It has been decided to call it RifGames instead of Bordergames Al Hoceima. Which is fine with us.

The presentation was very pleasant. As actors in the theatre know, the attitude of the audience has a strong influence. If the audience is bullheaded, stiff, the artist does not get inspired … But here it is a pleasure. The boys and girls are charming, funny and very bright.

We have cut our presentation short, without jokes, but it did not matter, they were very excited about the game. Immediately the first hands rose and they suggested scenes and above all stories, or, more likely to say: THE STORY: the patera.

The game is going to be about how to plan a little trip across the estrecho with your fellows. It was their idea, honestly; they are more conscious as we think they are about the representation of real life. You know, this place is not normal, there are full cybercafes in every street, I do not exaggerate. And opposed to the normal cafes the girls come in here. It seems to be a necessity to communicate with the outside world.

Walking around we have found ourselves in a mars-like city, first of all because it is winter. But its strangeness is not related to the calender, it is a result of the elements present here, that to us seem very peculiar: a post-colonial city, anti-morrocan, isolated because of the bad infrastructure, it resembles a toy-like kitschy Beirut but without the visible traces of war. War has been very important to this place, the people from the Rif were so tired with war, that now they could not care less about it. Nowadays everything depends on smuggling, foreign investments and the word of Allah. There were no wars here recently, but a whole generation disappeared, alive, but living abroad. The future is on the other side. Without any doubt the patera is the clear expression of an existential crisis.