Jedi Training On Marrakesh (Morocco)

Jedi Training On Marrakesh

Landing in Morocco for a second time (the first a twelve hour layover on our way to Ghana), we were warmly met by our marvellous guide Hamid, and after making it through customs, we loaded onto the bus and set sail for … wait a second, where’s Nancy?!
Oh my God, she’s stuck in customs. The Imperial Guards of Morocco have taken her hostage! Her passport is Belizian and the visa company she went through didn’t bother getting her a double entry! She’s not getting in!
A droid rolls its way onto the bus making strange beeping noises, we all surround it, trying to get it to talk, but it will only communicate with Hamid. A video message plays for him. A grainy image from Princess Lea, “Help me Obi-Won Konobi, you’re my only help.” Spry beyond his years, Hamid springs into action, levitating off our starcraft.
Half an hour later, a visibly shaken Nancy is rescued, and back amongst us.
I sit by Hamid. Is he, in fact, Obi-Won-Konobi performing a Jedi mind trick on the Imperial Immigration Officers? Can I learn the power of the Force from him to defeat big, tall, black, half-machine/half man Darth Vader (Rico Hanes) and bring order back to the galaxy? “How did you it Obi-Won?” young Luke Skywalker inquires.
Our Jedi Master is incredibly modest, at first he wants no credit. Luke presses him again.
“You exert confidence and authority without making them feel less then,” Obi-Won finally explains, “You hint that you have the ability to call someone who will make them do it, but put them in charge and give them the credit for making the right decision. You acknowledge that there was a mistake made, because you are showing them respect, but you also make clear that it wasn’t her (Nancy’s) fault, and that the visa company made the error. If they suggest that they talk to their superior, that’s when you tell them that you wish to speak with their boss, or they, themselves, can make the right decision, and it is in their hands, their power. Then they feel good granting amnesty.”
Skywalker’s ears are at attention.
Marrakesh

The entrance to the main square of Marrakesh

Even on this super-sonic spacecraft, it took over four hours to traverse the vast chasm of space between Casablanca and Marrekesh. I kept begging Han Solo to take the Millenium Falcon up to warp speed, but his curt reply, “What, this bucket of bolts?” was substantiated by a roar from a nearby Wookie.
It’s not an exaggeration to say we were in “space.” Morocco is largely mountainous or desert, with a few oasis (planets capable of supporting life) between them. The rest, a vast nothingness.

Dunes in the Sahara desert- where they actually did shoot Star Wars

Upon landing on Marrekesh, I jumped off the spacecraft and immediately started running in the direction of a store I was told had the necessary adapter for my computer. Skywalker was a little hasty. Planet Marrekesh regular reaches a full 120 degrees Farenheit (51 degrees “Centigrade” -- which is a bizarre, alien scale this part of the galaxy uses to measure temperature, where water freezes at zero and boils at one hundred. I am told that the odd molecular structure of Marrekeshian water accounts for its eerie boiling and freezing points. My father, an MIT physicist, has told me that water’s properties have no variance … Well, well, well; Take that, “Dr. Science!”)
Though I completed the half mile run without any ill effects, I sometimes wonder when my luck will run out, as people have been known to suffer heat stroke from far lesser activity, but such are the travails of a less than brilliant padawan.