southern excursion day 2

The bus left this morning under grey skies, but the rain held off. We spent the first half of the day driving through the Middle Atlas, listening to presentations the students on the bus neither wanted to do or hear.

The high point of the day was the scenery we got to see: a tizi (mountain pass), the Ziz river valley, and the beginning of the desert. The Ziz River valley carved out a gorge in most places, and in some it’s big enough that whole villages have sprung up around the river. They cultivate palms and other shorter plants that can live under the palms. The villages are the same color as the earth because they’re made entirely of mud bricks, so the only reason you can see them against the land is a difference in texture and shape.

We seem to have very interesting rest stops. No lie, we stopped in the Ziz River valley, no trees in sight, and had 15 minutes to scout out a private place to relieve ourselves. I’m sure it looked crazy from where the bus stood because there were about 35 girls running all over the hillside, ducking out and disappearing behind rocks.

After another brief rest stop, this time in the town of Errachidia, we continued on to our lunch in Rissani, a crossroads on the edge of the desert. Lunch was something called “buried bread” ( in Arabic “hubsa medfouna”). It was a Rissani calzone is what it was, although I don’t know what exactly was in it.

In Rissani we left our giant tour bus for Land Rovers to take us into the desert. A sandstorm was kicking up around this time, making the 30 minute drive to Merzouga not very scenic. There was nothing around to see anyway, except signs marking side roads to auberges (small hotels) cupped somewhere in the low hills.

In Merzouga we visited the Hasi Labiad Association, which helps women and families by providing women with income from crafts, but also by hooking tourists up with village families. The tourists get to see how a traditional family lives, and the family gets some sort of stipend (I think). Part of the money goes to a village fund, so when there is enough money every few years it goes towards a project for the village. The women of Merzouga also produce traditional Amazigh (Berber) handicrafts that they sell, either to tourists, in fairs around the country, or in Europe.

Also in Merzouga we went to the palm grove, rather uncomfortable in a sandstormish-type environment. Each family has their own plot within the larger grove and throughout there are small irrigation channels. Each family has rights to a certain amount of water as well, like a half-day or quarter-day. When they have finished using their water for the day the channel leading to their plot is plugged with sand.

Water rights are just as important as land rights; for example you could own the land but not the water on it and vice versa. I was quite intrigued by this system of sharing the water. Does it work on the based on the honor code? If you see your neighbor has had his allotted half-day but not plugged his irrigation channel, can you stop the water for him? What kind of etiquette is involved? Anyway, very interesting.

On down the road to our auberge. Because of the inclement weather (sand is weather?) our planned camels for that afternoon were cancelled and we lounged about the auberge (Auberge Ayour) for the afternoon. Once the wind calmed down quite a few of us ventured out into the dunes behind the town. It’s really an island of dunes, only 28km by 3km, but it was big enough for us. Since the wind was still blowing I had my scarf wrapped around my head. I was very stylish. The sunset was gorgeous, but not as beautiful as our buffet dinner.

On this whole trip, everybody ate way too much. I think it was something to do with the ability to eat if you wanted, and not being told to “kuli, kuli” by family members. The fact that it was a buffet, with VEGETABLES, no less, made it even better. I still couldn’t avoid the hubs.

After dinner we had a performance of Gnawa music. The term can be used to refer to the people of western Africa, or the music, or both at once. The group uses big dumbbell shaped castenette thingies, a 3-stringed lute, drums, and vocals. They cross a duple and triple beat, so it’s very catchy. The musicians are also dancers. The dances are vey simples though, just moving back and forth, side to side, to the beat. It’s a very meditative kind of music and dance. We got up and danced too, but I don’t think we were quite as meditative about it.

It was such a beautiful night that some of us decided to sleep on the roof of the auberge. My room was on the roof anyway, it was a tower room, but sleeping under the starts seemed much more appealing than in a stuffy room. The night was wonderful, but like all such attempts, I slept very little. I got a bit too cold for my liking so I went inside. We had to get up at 5am anyway, so nobody got much sleep.