Burning sheep heads and offal Tarjine

I hitched north away from the warm desert, spent one night with my tent pitched in a village construction site then the next in a cold wet mountain village in the home of what appeared to be a very poor man. We squatted as it seemed, the night in his house with no power around a small fire and drank hot packet soup which to me was the taste of heaven purely because it was not tarjine or a date. Again this man asked for nothing in the morning and did not appear to steal anything from my bag. I bought us some bread for breakfast then hitched on through the snow stormed town of Efrane, receiving a ride just as frost bite was creeping into my hitch hiker thum and arrived in the great old city of Fes with Morocco's largest old Medina. Here I ended up giving the last of of money to a family in exchange to live 3 days with them and eat with them in their Medina home. The first night involved me helping them to move home and lug beds up 3 strorries of narrow stairway. Fes is the capital of artisan work and you can see lots of people working with bronze and silver. Unfortunately I arrived in the days of the Muslim holiday of Eid and nobody was working. This festival required that every muslim family must slaughter and consume a sheep. I was interested to spend the holiday with the famiily and see how the festival was played out. The night before the first day of the fest, I lay under my rug in the lounge with the rest of the family anticipating what I hoped tomorro would be the muslim form of Christmas. Through the window I could hear our sheep which had been purchaced that day, It made a few confused sheep noises from its unlikely new home in the household terrace 3 storries above the city street where it was securely tethered but seemed generaly indistressed and unaware its destiny being forfulled in the morning. The morning came with no special greeting or sign of joy shown by any member of the household. I sat on the roof top and hear the cries of one million sheep radiating from the streets across the entire city. The usual breakfast of bread and oil was served though a small piece of sponge cake was now present as well. At around mid day the other son arrived along with a man with a large knife. The sheep´s throat was slit there on the terrace  and we all watched casually as he kicked and gurgled for a few minutes while filling the floor with blood which the son encouraged me to join him in bathing my bare feet in. The in home butchery continued with the sheep being strung up, peeled of its skin and gutted. I took a walk in the streets and everywhere you looked were sheep skins and burning sheep heads. Back at home a casual unceremonious lunch of offal kebabs was cooked by the mother and eaten by the two sons and I. Later that night a potent dinner of offal tarjine was served. I was disappointed to see very little appearance of other family or friends, no extra time spent enjoying the company of others, very little expression of joy or any of the usual traits one would expect on christmas. This seemed to me, mealy an in home butchery exersize. Never the less it was educational. This night I slept as usual under my rug in the lounge with the rest of the family, except we were now joined by the sheep who lay along side me with two rigid muscular legs protruding from beneath a rug of his own. I woke in the morning to a terrible stomach ache, and offal tarjine diarrhea. The entire city smelt of offal tarjine and I was glad to hitch away into the mountains to Katama the home of hasheesh. This was the last day on my Moroccan visa and I was determined to reach the Spanish border of Cueta to avoid a fine.  At 5pm however I was still standing at the roadside in the cold in Katama unable to catch a ride towards Cueta which was still 3 hours away. A skin headed leather clad man pulled up in a car and offered to take me home for the night. I reluctantly accepted due to the cold night approaching and spent the night waited on hand and food by this enthusiastically hospitable gangsterly dressed host as he poured me tea, covered me in blankets, delivered a television to the foot of my bed and tried to force feed me goat kebabs which I ate very apprehensively with my still unsettled tummy. In the night I woke to vomit on his floor and he was up immediately to assist in cleaning up the mess. In the morning he did not accept my offer of apples, mentioned the word tranquelo and left me to hitch away to Spain hoping that one day over due on my visa would give me no hassles at the border.