Still in Ouzoud

Well, inertia and a sense of comfort are powerful things.

I was meant to leave for El Jadida yesterday with Abdelhak, to meet the other members of his department and discuss possible teaching opportunities. While I am very excited by this idea, the whole planning of the trip just became too much for me and I decided not to go. Had I gone, we would have left at nine at night, stopped for the night in a Marrakech cafe, and continued on in the morning. This just seemed too much for me, so I will stop by the University on my way to Spain at the end of the month.

And so I stayed here at the waterfalls of Ouzoud, where everything is moving as slowly as always. I have been hanging out with a guy here, Abdul Hafid, and his friends, all of who work as guides in the area.

The whole guide culture is very strange...They are called faux guides (fake or false guides), as they are not recognized or licenced by the government. And so, guides must run toward buses and taxis, offering to all tourists their services. Prices are not fixed, and always originally run high. The tourists, of course, pay as little as possible.

What is very strange, and quite interesting from an anthropological standpoint is the way in which the tourists both create and disturb the local life. A guide with three foreign tourists, for instance, brings his clients to the restaurant of his choosing for lunch. He must decide where to bring them...but this is no easy task, as he knows everyone in the village. Does he bring them to his cousin, or his brother, or his friend? And so, here in Ouzoud, everyone is friends, yet everyone has people with whom they are angry, and everyone owes or is owed a favor. The network of social connections is confusing and complex.

I am now once again staying down at the bottom of the waterfalls in a campground there. I was staying at the Source of the river, but left as I had planned to leave with Abdelhak.

The Source was a truly amazing place. On my second night there, I was invited to eat with the family of Said, the young guy that seems to run the place (although this was never made absolutely clear to me...everyone seemed to claim ownership). When I arrived at their house, the mother and daughter were just beginning to make the meal, and as Said had to leave for a moment, I joined them to check out their cooking techniques.

While the mother got together coals from one of the many endlessly burning fires, the daughter got to work on the meat, bought that day at the local market. The family is Berber, and the women speak no French, so our conversation was quite limited, and yet we somehow understood eachother quite well. I would point, for instance, at the meat and make a noise like a sheep. The women would laugh and say the word for sheep, which I would repeat. We would all then say "muzzien" (good) and have another laugh.

The food that they were making turned out to be delicious, but at first sight it was really nothing to speak of. They made a simple tagine, as usual, but also prepared some shishkabob type things by wrapping sheep kidney in strands of intestine. These tasty little morsels were then grilled on the open fire.



Their cooking area was an incredible place with floors of packed dirt. One wall was the mountainside and the others were made of bamboo stalks and mud. Half of the large room was covered with a ceiling made of a similar material to the walls--the other half was mostly open, protected from the elements by only a criss-crossing of bamboo and the grapevines already heavy with grapes.

The women cooked crouched down on the floor, cutting the meat with an obviously often-used knife, shredding the flesh with expertise, all the while stoking the coals, heating water for tea and preparing the table. Alongside the cooking area was the true kitchen, a cavelike room of packed earth lined with sagging shelves filled with jarred spices, plants and olives. In the corner was the blackened wood oven, built into the dirt of the room.

As they prepared the food, Said and the dayworkers began to stream in and sit down, lighting cigarettes and talking quietly. In walked Said's father, Olaid, a man said to be only fifty, but who has the face of a seventy year old man. He held aloft a bulging package and declared that he had walked twenty kilometers to get his kif. He looked anything but tired, and was obviously happy to have replenished his supplies of the local herb.

He sat down and immediately got to work on making his kif smokeable, separated the leaves from the stalks and mincing them on a plank of wood, smoothing the pile occasionally to check the consistency, until finally he had a large pile of a nearly dustlike substance. With neither haste nor wait he packed his pipe, smoked it, and exhaling, popped the spent embers onto the ground. He immediately packed another and another and another. He was soon once again laughing heartily and talking about his favorite subject, the natural origins of everything around us.

Kif? Naturelle. (big smile)

Olive oil? Naturelle. (big smile)

Olives? Naturelle. (big smile)

Everbody? Naturelle.

This was Olaid's favorite subject, and mine too, as we could understand eachother in few other subjects. I immediately added my own commentary to the conversation, bringing up the donkey we had ridden into town that day.

"Quatre Quatre Berber?" Naturelle.

Here we both laughed, enjoying the local custom of calling donkeys four wheel drive vehicles. We continued, listing all of the things that a Berber Vehicle does not need.

No Gas
No Oil
No Key

Naturelle.



Riding the donkey had truly been a thrilling experience. As Olaid told me, the vehicle only had two seats, and I sat on the back sidesaddle, occasionally ducking to avoid low branches, bouncing endlessly and holding on tight so as to not fall off. Along the way we passed other donkeys and always stopped to exchange the nearly endless greetings of the area.

Assalamulakum. (peace be upon you)
Alakumassalam. (and upon you)
Beher? (good?)
Labas? (good?)
Beher. (good.)
Hamdullah. (thanks be to God)

We finally ate, although the women continued to sit in the corner of the room, preparing food for the other campers staying the night. After dinner, Said asked me to play guitar, and I did. The whole family looked at me strangely afterwards, which was a bit disconcerting until I tried to imagine the scene in my own house if I brought some strange Berber guy into my house to play some strange instrument and sing in a strange language. The looks, I imagine, would be quite strange.

And so now, here I am, still in Ouzoud, spending my days in odd errands, letting myself be taken along to find this guy's thresher, or this guy's money, or to see the other guy's house. The loops are endless and exciting, in a strangely bored sort of way. The land is beautiful, at times ridiculously dry, yet seems as fertile as the Nile Valley, and everything that springs from it seems strong and vibrant, and of a green color that nearly hurts the eyes.

I will leave soon for Errachidia, as I have a promise to keep and friends to meet. Until then, here I sit, whiling away my time by the riverside, falling asleep to the sound of waterfalls and birds and animals of the land.

There is so much more to tell, but there is more time to come, so for now I leave you. I hope you are all well.