Chasing Dreams in Morocco

At the doors of the Marrakesh Menara Airport, we were all getting ready to say goodbye to our magical 6-day Moroccan adventure, when Hamid got ahead of us and started to thank us. He thanked us for believing in them and for being part of their project that would keep on fostering many dreams. He felt lucky to have met us and told us what a nice time he had had with us. How could it be possible? How could he even be the thankful one after being responsible for giving us the adventure of a lifetime? He opened up the doors to his world and his family, he reminded us of the most important things in life and encourage us to always keep dreaming, and still, there he was telling us what a pleasure it was to have spent those last days with us. He gave us each a big hug and one little crystal bottle filled with grains of sand from the Sahara desert.

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As I was staring out the airplane window onto the vast mediterranean sea under me, I felt so fortunate, so privileged. How many people have attempted to cross those waters with hopes and dreams? How many of them were just washed away? Yet there I was, sitting comfortably at 36000 ft, chasing after my dream. Going after this land which had been at the top of my bucketlist for what seemed forever and which photographs had been in covering the walls of my room for years. I dreamed of the geometrical patterns and motives everywhere, the camel rides, silhouettes on the sunset, and the star-plagued skies. And Morocco proved to be more, oh way more than I could have ever expected. Mainly thanks to Hamid.

Hamid was this short, brown skin, bearded, dark hair guy who picked us up at the airport. He has sparkly brown eyes and a sincere smile. He approached us as he had known us forever: “Qué onda wey, qué pedo cabrón, ¿Cómo andan?, ¿Buen vuelo? ¡amamoossss! Despite of his colorful language and perfect domain of the Mexican slang, he was not one of us. Hamid was a Berber, a nomad from the desert of the Sahara. The Berbers are the ones on the road, the ones that guide themselves with the stars. Since 10,000 BC, Berbers populations have spread all over the north of Africa and have kept a mobile lifestyle over the centuries. The Berber symbol is made up of one curved line facing upwards and one facing downwards, joined together in the middle by a straight line, as if it was a man with his legs spread open and his arms to the sky. A free man. This is how they see themselves, as free people. Or as blue men, since their favorite color is that one of the sky. Blue is in their flag as well, representing those Berbers living by the Mediterranean coast, green for those in the Atlas mountains, and yellow, for those who come from the sand of the Sahara desert, like Hamid.

Our itinerary in Morocco was going to be busy, taking us from Marrakesh to Ait Ben Haddou, the Todra and Dades Gorges, all the way to the Sahara desert. Over 12 hours traveling on the road were going to be needed, and Hamid took that time to tell us not something you can find in books, but his own life story.

“We are nine brothers and we were all born in tents. The closest city was 5 hours away from us, but when I was little I had no idea that there was even a world beyond the desert”. He explained to us how the life as a nomad is super simple. There are only two important hours, sunrise and sunset. His happiest memories consist of walking kilometers alongside his mom, with the donkeys and the goats in search of water. “In the desert, every single little thing provides happiness, we feel joy of just being together”. Communities must live far away from each other, so they don’t take water from the same well, so their close family and their sheep, goats, lambs, and camels is all they own. It may not be a lot, but Berber nomads still share whatever they have. The inhospitable nature of the place they live in has nothing to do with their kind, welcoming manners. Which, in the fourth day of our trip, we were actually able to experiment firsthand. Rising in the middle of nowhere, with nothing else in sight than mountains and majestic dunes of sand, there were a couple of houses made with adobe, small tents made with poles, knitted with camel hair, and sheep wool. Hamid welcomed us into his world by taking us to the home of a Berber family, and a man in his 50s, with a blue tunic and turban, invited us into the tent and offered us tea and date cookies. Soon after, two little kids joined him. With curious eyes, they came on to us and pointed to our phones. Innocently they played with them and took pictures of us, explored, and laughed. “That is priceless for him, he will always remember this”. And I could see perfectly in Hamid’s eyes how he was seeing in this kid, his own self from 20 years ago.

Life as a nomad is simple but is not easy. Droughts, dirty water in the rivers, borders closing due to war, certainly don’t make life easy for someone who works half the years traveling and trading in caravans and the other half of the year tending herds of sheep as Hamid’s dad used to do. Also, Hamid’s baby sister was born with a brain tumor and with nothing else than natural herbs and remedies to help her, she soon passed away. So his dad finally took the decision to leave the nomad life, move to the city and pursue his dream of improving his family’s life.

Transition was for sure not easy. Imagine a little boy knowing no other than sand and the stars was exposed all of a sudden to the buzz of the city. Traffic lights, motorbikes passing by, people on the sidewalks, and buildings rising high. It was a shock. In this Arab city, they knew no one, Berber was not made an official language in Marocco until 2010. They were alone, marginalized in their little adobe house. A day he remembers perfectly, was when he was taken to school by his brother. Everything was new, a classroom of 45 people was a multitude to a boy who’s all his life had only had his brothers for company and the lambs and goats for friends. Nobody wanted to seat beside him. He knows it was not the children's fault, they had grown up with the ideology and stereotypes that set apart the Arabs and the Berbers, courtesy of the French that colonized Morocco and made sure those two groups would always be rivals and thus, never join and rebel. That day, he wanted to go to the bathroom so bad and held it for so long until he couldn’t do it anymore, and our little shy, disoriented Hamid peed his pants.

At that time, his main dream was to own a Casio, just like his dad did. One that would shine with a soft blue light whenever he would go to sleep under the stars and his dad would look at the time. “Sometimes, it is in the little things that we attach so much sentimental value”, he said. But today, Hamid has achieved so much more than just having his watch. Together with his brothers, they created this travel company, Viaje en Marruecos, which has hosted hundreds of thousands of travelers, mostly young Mexicans for the past 14 years, giving them priceless experiences. His dad would always say to them, wherever you go, never forget where you come from. So they always come back to the desert with new ideas and have never stopped thinking of larger projects to change more lives. That is why instead of buying their own camels for the tourist rides, they rent them to the nomad families. Today, they are helping 9 of them. They created a camp in the desert, fully run by Berbers staff and after that, they have never stopped thinking of larger projects to change more lives. For the past 6 years, they have been constructing a hotel of 30 rooms right in the “doors” of the Sahara desert. The staff will all be Berber nomads, “we will teach them how to work, so they can also be nearby their families, not like us that did not got to see our dad who went away with the caravans for long periods of time”. It will be named the Sahara Pearl, as a tribute to the all-time favorite camel of his dad, the one he sold with all of his belongings after Hamid’s brother had the idea and dream to start the travel company. They plan to open it this march.

What Hamid enjoys more about his job is to be able to see happiness in people's faces, that is what motivates him to wake up early, have energy all day long and party until sunrise. “When someone comes smiling and thanks me for helping them, then I understand why my dad had the dream of bettering others’ lives”. Hamid is also a man of faith, and one of the pillars of Islam is actually that one, give to others. As we crossed entire cities and drove through the curves of the Dades Gorges, we kept learning about the beauty of the Islamic religion, which is so misunderstood and lives under many stereotypes. Muslims believe in only one God, Allah, but the minarets of the mosques that are in every single of these villages have 3 little balls on top, each actually representing the three Abrahamic religions, Christianity, Judaism and Islam, proving that this last one is nothing else but a religion of acceptance and peace. Also a religion that focuses a lot on the care of one selves body, for instance, there is the Ramadan, that consists on fasting during daylight for an entire month. He loves this practice as it is moment when the family gets to share the meals altogether, and there is nothing he likes more than some quality family time like there used to be when he lived in the tents. He also explained to us how he sees it as a cleanse, and that once you get yourself used to that it, it actually makes you feel even better, stronger. Another one, is that Muslims pray five times a day, in a clean space and always facing towards Meca. Which I admire, specially because I don’t know how Hamid even managed to do it, he always seemed to be supervising, telling stories, or partying, and when he was not with us, he was always answering emails, Instagram messages or organizing future groups in his Excel. He was working in his computer when I actually dared to say to him: “You won’t even remember us in a few years”, as I knew he did this kind of trips with hundreds of Mexicans almost every weekend. But I was underestimating his brilliant memory, the one that could remember every dune of sand to guide himself trough the dessert even when the stars were not out yet, and the one who could tell us all the little details of his childhood. “Of course I will” he truthfully answered to me.

And so will I. I will never forget the buzz of the Medina, with the hundreds of vendors shouting, the sound of the prayers coming from mosques, and the smell of the thousands of different spices displayed in those stretch alleys. I’ll never forget the delicious cous cous, those juicy tangerines, and the Argan oil that comes from the trees that are climbed by goats. I’ll never forget the Altas mountains that make up for the most amazing landscape, the hours of staring through the window to the centuries old brown adobe villages. I will never forget the feeling of the sand softly sliding through my fingers, how I rode a camel I named Panchito or how the way I laughed for hours straight while holding on for my life sitting in a Jeep’s ceiling, rushing through the orange-yellow dunes that contrasted perfectly with the clear blue cerulean sky. I’ll never forget dancing under the moonlight to the sound of the drums, drinking and parting in the little van on our way to the next destination, the priceless sunset after a session of sand boarding or the nights I wondered if they could possibly even be more stars in the night sky than grains of sand.

And of course, I will always remember Hamid. His passion, his focus, his sense of humor. His love for reggaeton and Mexican bad words. His honesty, his confidence, his charismatic and cheerful self. His modesty, his love for his family. His way of experiencing live and living every day so intensely.

And so, when the came came of saying goodbye, my eyes teared up as I hugged him and thank him back, just dreaming of being able to treasure forever those moments and to carry with me his teachings, which were endless as the grains of sand in that little crystal bottle.