From Agadir to Essaouira

Ling and I landed in Agadir and took a collective taxi to Essaouira. These Mercedes taxis will fill up with four passengers in the back and two in the front passenger seat (plus the driver of course!). We were too tired to wait for the car to fill up so we paid the difference and left with only three passengers. The road along the Atlantic coast was gorgeous! There were many argane trees and they only grow in the southwest of Morocco. The oil extracted from their fruit has a hazel nut taste, has anti cholesterol properties and is full of vitamins. It is also used for skin problems, burns and rheumatism. The goats love to climb on their branches to eat their fruit and they are responsible for the reproduction of those rare trees. As the fruit is swallowed by the ruminant mammal, the digestive enzymes enter through the shell of its pit, which the goat eventually spits out. It is then ready to grow another tree. Clever those natives!

Essaouira is just like a town in Brittany (the northwest coast of France), except for the architecture and the culture. You can walk along the fort walls which overlook the ocean to watch the beautiful sunsets, eat freshly grilled fish and seafood at one of the street stalls along the water, or lose yourself in the labyrinth of the medina (the old city) to do some shopping. The temperature here is in the seventies all year round, a nice change from Marrakech or the desert where it can hit over 100 degrees Fahrenheit in the summer. Essaouira is a quiet and low key coastal town. But it won’t stay that way for long. A lot of construction is going on and the peacefulness of this gem will soon be broken.

Marrakech

We opted to stay in a riad and it was well worth it! Very old remodeled houses in the heart of the medina, they are often owned by foreigners and decorated in good taste, a luxury within very affordable prices! They usually have a courtyard and each room opens into it. We had orange trees in our patio and a fire place in the living room; it was a real haven!

The Jemaa el Fna square is, in the evening, a very lively outdoor theater. There is a lot of street entertainment, but beware of the pickpockets and the gropers! This square is also en entrance to the souk (market) during the day. The tourist police have made the souk more bearable nowadays. If someone harasses you, you can call or threaten to call the police. They will be put in jail for three months. This harassment was the major reason why I had put off my visit to Morocco for so many years. As we were walking through the souk, a man grabbed Ling into an area where they were dying scarves. He showed us the different colored powders used in the process and demonstrated different ways to wear the long scarves on our heads and around the body. But then he tried to charge us 250 dirhams (25 Euros) for a scarf that I had bought earlier for 20 dirhams! As we walked out, he grabbed my friend by the arm and demanded that we pay him for the demonstration that he had given us. We had never asked for it in the first place! I should have threatened to call the police.

We then went to a lovely tea house and met an English lady who ended up taking us to a beautiful old palace (Dar Cherifa) which had an exhibit from a Belgian painter (Isabelle de Borchgrave).

I would highly recommend going to Gueliz (the new city), to buy some Moroccan pastries. Al Jawda is a little pricy but the pastries were absolutely delicious!

A Camel ride in the desert

One thing you need to know before you get on a camel is that you had better hold on tight when you climb on it because it gets up very abruptly. As a friend of mine had told me that she had gotten seasick from riding a camel, I wasn’t sure how much of this ride I was going to bear. My friend Ling was so tense on her camel that she decided to jump off and walk instead. I kept my hips loose to accompany the movement of the camel’s hump and rode like an Amazon with both legs on the same side. The tricky part was trying to keep my camera still while my hips were moving, and taking pictures with one hand unless I took the risk of falling off. When we walked on the dunes, the depth of the dry sand was often very shallow and the ground often felt hard for a barefoot walker. But when we climbed a steep sand dune, that was another story! I was knee deep in dry sand and could not manage to climb up!

Our guide, Ichou, explained that the day before, they had been caught in a sandstorm and had to wait for it to die down before they could continue on. They did not arrive at the camp until midnight. We were much luckier the next day! When we arrived at the camp, we opted to sleep under the stars instead of under the Berber tents. The sky was covered in stars and within a few seconds of looking up, we saw a shooting star. There would be many more that night. I had some sand in my eye and the more I rubbed it, the more I irritated it until it was bloodshot red. Ichou offered to put some onion in it, swearing it was the best cure to clean my eye. When in Rome...! I accepted the offer and he proceeded to cover my eyes with freshly pealed onions, but I don’t think they were very fresh because there was no juice coming out of them. When I confessed that I did not feel anything, he split my eyelids open and started rubbing my eyeballs with the onions, by then I finally reacted and was about to fight back but he bravely held me down with all his might. My eyes were stinging and crying, but I knew that after a good night’s sleep, I would feel a lot better.

We had dinner and for the first time since we had arrived in Morocco, we were not offered mint tea, since fresh mint leaves would not last very long in the desert. There was another couple with us: Majid and Monica. Majid warned Monica of the scorpions, and she was afraid to go to sleep. Actually, scorpions and snakes usually come out after the rain and they are afraid of people. The only way to get bitten or stung by them is to accidentally step on them. Another concern is that there are some Algerian rebels roaming in the desert attacking people in the camps during the night. They want a piece of the desert that has access to the Atlantic Ocean. I did not worry too much about it until I got up in the middle of the night to go to the bathroom. I saw a shadow in the night and my imagination started racing. I got scared and ran back to my bed and every time I fell asleep, I had nightmares about the Algerian rebels coming in and slitting our throats so I would force myself to wake up. Then the beautiful starry sky would bring me a peace of mind until I fell asleep again and had my recurring nightmares. Thanks for sharing that story with us Majid! I finally imagined a white light around me to protect me from danger and eventually went back to sleep until dawn.

Ling and I decided to go watch the sunrise at the top of the dune but on our way back, we took a little detour and our guide lost sight of us. We had a little scolding when we arrived because apparently a lady had gotten caught in a sandstorm and died. We should not have gone out so far unaccompanied. I understood his concern and apologized but he then assured me that he would have found us anyway. We had to go back; it would have been really nice to be able to sleep another night in the desert, under the stars...

Le Ksar de Tamnougalt

On our way back to Ouarzazate, we stopped in Tamnougalt to have lunch. An oasis surrounded by palm trees, it was once the capital of mezguita. After a wonderful lunch, the host of our restaurant took us for a stroll around the village. He explained how the houses were built with mud and straw, each huge brick built in place and left to dry. Because the walls were very high and each layer had to solidify before another one was built over it, it could take three or four years to build a large house. As we walked through the village, it was pleasantly cool, around 70 degrees Fahrenheit. When we walked deeper inside a house, and no light came in, the room would get cooler and could be a natural refrigerator. The temperature inside these houses is stable all year round. In a similar way, the volcanic formations of Cappadocia in Turkey also keep a stable temperature inside the caves; a great way to save on heating and air conditioning bills! Then we walked through the luxuriant garden of olive, pomegranate, apricot and date trees. I felt like I was in the Garden of Eden, but the fruit were not ripe yet. Once again, we had to reluctantly leave our little paradise because we were awaited in Ouarzazate. The next morning, Ling went back home and I decided to go trekking in the high Atlas.

Life in a Berber Village

As we started our walk in the High Atlas, the landscape was very dry. The sun was hot, the climb was steep and I was out of breath. We finally took a break with no shade in sight and I took the opportunity to engage in a conversation with my guide Taïeb. I asked him if he prayed five times a day. He gave me a funny look. Of course he did, as any good Muslim should, but not when he was working. “So at the end of the day you pray five times in a row, right?” He laughed. I was trying to understand the Muslim religion. "Be kind and generous to others, Allah will be kind to you in return." Fatima, a guide, was a good example; her generosity moved a Portuguese billionaire: he bought her a villa. Her home is now open to people of all religions. The Ramadan fast, which lasts a month, gives Muslims an opportunity to know what it feels like to be hungry; they will hopefully then have more empathy towards others. It seems like all religions have the same basic rules.

I wasn’t sure what to expect in the High Atlas Mountains. Apart from the fact that I needed the exercise after spending so much time in a car, I was hoping to meet some villagers. We arrived in a lush valley filled with trees and green crops (it was April) and the sound of the river was roaring. Many canals were built in order to irrigate the fields. The women dressed in colorful clothing were washing their laundry in the river and laying them to dry over the bushes and rocks. Though there are no veils worn in the Berber villages, the women do wear a scarf out of modesty. The younger girls are spared the obligation and I noticed that some of them had auburn hair.

According to Taïeb, the Berber people originated from Nepal and Tibet which explains why some of them have slanted eyes. As these nomads migrated west, they stayed in Yemen for a while; they were Christians at the time. They finally arrived in Morocco where they were some of the first settlers. In the seventh and eighth century, the Arabs came and converted them all to Islam. As they considered them to be barbarians, thus came the name of Berber, but they are actually Imazighen. These people constitute two thirds of the Moroccan population. 

Out of respect but also to protect myself from the sun, I had chosen to wear a scarf and as I passed the laundering women, they all stopped to stare at me. I was the strange animal. I smiled and waved and them which provoked a collective giggle. Later when I was walking in the village, several women mentioned that I looked like a Berber woman, which meant I was accepted among them. Later on my hike, an older woman told my guide that he was very lucky to have found such a beautiful wife, to which Taïeb did not attempt to object.

After putting our bags down, we strolled around the beautiful green valley. There were cherry, apricot and fig trees. The villagers grew onions, potatoes, wheat, barley, peas, and carrots. The cows, goats, sheep and chickens provided the meat, milk, eggs and wool. The houses were built from the rocks in the mountains. These Berber people have lived in the mountains for centuries, they never bought the land. Apart from the clothes that they bought in Marrakech, they were quite self sufficient, until they ran out of food and waited for the new crop to grow.

From an early age they work very hard, from the young boys shepherding the goats and sheep to the little girls I passed carrying a stack of wood branches on their backs. Several times they turned around to look at me and almost poked each other in the eyes with the branches. The teenage girls were carrying heavy loads of alfalfa to feed the cows. I asked Taïeb why they weren’t using the mules to carry such heavy bushels, he responded that they were used to it. Of course it was difficult to ask a man about a woman’s choice and it may take a while before I can really talk to them about that as there is a language barrier. But it seemed like the chores were evenly distributed and everyone worked their share.

In the three villages I visited, we slept on the floor. There were carpets and blankets piled on top of each other to give us some cushioning. There was no electricity, just gas lamps and candles. There were no toilets, but Taib was encouraging the hosts to build them for the visiting tourists. One of them had a hammam. A fire built under the room heated a bucket of water. There was also a bucket of cold water inside the room and a third one to mix the cold and boiling water, the latter steaming up the room. There were also a little bench to sit on, hooks on the wall for my clothes and towel, a candle to light up the room and a cup to pour the hot water over me. Who needs a shower with running water when you can have a hammam in a remote mountain village in Morocco?

The joke about not having a toilet is that sometimes I literally had to go on a hike to find a place to hide; there were villagers working everywhere on the path. Nights were easier, though I sometimes had to worry about the dogs.

The meals were always good, served in a tajine, (a ceramic dish with a conical cover), which was placed in the middle of the table. We used bread to dish out the food after having ceremoniously washed our hands.Taïeb warned me not to reach over someone else when grabbing the food, but to eat what was in front of me. Sometimes I wondered if there was going to be enough food for everyone around the table, but the bread is pretty filling and there was even enough food left for the two kids who had fallen asleep before the dinner was ready. For every breakfast and dinner we ate in the villages, the bread was freshly baked. Some were a mixture of barley and wheat, others of semolina and wheat. Baked in a conical oven, a fire was built inside to heat it up. When it was left to coals, round ceramic dishes were placed on the hot coals, the bread dough laid over them and the oven sealed with cow dung. I did not look at my watch but it seemed like the bread was already baked in twenty minutes, but maybe it took forty five minutes.

One evening while sitting on the roof of my host’s house after a long day’s walk, I observed a young girl in the courtyard next door, as she was preparing for dinner. She appeared to be fourteen years old. She was building a fire in the bread oven and dishing out the coals to place them under the tajine dish and the water kettle. The chicken kept on flying into the courtyard through an opening around the door which was not properly sealed. Sometimes a calf would poke his head out of the house. When the young girl decided to sweep the courtyard, she had to shoo all the chickens out. She opened the door and with a “sh” sound, a lot of arm movements and finally resorting to throwing sticks, broom twigs and dried cow dung, she managed to chase them out. She sprinkled some water on the ground to avoid the upheaval of dust and proceeded to sweep the courtyard with a twig. Then she pulled a cow out of the house dragging it by a rope wrapped around its front leg, and tied it up in the courtyard. Next she pulled the calf in the same manner but the young animal fell to the ground as it was not yet used to walking on three legs. The girl dragged it a little before it managed to get up again. She tied it up away from the mother cow and fed them both some alfalfa greens. The calf was more interested in the mother’s food, which it could not reach for, than in its own which was the same. Later the youngster was dragged to its mother’s teats to drink some milk on one side as the grandmother of the girl milked the cow on the other side, sitting on a potato sack filled with straw, the designer Berber seat.

There was a water canal right in front of the house and the girl went to fetch some water as a younger girl came by with a baby on her back. She grabbed the baby and fussed over it, throwing it in the air and kissing it. Another teenage girl came by with two toddlers on her back, carrying a bucket for water. The three of them visited as the toddlers started running away. That was the end of that conversation. They finally parted and my new friend walked back to her courtyard, dished out some more coals to pour them under the tajine and the water kettle. She got the bread dough out of the kitchen and placed it on the ceramic dishes that were now placed in the oven. She sealed the oven with cow dung, using her bare hands. When she saw my reaction she offered to put some on my face. Hey, maybe that’s what they use for a face mask! Taïeb laughed at me: “It’s natural and it’s organic!” As my friend was waiting for the bread to bake, she looked over the wall at the water canal and threw a stone at another girl fetching some water. They chatted for a while.

It was getting dark and we moved into the house to snack on bread and olive oil while the boys were doing their homework. Although they had many pens, none of them seemed to work so I gave them mine. Dinner was served rather late and I always went to bed on a full stomach. It did not seem to be a problem though. Since the guestroom opened into the courtyard, I was expecting the chickens and sheep to walk in when it was left open but they never came to visit me. Shucks! My mother used to let my dog in my room in the morning to wake me up for school; it was the best alarm clock!

We had breakfast on the terrace surrounded by walnut trees and overlooking the Atlas, listening to waterfalls . It was paradise! And it was hard to leave... I tried to explain to Taïeb that although they were poor, these villagers were very lucky to live in such a beautiful setting and have such a big house and fresh food. Their life expectancy is very high here. It is not uncommon to live a hundred and ten years!

And so my journey ends, and I will have the photographs to remember it.