A LOST BUSINESS OPPORTUNITY
Africa. The next day I hitchhiked on. I stopped in British-colony Gibraltar. When I saw a ferry that went to Morocco, I thought, “Africa!” I decided to head in that direction, thinking it would be fun to see another continent. Anyway, the ferry was cheap.
Welcome to Hashish Country
I stepped ashore in AFRICA! and was greeted by men who smoked kif hashish. I saw more of it later on as it was legal to grow hashish in Morocco.
I headed east through the Rif mountains. One day I was picked up by two brothers in a Mercedes. They offered that I stayed with them in their hashish farm, where they produced around 200 kilograms of hashish a year. The brothers transport their product on a donkey over the mountains and down to the coast on a donkey, and then over to Spain by boat.
An Opportunity to Work as a Drug Smuggler
We sat in their home and smoked under the light of an oil lamp. The other brother was f*cked up after many years of using. After talking for some time, I was eventually invited to take part in their smuggling activities. They would take the risk of transporting the goods and I would pay when the hashish was delivered in Spain. I could decide how much I wanted.
We ate and smoked. When it was time for me to go to bed, they left half a kilo of hashish on the table in my room so I that could supply myself during the night. The following day the brothers took me around the fields and showed me how they extracted the hash oil. I left them alone and went on. Maybe I missed out on a good deal there…
Being Dubbed the White Devil
Up in the Rif Mountains, I met the teacher Khalid. He told me to stay with him, and so I did. He was a teacher in a country house in the middle of the mountains. That was their school. When the kids saw me they screamed, “He is the white devil!”
Khalid calmed the kids down and after a while they they accepted me as a mere mortal. I sat in the back of the classroom after giving the promise that I would not kill or eat any the kids. Khalid smoked tobacco while he checked the kids’ homework, puffing out clouds before their coughing faces.
In the middle of the lesson Khalid fell asleep. The kids looked at me, momentarily forgetting that they were afraid of me. I coughed hard and managed to rouse Khalid. At the end of the day the kids were no longer afraid of the white Satan. They were laughing and pinching me in my hairy arms. There were a lot of smiles and goodbyes as they disappeared into their long walk home to their villages somewhere far away from the school in the middle of the Rif mountains.
Meanwhile, back in Khalid’s house, I had the biggest hail storm I had ever experienced, hail and ice the size of golf balls. I was very lucky that I was under a roof. Hail of this intensity had hurt a lot of people before.
To be continued…
