Love and Hate

After 5 nights of frost, we have had all kinds of weather. It seems like a cold and warm weather front are fighting to gain control of our region. Thunderstorms are followed by dusty skies to be followed by rain and after that we have beautiful sunny weather and so on and so on…

We are making the most of it. It should not last long, as it is mid February.

The storks will have to wait a little longer to fly back to Europe.

As Easter is quite early this year, tourists are announcing their coming booking tours with Mohamed or asking the GPS coordinates of our camping.

Most of the overland travellers are not the big adventurers people think they are. They are cruising from GPS point to GPS point keeping contact by mobile and email with family back home or with newly made friends covering the same track with their vehicle.

Our place has become a meeting point where they catch up on each other and rest a few days before continuing their journey either together or splitting up again.

Most of these long time travellers have their own website on which we get a reference. Most of them have one or several dogs. Some pick up 1 or 2 stray dogs on the way.

Mohamed cannot believe how Europeans pamper their dogs. He says they treat them like if they were their children and they do. It is very awkward for him to see how positive Europeans towards dogs, while for Muslims they are the most unclean of all creatures.

“Dog” (Kelb) is the most used bad name over here. At the same time, it is the most used sweet name. Zakaria is Pappa’s kelby (my dog).

Love and Hate are never far apart.