Tag: Chess

Moro-Diaries #2: Essaouira

Although surfing with Adam in Marrakesh was a nice experience, I decided that it was enough for this trip. I guess at my age, I prefer a certain minimum amount of comfort. On the other hand, hostels are great places to meet people. I decided to continue the trip sleeping in private rooms in hostels or hotels. I grew to appreciate good privacy and alone-time at the end of a socially packed day.

***

The bus from Marrakesh to Essaouira took around 3 hours with a short break. Beside me was a French girl with whom I started chatting in the second half of the trip. Upon arriving in Essaouira, I immediately felt pleasant vibes, the complete opposite of the chaotic vibes in Marrakesh. Already from the bus, you could see countless kites of surfers in the famously windy city. I went straight to the hostel where I booked a room and was greeted by a German young man with one arm. He volunteers working there in exchange for surfing lessons and accommodation! I immediately climbed to the roof terrace with my book to have a read while observing the sun setting in the Atlantic Ocean. Around me were groups of young people who seemed to be traveling together, mainly French or German. I thought about putting on my noise-cancellation headphones since young people in general intimidate me👴🏼. In parallel, I checked out “couchsurfing hangouts,” which is a section of the Couchsurfing app to find other solo travelers to meet up. There, I found Wouter, a Dutch gentleman, and we agreed to go for dinner. Soon enough, a young European lady entered the terrace, saw me, and directly came to me, saying “you were on the bus from Marrakesh.” I said yes and invited her to have a seat nearby, and we started chatting and getting to know each other. Mirjam, a Norwegian 27-year-old traveling solo around Morocco. Mirjam, Wouter, and I went for dinner in a tiny family-run restaurant in the old town of Essaouira. The cook was a Moroccan lady, assisted by two others who looked really old, while the son waited on the tables. We ordered Tajines while discussing life, love, and Morocco. After dinner and the homemade cream caramel, we wandered around the “medina,” charmed by all the handcrafted goods, the small alleys, and passing by the fish market where fishermen prepared their fish of the day for the market the next day, I assume. Mirjam is a janitor, and Wouter is an animation artist. The conversation was very engaging and went much deeper than the casual customary fact-based chit-chat, to include childhood traumas and matters of the heart.

***

On the next day, Wednesday, I started the day with breakfast in the hostel. A modest breakfast that included my new favorite Moroccan almond spread “Amlou.” It consists of argan oil, almonds, and honey. The almonds are toasted, then crushed and kneaded with honey and argan oil. I enjoy it with some freshly made pancakes despite the flies hovering over the whole breakfast!
I then went to the medina, met Wouter, where we bought a chess set and went to a local cafe for some games of chess and more conversations. On the second floor of the cafe, we sat separated by the chess set, the early morning sun rays sneaked from the window and shone directly on the chessboard as well as on Wouter’s stressed face 😅. While playing, we discussed differences between Morocco and Europe and mainly topics which one can’t discuss in Europe since they are tabooed. Wouter’s lack of political correctness was refreshing, and I enjoyed the time we spent together a lot. We exchanged contacts and decided to try to meet later in our trips in another city.

***

Mirjam has a talent to know random people on the street; I met her later in the afternoon with her new friend, Hicham, a Moroccan French young man passionate about Salsa and working in tourism around the world. We spent some beach time where we built a sandcastle like a group of kindergarten children. The sea is relatively dangerous for swimming since the waves can be very high. This is why Essaouira is a good place for wind-surfing, kite-surfing, and etc-rfing. In the evening, we went for dinner accompanied by two new travelers that Mirjam recruited from the hostel, David, from the Canary Islands, traveling the world and speaking 5 languages, and Bartly (fake name), a Chinese electric cars engineer. Bartly barely spoke English but had a radioactive enthusiasm and positivity. We all went for dinner and had funny x-rated conversations, where Bartly was the protagonist translating everything we say with some efficient Chinese app. David and I laughed till tears when Bartly referred to oral sex as “sea-food” 😂😂😂. I hope no children are reading these lines. After another great meal, we went for some dancing in a local bar that was also filled with tourists. On the way back to the hostel, in the windy night of cute Essaouira, David said, “First and last time in f***ing Essaouira.” Mirjam and I will head to Casablanca tomorrow, while David will join us halfway and then stay in Marrakesh.

Stress 😉
With Mirjam and Wouter
The view from my modest hostel room, ocean, palm trees and laundry!
With Davi and Mirjam in Marrakesh train station

Kenya 2022 | Day 3: the Friendliest Slum in the World

I started the day by wondering, “what will I do today? and what will I do with this haircut?”
After some research, I decided to start the day with breakfast in an Eritrean roastery, and after no thinking, I decided to randomly spread some gel on my hair and not care.
The waitress in the Eritrean roastery took my order and said “ooh I like your hair!”. I said: “whaatttt??? I thought it is horrible” she said: “No, it makes you cuter”. This made me smile. Who doesn’t like a little ego-boost in the morning?

I don’t know why they served me popcorn in the morning with my Eritrean coffee

Today I planned to tour the Kibera slums. Internet-how I reached the contact of Winnie, a tourist guide that was born and raised in the slums and would take me for a tour there. I was the only tourist, so it was a private tour. What I saw today  will remain vivid in my memory till the day I say Adios.

We started walking through a street market that sold second-hand clothes that were donated from other countries. The sellers go to buy these from the government, wash them, make them presentable and sell them in the market. Winnie told me that this part of the market was too expensive for the slum’s people, since the prices were fixed and bargaining was not an option. Further closer to the slums, the prices were lower and affordable. What particularly caught my attention was that the mannequins for displaying women clothes had clearly bigger booties than those in Europe. I really wanted to photograph one, but thought the locals might get offended by this Mzungo (= gringo, = خواجة).


We walked through tiny passages in the big labyrinth-like market which was full of stalls, each is a tiny one to two meters and stacked with second-hand merchandise. Everything you need. Clothes, kitchen utensils, power adaptors, everything is there. Second hand and affordable. Winnie kept greeting people throughout our path and exchanging a few words with this and that shop owner. We passed by barber shops which are tiny enough for a chair and a tiny mirror, a beauty salon where ladies can get their nails done, even hotels which are practically one room! I am walking through these passages where people paid little attention to me, not what I expected. This commercial part, the slum shopping mall if you wish, looked miserable to me, but it was buzzing with trade and movement. In most of these businesses, one can pay using the local mobile payment system called M-PESA (like TWINT in switzerland) without need for cash.

We moved then to the residential part. Winnie took me to the school before the students go home. I arrived at a tiny room with around 10 children packed like a sardine tin. The teacher had a child sitting on her lap and there was a green board with the lesson of the day written in chalk. Everything you need to learn well. I saluted the children and the teacher asked them to sing a song for me. They sang with enthusiasm as well as some little choreography. That was one of the cutest things I have ever seen. I wished them all a happy new year, and we continued our way. Outside the class were these plastic thingies where children used as toilette. Winnie showed me a concrete building of 3 rooms that they bought from donations of the tourists. I will come back to this later.

  • Today’s lesson
  • I couldn’t be happier
  • Children toilette

The houses were either out of metal, out of mud or the more elaborate ones have concrete. However, they all don’t have a water supply or sewage. They, therefore, don’t have bathrooms as well. Instead, there are common bathrooms you can rent. You pay 10 shillings (around 0.1 USD) per usage. If you have diarrhea you are f****. Also, the showers are to rent, warm water is more expensive. Water is also sold here. 20 Liters cost 5 shillings, but you have to carry it to your “house”. Each of the above-mentioned opened business ideas for some locals.

I walked with Winnie in disbelief. I have never seen these living conditions on this scale. It is estimated that more than a million people live here in Kibera. However miserable I found this, these people seemed to have some sort of life full of dreams, playing, social life, love, hate, ambitions, and hope. Somehow, I didn’t feel that “desperate” was part of this place.

Winnie took me to some workshops, carpenters, blacksmiths, as well as a local workshop that makes jewelry from brass and animal bones. I bought a brass ring with parts of cow’s horn to support the locals. Since it is too feminine for my taste, I will be sending it to the first female reader residing in Europe (for logistics) that claims it in the comments section 😀 .

Precious!

We walked further, passing by a friend of hers that was HIV positive. It seems to be a common problem here. People only discover it after their partners die! We went to a local initiative called “women empowering group” where HIV-positive women joined forces to try to make a living by doing crafts. Some of them have HIV-positive children as well. They go regularly to a health facility for antiretroviral treatment, which is covered by the government for free. I was sitting among them, listening and contemplating at the same time. I have no words.

  • In front of the workshop of power women group. This is Winnie my guide
  • The power women rolled paper to make beads, the beads made bracelets that they sold

More walking, more images flash in front of my eyes. More stories are told casually by Winnie. At times I felt overwhelmed. She asked me regularly: “do you have questions?”, and I didn’t have. I think at times I didn’t want to know more. I was afraid I might not be able to handle all of this.

We passed by a container that had “community clinic” on it. I asked Winnie if we could go inside. Inside I met Victor, a physician assistant (which is a 4 years study). He does a doctor’s job for the major part since this was a level-1 health care facility. There are multiple more levels. You can find doctors only starting from level 4 or so. The biggest hospital in the country is level 6. I asked him a few questions about the healthcare system and about what he would do if he suspects a stroke. There are only a few places that have a CT.

Winnie took me to some platform where I could see the whole slum area. Then she took me to her home in the slums which she shared with her brother. The rooms are separated by curtains. Almost every house has a sleeping area, a sitting area, and a cooking area. They usually cook with charcoal because it is the cheapest. If it is cold, they cook inside their houses. They have electricity that is stolen from the government lines. Every now and then the government raids these line connections. However, the locals restore the connections immediately after the raid.

I bid Winnie farewell, I paid her the fees and obviously a donation. I promised her that I will mention the cause here. The donations are supposed to go to building the school for those children. We agreed to meet before I fly back home. So if you, my dear reader, would like to donate something to this school, and you trust me, you can contact me privately (you will know how).

  • Some guys playing billiards and some playing ludo
  • A one-room hotel
  • Entertainment is important, even if you don’t have a toilette at home

For dinner, I was supposed to meet Nadia, a local tinder-match where I explicitly wrote that I am looking only for conversations. At the end, before going to the restaurant she asked if I would cover her Uber, hell no! Meeting out of humane reasons is a lost art of living. Instead, I treated myself to a high-end local restaurant for some lamb-stew with mashed sweet potato. James, the waiter, saw me playing some chess on the iPad and wanted to challenge me or a game. They have a set in the restaurant, and he would ask his boss for a break, hehe.. his boss said “No” to him but “yes” to Lawrence, who is the baker and has finished his duties. Lawrence came with the set and we played two games. He told me that a chess trainer comes every now and then to train the staff of the restaurant! what? why? cool, no?

Sorry Lawrence!

Elshähabi Memorandum 01: Hitting the road

I didn’t know the word “Memorandum”. Morad suggested it as a title for our travel diary. He likes fancy words!

Hit the road jack! It is us, Adham ElshAhabi and Morad ElshEhabi. Brothers with slightly different last names thanks to some clerk making passports and deciding the spelling in Egypt. Morad and I have traveled often together. Sometimes just us and often with other friends. Now we are set on a further and bigger adventure together in new lands. Here, I will be writing about our times together. Events, places, people, and conversations. Morad and I are very close but veeeerrrrry different. This trip is probably going to be a theater for these differences at play. Observing different events and sharing our widely different perspectives on life and living.

It all starts as usual, minimal packing while discussing two ways of doing the same thing. Morad loves standards. He wants to follow the state of the art in everything he does. He seeks to know the “rules” and use them to excel.
I hate rules! well, not true. I like rules. I hate to follow them. I don’t trust the “best way” of doing anything. I have, Morad agrees, the constant delusion that I could find a new better way of doing things.
The train to Frankfurt and many games of chess where Morad enjoys a higher percentage of winnings. He likes to refer to Bernouli’s law of large numbers. Which states that more times you repeat an event, the higher the probability to get a representing statistics of its different outcomes. He often wins and often shouts “Bernoooouuuli ya habibi”. He has read books about chess and its strategies. He is quiet didactic about it. I use more my gut feelings and unpredictability. Which often gets my king stranded on the board contemplating about the beginning of the chain of wrong decisions that let to his misery.

In Frankfurt, the Emirates flight was scheduled at 22:20 at night. The first leg is set to Dubai. Morad used his charm at the checkin counter to ask for more legroom. The lady behind the counter with exaggerated eyelashes moved things around and gave us the best seats in the economy section; at the emergency exit. While Morad says that this is one of the few times he flirts, I only saw him put a friendly smile! He didn’t really need more!

In the airplane we had a few hours of waiting. There is ice on the wings and somehow someone couldn’t manage to remove it. We won’t fly, they said. Then we will fly, they said. Then no.. really we won’t fly. It seems that a german official in the airport has given the permission to fly after 23:00 o’clock (which i came to know is the last time for takeoffs), and then revoked it! A huge plane with two decks had to go back to the terminal and all passengers need a hotel! Chaos! Emirates seems to have won “the best airline in the world” award. However, their on-the-ground management of this issue was disappointing. As if it happened for the first time and as if there were no protocols for such circumstances. Morad was out of glucose, I tried to convince him to consume a sugar bag that I have kept with me. He refused. He is very picky about how healthy everything should be. I am pickier about how tasty everything should be.

We spent the night in the Marriott and indulged in a long conversation over breakfast about the previous day. Emirates have rebooked our flight to 15:15 the next day which screwed up our Dubai plan. Originally we had around 12-hours transit and got Visas to check the city. Dubai scored 4th this year for the number of visitors worldwide. I guess we are not meant to increase the number. Well, as my mom always says, “Everything has its time, my son!”

Other than Morad, I have two companions in this trip, Jose Saramago with his book “Blindness” (thanks Merve for the gift!) and Daniel Kahneman with his book “Thinking fast and slow”. Morad reads “A Gentleman in Moscow” by Amor Towles and two audiobooks “The History of Jazz” and “Mind Gym”. As Morad says, It is holidays, with so little to do and all the time in the world to do it. This is what we will practice in our first destination, Hong Kong!