Participating in team challenges, navigating the Moroccan desert with a road map, and embarking on an extraordinary human adventure: this is what awaits Géraldine and Pascal Demeester in the Bab-el-Raid rally. This project was born during a weekend in September 2025 with their friends from the Vosges, Jean-Christophe and Anaïs, where the idea of a team challenge emerged.
Géraldine, who had previously participated in the Rallye des Gazelles in 2023, found that experience literally changed her life. The desire to relive such an experience as a couple arose, leading the four friends, being competitive, to decide to challenge each other in a 'girls versus boys' mode! After some research, they discovered the Bab-el-Raid rally, managed by the same organizers (Maïenga Sports Events) as the Rallye des Gazelles, a mixed-gender automobile raid for pairs.
The rally, with its official start scheduled for January 31st, involves reaching Morocco by car from Fouras-les-Bains (Charente-Maritime) while being autonomous and as consistent as possible. The two pairs, respectively named Calamity Queen and Chef and Sherif, found identical Peugeot 205 cars on Le Bon Coin and prepared them for desert conditions, including installing reinforced tires.
Beyond the sporting challenge, the Bab-el-Raid is also a humanitarian and ecological race. The project aims to assist local villages by planting fruit trees, providing water tanks, or donating food supplies, alongside an ecological initiative. These aspects were strong motivators for Géraldine and Pascal.
The couple has received support from numerous partners. The idea is to collect food donations for the Restos du Cœur and a local association for remote populations in southern Morocco, to be distributed by the association Cœur de gazelles. The municipality of Villiers-sur-Marne, through Carole Combal (Deputy Mayor for Sports, Clubs, and Sports Associations), responded enthusiastically, offering them stands at the associations' forum and the Christmas market. Several local businesses, including the Family Time Café, the Épicerie 64, the Axelo cheese shop, the Sukré dessert bar, the Aïko Sushi restaurant, and the Seven beauty institute, have also shown their support.
Attached to their adopted town of Villiers-sur-Marne, where they settled in 2022, Géraldine and Pascal are considering organizing an official departure from Villiers towards Fouras-les-Bains. This challenge, which is simultaneously sporting, technical, financial, and above all human, will undoubtedly count on the support of the entire town.
You can follow their adventures on social media: Instagram: calamityqueenvschefandsherif and Facebook: calamity.queens.babel.raid.team.2027.
