Rural Morocco

We woke up this morning in Aquermood, about 30 km north and slightly east from Essaouira. We spent the last 36 hours here couchsurfing with Molly. She is a Peace Corps volunteer from South Dakota via UC Berkeley. She loves New Orleans and Ghana. She offered us a window into what life is like in rural Morocco. And has done her best to open it as widely as possible for two Americans spending two days in Aquermood who don't speak Arabic or French. But we didn't lack for conversation.

We spent hours enjoying conversations about any number of things in Molly's simple but comfortable living room/salon. The central subjects were Moroccan culture, American culture, books, movies, politics, volunteering and service. We talked extensively about the Peace Corps and I felt quite at home. Molly shared her struggles as a singe woman liing inthe daily patriarchy of Moroccan village life. And she talked of her challenges getting things done in this context. Her work there is focused on public health and health education. Her main project ma be to adress the village's trash problem, enshallah. Right now, it builds up behind a stone wall and along the streets. And the donkeys and cows eat what they can of it. Some is presumably hauled off to somewhere out of sight by a man with a donkey and a cart on occasion. While we were there, she finally got a meeting with a key village leader after two months of trying.

We cook for the first and second times since leaving Europe. Molly's a vegetarian and her diet is true to what's local and in season. We eat sauteed pumpkin, tomato, garlic, green beans and okra over rice. Breakfast is pancakes from scratch with honey and strawberry jam. Dinner the second night is baked potato with grilled garlic, onion and peppers and some wedges of the best cheese food you can get your hands on in rural Morocco.

Molly's village has the infrastructure for it, but no running water yet. A modern looking gated white building and tower on the edge of town, along with her landlord, proclaim its imminence. But none yet. So we don't shower. Instead we go to the hammam - Moroccan communal sauna-like baths. Annette and Molly go to the more social women's side. Their presence seems to stutter the local gossip. Meanwhile I sit in steamy solitude in the hottest tile room I can find.

Refreshed and exfoliated, the sexes reunite to walk across the street for tea and home-baked bread at Molly's host family's home. They are a couple in their thirties with six children, the last of whom is a boy. The mother is quiet and sweet. The father is gregarious and hard-working. He shows a devilish grin that reminds me of the Fink boys back home, as he makes fun of Molly for not putting enough olive oil on her bread. There are two types of oil and fresh honey. They make the oil downstairs with a press that they show us. Actually it is a huge wheel that churns the fresh olives into a paste. Then the olives are placed in soft wicker baskets and stacked on two poles under a press that looks like a huge winch. The oil drains into a tank, where it is scooped out by hand into reused plastic water bottles.

The two-story house is partially obscured by a pile of mulch eight feet high that turns out to be what's left after the oil is extracted from one million or so olives. I don't think my wife would go for that in our frontyard. When it is not olive season, he trades seaweed among other things. They don't speak any English or French so we go easy on Molly as our translator. Keep it to thank yous, this is delicious, and a few easily translated gesturing jokes.

We walk through town under a full moon and an indigo sky at 6:40 a.m. Donkeys are tied in the fields, six feet of rope from their front left ankles to a rock or a tree. Their saddles with built-in bags rest on the ground next to them while they pull at some weeds. Normally, grown men riding side saddle would be kicking both feet on their front left shoulders, saddle wighed down with olives on two sides while the donkey trots. Perhaps it is still too early. We walk past piles of green and black olives on tarps. We walk through the beginnings of the unfolding Friday market to our sixteen-passenger blue mini-bus back to Essaouira.

It leaves on time with only six of us at 6:45. I sit near the door. Annette stretches our on the bench seat in the back. An older man jumps on as the bus pulls away. He pulls a ticket book out of his worn gray jelaba and gives Annette and I one each in exchange for two ten-dirham coins. We stop five minutes down the road. A jolly and talkative farmer gets on board. His sacks of mint and greens are loaded on the top of the bus. He slides a few boxes under the front bench seat and plops down at the center of it. He greets several of the other men on the bus, talking and laughing with them much of the ride. Five minutes pass and the bus stops again. This time, three women cloaked in jelabas and scarves except for their hands claim the seats across the aisle from me. One woman pays for all three. As we pull off, the old man hops on again and swings the door shut. He stands in the aisle as we drive. The women smell of rosemary and cardamon.

Three minutes later we stop again., only long enough for a school girl of perhaps ten to get on board. She stands as we turn a corner and disappears a few minutes later as quickly as she appeared. More stops as we go. More farmers on board. More stuff piled on top, tucked under seats. It must be a market day in Essaouira. Or perhaps this is every day. The first farmer talks to all of the other men as if they are old friends. He wears a brown jelaba that looks like he cleaned a donkey in it. The man directly in front of me dozes off.

The bus stops again. The door opens. Old man hops out. A tall young man hops in. He wears the kind of jacket skateboarders wore in the U.S. in the 1980s. Kirk Cameron and David Hasselhoff wore it too. He is easily six foot two, extremely tall by Moroccan standards. He looks 22. He crouches in the back of the aisle, as Annette's bench is now full as well. The old man who takes tickets directs the men on the bench in front of me to make room. The farmer leads the way and organizes the affair. This produces about six free inches of bench, enough for the young man to perch there and lean forward.

The bus stops again near a field. A young woman in heels and tight jeans with a diamond ring on her left ring finger gets on. She has her phone in her hand and a Louis Vitton purse around her wrist. She stands. The old man now stands directly in front of me. His calf occasionally pushes against my knee. He smells of smoke from a wood fire. He looks like it too. I wonder where he slept last night. Perhaps where Annette is sitting.

We descend a hill to find Essaouira sprawling out in the morning sunlight along the sea. She seems to laze about like any number of her cats. The bus stops again. The woman in jeans and heels gets off. So do the the other three. When we arrive across from the Essaouira bus station. The bus' contents spill out onto the street and sidewalk. One female rider sits down on the sidewalk and pukes. The farmer throws down his sacks of mint and greens from the roof. Yet he gently hands us Annette's backpack lik it is a carton of eggs.

We check our bags at the bus station and spend our last few hours wandering Essaouira as she wakes. Today we ride to Casablanca and onto Rabat, where we will meet and old classmate of Mara's. It will be 14 hours between Aquermood and Rabat and worlds beyond that as we go from rustic charm to international urban luxury.