I was determined to spend at least one night on the land before leaving for Fez and the Uk, but the time it had taken to buy a donkey and establish a sufficient piece of ground to put a tent up meant that this would only be a solitary night.
However with my faithful steed by my side what could stop me? Again things are rarely as easy as they seem…the skills necessary to harness and ride a donkey…shouldn’t be viewed lightly. As a simple debutant “gauriey”, I am regularly viewed as something of a novelty in Loubar and I knew that I would make a fool of myself if I tried to do this on my own.
Thus I asked Abdel Kedir for help, only for my steed to fall off the track and in to his marajuana field, crushing a good 4 m/2 of the weed…AK and I rushed to the aid of the donkey and I feared that I’d broken his leg before I could even get to the end of the track (25 donkey years translates in to 2 days with Paul!!).
As for the damaged weed, AK of course, took it in his stride as I looked on in horror at the damage done to his crop, and he simply moved his water pipe to the damaged area…don’t worry they’ll grow back!…Phew!
Once AK had left I was on my own again and it showed. My knots untied and my friendly life time mate, wondered off as I tried to lift loads of gravel and tent on to his back.
And then my saviour arrived.Yahyaa is the 10 year old son of a neighbour and he quickly realised my ineptitude, grabbing hold of the donkey and packing bags with a deft of hand in knot tying I could only dream of…and he agreed to work for me for the rest of the day.
Over the next 5 hours we hauled stuff from one end of the path to another…and though Yahyaa’s fasting put me to further shame, I slipped from discreet sips of water at passing springs to simply laying with my mouth open and gulping greedily from them.
But eventually I managed to flatten a space with enough gravel to put up a tent and stood proudly by looking on to my success.
Ok, Ok it may not quite be ready to open to the public, but if I say that that evening I was able to sit and watch the sun set, listening to the drifting of the muezzin through the valley below and the rising darkness of the night sky, suddenly filled with an array of glittering stars that forced me to think that in the future I’d be able to tell guests to move from looking at the horizon in to the wonders of a spectacular night sky.
Wow…can’t wait to get this thing going, it’s just too beautiful not to get excited about!