between these two crazy women shouting at each other over who gets my money.... it was really embarrassing. So I said to the man, please ask them to stop arguing as I would simply buy one from each of them but they were so busy yelling they didn't hear his translation. I was now completely out of time so I just threw the money at TWN2, she shoved it in a bag and I couldn't get away fast enough, leaving them almost clawing each other's eyes out in my wake. Must have been a very slow day for them. Ahhhhh - the joyous shopping experience of a market town.
After Meknes, we drove through the afternoon to Asilah where we set up camp and endured Nicole telling us all to move our tents away from hers. Everyone ignored her and got on with it. Getting pretty sick of camping by this stage. Hate tenting. Definately contracted the bug going around and several toilet stops a day now necessary for the majority of the group. Had a hot shower in the dark as couldn't find the light switch. Was stark naked when I realised I'd forgot to bring my shampoo. Note to me - baby-soap and rose-cream almond lotion does not for clean hair make.
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