desert dwelling

We arrived at the top of a cliff over looking a right hand point break and decided we had found the place to post up for a few days. We grabbed our tent from the car and skipped off over the dunes to find a protected place to pitch up. Our tent, which we had emptied our pockets to purchase, was a traditional round, single poled, canvas Bedouin tent. We had ordered it as a custom and waited two days for it to be finished by the local maker prior to hitting the deep desert of the western Sahara.

It was hot and windy on the sand as we unraveled the olive green canvas. Fatigue from traveling across the desert mixed with heat and airborne sand made solving the puzzle extremely challenging. The source of our confusion became clear when after 10 minutes of struggling in the wind to make sense of this tent the aha! Moment dawned. Almost in sync with the moment my pants ripped in half, leaving my bare arse hanging in the wind, we realised that our tent was “very traditional” so traditional that it required a seperate structure to make it work. It had no floor! It was a glorified umbrella, a castle in the sky. It needed thick moroccan rugs and material to hang off it to make it a home. 

So there we were in the hot sand, our house had no bottom, mine was getting scorched through the gaping hole in my only pair of trousers and the sun was beginning its decent. 

We aborted ship and trucked back an hour or so to a nearby town to sleep.

We then carried this tent with us for the rest of the trip and at every opportunity I would fortify the seam in my pants with a needle and thread. 

What was point in all this? 

5 years later I threw the mouldy canvas tent in the bin and laughed a big beautiful laugh at our misfortune that we were fortunate enough to experience.