3/10/09 Taxi troubles

I'm inventing a new category of post, called "VisitorInfo." I'll go back through and stick it on some older blogs soon (probably tonight). It will flag posts that are (I hope) especially helpful for tourists, travelers, new Morocco PCVs, and other folks who are unfamiliar with my country.

I've written before about grands taxis, the sedans (and occasionally station wagons) that are the alternative to buses for long-distance travel. Grands taxis usually travel distances between 15km and 100km. If you're going further, you'll either need to switch taxis along the way or else take a bus. (You can also rent a car or hire a car and driver; I'll talk about those options some other day.)

The vast majority of grands taxis are Mercedes Benz sedans, fairly wide-bodied, and nearly always painted dun yellow. About 90% of the time, they work like this:

You go to a taxi station. You listen for a second as the drivers shout the names of their destinations. If you hear the city you want, walk to that driver, check the fare, and wait. If you don't hear the city you want, look for the kurti (the guy- and yes, it's always a guy - in charge). He should have a fluorescent yellow vest on - those are becoming standard, lhumdullah - but if nobody is glowing, look for a guy holding a list in his hand. Tell him where you want to go. He'll either point you towards the relevant taxi or else explain why there isn't one: it hasn't come back from its last run or you need to take a taxi to an intermediate destination first, and then switch into one to your final destination. Then, again, walk to your driver, check the fare (you can also do this with the kurti), and wait.

Why wait? Why not just hop in and roll?

Because these taxis carry six passengers at a time. Two in the bucket seat, four across the back.**

They aren't like American taxis, which are meant for you, or perhaps you and a travel companion, only. These are more like very small shuttle buses.

The taxi driver won't leave until it has six people or until he (always a he) has the fares for six people. This means that, if you have the money and not the patience, you can hustle a taxi out of the station by buying extra seats.

Example: Imagine you're going from Fes to Meknes, and you're in a hurry. You get to the taxi stand, follow the cries of, "Meknes! Meknes!", and find your driver. He tells you that it's 50dh. (Don't quote me on this: I've never actually taken a taxi from Fes to Meknes, so I'm making a blind stab as to the fare.) You fork over the 50 dh, drop your bags in the trunk, and then notice that the engine is dead and nobody is sitting in the taxi. "How many seats are taken?" you ask. (Sh-Hal n blas 3mmrn?, if you're curious.) "Two," the driver replies, "You're the third." This means that the taxi won't leave until three more people show up...or until three more fares are paid for. You can either wait until three folks arrive - which may be two minutes or two hours - or you can fork over the money for the three extra fares and hit the road immediately. Many tourists opt for this latter option, valuing their time over their money. Most Moroccans and PCVs will wait for the minutes or hours until someone else arrives to pay their way.

This is how it works, as I said, around 90% of the time.

The other 10% of the time, the drivers leave the taxi stand with one or two empty seats, trusting that they'll pass by somebody who wants a ride. (Hitchhiking is incredibly common in Morocco, so any time you're traveling, you'll see people waiting hopefully along the roadways. Most get picked up by private cars, but souq buses and taxis will pick up folks too, if there's room.)

This happened to me a couple weeks ago.

I'd been in a hurry - enough of a hurry to splurge on buying two seats (which guarantees me the bucket seat next to the driver, aka comfort *and* the guarantee that no one will be pressing their body parts into mine) - but the driver was not.

We left with only three people in the backseat. I figured that one of them had bought two fares also, and didn't think much about it...until we stopped to pick up a hitchhiker. Who traveled about 5 km, then got out and paid the driver a few dirhams. A kilometer or two later, we saw another hitcher...and stopped again. This time, we went about 10km before stopping to let him off.

When you're traveling ~100km, as I was on this particular trip, it's always a tossup as to whether you want a bus or a grand taxi. Buses are usually less crowded, plus they're cheaper, but they only run every few hours and they stop for every hitcher they pass, until every seat (and sometimes the aisle) is filled. This makes them sloooooow. Usually. Since I was in a hurry, I'd opted for the taxi - 5dh more per seat, but 30-50% faster. Usually. This taxi, though, was acting like a bus - in fact, we kept leapfrogging with a bus, as both the bus and taxi kept stopping to pick up and let off folks - it took just as long as the bus would have. In fact, once I got to my destination, and was walking from the taxi stand to the bus station to pick up a bus for the next (longer) leg of the trip, that same bus passed me again, and slid into the station just before I walked in. Sigh.

** The sedans can't really fit more than six, though I've seen up to nine passengers - of the extra three, two were small, lap-carried children, and the third had crammed in next to the driver, on his left. The longer, narrower station wagons are meant to carry two in the pinched wayback, three in the middle, and one in the bucket seat. I've seen FOURTEEN people in one of these. As I recall, three were small children, one was the driver, and the other ten were full-sized passengers: two in the bucket seat, four in the middle, and four in the wayback. This violates a sheaf of laws, but the driver paid off the gendarmes we passed; the extra seven fares more than covered the price of the bribe.

3/9/09 Word of the day: Hleeb

Hleeb is milk. It can refer to milk fresh out of a cow, in a bottle, or in powder form.

Given how much time I spend in coffeeshops when I travel, and how much I despise coffee and get plenty of tea at friends' and neighbors' houses, I order Hleeb a lot.

In my favorite cafe in SouqTown, the waiters almost don't have to ask any more, except on hot days (when I might order juice). Cold days, chilly days, rainy days, foggy days...I'm ordering Hleeb b shokolat. Milk with chocolate, aka hot cocoa.

Every once in a while, I find a cafe that doesn't have any chocolate powder on hand. I usually settle for Hleeb b sukkar, sweet milk. One day recently, when I was killing time in a bus station (the 12:00 bus arrived at 1:45, as it turned out), I went to order a hot beverage and got a surprise. "We don't have any chocolate," the friendly barrista explained in Tam, "but would you like Hleeb b Leepton?" Leepton, aka Lipton, is Westerners' tea. Lipton tea packets are available in nearly every hanut, but are sold almost exclusively to tourists and hotel owners, as far as I can tell.

I was so surprised by the counter-offer that I accepted it without thinking. I really had no idea if Lipton tea would make for a good milky tea...but it was awfully chilly, and I figured that, with enough milk and sugar, nearly anything tastes good.

Turns out Hleeb b Leepton is great. It won't supplant Hleeb b shokolat in my affections any time soon, but it's good to know that I have a viable alternative in the event of a chocolate-drought crisis. :)

3/8/9 International Day of the Woman

Today is International Women's Day / International Day of the Woman / World Women Day - depends on how you translate it.

Any way you phrase it, it's an excellent opportunity to raise issues of Gender and Women's Rights. :)

Peace Corps has a committee known as "GAD", Gender And Development, that helps us organize activities and events to raise awareness of women's issues.

Actually GAD's focus is broader - it's a paradigm for developement that means incorporating the attitudes and needs of *all* the members of a community - men, women, boys, girls, and the elderly.

One of the examples they give, to illustrate the importance of GAD, has to do with tree plantings.

Once upon a time, there was a community that desperately needed erosion control and soil improvement. Their Peace Corps Volunteer thought that planting trees would meet these environmental needs. He talked to the men in his village, who explained that they wanted fruit trees, to serve as a cash crop. The Volunteer found funding and there was a massive tree-planting effort.

What the PCV didn't know was that in this community, women were responsible for agriculture. So women were expected to water and nurture the trees, and eventually harvest the fruit.

The women had enough work to do, saw no point in supporting this crazy project, and the trees all died.

So the next PCV in the community talked to the women. They explained that they spend most of their time hiking into the forests nearby to gather "fuelwood", branches and twigs that they can burn to heat their houses and cook with. So they want fast-growing, low-maintenance trees that can serve as a local source of fuelwood.

So she arranged funding for a massive tree-planting effort...which was stymied at every turn by the men, who didn't like being left out of the decision-making process and who saw no point in planting trees that didn't grow saleable products.

The third Volunteer talked to the men *and* the women. She explained to the women the potential benefits of this extra income for their families. She explained to the men that if women didn't have to hike out for fuelwood, they'd have more time to cultivate the fruit trees. She got the men and the women to talk *to*each*other* about their different needs.

Result: Impasse. Deadlock. And ultimately...compromise.

The community ended up planting a combination of fruit trees and fast-growing fuelwood trees. (Pines, I think.) Since the women didn't have to go as far to get fuelwood, they were available to cultivate the fruit trees. Since the men understood the purpose of the fuelwood trees, they helped plant them.

And they all lived happily ever after. :)

I don't know how exactly this example was drawn from life, or how many details have been changed in years of retellings, but the take-home lesson is a good one: a clear understanding of gender roles and gender-based needs is key to effective, sustainable development.

Happy Women's Day! :)

3/7/09 "Another Solution"

Last weekend, when I went to visit a friend for her birthday, I went traveling through parts of Morocco I haven't explored before. I ran into a series of obstacles, which culminated in my being about two hours behind schedule...so I missed the last tranzit of the day. Or at least I thought I had. But I didn't know where the tranzit station was in this town. All I knew was that it was "near the taxi station to [her souqtown]", not to be confused with the other taxi station, and that the taxi station was "across town" from the bus station where I'd arrived. (Like most long trips, it involved every conceivable type of transportation: buses, taxis, tranzits, etc. I'm kinda surprised I didn't end up on a mule.)

So I asked a gendarme where to find the taxi station I wanted. "Go straight, for a while. There's some big streets, then some small alleys. Turn left at the second alley."

I figured I'd walk straight for a few minutes and then ask somebody else.

"Madame? Bonjour? Madame?" A voice nagged at me from behind. I ignored it, as I always do when strangers try to chat me up in French. For that matter, I've heard "Bonjour" from kids whose French consists of about four words. The clue is when they say, "Bonjour, monsieur," to me. I don't care for the "madame", but I really hate being called "Monsieur." I know that the kids don't mean to call me "mister", but it bugs me that they spend half their schoolday being taught in French, and clearly, nothing sticks.

Anyway, I was ignoring the voice. And then it said, in flawless French, "You're looking for the taxi station to [her souqtown]?"

My head spun around involuntarily. I hadn't noticed anyone lingering within earshot, but apparently somebody had.

I saw a young man, probably 16 or 17, looking at me with an earnest expression.

"Do you want help finding the taxi station?" he pressed.

I figured he was an enterprising kid looking for an easy few dirhams, but I didn't begrudge him. If he could get me across town without my having to admit to another dozen strangers that I had no idea where I was going, that was worth a few D's.

As we walked through town, we chatted. Turns out he's 19, a year away from sitting for his baccalaureate exams, and has grown up in Belgium and France as well as Morocco. He's hoping to start his own construction/development company, or else study architecture.

Twenty or thirty minutes later, we got to the taxi/tranzit station. There were no more taxis heading my way. My young friend, Mehdi, was undismayed. "We will find another solution," he said confidently.

We walked to the tranzit part of the station. The last one had left about 45 minutes earlier. "We will find another solution," he reiterated.

He has a friend with a car, who could drive me out there if I'd cover his gas. I was wary, because it sounds too much like hitchhiking, which is a violation of Peace Corps rules. Turned out to be a moot point, because the friend wasn't picking up his phone.

"We will find another solution."

And we did. It was more expensive than I'd hoped, but it got my to my friend quickly, safely, and without violating any Peace Corps rules. He stayed with me, cajoling, encouraging, and haggling with anyone who could help, until he waved me off on my path. He didn't take a penny for his troubles, either.

During our walk across his city, he'd asked me if I were Muslim, or planning to convert. I smiled and said that I'm happy as I am. He assured me that all people have the right to their own beliefs. I heard a "but" coming.

"But in my opinion, Islam is special because of its attitude towards the stranger," he said with his trademark seriousness. As I looked at him, I realized that he was living his beliefs. What better illustration of that "attitude towards the stranger", usually expressed by unfailing hospitality, than his willingness to take an hour out of his Saturday afternoon to shepherd me through his city and make sure I made it safely on my way?

3/6/9 Ruminations on the Fifth of March

On March 5th, 2008, I woke up in a hotel in a Europeanized city for my very first full day in Morocco. Though I now know that it's a thousand-dirham-a-night fancypants hotel, at the time it seemed a bit quaint. As I recall, I claimed first shower, took a quick one out of consideration for my two roommates (and felt vaguely righteous for doing so), then dressed and headed down to the enormous buffet breakfast, where I helped myself to pastries, fruit, and juice.

March 5th, 2009, awakening and breakfasting looked a bit different. I opened my eyes, slithered out of my sarcophagus-style sleeping bag on a living-room ponge (where I've slept for the past several nights, because the living room is warmer than the bedroom), then ran into the frigid bathroom, whose door doesn't fully close, and squatted over a ceramic plate. Then I opened the spigot to one of the two functioning taps in the house, positioned a banyo (rubber basin) under it so that I'd hear the water splashing into it whenever the pipes opened, and went back into the living room. I pulled the sleeping bag over my lap and reached for the lighter & candle. The lighter struck on the first try, lhumdullah. I lit the candle. Once its flame was steady, I released the lighter, set it down, and reached for the gas nozzle on the small heater. (The big one is overkill for daytime.) I cranked it all the way up, holding the candle in front of the flame-plate. It kept catching in bursts, flaring with spurting blue flames that died instantly. Once the gas had increased from a trickle to a flood, it finally caught with a sustainable, rumbling red-blue sheet of butane-scented flames.

Then I booted up my laptop to see if anyone had responded to the email I'd sent out the night before, about my first year in Peace Corps. An hour or two later, I heard the splishing and gurgling of water pouring into the bathroom banyo. I waited a few moments to let the banyo fill, then slipped on my shoes - cement floors are cold, even through the wool socks I never go without - and went into the bathroom. Once the basin was brim-full, I turned off the tap and walked into the kitchen.

I filled the large aluminum teakettle, then lit the stove and set the kettle on to heat while I did the dishes in my rubber gloves. Once the water was hot, I rinsed the last of the dishes, then made a pot of cocoa while I straightened up the kitchen. (When I want just one cup of cocoa, I use a Swiss Miss-style packet from a care package. When I want a pot of cocoa, I make it from scratch.) To make the cocoa, I scoop 3 heaping tablespoons of powdered milk into an old jam jar. Then I pour in hot water, till the jar is about half full, screw on the lid, and shake it till the powder is all dissolved and I have a jar of cream. I pour this into the white-enameled coffeepot. Then I light a candle off of the flames under the teakettle and use it to light the tiny burner for the coffeepot. (All the other burners leave too big a gap in the iron cage over the flames, so the coffeepot tips over when I try to set it down.) Then I pour more water into the jam jar, to get every last bit of milk off the sides. (Why waste it when I wash the jar?) I pour that into the coffeepot. I add in a heaping tablespoon of cocoa powder and another of sugar, then enough hot water to fill the coffeepot. If there are still traces of milk in the jar, I swirl the hot water in there before pouring it in the pot. Then I leave the coffeepot - cocoapot, more accurately - on the stove until it just starts to simmer. I know when it has reached the precise moment because the cocoa starts to inflate, swelling higher in the small pot with all the tiny puffery of a winter bluebird. Just like that, I have a pot of cocoa, with enough for 2 full mugs and a little extra. So I pour a cup, carry the pot and mug, and come into the living room to drink.

Not exactly the same start to a day.

I imagine that the next March 5th will look rather more like today than like last year, but who knows...and of course, two March 5ths ago, I was restarting my long-dormant Peace Corps application.

Life is funny.

3/5/09 March came in like a lamb...

...but that didn't last long.

The first few days of March were chilly and overcast, but calm. Then, the night of March 3rd - March 4th, we got our first snow in ... two weeks? Three? Long enough that there were only a few drifts left.

The storm system reached across most of the province, but at lower elevations it showed up as rain. Up here in Berberville, (one of?) the highest-altitude site(s?) in Peace Corps, we got snow, naturally.

When I left town for the weekend, I noticed that I could watch Spring arriving just by traveling down the long road to SouqTown. As we steadily lost elevation, the trees grew more and more blooms, until by SouqTown they were flowering and glorious.

I imagine that driving up on the 3rd would have shown a similar switch from rains to a wintry mix to pure snow, as the seasons wound backwards with the increasing elevation. Up here on the mountaintop, I got to indulge in childhood's pleasure, watching chubby flakes swirl and twirl in the wind. By morning, we had about six inches, much of which melted throughout the day, even though the sun barely poked through the thick clouds.

The snow shut down the town, for the most part; nearly everyone chose to stay indoors. I was no exception, spending most of the day in front of my heater. Power flickered on and off a few times, but never stayed off for more than a minute or two.

Just another winter day in Berberville...in March!

3/4/09 Happy Anniversary!

Today marks one full year that I've been in Morocco. My plane landed a confusing number of hours (thanks to the five-hour time difference) after leaving JFK. We took off in the evening and landed in the morning, so 3/3/08 was the last day I lived in America, and 3/4/08 was the first day I lived in Morocco. :D

The new batch of Environment and Health Trainees arrived a few minutes ago, ready to begin this adventure...

This seems like a good time to take stock.

In the past year, I have...

• Made dozens of new friends
• Joined two new families - three, if you count my Peace Corps family
• Learned how to peel an apple in one long curl
• Helped plant 250 trees (and am planning to plant 550 more)
  
• Become proficient at feeding myself from scratch - life without a microwave!
• Helped create EE clubs at multiple schools
  
• Mastered the butane gas heaters, stove, and oven
• Learned conversational Tamazight
  
• Mastered the squat toilet
• Carried on long, complicated, technical conversations in French
  
• Survived indoor temperatures below freezing
• Drank tea with hundreds (literally, well over 500) women
  
• Weathered meter-plus snowfalls
• Helped paint & coordinate three huge murals in Berberville, and hundreds of small ones in SouqTown
• Baked dozens and dozens of chocolate chip cookies
• Traversed Morocco from Marrakesh (SW) to Oujda (NE)
• Bought produce, train tickets, souvenirs, hardware, kitchenware...without using English
• ...and lots more, but this list is long enough.

It's been an amazing year, and I'm so grateful for it. Thanks, too, to you, dear readers, for sharing the journey with me. :D

3/3/9 Yen Yid

Whenever I go into SouqTown, I spend the night. At four hours each way in the tranzit, and with the last home-bound tranzit leaving at just 2:30pm, doing a one-day round-trip isn't feasible. So I stay over.

I've virtually always stayed in the same little hostel. Whether I'm there alone, with a room to myself, or sharing a 3-bed or 4-bed room with other PCVs, the price is always the same: 30 Dh. Checkout is simple; you return the key (or explain that you left it in the lock upstairs - the better option if you're leaving while the cleaning lady is doing her rounds) and hand over 30 Dh for every night you stayed.

Last week, as I was leaving, the manager looked up at me and said, "Yen yid?" The context and tone of voice made it clear that he was asking, "How many nights did you stay here?", but the words didn't seem to match. I've gotten used to missing words, though, and just responding to context clues and nonverbal signals, so I cheerfully responded, "Ghas yun gid." Just one night.

I wasn't consciously thinking about the manager's words, but somewhere in the back of my head, I was trying to process them. I still hear lots of words and expressions I don't know in the course of a conversation, but quick little exchanges like this rarely surprise me anymore, so some part of me was working to parse it. And suddenly it all clicked.

In this region, g and j and y are interchangeable. (As are sh and k, and r and l, and, well, there's a lot of reasons that lots of words sound the same.) And the word I learned for night, gid, is therefore pronounced "geed" (like "good" but with a different vowel sound) in SouqTown, "jeed" (where the j is the zh sound of the s in "pleasure") in Berberville, and "yeed" whenever somebody feels like it. And "yen" and "yun" are just regional variations for the Tamazight word for "one".

So what he had said, "Yen yid?", and what I'd said, "Yun gid," were actually identical in meaning. Without even understanding the words of his question, I'd answered it clearly. I guess this nonverbal communication thing works! Plus, it's reassuring to know that yes, after a year in-country, I have, in fact, mastered the most rudimentary vocabulary. In multiple accents, no less. Lhumdullah!

3/2/09 Secret Schedules...

Notes written in my journal during my bus ride back from my friend's party. Like so much travel in a developing country, the journey took several stages, and involved several types of transportation. After climbing out of the second sheep-scented taxi, I waited for a bus to pull in, to drive me south. A bus did show up, 45 minutes ahead of schedule, but the waiter at our cafe assured me that it was going a different direction. Made me a little anxious, though. It waited around for ten or so minutes, then pulled out. Fifteen minutes later, another bus pulled in. This time, I walked over to the bus and asked the guy dropping blocks around the back tire where it was headed...

Manis tdit? Where are you going?
Manis trit at-safrt? Where do you want to go?
S [SouqTown]. To SouqTown.
Yalla, alli. C'mon, climb up.

I'd actually been hoping to find out just how far south this particular bus route extended. And my follow-up question would have been to find out where it comes from. (I travel this stretch of highway frequently enough that I know all the major and minor cities along it, but not often enough to have any idea of the schedules or routes of the buses.)

I could ask these more specific questions, of course, leading off with, "Does this bus leave from [a northern city] or [a touristy town just south of it]?" but I'm afraid of the reception I'd get. A look of suspicion, I expect, questioning the cause of my curiosity. Why does she want to know? Is she expecting someone from [a northern city]? A male someone, perhaps? Does she think buses from [that city] are better? Worse? Is it to my benefit if she thinks it's from [that city]? If she doesn't? I imagine these questions flickering across the face of my jumper (the guy who assists the driver and collects the fares).

Curiosity for the sake of curiosity - wanting more knowledge just because I like knowing stuff, and not because I have any pressing reason to apply that knowledge - confuses people, I've found. And given my tarumit appearance, tends to make folks suspect me - ME! - of being a spy.

Well, that's my fear, anyway. Not so much the spy part as the general suspicion. Maybe I'm crazy. Or paranoid. But the hesitation and confusion on the faces of people when I ask questions, and the above-cited tendency of people to answer questions with another question...well, it'll make a body paranoid after a while.

But neither the jumper's reticence nor my paranoia explains why schedules are so poorly publicized, let alone adhered to. *Large* cities have published schedules posted on the wall...on chalkboards, like a special-of-the-day. And as subject to revision. Smaller cities and towns have nothing; you just have to wait for it enough times to learn when it comes by. So locals and PCVs slowly accumulate this knowledge, but travelers and visitors just have to muddle along as best they can. A PCV friend had told me when to expect this bus - which is why I use the phrase "ahead of schedule", perhaps unjustly, above...

3/1/09 Shuttling Sheep

Happy March!

This weekend, I visited a friend in the north, for her birthday weekend. :)

As I was leaving her site, though, something unexpected happened...

At first, everything looked normal. Grands taxis in various states of disrepair, drivers loitering... As we approached, one of the drivers came to meet us. We explained that we were heading towards my friend's souq town, the jumping-off point for all further travel. Since taxis and tranzits are the only way in or out of her town, the taxi driver runs a regular shuttle between her village and her souq town.

So far, everything was perfectly routine.

My friends and I walked to the trunk, popped it open, and started to lower our bags in. "No, no, keep your bags in the car with you," the driver said hurriedly. The other visitors and I exchanged confused looks, but the birthday girl pointed over her shoulder. We looked: some women were walking up to the taxi stand with their sheep.

I see people with sheep every day, so I didn't immediately catch the significance. But then I caught a whiff of eau du trunk, and the picture snapped into focus.

These women were going to be sharing the taxi with us.

So were their sheep.

The women on their way into their souq town, just like us.

In a Mercedes-Benz taxi.

The sheep get the trunk.

That's why our bags stay inside, with us.

As I stood there, considering the ramifications of this, I became downright *thrilled* at the idea of having my hiking pack sit on my lap for the 15 minutes or so it would take us to get to town.

After a surprisingly uneventful ride, during which I tried hard to ignore the series of thumps and thuds from the trunk, we got to my friend's souq town. We unloaded ourselves and our bags from the body of the car, tried not to watch as the sheep were hauled out of the trunk and off to animal-souq, and looked around for a taxi to the biggest town in the region, aka the next stop on all of our journeys.

We found a taxi whose driver was shouting our destination. Ah, sweet return to normalcy.

Hah.

As we approached his taxi, the odor wafting out of his open trunk was so much stronger than it had been in the first taxi that I almost recoiled. But this guy didn't want us to have our bags crowded on our laps for the much-longer ride. Instead, he had someone else put in wooden brackets and a layer of tarp, and indicated that we should put our bags on top of that.

A wide, gaping, yawning gulf of at least 2 inches separated our worldly goods from the urine-drenched lining of the trunk. I looked forlornly at my abandoned waif of a backpack. Then I gritted my teeth and stepped away.

The smell wafted into the body of the car, too.

I won't elaborate.

Suffice to say that I have a whole new appreciation for my tranzits, where the livestock are transported - very occasionally - on top of the minibus/van, in the open air, but never, ever, in the vicinity of the passengers. Well, except for those poor overcrowded souls who are stuck up on top of the tranzit. Since Peace Corps forbids us to ride up top - ride afla, as it's known - I've never had to ride this close to sheep before.

Just think of how much I'm learning to be grateful for! I've never thought to give gratitude for my freedom from the smell of sheep pee, but now I know that I should. :D