A Jaunt to the Country

            Despite taking daytime cold medicine to stop my incessantly sniffly nose, I managed to sleep all the way from Rabat to Bouyoussef, a small Berber village in the mountains outside of Meknes. When I woke up with a jolt as the bus turned onto a bumpy dirt road, we were there, surrounded by lush green mountains that maintained their beauty despite the overcast day.

            We filed off the bus and our program director – himself from a Berber village – ushered us through the compound of ramshackle houses to a giant tent. It was flanked by a small outdoor kitchen, where a pair of women fried giant round milawi – those flaky and toothsome Moroccan pancakes – and tossed couscous with their hands. The couscous wouldn’t be served until lunch, still a couple hours away, but making it from scratch is a long process. Our guide, a man from the village who was now an English teacher at a high school in a city a few hours away, explained that the semolina must first be sprinkled with water so that it clumps into larger pieces, then steamed three times until it is cooked. Meanwhile, vegetables and meat simmer and create a sauce for the couscous until it is all ready to be served together.

            Inside the tent, various men in jellabas concerned themselves with the vitally important task of making the perfect tea. They ripped open packages of sugar cubes, generously filling the pot. One brought in a bunch of mint leaves and handed them to the man presumably in charge, who was pouring the hot water into one cup and then back into the kettle in the normal ritual. He sniffed and tasted the leaves, but poured the tea without them. “He doesn’t think the mint is of very good quality,” the program director explained. Better to serve plain tea than less-than-perfect tea. The hot milawi were placed on low tables in each corner, and we tore off pieces of the pancake as we listened to our guide explain the history of the region.

            Berbers first came to Morocco between 10,000 and 7,000 years ago, at the end of the last Ice Age when a group called the Capsians migrated into North Africa. Their first appearance in written history is in Egyptian sources from around 2,000 BCE. From the 2^nd century BCE until the 3^rd century CE, we have written evidence from the Berbers themselves. They developed a script based on the Phoenician alphabet, and left inscriptions, some of which I saw in Tangier in the Kasbah Museum (which I somehow forgot to mention when recounting my weekend there – I guess the fact that I waxed nostalgic about the pancakes but forgot the gorgeous restored palace/museum reveals my true priorities!). However, somehow the script fell out of use, and when the Islamic Arabs arrived to anachronistic Morocco in the early 8^th century CE, the Berber language was spoken universally but not written.

            The Berbers, for the most part, quickly adopted Islam, and used its egalitarian message as an argument for equality with the Arabs. Ethnic strife ensued, but Berbers managed to establish their own dynasties, including the Almoravids and the Almohads, both of which united Morocco and the Iberian Peninsula in the 11^th-13^th centuries. However, even as they embraced Islam, the Berbers were slow to adopt Arabic. The Almohads, for example, were very strict Muslims who nevertheless used Berber as a liturgical language to some extent, and even today about 50% of Moroccans speak one of the Berber languages as their first language. (Most are bilingual – at least 90% of the Berber speakers also speak Moroccan Arabic.)

            Until recently, French and Arabic were the only two official languages of Morocco. In the last couple years, Berber – or Tamazight, as the main language is called – was added to the list. For the first time, elementary schools in Berber communities have at least two hours of Berber a week, thanks to the efforts of the fledgling Berber identity movement. And one sees the occasional Berber script while walking through the streets.

            As for literacy rates in the village, they are certainly up from the dismal rates that hovered around 90% illiterate when the French withdrew and Morocco gained independence. This town had only a one-room school house that served the children of the 15 or so families who lived there. The main occupations are tending livestock or farming. It is a simple but relatively comfortable life: there is enough for subsistence and extra to sell. Regardless, the limited opportunities have caused many families to move to the bigger towns nearby, although many people born in the town are also deciding to retire there. I can’t wait to come back to Morocco in twenty years to see how much is changed. Globalization is a powerful force, and it is hitting Morocco hard. Will most people take the route of our guide, learning a foreign language, moving away from the town? Will they, like him, still appreciate Berber culture and teach their children Tamazight? Or will jellabas be abandoned for suits and sweatshirts? Will double-shot lattes someday outsell even mint tea? Would that necessarily be bad? (It would probably decrease the diabetes rate!) It’s an interesting shift to watch as the young farmer movement blossoms in the United States. Even the enthusiastic new agriculturalists in the states, though, value having heat and running water and living near cities that offer culture and leisure, or at least large farmers’ markets patronized by equally eager urbanites looking for a way to connect with their food. If no one wants to live “the Berber life”, is it really something worth preserving? I know that simplicity is gaining new value, as is connecting with nature and the Earth, taking time to slow down and just think or gaze out across the mountainside. So perhaps the next occupants of this village will be Americans desperate to escape the big city and return to their 10,000-year-old roots.

            Existential ponderings aside, after our breakfast, we followed our guide a little ways down the mountain to a cave, where the villagers supposedly lived until the late 19^th century. It had definitely been inhabited – one wall was blackened from smoke, “the kitchen”, our guide said – but our history professor warned us not to generalize. Berbers had been settled for millennium, presumably not just where there were enough caves to support an entire village.

            The houses now still don’t have running water though, but the spring is not far from the settlement. Cement troughs carry the water from the source down through the town, so water is available outside the front door. For pure drinking water, though, it’s better to hike to the source, just a few minutes uphill from town near the tiny mosque nestled into the hillside. Standing by the spring, I looked out over the green landscape, blurred a little by the rain that just started falling. It looked like an impressionist painting, full of greens and purples and tiny doll-house-like settlements in the distance.

            From the cave, we hiked back up the hill to return to the tent for lunch. The other two vegetarians and I found ourselves once again at our own table, with our own giant dish of couscous with potatoes, carrots, and onions. Delicious is an understatement. The couscous was steamed to perfection and wonderfully spiced – a difficult task based on the number of people who have experienced dry and boring couscous. We made only a dent in the huge pile in front of us. Feasts seem to be a common Moroccan experience. Along with “mashi muskela”, “Thank you, I’m full” is another phrase that has become a motto. Even in a Berber village far from being endowed with resources, we were safi, schbaat, shukran!