Berber Village IminTanoute Morocco 10-22-08

We visited a BerBer village for an overnight stay. This is similar to a bed an breakfast with a cultural exerience. Mohamed manages this with his wife and many friends and neighbors from the village. Here is his email; berber_culture_ center@hotmail.com. The small village is near Imi-n-Tanoute on the maps we saw. There was a traveling carnival in town that week we drove through the town.

The bus wound through the narrow streets and snaked up the hill to the village. People from the village waited on the main highway with smiles and waves. The bus continued to drive slowlythrough the narrow rocky path where we all got out for our overnight sleepover with a Berber family.

We walked up a moderately steep rocky path, wide enough for a donkey cart, to the Berber Inn. It was built in 2003. There are 8 rooms with 2 community toilets next to a shower. Yes running water and western style toilets. Water is cold. There was a kitchen with an open wood burning oven and tables for preparation in the court yard just in front of the kitchen.

As you enter the sleeping rooms or community room you slip off your shoes. We gathered around tables in the community room as we sat on pillows cross-legged. Our host served green mint tea in small shot sized glasses and a big bowl of popcorn at each table. The tea is always heavy on the sugar for Moroccans.

Our rooms were modest with 2 beds on a platform with fresh bright pink sheets on a hard 6 inch mattress with a big heavy course blanket. We layered on most of the clothes we brought with us as the air was chilly.

We volunteered for groups to make chicken and vegatable Tanjine, bread or bring water from the well.

Stan and I chose water gathering. Down the rocky path we trod behind the donkey with water jugs, made from old tires, packed the his back. Up we went to the well enclosed with a concrete block wall. There were two buckets one on each end of a long rope that was hung over a pulley. One bucket was dropped into the well filled up and then pulled up with the sopping wet rope. We all took turns and finally the jugs were filled. Back to the center. Poor donkey. Some co-travelers took a ride on the donkey. I decided his burden was already heavy enough and skipped a ride.

A couple of water gatherers got off the path when they stopped for a photo of the valley. Barbara and Brenda found their way back after spending a hour or so in heavy afternoon showers. They saw people along the way, but speaking or understanding Arabic is a challenge. They kept back tracking on themselves as one cactus patch on a rocky path looks like the next. They were drenched and humbled by their experience.

We had a bed on platform. I should say hard beds with extra hard pillows. The people are gracious; funny and interesting.

Our Japanese co-traveling friends, Fumi and Katsuyo, opened a package of origami paper and we all sat at a table making cranes. Katsuyo told of the story in 1945 right after US had bombed Hiroshima and Nagasaki, when people in Japan held vigil for the severely injured in hospitals by making 1000 cranes and stringing them up in a circle representing peace.

Here we were at the Berber center making cranes offering peace to each other.

That late afternoon we enjoyed the works of our labor in the commuity room. The chicken Tabjine was delicious and tender. It included potatoes, onions and squash. It had baked in the conical pot over coals. The yeast bread was flatten and baked in an open fired overn. The prepared dishes were placed in the middle of each table. You would tear off a peice of freashly baked bread and scoope up some veggies or chicken. No plates, napkins or silverware. Were in Morocco now. It was delicious and hit the spot. It was followed by with a friut salad of small pieces of bananas,greaps, seed from palmgranets and dolop of yogurt. Yes, a spoon this time.

I helped dry the dishes with a tea towel in the kitchen. It was chlly and this was one way to warm up next to the oven that was colling down from cooking the bread.

One women crouched on the floor making our afternno snack. It was a layer of sweeten yeast bread, pudding or custard, topped with swirls of dough rolled like snails filling the top. It was yummy perfectly browned.

We then had a tea making contest. We were teamed in groups of 3 to make mint/green tea with plenty of sugar. We didn't win, but laughed and decided bits of green tea chewed in their dry form tasted like charcoal. We have sense found out that the tea is poured out 3 times to help with the seeping.

Later that evening the host served thin asian type noodles mixed with a few raisins and sprinkled with cinnamon.

We slept mostly well bundled in our cloathes and the heavy blanket. The next morning a few of us did some taichi with our Japanize friends in the court yard. For breakfast we were served a kind of cream of wheat (yes with a large spoon), more yeast bread and crape type pancake. We drizzled thick honey on it and rolled it up like I did when I was a kid. My mom would save the last pancake, spread it with sugar, roll it up and offer it to me. It is still my favorite way to eat pancakes.

On our way down the hill after our visit we stopped to smile with some little children going to school. I gave them an A B C puzzle. It was cute to watch them hold it up for a photo. Hopefully, they will learn to make lots of words.