First Steps in Africa

It was a long day of travel from Sevilla, where I spent one night to see a friend. Fortunately, all my connections went smoothly. A city bus brought me to el Prado de San Sebastian bus station, and I got on a bus to Tarifa twenty minutes later. In Tarifa, I walked through town, blown over by gusts of wind which attracted all the kite surfers, which in turn supported the hundreds of surf shops and schools along the boulevard, and got a ticket on the 1PM ferry.

Morocco's port city Tanger was nicer than I thought. I expected a dirty rambling city built on hustled money and sucker tourists. Just the cynic in me, I guess.

It was a bit dirty and a bit hustled, but a bit charming as well. Me and two Swedes wandered around the medina and the souks. I had to drag my luggage around, making me sweat even more in the heat. There were no lockers at the train station where I had booked an overnight train to Marrakech.

In fact, I hadn't showered since the day before in Sevilla, and my general feeling of hygiene was even worse due to the long stretch of traveling.

I found a barber near the main mosque and got shaved clean for $1.50, then we asked our way to a hammam, having to pay off a little kid one shop owner sent to lead us, and another guide who latched onto us and did the talking.

The bathhouse was full, apparently, but we still got to shower for another $1.50, no doubt a tourist extortion, but standing in the stalls with exposed rusty pipes felt like heaven after dragging around my guitar and pack through the heat and the sun, the souks crammed with people selling everything from cigarettes to steel lamps to spices to sides of lamb.

It's the middle of Ramadan too. Needless to say, it's not easy to find a beer, and not so easy to find a restaurant except for a handful of places that overcharge foreign infidels like myself and my two Swedish friends. We had a couple small meals, one in an outdoor cafe that's been around for 200 years, one in a small shady alley where the small shady man insisted he had no menu and quoted us prices that were much larger than the small portions.

Such is the fate of a tourist.

But for everyone that squeezed a few extra dirhams out of us, there were an equal number of people who were genuinely kind. Two young men stopped to chat with us and were interested in my guitar. They gave us advice and asked for nothing in return and were happy to practice their English. The two taxi drivers were happy to give us the rundown of the area in Spanish after we negotiated the fare, and the man who was getting a shave in the barber shop before me insisted on showing off his 59 year-old strength in a powerful handshake, and grinning with the few teeth he had. "American? Welcome!"

I did seem to get many warm responses from the many people who asked where we were from. The Swedes basically just confused most of the people when they explained where they were from, but everyone who heard I was American was enthusiastic.

Good to know we still have some rapport somewhere, even if you have to squeeze through sweltering alleys to find it.

A Turkish Shave

Turkey is a fantastic place for male grooming. Dudes here have good facial hair, and as a result, there are barbers, or berbers in Turkish, everywhere. For dudes, at least. I'm told that women's hairdressing is equally pervasive and socially pertinent, but they are hidden away off the street level, mostly 'cause of this being a Muslim country and the bizarre female head modesty that goes along with that.

I got my face shaved twice so far. I even got my haircut once, which was pretty amazing, but that's a different story. There's a barber literally outside my door. I just got back from a shave, in fact.

The cost is five Lira, less than four bucks, and even that is probably a tourist price. The dude has a long white pony tail pulled from his nearly bald dome, and a pretty sweet chin/handlebar beard trimmed thin. The best part of his tiny two-chair shop is the pictures of him when he was young and at the height of early 70s Turkish clothing and hair fashion. Said photos unfortunately not pictured above, among the clearly visible tea try and glasses, mini Ataturk bust, ashtray, and foam lathering brush - all potential symbols of Turkey in their own right.

Maggie got to witness and photograph my first face-shaving. Since she's a foreigner, she might've been the first women in the place in decades, who knows.

First the dude whipped up a warm lather in the sink, painted my face for about five minutes with it, then put a new blade in the straight-edge and expertly scraped my face smooth, then lathered me again, and got any stragglers.

Some might understandably be nervous to to have a stranger take a sharp knife to their neck, especially those in earthquake-prone areas. This dude obviously had years of face-shaving experience though. He was quick and sure with his cuts, turning the blade in to his free palm to wipe the foam off as he went. He cleaned the foam out of my ears and rinsed off my face.The whole thing took about 15 minutes with an obligatory tea break.

At the end, I was freshened up with a spray of citrus-alcohol which stung like hell, but left me crisp and well scented. You can literally find these barbers everywhere. There's a lot of demand with the level of facial hair here, and I must say, Turkey has the best mustaches outside of Azerbaijan - for the plus 30 demographic of course. Young kids now just don't appreciate mustaches anywhere it seems.

Maybe I'll get around to describing how awesome my Turkish haircut was. Depends how motivated I get. Depends how lucky you are.