A note from the author prior to reading:: I know well that it might appear to some of you that i am completely "anti-american"... but not arbitrarily, it is certainly for a deep reason. I feel almost like it is my "duty" of sorts to report the facts back to those i care about in American and other places in the west. I dont know too many people, none really, back home that have put themselves through the things i have put myself through. I dont know more than a very small handful of americans (i mean like me and two others) that have really, truly stepped outside of the whole mess and experienced the vastness of other cultures, seen firsthand that there are many different ways to live a life, many different views of reality and what this world is... If you have not travelled and personally experienced these differences then i dont know how you could possibly know, and i mean REALLY KNOW the different ways of the world... So i feel like its an incredibly valuable thing to all of us really, since i have taken it upon myself to step outside the realm of American society and examine it in great depth from other, very different perspectives.... I think anyone of us can benefit from this kind of knowledge, and so for that reason i write as raw as i can, not caring for a moment if i offend anyone because what i write is the truth and that gives me all the confidence in the world, i am not making things up about my experiences or certainly not about American culture, i just record the facts, and if that makes someone feel "uneasy" about their own life, then please take that incredible opportunity to examine your own life... Examine what it is exactly that would make you feel uncomfortable or ashamed... and more importantl... why?? That type of self-reflection is the whole reason i keep this blog, to show others that you do NOT have to live your life in the bounds of the society you were born in, if you examine your society and find it to be sick, wrong, incorrect, then you can live your life by a totally different ideal; you can live your life the way YOU want to live it and not the way society would condition you to live it.... and i have PROOF that this is so, because i have travelled to other lands and interacted in depth with people that are living their lives in a totally different way than we do in America, completely on a different plane of reality, it is not simply a dream or some fantasy, it is REAL and it is happening NOW... that is all i am trying to say really...

so on with it!! and keep in mind that i grew up in the age of "spell check" and so i have a very low ability to spell things correctly, but i dont care, you get the gist ya??

In keeping with the theme of last time, id like to describe another situation that is ordinary, in ordinary life, but out here it becomes something much deeper, the ordinary just doesnt exist for me! I would like you to follow along with me as we walk through a common "Saturday Market" or "Sook" as its called here.

The Saturday Market Experience:

Two days prior to the market:

I call this the saturday market "experience" because it really is an experience all in its own. In the States we just "run to the store" and pick up whatever our hearts desire for the most part, packaged and stocked deep on the shelves for anyone with cash!... Here in Morocco it is much, much different. It really begins a few days before the market when you discuss together what supplies would be nice to have, things that the local "barter economy" cannot provide, for example; tea, coffee, chocolate, sugar, dried fruits, man made objects like knives, pulleys, buckets, etc, all of which must come from outside the village as they do not have the means to create those things here themselves, otherwise i know they would do it!!.. So really it begins on thursday when we discuss exactly what we need and in what quantities, then we decide who will go and how. The way they share the financial load around here is quite remarkable really, as it would not work even for once moment in the States, the dwelling place of greed. These villagers do not really concern themselves with ownership of anything, never really getting too bothered over who owns what or who has this and that thing. They can have this mentallity because they share everything, and i do mean everything, if one person "owns" something, then really all of them "own" it as well. Any material object whatsoever, they share it immediately and without hesitation. I will eventually write an entire blog on this topic but for now just know that "possessions" and "ownership" are not strong concepts around here and they do not even think along such rigid, divisive lines as "priviate property"... if its here on this earth, then it is here for all of us without exception. This mentallity even overflows to the currency around here, as long as the actual bank notes are here in the village, no matter who has them or how, it is presented for use. Once it is decided what is needed and how much, money seems to simply manifest itself, nobody is keeping track of who is paying exactly what or when, its simple really; if you have the notes in your pocket, present them and allow everyone to benefit from their use. Nobody seems to care at all about "their" money or what they will do when it runs out, and it will. I observe closely though, and i see that nobody takes too much advantage of this system for their own benefit, each person contributes an amount that coralates to their ability, whether it be monaterily, physically, or even spiritually, everyone contributes so they are not concerned with "keeping track".... and like this, everyone always has enough, because "today i have some, but tomorrow i may need some, and when i do, i know you will be there for me just as i was there for you..." ... its quite beautiful really.... I will describe this whole concept way more in depth in future blogs, but for now you get the idea well enough.... its a true "community", sharing eachothers lives in "communion" with the whole....


Saturday early morning:

You wake up with the sun, brite and early in the morning, excited in anticipation of the big event comming up. Elazraq is already awake and waiting with "moroccan whiskey" as they call it, its not whiskey at all but its brutally strong! It is this tea they drink ten times a day or more! Strong green tea leaves are boiled by the handful in a special pot calle a "brrredth"... at this point, before the sugar, it is so strong and such bitter tea that it is absolutely undrinkable, like trying to drink paint thinner or something of similar caliber!.. to counter this, they add an absolutely absured amount of sugar, or "z'quar" as its called in this local dialect of Arabic that i must use every day now... literaly a quarter to third cup of sugar per "glass" and the glasses around here are so small, maybe equal to about three shots. So first thing in the morning, you drink two or three cups of sugar tea and eat the standard Moroccan breakfast of " Hkobz oo zeet lahaud"...plain bread and olive oil. After breakfast, still before 8 in the morning, you take a "shower" because the big event is today, going into town... now this is nothing like we would consider a shower, but to them it is all they have. The "shower" begins with some time spent pulling up 5-6 buckets of water from the well, then taking one of the buckets and putting it over the fire, allowing it to become scolding hot. This hot bucket, along with a few buckets of well water, which if you have ever experienced it you know that well water is not really "cold", as it is the tempurature of the earth, which is warmer than room temp. You artistically mix the proper amounts of hot water with the well water until you get it to your liking, then you simply scoop it out with a smaller bucket and pour it over yourself. Pour it over your whole body first, getting everything nice and wet and removing the caked on dirt and initial dead skin. Then go over again but this time with soap, once the whole body is lathered up, you scrub it with this cloth that closely resembles sand paper, to really scrape off the dead skin and reveal the fresh, clean skin underneath. On the feet, a rough stone is used to polish off the hard, leather like callouses that come from this kind of lifestyle. Once the soap is lathered and the skin is scrapped clean, you then rinse yourself with a few buckets of clean water... and there you have it... a Villager "bucket shower".... it gets you clean-ish, but absolutely nothing can compare to a good old hot water shower with running water and an antibacterial soap... After the shower, you put on your cleanest dirty clothes, your "sunday bests" because going into the town makes for a very special event. So now you are fed, washed and in clean (ish) clothes and ready to head into the battlezone of the market!!

To get to the Market, it is much more involved than it is back home!!.. First, we must travel from our village to the next bigger village where we will be able to catch a bus into the town where we will then walk for a half hour in the sun to get to the market. But "travelling to the bigger village" is not as simple as just getting into a car and driving, oh no!... Elazraq has an ooooold piece of trash motorbike that he somehow keeps running, a Motobicane", the old school kind with the bicycle pedals on it to help get it going at stops, and then also so that one is not totally stranded when the bike breaks down, which it will... Me on the other hand, all i have is this massive battle tank of a bicycle to shuttle me to the village. Depending on the wind, it can take me up to an hour just to reach this village of Takkad, and Elazraq says that is too long and we will miss the bus. So how do we solve this problem??... very dangerously of course!.. Elazraq and myself push the two bikes out onto the road, his with a motor and mine with nothing. Immediately outside of the village is a massive sand dune hill, an uphill climb for maybe a solid mile first thing when you start off!! We line up so that i am on the right side of the center, stopped, and he is directly in the center of the road, about 50 meters/ 150 feet BEHIND me. He pedals his bike with ferocious intensity to get it started, its geared about like a mountain bike in first gear, the pedels are moving as fast as fan blades!!... after a few meters of pedeling the bike, it finally takes hold and the engine starts, sputtering and surging at first, then eventually leveling off at full throttle. The engine is so small and weak that it sounds like it is just on the verge of stalling, but somehow it doesnt!... so he is getting closer and closer to me, levelling off the throttle, slowing down and moving as close to me as possible. Then, as he gets closer i begin to pedel my bike, still staying to the right side of the road. Eventually our paths cross for a moment as he passes me on the left, and this is when i make my move!!.. Pedelling my bike, steering with my right hand, i reach out with my left arm and catch hold of his right shoulder just at the moment when he passes me. I tell you now, it takes every single bit of my strength to catch hold of his shoulder as he is moving so fast by me and i am so heavy!!... his bike immediately nearly stalls with the increased load (thats why we have to get a running start) and we both wobble and swerve for a few moments as we become adjusted to this new force, often comming only centimeters away from smashing front tires together or getting our pedels tangled up and hitting the ground!... After a few moments we have become adjusted to it, my hand is on his shoulder and holding on for dear life as we are both propelled by this tiny little chainsaw motor!!... Soon though, we get going fast, actually much faster than i am comfortable going on this very wobbly bicycle. Clearly my bicycle is designed for close quarters, inner city riding only, its very quick and easy to manuver, but take it up to speed, or load it down with bags, or just try to go strait on a road, and it quickly becomes a bit of a dangerous joke. Now, with his motorbike propelling us, we are travelling like 30-40 miles an hour up this hill and then along the strait away, i am holding on to him with a death grip, eyes wide and fixed on the road ahead of me. At this speed the bike is wobbleing uncontrollably, each small bump in the road almost sends me to the ground, and my goodness, since this bike is so rediculously tall (when on the bike my head is taller than the heads of those people in trucks!. like 7 or 8 feet off the ground!) if i were to hit the ground, man i would hit it HARD!!!.. so i just make sure i dont fall down, thats all... and like this, Elazraq and myself are propelled to the village where we catch the bus. Once in the village we store our bikes at his mothers home, and hop on the bus to the market!

Arriving at the Saturday Market;

After a 30-40 minute bus ride through the dusty, dirty "no mans land" between the villages, you arrive at the market. Stepping off the bus, you cannot see the market yet, but you can see the footprint of it!.. Off in the distance, in the sky, there is a huge cloud of dust and sand in the air, lots of buzzards and sea gulls all flying around waiting for the scraps to eat. The sun is shining bright and strong as you begin the half hour walk to the Sook. The walk of a villager is nothing like the walk of the ordinary western person. Western people tend to walk like they are not really accustomed to walking much, which in comparison they arent. White peope, especially Americans, usually have bodies that have obviously been "sheltered" and comparitively "unused". They tend to be very soft and have way too much excess energy reserves in the form of fat; soft, stagnant tissue that is a clear sign of a person that consumes way more than they actually need, and does not do anything to use the calories!.. So the western person tends to walk very slow in comparison to the villager. This is partly attributed to the style in which most Americans walk. If you observe the average American walking, which i actively do, you will find that they tend to walk in a very unnatural way, this comming from a serious lack of use and understanding of the body and its connections to transporting itself. Americans will walk slowly, with their weight held back further than natural, often to counterbalance their heavy guts and excessive weight. They walk with their legs too far apart, the feet pointed out to the sides almost at a 45degree angle, totally throwing off the natural trajectory of your walking inertia. Often this "duck walk" as i call it, is attributed to the increased amount of stored energy in the form of body fat that accumulates around an Americans legs and mostly the upper thighs, so even if they tried to walk in a more proper, natural way, they couldnt because their inner thighs would rub together, so to counter this they walk with their legs further apart and feet out to the side, almost like a shuffle. Well the villager walks for a living, literally they are born to walk. They walk like people that are very accustomed to walking. The pace is almost like a slow jog to us, the legs are brought swiftly one after the other in a very strait line, as not to waste any energy walking with their feet out to the side like Western people. These villagers can walk all day long, non stop, literally. Elazraq even showed me how to tell the difference between a tourists footprint in the sand and a Moroccan persons, the tourists footprints are always at some kind of an angle outwards, but the Moroccans are always in a perfectly strait line, conserving their energy and walking far more efficiently... So there we are, walking very fast and strait towards the huge dust cloud off in the distance.


Finally arriving at the market:

After a half hour of very brisk walking, almost jogging, you arrive to this massive scene of chaos they call the market. This place is absolutely surreal. You see a supernova of old, dirty vans interlaced with an impressive labrynth of canvas tarps and scraps of plastic laced together with bits of rope and twine, creating a "canopy" of sorts over the merchandise. The amount of energy that is emminating from this scene is hard to describe with any other term than "pure chaos"!! haha.. There is dirt being kicked up high into the sky from all the people and all the wind, loud distorted music comming from tiny blown out speakers cranking traditional Arabic and Berber music (Berber is the people of this region)... In some areas there are people playing live music, not selling anything other than some pleasent sounds, which the locals do appreciate and help to financially support. There are so many people crammed into such small spaces that really the "tents" form a sort of wall around themselves. Finding an opening in the wall of plastic and other vairous trash used to create a barrier from the wind, you gather your courage and plung into it. This time Elazraq is my partner and he is determined to show me off to all of his friends, which he basically knows the entire region, and along the way he shows me everything that he thinks is interesting or that i might like to know. By this point, Elazraq understands very well that i love to learn about new things and so he takes as much time as needed to stop and explain what things are and how they are used, keep in mind this is all in Arabic and advanced storytelling!! But man we communicate beautifully!!...

Immediately the moment you enter the canopy of tents, you are hit in the face by the very distinct odor of dead, rotten flesh... Yes you have entered strait into the "animal product" section, not the "meat section" but more the "animal product of unkown origin" section... The markets here are divided into sections or "areas", each dedicated to one particular thing, the animal section, the fruit section, the clothing section, ect. The animal section is perhaps the least desireable to walk into. The smell is always the thing that gets you first!... Your nostriles immediately cringe at the smell of dead meat, of old blood, of entrails and their contents, of hundreds of kilos of dead fish and all that comes along with them. You look to the right and you see things that conjour a sort of "horror movie" scenario; bright, blood red flesh exposed and devoid of its skin, huge chuncks of it hanging on rusty steel hooks. You see slimy intestines strung like christmas lights over rusty looking steel hooks as well, not just the intestines but any part of the animal that is considered edible, the heart, the liver, the stomach, the feet, the brain, even the eyeballs!!. To your left you look down and you see something that you almost cannot believe you are seeing, a huge pile of severed goat heads, tongues sticking out and eyes rolled back into the head, totally covered in blood. Man that is one thing that i just dont understand, why do they insist on displaying the severed heads of these slaughtered animals??... Above the pile of goat heads you see something that makes you question just what in the hell is going on here!!.. There in front of you is a man, and this man is taking a full sized machete, not a proper stainless steel meat cleaver but a real, jungle warfare style machete... He is taking this sword and as hard as he possibly can he is striking the massive head of a dead cow!!... the head is devoid of the rest of the body of course, just a massive cow head on a tiny wooden table, and this man is whacking this cow head with this machete as hard as he can, over and over and over, each time with each blow, blood and brains and bones are flying in all directions. I got a bit too close the first time and i honestly was splashed with cow brains as this man totally did not care or even notice i was there!!... This image i will never get out of my mind. To me, the most powerful, or at least the most impressionable thing of the animal section is the smell!.. The smell that you want so desperately to be pleasent, is not, its not at all pleasent, in fact it reminds you of a time when you pass a dead animal on the side of the road, roadkill, and the smell enters the car and makes your eyes water and your gag reflex kick in immediatley!!..The smell of roadkill along with the roaring sound of flies eminating from it, is enough to make you never want to eat dog again, or whatever other various animal product of uknown origin is being sold here..

So walking on, you see that here in Morocco they like their meat fresh, i mean REALLY fresh. Just past the "dead animal" section is the "fresh animal" section, and by that i mean the "live animal" section!!... Yes here they have huge cages packed full of living animals, chickens, rabits, goats, turkeys, all of it is still alive!!.. here you have two options, you can take the animal back home with you completely alive, or you can choose the one you want and have it butchered right before your very eyes!!... The first option; you choose the live chicken you want, and the man walks over, opens the cage and reaches in with his ungloved, bare hand and grabs the chicken by the feet. Pulling it out upside down, the chicken is going absolutely bezerk!!.. its flapping its wings and kicking its feet, screaming and moving as if it knows that it is going to be killed and eaten this day. Then the man awkwardly stuffs the live chicken inside of the tiny little cage you have brought with you, and you strap it to the back of your motorbike, in a cage and alive!.. Yes they strap it to the back of their motorbikes!!... i have seen everything you could imagine on the back of a motorbike, a dozen live chickens bouncing around in a cage, fifty kilos of dead fish, hell in Vietnam i even saw a full sized live pig strapped to the bike!!... The second option; you choose the chicken you want to eat that evening for dinner, the man walks over and grabs it but this time by the head. He takes the chicken that is going absolutely INSANE with fear, begrudgingly puts out his cigarette, grabs his machete, slams the chicken down on a big wooden stump, and swiftly chops its head off, right there in front of your whole family!!... He chops the head off and throws it on the ground, then he takes the chickens body and presses it hard to the wooden stump with both hands, because this chickens body is now fighting like you couldnt possibly imagine!!... Yes the head of the bird has just been hacked off and is lying on the ground, but the bird is fighting and jumping around even more than before!.. its like his nerves have just been kicked into "warp speed" and its squirming like when you put a drop of water on a red hot frying pan!!... after a minute or two the bird looses enough of its blood and it stops moving, the man then slices it open, removes the guts and packages the heart, liver, kidney, gizzard, head, neck and feet in seperate pieces of newspaper, as you will obviously want to eat it all.... yes all of this was done in front of you and your five year old little girl!!....

SO... of a haste, you make it out of the torture and exacution section and on to the next area. Entering this next area, you are immediately transported to a better place and time. A smell so heavenly hits your nose that it stops you dead in your tracks, yes you have entered the section of the spices!!.. Spices are a huge deal around here and the very foundation of Moroccan cooking. The spices we get in America are different than these. Ours are processed heavily, concentrated mechanically then packaged for long term storage, stocked deep on a shelf, and sold at extortionate prices. Here in Morocco they couldnt imagine a life like that, where you dont know EXACTLY what is going into your food and thus your body. Spices are bought in huge quantity here, not in tiny little containers like back home in the states. Here you simply walk up to the spice you want, tell the man how many grams you want and of what, then he proceeds to scoop out your desired quantity of spices with a small hand held shovel. After shoveling your spice he puts it on an ancient, antique looking triple beam balance where he fine tunes the weight. He takes the bag and ties a unique sort of functional knot in it and you carry it off with you!.. I love simply walking thru this section. As you walk thru the pathway you see on both sides of you mountains of fresh spices, roasted and raw nuts of all varieties, along with an infinite amount of other small things you may want. To me, this is the ONLY way it should be done, fresh and whole directly from the source, often times strait in their raw form and you grind them up yourself at the rate you use them!!... man when you taste the difference in these spices you will immediately understand what i am talking about!!... there is no comparison....

After a considerable amount of time spent basking in the beauty of the spice section, you move on to the fruit section. They take their fruit really, REALLY serious in these parts of the world. They only buy fruit that is absolutely fresh and they are wonderful judges of that!... Perhaps a dozen or more fruit vendors line up all in a row to display their fruit. You can always tell the man with the best fruit as he will be specializing in one thing only, bananas, oranges, strawberries, hundreds of kilos of them!!...not only will he be a specialist, if he knows that his fruit is really the best at the moment, he will be standing up yelling it at the top of his lungs, he will be shouting to everyone that he has better fruit then all of these other people and that you need to come and try some. When you do come over to his stand, he immediately slices you off a piece of his prime fruit and lets you sample it. Man is it good!!!... Never, ever, not even once have i tasted fruit of this caliber anywhere in the States. Our fruit is of a totally different nature. In the States it is sold by weight and since we are capitalists, that is the only thing that matters, the weight. So most of our fruits are grown in greenhouses under totally artificial conditions, pumped full of fertilizers and other things of the chemical age to encourage and "force" the fruit to soak up tons of water and grow as big as possible, thus producing the most weight and hence the most money. Not only is it grown by artificial means, it has to be transported such vast distances in America that in order for it to arrive to the consumer "fresh" (i use that term lightly here) it must be picked WAY before it is ready, ripe, so that durring transport it can "ripen"... even though this is not a real kind of "ripening".... Here (and in nearly every other part of the world i have been too) they take the fruit to a whole different level. Fruit here is also sold by weight, but that is not the most important thing, the most important thing is the quality of it. The fruit is grown locally so it doesnt have to be transported very far, allowing for the fruit to ripen "on the vine" , thus absorbing the full spectrum of nutrients and minerals that nature intended it to. This alone creates a huge difference in quality.Then, the "chemical age" of scientifically growing your produce has not reached here yet and i dont believe that it will, as it doesnt add one bit of quality, you cannot improve on nature, it is not possible to improve something from its natural state as that is how, EXACTLY how it is intended to be... So as a result, the fruit is much, much smaller than in the States. The bananas are perhaps the most noticable difference because they are so incredible and such a staple of the diet here. There are dozens of different kinds of bananas and they range in size, but absolutely none are the size of American consumer bananas. Of the best bananas, it would take perhaps five or six of them to equal one full sized banana in the States. But, that being said, these bananas (and all the fruit really) are packed with such an absurd amount of flavor that even if you had a hundred kilos of American bananas you could not ever get the quality and magnitude of taste that you get from just a single bite of one of these fresh, vine ripened bananas. So there you have dozens of kilos of bananas hanging in the air, apples, strawberries bright red and plump, avacados ripened to perfection, oranges that have real orange juice inside of them and not just water like in the States, everything is just of a higher grade of quality. Under the hanging fruit you see crate after crate of various kinds of dried fruits, a half dozen different kinds of dried dates, each one more succulent and magnificent than the last, dried Figs strung together by the hundreds!... If you like this kind of thing, which i do, this world will be like a dream come true for you, a total fantasy to an American who would never know this kind of true quality ever even existed!!... People make fun of me when i go back home because it appears that i have become a snob about American foods, but in reality it is just that i have tasted REAL foods prepared by people who take it so much more seriously than we do in the states...My tastes have been distilled and highly refined, through first hand personal experience i have become a connaisure of sorts....i cant appologize for that... hahaha

Moving on you enter the clothing section, i will only touch briefly on this as it does not really interest me at all. In the developing world there is this incredible phenomonon happening: The younger generations have totally cast aside their older, traditional clothing that is designed by thousands of years of experience and made specifically for the climate in which they are living in. The traditional clothes are made like that for a reason, and its shaped by the elements, the traditional clothes really are the best for the elements!!... Instead the younger crowd now wants to feel more "affluent" and "in style" with modern society, meaning the west, with America at the forfront. Yes the sickness of western culture is beginning to reach and corupt the younger people here. Now they want to dress like the people they see on TV, the people they see in western advertisements durring soccer games. It makes them feel more a part of the global society, more "affluent"... but its done in a manner that clearly shows that all they care about is the face value of the clothing, they only care that it says something western or that it has a western brand name on it, they care NOTHING of the quality. Therefor, every single piece of clothing you see for sale here that resembles western clothing, is FAKE, it is a knock off of western brands. Often this clothing is made to look IDENTICAL to the real thing, just with vastly inferior materials and sold at mere fractions of the price of the real deal. If anyone was to try and sell REAL western brand clothes at REAL western prices, absolutely nobody would be able to afford it!!!... so instead they produce this absolute JUNK clothing to immitate the real western clothes... a pair of "nike" brand running shoes for six dollars, a "polo" shirt for three dollars and a pair of "diesel" brand jeans for five to ten dollars, all brand new in the package.... none of it will last, immediately it breaks down and fails, BUT, it gives the appearence that they are affluent and "in line" with western society, even tho they are certainly not, that is good enough for them....

Continuing on to the very back of the whole market, you come upon the section that i call the "junk section", even tho to them it is not junk at all and this is where the real "wheeling and dealing" goes on!!.... In this section you will see hundreds of people from all parts of Africa, many of them from central and western Africa, distinctly different than the Moroccans and identified by their skin that is blacker than the darkest night, almost a shade of deep, dark, powderd coated purple. This allows for an amazing contrast with their teeth!!... these Africans have the most beautiful smiles one could ever imagine, i love interacting with them!!... Here in this part you dont see many tarps or any sort of "canopy" like in the rest of the market. Here is the people who really have next to nothing to their names, maybe one single tarp to lay their stuff out on but not another one to put over them, so they sit there, directly in the blazing hot Sahara sun!!... Here you can find all sorts of little odds-n-ends that one might need, various used nuts and bolts, pulleys, tools, scraps of things, old broken radios and other broken electronics... ALL of which is heavily used, almost to the point of uselessness, but these are the kind of people that will breath new life into them to get every last little bit of use out of it!!... the majority of these articals are aquired by digging thru the trash for many hours. Here, as with many parts of the developing world, there are no "trash removal" type services, so the people literally throw their trash directly outside on the ground. No matter where you are or what kind of trash it is, big plastic bottles, plastic bags, food, metal cans, ANYTHING it doesnt matter, simply throw it out the window or on the ground and never think twice about it!!!... i know it sounds horrific and it is, i will describe this topic in depth in another blog, but for now just know that "everywhere" is the trash can!!... Well in this section you will find the people that simply go around with a donkey drawn cart and dig thru these massive piles of trash to find things that can be re-used in some way... and they are EXPERTS at it!!!

Now actually "buying" something at one of these markets is an experience all in its own... perhaps i will dedicate an entire blog just to this moment of interaction, as there is SO much that goes into buying something in these parts of the world, its absolutely nothing like buying something at home...

The market experience is comming to a close now. You have walked all day long, enjoyed many different treats and snacks of many sorts, had tea, purchased the supplies the village needs, and are now ready to make your way back. Going back is just like it was coming, only in reverse, hopefully making it home before the sun sets and the wind becomes deadly and the tempurature drops by fifty percent!!...

This was quite a long blog but what i did here was simple; I just closed my eyes and took myself directly back to the experience i had firt hand, then i try to remember the little details, the ones that really make the scene "pop" and come to life!!... then i simply write in a free flow of concsiousness, recording the activities i went through.... I hope anyone that reads this might get something, anything, out of it... if even a single fraction of your view of reality and society is expanded or transformed in any way, then writing about these experiences has been totally worthwhile and valuable to us both.... I plan to keep with this theme of describing ordinary experiences that become extraordinary when you place yourself in a totally different culture. Seriously i dont know how to tell people how heavily influencial it is to go thru these sorts of things, it is really like going to a different PLANET, a completely different dimension, a whole different way of doing things and totally different views of the world and what it means to be alive.... Experiences like these a man never forgets his whole life, its become part of his being, he cannot un-learn it, reality for me is different because of them, plain and simple... I write because i have something to say, and i will continue to write about my experiences because i will certainly continue travelling and learning, expanding, growing, LIVING!.... there is so much more we have to learn... so much...