Tafraoute, Morocco

Tafraoute is a truly beautiful little town: pink, red, orange, ochre buildings melt into the landscape.  Date palms and apple trees in blossom add soft touches of green, white and pink.  We drove up hill and down dale to get to a nearby gorge, then hiked along the course of an old cement aqueduct.  It’s an incredible feat of engineering, built so many years ago.  It’s hard to imagine the work involved, the thousands upon thousands of wheelbarrows, loaded with rocks and cement, rolled over narrow rocky paths through miles of dusty, hot terrain.  Or transported in crude buckets and containers on heads and backs.  Literally back-breaking work.  And all for water, that precious resource that brings life to this barren, rocky landscape.  Truly awe-inspiring.

Back to our car we find two Berber women, very colourfully attired, with large, obviously heavy, baskets, standing there.  Through gestures and smiles they made it clear they wanted a ride up the steep 10 km hill to their town, which is at the top of the ridge, quite literally on the ‘top of the world.’  Doug loads their baskets into the trunk.  My god but they are heavy – what the heck is in them (they’re covered) – and the women settle into the back seat, smiling broadly and waving gayly to the four or five other, younger, women who must either walk or wait for other tourists, in the hopes of getting rides.  The women chatter away in Berber all the way up the road.  They speak no French.  One belches loudly, like a camel.  We give them some candies, which they squirrel away in their robes, perhaps for children?  At the top of the world they get out.  While unloading their baskets some of the contents accidently spill out – DATES!  They’ve spent the day in the gorge picking up dates from the ground.  I hope they’re cleaner than the ones I bought, carefully wrapped in a palm leaf, that were not ripe and too dirty to eat.

From Tafraoute we head back to Agadir.  On our way we stop in a field beside the road for a picnic of bread, cheese, tomatoes, cucumber and coarse Moroccan salt.  This has become our standard lunch: simple, good and cheap.  Two women tending a few cows wave and smile.  We give them a couple of cookies.  They reach for my hand, I think to shake, then bring it to their lips for a kiss, then place their rights hands over their hearts and say ‘shukran, shukran!’  I am truly humbled.   We have so much; they have so little; and they are so thankful for these small hand-outs, a couple of cookies.  Would that we could give them so much more…

When I think of the warmth and generosity that we have experienced here, by a people who have so little, and yet are so willing to share, to welcome, to help, to give, I am ashamed, and saddened, by the selfishness and greed so prevalent in my own culture and society, where we have so much and yet are so unwilling to give or share that muchness.  

Location: Tafraoute, Morocco

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Essaouira and the Had Draa Camel Market, Morocco

Image
Ahhh, Essaouira.  Not raining, considerably warmer, and a lot less hectic.  Essaouira is a picturesque old port town.  Most of its white-washed buildings sport freshly painted blue doors and shutters.  But the real attraction for us, as coasters, were the colourful fishing boats in the harbour.  A photographer’s dream. Hardly surprising, Essaouira had a great fish market.  I couldn't identify many of the fish, but they all looked very fresh, quite probably caught that morning in the early hours before daybreak.  The sellers, like fish-sellers everywhere, were experts at skinning and filleting, wielding their knives with economy and precision, ensuring very little waste.   Just south of Essaouira, in Had Draa, another photographer’s dream: a popular Sunday market where goats, sheep, donkeys and camels are traded.  As the self-proclaimed and now 30 plus years uncontested ‘Camel Queen,’ this was a must-do attraction...
Read more

Paradise Valley and A Real Moroccan Tagine

Image
We stop long enough in Agadir to arrange for another week’s rental of the car, and head up the coast to Awrir, where we head east, into Paradise Valley.     We’re on a mission to find to D’s old camping spot, where he and a group of hippies from all over the world – Canada, America, Australia, Europe – hung out for weeks at a time.     He’s trying to remember the road, the villages, where he traveled so long ago.     It’s a lovely valley, full of palms, and very quiet.       We are the only guests in a hotel with two swimming pools, both empty.    Our hosts were most attentive.     They made us a fabulous Moroccan tagine dish, served with great elan.     I love the way Moroccans pour tea, as many Indian people do, holding the teapot much higher than the glass, so as to aerate the tea.  I’m always amazed at how good their aim is; when I try it, more tea ends up on the table than in the glass.  After...
Read more

Merzouga, Morocco

Image
It was snowing when we left Dades Gorge.     Regardless of that minor inconvenience (we are Canadian, so what’s a little snow), we decided we’d head up into the Todra Gorge.     That meant going directly east to Tinghir and then north into the gorge.     Todra is much narrower, rougher, rockier, and more dramatic than Dades.     The road twists and turns through     somewhat menacing, and very high vertical rock walls that defied the penetration of even the smallest shafts of light.     It was bitterly cold.     At the top of the gorge we came upon a very poor village, Tamtetoucht, where the ragged children reminded me of children I’d met in the Andes, with rough weather-reddened cheeks, chapped lips, bare feet, and beseeching eyes.     There are so many people in this world who lead such desperate lives, with no hope of anything better, no chance to improve their lot, and so little, really, to live for. ...
Read more