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.

southern excursion day 1

We had a whirlwind drive across the country to start our week of awesomeness, otherwise known as the Southern Excursion. We left Rabat this morning and went east to the Middle Atlas mountains.

I didn’t mind spending so much time on the bus today because the countryside was so beautiful. As a result, I have far too many blurry photos taken from the bus window, and even worse, from the front of the bus. I couldn’t help it, really!

Occasionally Lahcen would chime in about something we were passing, like onions on the plateau about the town of Eyebrow (it’s really called that, but I don’t remember the Arabic name). The farmers preserve their onion crop on stone walls, to dry them out I guess, to await the time when they go to market in the city. Lahcen’s commentary went something like this:

“Those are how the farmers keep their onions until there’s a good price in the city for them…these are red onions, but in the south there are also yellow onions, which are also interesting…but I like the red onions, but you need to cook them…and if you eat a lot you’ll need chewing gum…(extended pause)…which I have…”

Our first official stop was in Ifrane, a relatively recent city. The French built it up to look like a winter resort in the Alps, so all the houses look like Swiss chalets. It looked a bit like Disney World because everything was so clean, well organized, and followed the same general design scheme. Ifrane is also a destination for Moroccan tourists. We picked up 5 bags of hubs (bread) for lunch and the bus disappeared for about 20 minutes before it was finally located.

We stopped for lunch on the side of the road, pretty much the only spot where the bus could pull off the road. The forest was very open and sunny with lots of fallen trees to sit on. The hubs reappeared and cheese, peanut butter, jam, tuna in tomato sauce, Nutella, and olives were produced from a large cooler. After descending on the food like locusts we scattered around the clearing, perching on logs and gleefully stuffing our faces. Several groups set out in the underbrush to find pee trees, and only two people were lost.

Back on the bus we were all tired and passed out until we reached the town of Azrou. Azrou funnels down a valley between two mountains and eventually spreads out on the valley floor like an alluvial flow. We were dropped off next to the mosque and told to map the town socially, economically, age-wise, etc. in 40 minutes. Yeah right. So we strolled around the town center in groups, gathering strange looks and have men talk to us, you know, the usual. Jesse and I sat for a while on the bluff above the new part of the city and got sunburned. Then the Rock of Azrou (I have no idea why it’s so important) proved just too persuasive. So we climbed it. The Rock of Azrou is a giant knobbly lump of smooth pocked limestone. It also has a crown on top. We made the summit in under 10 minutes, narrowly avoiding the piles of poo along the way. We didn’t stay long at the top because we were already late for the bus. Although the scramble down wasn’t difficult, some construction workers below found it in their hearts to yell at us, Tarzan-style.

Anna sprained her ankle walking around Azrou! Some high curb bit her or something. It could have happened to any of us. Thank goodness Will had his giant first aid kit handy so her ankle could be wrapped.

We made a short stop in the cedar forest near Azrou (I think it was Ifrane National Park) for a lecture and some macaque chasing. Long story short: people in Morocco don’t understand that you shouldn’t litter everywhere. Coming from America, I just don’t understand how you can not not understand that littering is bad for the environment. There’s also a complicated network of reasons why keeping the forests “pristine” is difficult, starting with the fact the macaques eat the topmost cedar branches during a drought. That’s right, only the top ones. There were also men leading (dirty) horses around so tourists could ride them (the horses, not the men).

For the next two hours we drove through country that looked alternately like Scotland, on account of all the sheep and stone walls, and Colorado, on account of the wide open spaces and rocks. Between dozing off and Lahcen’s running commentary, I managed to take even more blurry photos of the countryside. We must have had the same bus driver as when we went to Moulay Idriss, because he was king of the road. Seriously, this man was taking up two lanes with this tour bus, passing cars, negotiating narrow mountain roads.

Our hotel here in Middelt is gorgeous and guess what makes it even more wonderful. That’s right, a western toilet and shower. The roof over the restaurant downstairs reaches out beyond our rooms so we have kind of a balcony, except there’s no doors so we jumped out the windows. We have a stunning view of the snowcapped mountains (very Lord of the Rings-y), and there was a full moon tonight.

In other news: Happy Birthday Mr. Prophet Mohammed! It’s a pity we had to travel today because my family wanted me to be with them for the holiday. Today is Eid Al-Nawlib and there are festivities everywhere.

Perhaps because they are out of the office, the CCCL, Lahcen, Nabil, and Nawal are all working the casual look. Lahcen especially, as he was wearing designer jeans and fancy sneakers (he’s probably in his 40s). All I can say is he should have invested more in a functional belt. Allison and I think we should keep a running Creeper Tally, this instance of I-didn’t-need-to-see-that being point number one.

Clearly, my internet connection will not allow me to upload all the fabulous photos I took throughout the week, so I'm going to try and post them on Facebook. I don't know how that will work, out so keep checking back.