Life has been pretty hectic, with barely time to think, much less write, for the last week, so I am taking a slow day to catch up on things. Last night about 8 PM I arrived back in Inezgane, from where I left a week ago. Since I knew the place, having been there a couple of times to buy my ticket and get on the bus, I was comfortable arriving at night. The local taxis…‘petit taxi’, as they are called…are compact cars of all nationalities…Toyotas, Renaults, Ladas, some Turkish brand, etc. They were just a block away from where the bus stopped, and the hotel was a few minutes drive away. When I arrived in Inezgane, I felt like I had come home.
I love the names of the places here…Ait Melloul, pronounced eight mill-ool, Inezgane, pronounced In-ez-gahn. They sound so exotic…it’s hard to believe sometimes that I am living here, even if only for a short time. I am feeling like it isn’t long enough…there is so much more I want to see and learn.
I’m sitting here in the garden of my home for the next couple of weeks…a B&B run by a French woman, called La Pergola. I’m eating breakfast and drinking entirely too much café au lait as I write. La Pergola is very French… last night at dinner, I felt like I was back in my Togo days, where many of the restaurants were run by expatriate French people. It’s very nice and the food is very French and very good, but I am going to have to go out to eat Moroccan food.I’ll have to investigate the little cafes where it would be appropriate for me to eat alone. Public socializing is pretty much all men. La Pergola was hopping last night…it has a bar, restaurant, and I think a billiard or pool table, I didn’t go in to investigate that! It was full of people…well, to be precise, it was full of men. I was the only woman in the restaurant or bar - everyone was male, waiters and customers alike, until the owner, a Frenchwoman, and a French-Moroccan family came in as I was leaving. I was the only one eating at 8:30 PM, and the restaurant was starting to fill up as I was leaving around 9:45 PM! People come to life at night here…no wonder nothing moves before 8 o’clock in the morning, they are all sleeping off the late night.
The garden is lovely, lots of bougainvillea and other flowering plants, lawn, nice trees. The gardener was sweeping up this morning and his piles of debris were clouds of multicolored bougainvillea blossoms: pink, magenta, white, and orange… Well, technically, they are calyces, but their colors make them look like flowers.
Unfortunately traffic noise is a bit loud, as a busy road runs by it, so it’s not a peaceful as it might have been in the past. The garden includes a small pond enclosed with a stone wall, and covered in water lilies. Saïda is stalking whatever is in it…not sure if it is fish or a frog. She cornered a humongous toad – at least 6” in diameter…the other night when we stopped for dinner at a rest stop on the road to Marrakech.
I am glad of a slow day. The fig conference was non-stop for five days, most days were 12 hours or more. After it ended, Dr. Messaoudi Zerhoune, the organizer of the conference and professor of horticulture at the ag school where it was held, took four of us on a two-day agricultural tour.
I am glad of a slow day. The fig conference was non-stop for five days, most days were 12 hours or more. After it ended, Dr. Messaoudi Zerhoune, the organizer of the conference and professor of horticulture at the ag school where it was held, took four of us on a two-day agricultural tour.
The after-conference tour was supposed to be a larger group, but the Turkish contingent pulled out the night before, which left four of us, three Americans – myself, the other UC Farm Advisor, Maxwell Norton; his wife Diane, and Dr. Nasser El-Khalifi, a Saudi ag researcher. The change in plans delayed us a bit, but the small group was nice…very congenial, so we had a great time. Dr. Messaoudi is very high energy and fun…he just keeps going all day and expects the rest of us to keep up! With just four of us and Dr. Messaoudi driving, we stopped when we wanted to see things or take pictures.
It was really agricultural tourism…we stopped to look at the onion harvest and storage, to check out honey being sold along the road, to look at pomegranate and fig orchards, and to see the source of one of the major rivers that feeds the agriculture in the Tadla valley. It was fascinating, and showed us a real cross-section of Moroccan countryside and agriculture in the middle of the country.
From Meknès, where olives, figs, peaches, plums, and other fruit are grown, we drove up to Ifrane (pronounced ee-fron), which is around 5,000-6,000 feet in the Middle Atlas. We drove through beautiful cork oak forests on the way up, which is where the honey sellers were. It was very green from recent rains, with a grassy carpet below the cork oaks. Ifrane is a resort area…cool in the summer, and it gets quite a bit of snow, so there are winter sports as well. It looks very European, with lots of gardens and lawns, more green than I had seen since I arrived in Morocco! The houses are also very different than other areas of Morocco…they have very steep, tiled roofs – because of the snow. 
Most of the roofs were red tile as you would see in Spain or Italy. Big wide streets…also because of the snow, according to Dr. Messaoudi.
We stopped in the town of Azrou, which means the Rock (with a capital R!), a huge outcropping that is the distinguishing feature of the town. There the roofs were green tile…a mixture of tones of green, very pretty…I’d like a Moroccan green tile roof on my house! It was cool there, and the landscape was cedar forests…I think it’s Atlas cedar.
Dr. Messaoudi’s brother-in-law lives in Azrou, and most of his family was there for a baptism the previous day. They invited us for tea, but it was a lot more than tea. Dr. Messaoudi’s wife had made a variety of delicious flavored nuts, pastries, and tiny cookies, with dates, sesame, ground nuts, etc. for the baptism and for our visit. They also served peach and orange juices and smoothie-like drinks made with yoghurt and fruit…either banana, avocado, pear, and almond. Very tasty! Since it served as our lunch, I’m glad it was more than just mint tea.
They were growing cherries, apples, and pears up in the mountains, as well as wheat and barley. I think the main industry is tourism, though…Moroccan and foreign, because of the mild summer climate. It reminded me a bit of Tahoe, with an exotic twist, but Tahoe doesn’t have a King’s palace overlooking it!
Most of the roofs were red tile as you would see in Spain or Italy. Big wide streets…also because of the snow, according to Dr. Messaoudi.We stopped in the town of Azrou, which means the Rock (with a capital R!), a huge outcropping that is the distinguishing feature of the town. There the roofs were green tile…a mixture of tones of green, very pretty…I’d like a Moroccan green tile roof on my house! It was cool there, and the landscape was cedar forests…I think it’s Atlas cedar.
Dr. Messaoudi’s brother-in-law lives in Azrou, and most of his family was there for a baptism the previous day. They invited us for tea, but it was a lot more than tea. Dr. Messaoudi’s wife had made a variety of delicious flavored nuts, pastries, and tiny cookies, with dates, sesame, ground nuts, etc. for the baptism and for our visit. They also served peach and orange juices and smoothie-like drinks made with yoghurt and fruit…either banana, avocado, pear, and almond. Very tasty! Since it served as our lunch, I’m glad it was more than just mint tea.
They were growing cherries, apples, and pears up in the mountains, as well as wheat and barley. I think the main industry is tourism, though…Moroccan and foreign, because of the mild summer climate. It reminded me a bit of Tahoe, with an exotic twist, but Tahoe doesn’t have a King’s palace overlooking it!
On the way down, we stopped at a scenic overlook, and I saw something jump down from a tree a little distance away…at first I thought it was a kid, but then he came ambling up to us…it was a Barbary ape. He was not afraid of us, but VERY interested in Saïda the cat. He didn’t want us to leave, so he jumped up on the hood of the car, and only got down when we started to drive off.We came back down the other side of the Middle Atlas to the Tadla Valley, passing a very large man-made lake. In past decade, they have been building a number of dams to provide irrigation water for the valleys, and valley agriculture is pretty intensive- sound familiar? They grow olives, figs, almonds, stone fruit, and citrus up to about 1500 feet.
Then we went up to the sources of the Oum ir-Rbia river…It was lovely. It all comes flowing down the mountain…I guess normally it is crystal clear but there have been major thunderstorms in the last few weeks, so it was bright orange-red with eroded soil when we saw it. There were beautiful gardens, and a Kasbah at the top, with a scenic overlook. 
We came back down to Khenifra and Beni Mellal, visiting a pomegranate orchard and checking out the river which provides water to the orchards. Dr. Messaoudi showed us how the water from the rivers is pumped up to some of the orchards…by pumps run on bottled butane gas. Very creative set-ups - they are cooled with water piped around them during the summer. 
We stopped for dinner at a roadside rest stop. There are lots of them all along the roads, with gardens, a restaurant, often craft shops, and always a small mosque for travelling Muslims to pray. We had Moroccan-style fast food…ground beef with herbs and spices formed into little sausage shapes, with onions, tomatoes and bread. They ground it right then and there, then cooked it on a special kofta/kebab brazier. It was done before Drs. Messaoudi and el Khalifa were done praying.
Around 9:30 PM we arrived in Marrakech, which in Arabic is pronounced Mrrah-kish (rhymes with brackish) with a nice rolled r and the accent on the rah. It sounds ever so much more exotic that way! When I was waiting for the bus in Inezgane on the outward journey to Meknès, the man who checked in the bags asked me “Mrrahkish?” but I thought he was asking me if I was Moroccan, so I said no. So he asked for my ticket, then said very firmly, “Mrrahkish!” So I have been saying Mrrah-kish to myself ever since…I like the way it sounds. Dr. Messaoudi gave us a driving tour of the main sights of Marrakech before we went to the hotel…all of us to sleep very soundly after a long day!
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