Southern Cross Station

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Erfoud to Marrakesh

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We leave Erfoud, heading for Ouarzazate. Driving through miles of desert, past hundreds of artesian wells, each owned by a family, but now largely redundant owing to new bore water pumping and storage. Our first herd of camels accompanied by their drover all dressed in blue, appears. Abdul, the tour guide is a funny guy, when we arrive in our host towns for the evenings, the fountains will all be coming on, and he says, "See they have turned on the water for us! I telephoned them and told them we would be in at 5pm, and they have turned it on because I asked!" When he sees the camels he says, "See, I told him we would be coming past here at 9am, and he has come just for us!" We stop in a town called Tinghar, where Abdul has a friend with a silver shop. Of course it is the best silver shop in the desert and the only safe place to buy genuine tribal jewellry, (oh yeah). I do buy a lovely necklace for myself. Then on through more arid mountains and lush gorges to...
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Inside the brain

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My daughter finally said something to me the other day that stopped me in my tracks. She said "your sisters try to make you fit" (or something like that) "you take risks with life, how come you do that?" and it took me a while to sort out what it was that she was asking and then to find the answer. Firstly I said "Well you know, it was when I was raped so young and I thought that I just had to survive." and then I added "and it was being diagnosed with insulin dependant diabetes when I was 25 and realising that I was mortal.", but actually I think am just like this. Maybe I would have grown this way anyway. But what was nice about the whole conversation was that she appreciated my struggle to be me and that she didn't judge it, just accepted that this is how I am. I think so many of us live inside our heads. We go about our daily work all the time seeing the world in images and conversations that roll across the screen inside our brain. I h...
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Morocco - social observations

One of the things I didn't expect about going to Morocco, was that of having my assumptions about women and men in Moroccan society challenged. I carried with me, assumptions about dress, social codes and division of labour. Dress: Yes the majority of Moroccan women wear the djellaba and a head scarf. In the Berber villages they wear traditional long skirts and long sleeved tops and head scarves. It appears that about 70% of women dress this way. About 20% of women wear the long djellaba or skirt and shirt with no head scarf, about 8% of women (mostly under 30) wear western dress, particularly jeans with a long sleeved top, some with a head and shoulder shawl, and about 2% have the full bourka, complete with veiled face. The wearing of the djellaba is interesting because you often see it being worn as a sort of outdoor coat, rather than a constant feature of dress. The workers in the riads wear jeans and a white tunic style top, and the kids going to school wear jeans with a white ...
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