Ait Imazere Picnic

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Every year in the middle of May, one of the most beautiful months here in Ouaouizerht, Jamayat Tawasul holds their biggest fund raiser of the year: a community boat trip across the lake to a peninsula, named Ait Imazere, for a picnic and games. They sell tickets for 20 dirhams a pieces, first come first serve, to about 200 lucky people, and on the appointed day everyone grabs their tagines, blankets, and soccer balls and heads down to the shore. So it was that at 6:00 on a beautiful Sunday morning I found myself sitting in the café with one of my students, Jalal, waiting for our friends to come meet us. The early hours can be a trial on your second language skills, but fortunately Moroccan boys, even tired ones, rarely leave room for awkward silences. Laughing and joking we joined in the train of people and headed for the boat landing.

Surprises have, by this point, become a normal part of my life here. It’s an odd day when nothing I encounter fails to tie my tongue and make me eyes widen. After a while the shock value starts to wear off and you just begin to accept the cultural reeducation you are undergoing. Still, every now and then, you hear or see something that makes you say to yourself, “Right, I’m DEFINITELY not in America anymore.” The kids were asking me what I had brought, and in typical American fashion, I mentioned that I had a bag lunch including meat, cheese, and bread for a sandwich, an apple, a coke, and cookies for dessert. Of course in typical Moroccan fashion they laughed and said, “What, no tagine?” Seriously, these people will carry a tagine absolutely anywhere: up mountains, over water, and probably across international borders if they get the chance. This, for those of you who have never seen a tagine in person, is no easy feat. It’s a heavy clay dish usually over a foot in diameter with an even heavier top shaped like a rounded pyramid. Inside they put a mix of vegetables, meat, and olive oil, and to cook it all they also have to lug around a small tank of propane gas and a burner. The fact they had brought a tagine, though, wasn’t what surprised me, but rather what they were planning to put in it. Along with the usual potatoes, carrots, etc., they had brought six live RATS that they had raised in their homes and were planning to slaughter once we reached our destination. When they asked if I’d like to have some I did my best to explain that, in America rats tend to live in the sewer, not in houses, making us somewhat averse to eating them, to which they again laughed. Honestly I don’t mind being made fun of for my “strange” foreign tastes and preferences, but there are some differences in our culture that are just too great for me to overcome. Since I got here I’ve eaten hearts, lungs, livers, intestines, kidneys, cheeks, brains, and most other things you can get out of a sheep, cow, chicken, or who knows what else, but I just have to draw the line at rat.

Happily, before this conversation could go any further, we reached the lake and dispersed ourselves among the crowd. I was happy to see that whole families had turned out for the affair. There were lots of people there that I knew, but even more that I didn’t, giving me a chance to see some new faces and make some new friends. Even better, I noticed that some of the teenagers had brought along their drums. Since I had my guitar firmly in hand (never leave home without it!) I knew this was going to be a fun day. Eventually the boat showed up and we all climbed aboard. It looked somewhat like a small barge with a low-lying deck, railings, and a center cockpit on a little tower. As we crammed ourselves into every corner of space, including sitting on laps and hanging off the sides, and I looked around at the men, women, and children dressed in their traditional clothes and holding their small bags, I couldn’t help but feel like I was on some kind of refugee ship. It was sort of a morbid image, particularly for a happy occasion, but the irony of it gave me the chance to reflect once again on how little these people need to have a good time; on how beautifully simple life can be here.

The ride across the lake was nothing short of breath taking. Being out on the open water, feeling the waves lapping against the side of the boat, watching the sunlight glimmer over the surface, seeing, as always, the mountains all around us, and listening to the songs being sung by the people in Tamazirght, was yet another in a long series of inspiring moments for me. I made my way to the back of the boat where the kids had a drum circle going and did my best to join in. Western and Moroccan musical rhythms don’t match up too well, so I quickly ditched the guitar and just clapped along to the drumming and singing. Berbers love it when outsiders take a liking to their music and I had boys grabbing my hands and showing me the steps to their dances. They tried to teach me the words to the songs too, but my Tamazirght is still in its infancy so it might be a while before I can really sing along.

Finally we arrived at Ait Imazere and, as the boat neared the shore and began pulling in to land, everyone started jockeying for position. If you’ve ever seen the movie Far and Away where the settlers race across the field to claim land for their homesteads you might have some idea of what it was like watching the families pour off of the boat and charge up the hill, food baskets in hand, looking for the flattest, shadiest spots to set up camp for the day. Completely unprepared for this competitive style of picnicking I found myself standing alone, looking around dumbfounded, until Jalal eventually found me and invited me over to sit under his tree. He was making breakfast, which I sheepishly admitted that I didn’t know I was supposed to bring, and, laughing at my incompetence he quickly fried me up some eggs and served me tea.

The whole day was full of activity. The members of Jamayat Tawasul had brought a volleyball net which they set up in a clearing and they put together teams to hold a tournament. Those waiting for their turn to play went down to the other side of the peninsula for a swimming race out to a small island about 200 yards away. Having competed as a kid in a summer swimming league back home I signed myself up, but when the race was over I found to my dismay that years of experience in a pool do little to make up for the fitness that comes from a lifetime of living in the mountains. Nevertheless, standing on top of the rock formation in the middle of the island, I was struck by the nature of the situation. Swimming to an island in a lake in a valley of the High Atlas Mountains of North Africa is a big change from daily life back in Boston. It’s not that I don’t appreciate or enjoy the things we do back home, and honestly there are times when I really truly miss my old life there, but here I’m living the dream of a once in a lifetime adventure and I’ll take every chance I can to soak it in.

My volleyball team made it pretty far in the tournament but we eventually went down in the semi-finals at the hands of the team that would go on to take the trophy. After we’d taken our turn I was surprised (there were a lot of those on that day) to see the moms take the field. Berber mothers, despite making up one of the hardest working and therefore physically strongest demographics here, aren’t known for their athletic prowess. They are, however, a proud and stubborn bunch so nobody was about to stop them. Everyone, including the women themselves had a good laugh as they ran around in their jellabas chasing the ball and high-fiving each other after plays. Following volleyball we had tug-of-rope and sack races using old blue rice bags. Once again, after the rest of us had had our fun, the moms took their turn, giggling along with the rest of us as they fell down in the dirt and hopped along in their sacks. Women’s empowerment is part of the Peace Corps mission here in Morocco and even though this wasn’t anything earth-shattering like giving them voting rights or career opportunities it was nice to see that the men and boys of Ouaouizerht will let their moms and sisters join in the fun sometimes.

We capped the day with an awards ceremony for all those who had won in the various competitions, and, finally, a couple of songs sung by, as Abderrahim, the president of Jamayat Tawasul, nicknamed me, “The Cat Stevens of Ouaouizerht.” 😉 I’m not sure if I deserve such a lofty title (Cat Stevens is loved by all Moroccans, partially for his music but more, I think, because he converted to Islam) but I did my best to live up to it with renditions of It’s Not Time and Here Comes My Baby, which were received, very politely, with raucous applause.

As the boat motored us back to Ouaouizerht and we all got off and headed for our separate homes, I gave one last look at the sun setting behind the mountains high above the surface of the lake and bid farewell to yet another amazing day in Morocco. There’s still a lot here that I don’t really understand, but I can’t express in words how thankful I am that I’m getting the chance to experience it all. Living in Morocco is hard in a lot of ways, both for Americans and Moroccans, but its days like this one that give me hope for these people and this land. They have a great zest for life that can’t be beaten down no matter what they have to endure, and one can’t help but believe in their ability to do great things once they are finally given the chance.

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