In Rabat we've fine tuned our F512 VOYAGER. The result was an enhancement of our favorite travel bag.

The Rabat market is roughly divided into two areas: There is the readymade stuff for tourists – useless stuff they buy as souvenirs for their obvious Morrocan style. And then there is the market for everyday people, local inhabitants of Rabat. It’s a market with real products, real handcraft, things of daily use that got broken and repaired, created and customized to fit the customer’s needs. The range spans from a hundred worn out belts and fresh from the producer leather slippers to old pipes that get repurposed for momentary need – everything in between smoked food stands. All you really need to buy - provided by hundreds of random shops.

I was fascinated about the guy who welds a steel frame generating cuttings that fly through the air next to dense pedestrian traffic, the guy with humble tools crafting instruments and chairs in the same shop, men who sew clothes for men and women right on the street. You are invited to observe those Universalists in the making of products – a thing that lightens a pretty remote memory here in Europe, where goods nowadays seem to begin their life right on the shelf.

It was there where I was standing with my camera bag and the camera bag again packed into a versatile protective shell, the F512 VOYAGER. It’s a huge bag, that Voyager, but my old video tripod didn’t fit by the matter of inches. So I started roaming the streets. I knew I had a day of wandering around the markets in front of me. I met a group of sewing craftsmen and thought: They might as well have a solution for that tripod issue.

The outcome: I was drinking tea with the men while one of them applied some straps to my Voyager. Actually not one alone - there was a vivid sewing discussion circling around my red bag, each craftsman having a better idea of how to attach the tripod sensibly to the bag. Finally I didn’t have to carry my tripod in my hands anymore - the VOYAGER upgraded to fit my cameraman’s life on the road in Africa. And off we went to more inventive people of everyday life.

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