Marrakesh

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Wednesday was a long travel day, returning us from deep in the hamada through the High Atlas to Marrakech.  At one of our rest stops, our head guide ran into the hamada to a Berber nomad camp which we could hardly see from the road.  The head of the family was the only person there, but welcomed us all to his camp and some fresh mint tea and hot bread.  We doddled and conversed so long that our other planned treks for the day were cancelled.  He reported (through our head guide as interpreter) that in a week, he and his family (wife and 8 kids) would break camp and travel south on foot for another week for the winter.  He had 100 sheep, 50 goats, 10 camels and a donkey.  All the animals were away completely out of our sight, in the hamada, "grazing" under the watchful eye of the rest of his family (except for about 25 kid goats who were amazingly tame).  We arrived back in Marrakech after sundown, to a very emotional but happy send off from our guides, cook, drivers and, of course, Matt Butler, who arranged it all.  Grant and Lynn left us even though they were staying in Marrakech another couple of days but at another hotel.

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Thursday was spent within and around the medina.  We waved goodbye to the Jones' and Craigs as they caught the train to Fez, more travel in North Morocco and then over to Andulusia for 2 weeks.  They remaining 4 couples spent hours together in 2 artisan cooperatives, leaving almost all of our Dirhams in Morocco.  Lunch was going to be our major meal but we didn't ned to gorge ourselves to the extent we did at the Riad Omar restaurant just outside the Souq.  We sampled everything on the menu I think and even left with baggies of goodies for between flights.  The Demas' left us at the airport in Casablanca enroute to Egypt and we left, on schedule for Lisbon @ 9pm.  Thus ended our Morocco segment of this adventure.

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Some facts and lasting memories.  The population of Morocco remains heavily rural, skewed especially by the high proportion of the population which is Berber.  Arabs and Berber do not generally mix, intermarry or even like each other.  Really, what unifies them is that they are all, with few exceptions, Muslims.  There are mosques galore in all the Berber villages, just like the Arab mostly urban centres.    It is impossible to sleep through the night because of the infernal calling to prayers which start about 4:30 in the morning.  The current king, Mohammad VI is warmly loved by all.  He is not only an exception, by being both Arab and Berber, but also he married a commoner.  She is a computer programmer still working outside the Royal home and adored by the populace much as Dianna was in Great Britain.

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Maybe the differences just broke down along urban/ rural lines, but Arabs were pushy, loud and unpleasant.  Berbers just the opposite.  Happily, most of our time was spent among Berbers.  These differences (and prejudices) were no doubt affected by the fact that our head guide,  our cook and 2 of the 3 drivers were Berber.  Matt Butler said that we were very fortunate not just to be invited into the Berber nomad camp but to be welcomed so warmly.  Matt had never had that experience.  Most nomadic families are so painfully shy that they would have had trouble looking at us much less conversing.  Again, the friendly, sensitive, knowledgable manner of our chief guide made the difference.  Typical of their shyness, however, was the instant reaction of embarrassment our host had when Doug Craig presented him at the end of our visit with a sketch Doug had just made of his camp.  Our host seemed almost embarrassed to look at it and quickly stuffed it in his nearby rucksack.  We wondered later what he'd tell his wife later about what had happened that day when she got home and whether he'd show her the drawing.