Mekness/ Moulay Idriss Part Deux

Mekness is a sizeable city about an hour away from Fes. We decided to visit as we had a long weekend for the holiday of Mohammed’s birthday and there was a special festival for this holiday in Mekness. We had planned to take a train there, but that didn’t work out as the station was crazy for the holiday, instead we bargained for a taxi to take us. John, Mark and I stayed in Mekness once we got there, and Phil and Alex went on to Moulay Idriss as they wanted to go for a hike. We spent the day at the festival, there was a tent city set up in an open area of town, all of these tents were selling food and tea and the city was swarming with people. It got to the point where we could hardly move to try to get around. People were everywhere selling things on the street, we saw a beggar with no feet and only one arm and a man with a cactus shoved into in his back, and safety pins through his skin everywhere, a woman was laid out on the street who had her leg and a half fused together near the knee and whose torso was completely twisted to be backwards, there were bands playing, drumming, dancing, and smoking hashish on every corner, and in an adjacent field was a carnival with a ferris wheel and all of the main attractions of a traveling carnival, at least one that was fun the 1970’s in the United States then sold to a Moroccan company, as it was no longer legally safe in the United States. The rides were filled with English writing and references to American pop culture. I didn’t go on any.
We eventually made our way to Moulay Idriss, which is about a half hour further along the road past Mekness. Moulay Idriss was just as beautiful as the first time, except that it rained most of the weekend, which was fine for the other four as they had lots of studying to do before their final for the first session, but, I was a little bored, I read a lot though, which was nice, and got to explore the town a little more. It is beautiful and purely Moroccan. I sat in the main square one night and just watched the people, no tourists, but people conversing and enjoying each others company, it seems to be a wholly self sufficient utopia, employing all of the rules of community building and being successful as a result.