Witnessing Our Site

We left Beni Mallal for our new site in the Ouarzazate Province (Oz for short) armed with our new official Peace Corps titles. We took a taxi of 5 passengers from Beni to Marrakech, grabbed some fruit and bread from a tahanut and caught another taxi of 5 to the Provincial capitol of Oz. The road from Marrakech to Oz, which traipses over the high atlas mountains, maps out like intestines, which is ironic because that is the part of your body you begin to pay attention to as the driver zooms around endless winding corners with changing elevation like a heart monitor reading. Over the mountains, the road finally flattens out, but now we were on the edge of the Sahara desert and hot gusts from the open windows act like a convection oven. Still, the fresh air was crucial among our cramped seats. When we pulled into Oz around 3pm, we were met by some local currently serving volunteers who stayed with us in the conveniently located Hotel Gazelle and the next morning we caught a taxi our new site.

The road to our site from Oz undulates through vast desert foothills dotted with great worn Kasbahs and unique sand formations. The sandstone mountain walls change color with each ripple of the earth so that warm tones from khaki orange, red to purple can all be seen overlapping themselves along the countryside. Large salt crystals from this area are sold in souqs all over the country, and for a stretch, all the roadside formations are striped bright white, reflecting this abundant commodity. The road then crosses a bridge over a wide empty riverbed green with palm trees. This is where the camels can usually be found grazing. Soon the trees are gone as the desert again takes over. At times, it seems as though nothing could live here in the dunes and sun. The most breathtakingly beautiful thing about this area however, are the oasis. In a sea of sand, a lush, bright green oasis will appear from behind a dune, complete with date palms, towering Kasbahs, and rose gardens. My town is one such oasis. Built snuggly into the foothills of the High Atlas Mountains, along a wide riverbed, emerging from the peaks, our lush, verdant, village fields go on for acres and yet are surrounded by completely sterile sun-baked sand valleys and peaks. From our site, the mountains ascend dramatically, and though it is fairly hot here already (maybe about 85-90 most days), there is a clear view of the snow-capped mountains looming above us. In many ways, the dry, warm weather, desert scenery, and mountains remind me of the places I’ve seen and lived in, in the American Southwest (New Mexico, Arizona, and Utah), but the vastness of this place, and the silence, make it seem unfamiliar and even mysterious. Then of course there is the culture to consider. The Kasbahs, the cramped screaming taxis and busses, the fruit stands, hanging skinned goats and chickens, solo bikers in the desert wearing turbins and pedaling huffy’s, loud Arabic rap music, men praying on personal tote prayer rugs on the sidewalk, donkeys carrying huge decorative metal doors, patient sheepherders crossing busy streets with their full entarage, women wearing richly patterned colorful jallabas (like a really fancy night gown), trash piles in front of tahanuts waiting to be burned nightly, and of course the calls to prayer echoing off the mountain sides. This is not the southwest; but it is fascinating and beautiful beyond words.