As we are leaving Essaouaira, Naim points out a curious bit of roadside business that adds to my collection of ‘roadside marketing’ that has amused me over the years. As you drive into town you will see young men waving bunches of keys at you. If you are looking for cheap accommodation these are the chaps to talk to, because by waving the keys they are telling you that they have rooms or apartments to rent, and you can be sure it won’t be in some fancy hotel with fancy hotel prices.
I first became aware of roadside marketing (although not in its strictest sense, that of selling something), in the foothills of the High Atlas Mountains when I saw a small boy of about four sat on a rock beside four large blue metal gas bottles. His job was to wait for the gas bottle wagon. If he was big enough he might be entrusted to hold the money to pay for the refills, but if he was only a little’un, as soon as he saw the wagon he would run to get his mama. Sometimes there was no-one guarding the empty bottles, and the wagon driver would blare his horn to attract attention. But if you didn’t get your refills, especially in winter time when wood was hard to come by in more remote regions, you would be having cold meals for the next couple of weeks until the bottle man came around again.
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| photo credit : PixaBay |
There always seems to be something for sale at the side of the road, depending on the season and the region: roses, olives, eggs, chicken, figs, prunes, apricots. Fruit in plastic buckets, olive oil in yellow plastic containers, everything re-cycled. Whole families sit by the side of road under a shade tree, and if you don’t see anyone, as soon as you stop someone appears. In beekeeping areas you might be tempted to wonder why you see so many large bottles of Coca Cola and Pepsi for sale by the side of the road. These aren’t wayside cafés, there to slake your thirst on a hot Moroccan day; the bottles are full of honey, which deteriorates in plastic, so the glass coke bottles are perfect for storing the precious – and expensive – miracle food. At around four hundred dirhams for a 1.5ltr bottle it doesn’t come cheap, but it will be some of the best you have ever tasted and will have more health-giving properties than you could shake a medical dictionary at.
As you leave Casablanca heading north or south on the coast road you see fishermen doing their best to cast their lines from the few rocky outcrops not pounded by the blustery Atlantic waves. If they are successful with their catch it may well end up on the family plate, but before that the fishermen will try to sell it to the drivers passing by at speed, laid over a frame or holding it up on sticks to catch attention.
Around Chefchouen they take their marketing seriously, with shaded stalls selling all manner of local produce, but also traditional local headwear, conical straw hats with brightly coloured pompoms hanging from a wide brim, reminiscent of those worn by the water-sellers of almost any ancient medina. Dates from the Ziz Valley, some of the most delicious in Morocco; Cherries from Safrou near Fez; the best quality hena from Tazrine, used in the intricate hand decorations created throughout Morocco; walnuts from Imlil in the High Atlas Mountains, the base village from where ascents of Jbel Toubkal, North Africa’s highest peak begin; saffron from Taliouine, Agadir and Ouarzazarte (where you will also find the largest film studio on the world, Atlas studios).
You occasionally see food stalls set up by the road-side catering to the traveller, and when I’m tempted to stop to sample a bowl of couscous with a strange sauce made with unpasteurised local milk poured over it, Naim suggests it might be safer to stick to the wrapped sandwiches we bought at a petrol station earlier in the day. Long hours of driving on twisting country roads are not conducive to gurgling stomachs, and while locals may happily consume milk-covered couscous it might not be the best of things for a tender foreigner to try. I bow to his greater knowledge and his unspoken wish that he probably doesn’t want to be driving someone who would be seeking a toilet every few kilometres.
