Chefchaoen at Dusk

When I was in Chefchaoen, Morocco in 2009 and looking out from the rooftop of the hostel I was overtaken by a feeling of awe and amazement at the sheer size and scale of the world.

Gone was the small-minded, insular and parochial place of my origin and instead I was in place where people had lived out their lives in a completely different way, speaking a different language and writing a script so unlike my own. Believing in a God so unlike my own and listening to the circling winds of folklore and stories so unlike my own ancestral stories from the white world and the Māori world. Every few hours I would hear the minarets ringing out over the surrounding hills with the call to prayer. The call was made in the most solemn, peaceful, reverent and beautiful voice. It felt like hearing someone else’s dream or many people’s dreams echoing out over the sky. On the air you could smell the burning hash from the mountains where farmers grew it and burned it off.

I realised how small and insignificant my life was and how there are infinite ways to be in the world and move through the world. That nobody owned me or could lay claim to me or my thoughts and what I wanted to do with the remainder of my life. I was my own person completely, rootless but grounded within my own self.

I really recommend travelling alone if you want to have an experience something like that.