Early on Wednesday morning while the stars were still out, we left Marrakesh behind and headed south high into the Atlas Mountains. We drove through winding mountain passes and river valleys, stopping to picnic and explore the sweeping expanses of open slope. Late in the afternoon, we arrived But Ghrar, a small village nestled into the foothills of the southern slopes of the mountains. Seth, John, Tanner, Tammy and I dropped our bags at the small riad we were staying at and walked in the shadow of a towering rock face to a small outcropping over the river. We sat and watched the darkness settle over the mountains, slowly covering the terraced slopes and the lush valley. The low rush of the river below and the distant barking of dogs were the only sounds that broke through the stillness of the night. There were very few lights in the village behind us, and when we looked up we could see the sky turn into a shimmering sea of lights. The Milky Way shone brightly overhead, and the constellations I knew so well took on a whole new life and vitality away from the light pollution of the cities. We walked through the darkness back to the village, stopping beside the rocky outcroppings of the stream bed to breathe in the cool night air and gaze at the sky.
The hotel was a small traditional Moroccan home with a few other local patrons. We ate a delicious tagine and lay on the roof in silence looking at the stars. The next morning, Katie, Margaret, and I woke up at five o'clock and returned to the roof. We lay down mattresses and bundled up in blankets to warm ourselves in the chill of the predawn air. The stars were clear and distant overhead, and we saw six shooting stars streak across the sky. We lay in silence as the sky lightened and the stars slowly faded into the soft pinks and blues of dawn.
As the sun rose higher, we left the riad and went on an incredible hike through the neighboring villages and gorges. The villages sit in the shadows of the High Atlas mountains and are inhabited by the Berber (indigenous Moroccan) people. Although Berbers and Arabs cohabit Morocco very peacefully, there is a strong sense of Berber nationality. Many schoolchildren has the Amazigh (Berber) symbol written on their backpacks, and the sense of identity was strong in the villages. Most people there are still subsistence farmers, and the village is surrounded by lush green fields irrigated by the mountain springs. We walked though the wakening villages as the sun warmed the land, and we passed through a narrow gorge alongside traders traveling from village to village with their pack-laden donkeys. On the other side of the pass, we visited a tiny one-room schoolhouse that serves as an elementary school for the village. A major problem in rural Morocco is access to education. Although a middle school education is compulsory, this law is nearly impossible to enforce in rural areas. School in Morocco is conducted in Arabic, but many children in these mountain communities only speak a Berber language. This situation leads many students to drop out of school at a young age because they have no idea what is happening. Furthermore, most villages do not have communal transportation to school. Many middle and high schools are designated for a large region of land since these areas are sparsely populated, and some students are unable to walk the many miles to and from school every day. Recently, the Moroccan government has made a huge push to improve educational opportunities, and they have been incredibly successful increasing the literacy rate. However, there are still many problems facing Moroccan education and it was very interesting to see some of the manifestations of the government programs in this village. There were about 30 children in this tiny one-room schoolhouse, but out in the fields and on the mountainsides there were many children herding sheep and farming who clearly were not enrolled in school.
The teacher in the village was part of the Moroccan government's initiatives to improve education by sending all certified teachers to an assigned location through a lottery system. She was from outside Casablanca, but she now lives in the village. She spoke English and was able to explain the basic workings of her classroom to us. The students were sitting in rows of desks studying math when we came inside, and she taught from the front using recitation techniques and a blackboard. Our group gave the students a short English lesson, and it was wonderful how enthusiastic all the students were. There was one girl in the front row wearing a headscarf with a pen stuck behind her ear who was literally jumping out of her seat to try to answer a question. When we left the building, we could hear a chanting noise behind us that sounded like "st-st-st". We asked our guide what the students were saying, and he said they were all saying "OuSTada" (teacher) to clamor for her attention and offer up an answer. For many of these children, education is not an assumed right the way it is for most people in the United States. Their enthusiasm to be in school was incredible. However, it made me very sad to think that a girl like the girl in the front row might not be able to continue her education since the nearest high school is many miles away.
We continued down the Ouad Draa into a small village called Zagora that is commonly known as the "Door to the Sahara". On Friday afternoon, we left the beautiful patio of our hotel and drove through a barren stretch of desert to a small outpost an hour into the desert. The town is built around the tourist trade in the region and is comprised of a single minaret surrounded by a few compounds of low earthen buildings. A decaying palm grove rising out of sand dunes borders the settlement on three sides. Although the date industry in this town has clearly faltered due to this climate change, the tourist industry is what sustains the people here. Our group was fairly alone out in the desert, but in December and March European tourists flock to the Sahara for the holidays.
As the sun fell lower in the sky and the air cooled, we mounted our camels on the outskirts of the village. Four men from the town guided our trains of camels, and they helped us navigate the tricky task of clambering aboard. Saharan camels are called dromedaries (single-humped) and are incredibly interesting animals. Their faces appear very regal and aloof, with large brown eyes and a long graceful neck. Their legs have two joints, one at the very top and one midway down the leg. This anatomy makes for a very choppy gait that is incredibly distinct from that of a horse. My first camel was a beautiful tan color, and I named him Jamil (the word for beautiful in Arabic). A guide named Marhabeb led Tanner and I through the desert, and throughout the excursion we were able to use our rudimentary Arabic to talk with him about the desert. He was very kind and taught us some new vocabulary about the Sahara. He and his partners spend their days ferrying tourists from the town out to the camps in the desert and then back in the mornings. One of the best things about the tour for me was how much the guides genuinely seemed to enjoy giving the tour. In many of the places we have traveled, there seems to be a certain resentment towards work done for tourists. However, these men seemed very content to be out walking through the desert and sitting under the stars by the campfire for the night. I really enjoyed their company throughout the trip and I was happy that I was able to talk, albeit a little, with those men.
We spend an hour and a half riding away from the town towards distant sand dunes. The landscape gradually changed from barren cracked earth to sweeping hills of fine reddish sand as we trekked further. From the swaying back of my camel, I could see the distant plains of Algeria and the mountains of Morocco through breaks in the dunes. The heat was beginning to abate, and the evening wind was gentle and warm on my skin. As the sun sank lower in the sky, the clouds began to take on an unearthly soft red glow reflected in the sand below. The shadows of the dunes contoured the desert evening. On the sides of the dunes, the breeze had created long patterned ripples of sand that bore a striking resemblance to the ocean floor.
Just as the sun was dipping below the horizon, coloring the world in soft red and gold, we arrived at the campsite. The guides have a very nice setup complete with bathrooms, a campfire pit, a large communal tent for meals, and very clean living spaces. The tents ring a common area with soft mats laid over the sand, pillows to sit on, and a large fire pit surrounded by stools.
We dropped our backpacks in our tents and immediately headed out into the desert to enjoy the last few moments of daylight. I took off my shoes, and when I stepped out into the dunes I was amazed by the feeling of the fine warm desert sand. Directly to the west of the campsite, a massive sand dune rises high above all the surrounding hills. We clambered up to the top, slipping and laughing in the fine sand, and sat on the peaked top taking in the view. To the east, we could make out the foothills of the Atlas Mountains rising in the distance over miles of barren desert. To the west, the desert stretched as far as the eye could see into Algeria. Every direction, there was a sweeping expanse of rocky plains interspersed by sand dunes and small gnarled trees.
After a few minutes, Katie, John, Seth, and I decided to explore the desert. We ran down the steep side of the sand dune, sliding barefoot with every step and completely unable to stop. The speed and the blurring view and the warm desert wind blowing in our hair was exhilarating, and Katie and I just collapsed at the bottom and laughed. John and Seth led us through the desert towards a high dune in the distance, and we sat there and talked as the stars came out. For a while, we lay in silence on the flat top of the dune watching more and more stars appear in the gathering dusk. I was struck by the sheer immensity of the silence in the desert. There was no animal sound, no rustling leaves, and no human activity. I do not think I have ever been in complete and total silence like the silence of the Sahara, and it was interesting the compare the total absence of noise with what I normally think of as silence.
After darkness had fallen fully over the desert, we made our way back to the main campsite. At the top of the large sand dune next to the tents, we could see the campfires starting up below illuminating the sleeping camels and ring of texts. We decided to roll down the slope, and we threw ourselves onto the sand at the top. I picked up speed quickly, and soon I was spinning down the slope through the warm sand surrounded by a blur of stars and firelight and laughter. We stumbled between the camels back to camp, dizzy and light.
Back at the campsite, we shook out the sand from our hair. Katie, Isobel and I changed into traditional Moroccan jelabas, and we sat down in the communal tent for a wonderful dinner of harira (soup) and tagine.
As the fire faded to embers and the music slowed, we all left the warm fireside and walked up the tall dune beside the campsite. We lay in silence on the dunes under the vast expanse of sky, our feet buried in cooling sand that enveloped our skin like wet porcelain. Katie, John, Seth, and I went "star-tipping", a dizzying and slightly juvenile process where you spin fast in a circle staring at a star overhead. Once you are fairly dizzy, someone shines a flashlight into your eyes. The disorientation and light change makes it physically impossible to control your body, and you fall into a heap on the ground. As you can probably imagine, this was a pretty unreal experience at the top of a sand dune in the Sahara, and we had a lot of fun.
That night, we sat on the roof looking at the stars and heard the noises of a loud party below. Seven of us went downstairs to ask the hotel owner what was happening, and he told us that his cousin was getting married in a traditional Berber wedding. Since celebrations are very large and open in Morocco, he told us to go put on jelebas and come with him. The festivities were solely the woman's side of the family (her future husband was from Ourzazate and his family was celebrating there), and the bride was not actually in attendance. She sits in a room with her close family and friends and celebrates, and her extended family has a massive celebration for her outside. Women dressed in ornate jelabas ringed a group of men in white robes with drums. The celebrations was, as the hotel owner described, "a soccer match" between the male and female relatives to see who could give the best performances. We sat on colorful benches on the outskirts of the circle and watched the women dance in a slow circular shuffle singing in a high lovely wail to the beat of the drums. Periodically, they would stop and the men would chime in, their low bass tones resonating down into the earth. We sat and watched the celebration for almost two hours, taking in the colors and music and dancing. A traditional Berber wedding is not something most foreigners will ever get to see in their lives, and we were so lucky to be able to have that experience.
The next morning, we woke up early to watch the sun rise from the top of the ancient fortified city across the river (as an aside, I would like to point out to everyone who knows my living schedules at home that shockingly enough, I woke up before sunrise every day for five days). The view from the top faces southeast into the the plains stretching down into the Sahara. We sat in silence at the top leaning against the walls of the ancient castle and watched the sun edge over the horizon in the distance.
A few hours later, we drove back through the beautiful winding passes of the Atlas Mountains back to Marrakesh. When our bus pulled in to the CLC, I was so happy to find Yassir and Zineb waiting at the door to welcome me back. They are so amazing and I am really happy to be home hanging out with my host family again. This week, we are back in the full swing of school, TEFL training, and our normal routines. I'm resuming my training for the Marrakesh road race tomorrow, and I'm excited to have a few weeks to resume a normal routine and be with my family here!
Later that afternoon, we left the riad and traveled away from the mountains towards the desert. We drove through the Ouad Draa, a valley that winds through the mountains and opens up out into the Sahara desert. As we approached the desert, the effects of global warming and the resulting desertification became increasingly apparent and increasingly devastating for the villages. Coupled with political clashes over water rights, global warming has made it impossible for these populations to obtain the water that they need to farm. In many communities, water is so rationed that it is only available in the mornings and after dark. We visited a town that is a main producer of dates in Morocco and discussed this with a local man. He said that when he was a child he could play in the pools of water in the palm groves and feel mud between his toes, but that over the past decades the mud has increasingly turned to sand. Now, there is barely enough water for the palms to survive. In the village, small children came up to us and asked for the water bottles we were carrying. It was eye-opening and sobering to see the manifestations of global warming, especially because as a New Englander the concept of not having enough water is very abstract. We hear about global warming and we know that it is a problem, but we never have to experience the day-to-day impact like the people who live near the Sahara and fear the relentless progression of the desert sand.
After dinner, we sat around the campfire with the camel drivers and the other workers at the camp. The men brought out traditional instruments, and they sang us the songs of their villages. The music was a wild mix of drum beats and powerful melodies from deep within the mens' throats. They sang traditional songs and improvised together under the shimmering desert sky, and we all sat next to the fire with warm skin and faces upturned to the music and distant starlight. Margaret brought s'mores makings, and eating food reminiscent of childhood campouts and long summer nights in my backyard just enhanced the experience. We roasted marshmallows and listened to the steady beat of the drums rise up with the smoke into the cooling desert night.
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After an incredible camel ride out of the desert, we drove back to our hotel and rested. That afternoon, we visited an ancient library in Zagora with a collection of books from all over world. The man and his son who founded the library and the corresponding madrasa (Quranic school) traveled all over the Middle East a thousand years ago on long journeys to bring back books. They brought vellom copies of the Qur'an and hadiths (the sayings of the prophet) from Iraq and Syria, and books about science and history from Alexandria. There was an incredible collection of ancient literature and research. However, the most fascinating thing about the library was the accessibility of the language. Since Modern Standard Arabic (fusha) is the language of the Qur'an, not a spoken dialect, it has not evolved linguistically over time the way that English has. These books were written even before works like Beowulf were written in Old English, which is barely (if at all) comprehensible for modern English speakers. However, since fusha has not evolved in the same way these texts are written in the same linguistic way as most formal Arabic texts today. I found that aspect of the library absolutely fascinating, and I can only imagine how wonderful that is for Arab historians and researchers.
That night, we traveled to Ait Ben Haddou, a beautiful village with ancient buildings where many movies (ex. Indiana Jones, Gladiator) have been filmed. The owner of the small hotel we stayed at is called "Action" by most people in town because when people come to film he often is designated as the person to call out instructions on set. He has been an extra in more that 60 movies and had a lot of information about how the movie industry had impacted the economy of the town.
