Secret gardens in Tazzarine

Tazzarine is a small city near the Draa valley, unfairly qualified in the touristic guides that don't find anything special to mention, and can even write it's rather ugly.

Actually, they do not know Tazzarine (or, as Moroccans write it, Tazarine). The tarmac road, made around fifteen years ago, did not pass through the old village and its intricated narrow streets between the casbahs, but outside. As a consequence, like a mushroom-city of the American Wild West, a long commercial street was built, modern and concrete made, with only a few traditionnal houses that belonged before to the outside parts of the city.

That's a fact, this main street is ugly and lacks character.

The heart of the real Tazzarine, which you'll visit by taking the left path at the entrance of the village, is full of hidden wonders.

Like for example, the marabout of Sidi Ben Haki, which reveals itself between the palms at sunset.

Sidi Ben Haki Marabout, Tazzarine

Desert by Tazzarine

A few minutes walk from Mezgarne, you can find the natural oasis of Serdrar, and its dunes spread with black stones (there is a marble quarry nearby)

Serdrar

Babel, the movie, was not in Tazarine !

Remember I told you Babel was not in Tazzarine ?
But how puzzled I was about the road sign ?

OK, Bilal saw the movie.
It was made in Aït Sahoun, near Ouarzazate.

This is Aït Sahoun :

Ait Sahoun pass, near Ouarzazate (c) MA Koiransky - Lumière de Lune

And they just put a fake road sign that does not exist. That was what made me unable to identify the place !

Here is the trailer, you can check the mountains :

Desert Flowers

This things, taht reminds daffodil, corn and a kind of cactus is a root of tamarisk, which grows through the sand in spring, and blooms.
After the rains, there was a lot of them around the Oasis.
Unfortunatly, the flower does not stay beautiful a very long time. In a few hours, a few days, it blackens, like if it was rooting, or had been burnt.

Seen from a little far away, these yellow flowers are brilliant lights in the desert

No fool's day but Mouloud

Today is the Prophet's birthday. So no fool's day, no stupid jokes, but a holliday, and also tomorrow.

In many villages, there will be a moussem. That's the case in Tazzarine, where Sidi Amrou is celebrated. It's marabout (mausoleum) is paint totally anew, and decorated. Singing and dancing will take place in the street.

Drums of the Gnawas

Gnawas are at the same time musicians, a brotherhood and somehow magicians. Descent of former black slaves, they are known for their hypnotic music, cymbals and drums....
Gnawas of Essaouira are the most well known, but they can be found everywhere in Morocco, with a World Music sound, or a deeply authentic one.

In Tazzarine, ithey are six brothers with deep voices that chant the blessings. They come sometimes in the Oasis, and you can see them walk through the desert, accompanied by the sound of their drums.

We light a fire, outside of our walls, with a big root of tamaris. And the night starts, the rythm quickens more and more, and suddenly stops. The leader hits his drum several times, very regularly, in the silence of the night, like before opening the curtain in the theater... and the music starts again.

Ousmane Dodo, doctor of the desert

Tonight on the international French TV (TV5) a reportage by Claudia and Günther Wallbrecht about a Tuareg doctor.

I was fascinated by the similarities and differences.

Many customers tols us Tazzarine and the desert around the Oasis (specially Serdrar) looks like Mauritania. I've never been there, but tonight I recognized it for true. The colors are very similar, the dark tones of the stones, that give a strange athmosphere to the landscape. Sand in yellow-ochre, but the light is somehow dimmed by the black reflection of all these stones. From place to place, a solitary tree, which is good enough to provide a small shadow shelter in the deep heat of the day.

Ousmane Dodo is a doctor who turns around this desert 10 months a year, spending very rare times with his own family. He can be up to three or four days alone, and needs to use his inherited knowledge of the desert to be able to direct himself. He went with caravans also when he was young, before being trapped in school (which is compulsory there, and nomad children are boarded in cities), and knows the real hardships and condition of life of the nomads, who trust him because he is one of them. A nomad of another kind, not looking for grazing fields for his cattle, looking for people to cure and help.

His patients don't know how to read, so he has to explain the drugs, and be simple. He often receives tablets from european people, and when he doesn't know what they are for, he looks at the latin names of the ingredients to understand the composition. He relies on drugs as well on traditionnal medecine, specially because most of the drugs, even the low priced one are too expensive. The average monthly earning in Agadez is of 30 euros per month...

Life is hard, the drought is important, and families have to move more and more to find places where they can stay a few days, maybe one week or two. Ousmane meets a clan where a young mother has lost her child, born too early, at seven month. No chance to survive for the baby, and the mother is worn out, because the family could not wait. No water anymore, and the day after they had to move again.

One child out of four, born in the desert, will die before reaching his fifth birthday...

But not everything is dark in this life.

Ousmane attends a traditionnal celebration, before the salt caravans leave for a 1200 kms over one month trip through Tenere. This is similar to moussems in Morocco, and I would love to see in Goulmine a camel beauty pageant as in Mauretania. The beasts are splendid, the men honour them, the place is out of time. Some Targui, in their best traditionnal clothes, protect themselves from the sun under modern coloured umbrellas, there is nothing but sand and rugs in the "center", nothing... but also micro, loud-speakers and an electric guitar to play the traditionnal sounds. I'm suddenly thrown back in Morocco, the orchestra of five young women singing traditionnal songs is so similar to Awach and other Berber rythms we here in the Draa valley... the rythm, the way they danse with the music, and even the voice, high and regular !

Words are different, Tamasheq is difficult to understand for a Amazight like Bilal, of a Chleuh (south of Morocco), and personnally I can't grab a word. Nevertheless, it sounds familiar. Names of places are familiar, Agadez, Aguelmane could be in Morocco.

Women are free. Women are not veiled, they can talk with men, Ousmane even explains how he met his wife : "I saw her, and I asked her if whe would accept to marry me, and then we discussed the whole night. And I was coming back and we where discussing tthe entire night, and we were making love, and I married her". Even if Muslim, women and men can have relationship before the wedding, and Targis are usually monogamist.

Two things I would retain, more than anything, because they really show how different our worlds are. Ousmane discusses with one of his friend who went to Europe "Over there, you have to pay for everything, you take the bus, you pay, and even when you park you caar you have to pay."

And his joy, before the celebration, when he can bath in the pool made by the cascade in Aguelmane. Because that happens to him only once a year to find a place with so much water. His few minutes in the water are his yearly treat....

Babel, a disappointment (spoilers inside)

In December, a friend call me, and tell me about Babel, pointing that the moroccan part happens in Tazarine.

I'm a little bit surprised, I did nothing about it, a moving shooting with Brad Pitt, I should have heard of it.

I don't have time before leaving, I don't have time in Morocco, and I finally went to the movie on Sunday.

I went out with a mixed feeling, which, as you can imagine if I say so, is not fully positive.
Morocco, catastrophs are also piling up.

Two young goat keepers are shooting with a hunting riffle. This gun was sold to their father to kill the jackals, by another Moroccan who received it as a gift from a Japanese hunter.

What an effort to be able to introduce in this story the third part of the world, this Japanese and his deaf daughter walled in her silence amidst the defeaning sounds of Tokyo by night. You can appreciate the strength and meaning of the symbols, in case you did not get it, some parts of the disco scene suddenly cut the sound, to put the final point on the ideogramme !

However, except for falcon hunt (an awesome experience), I ignored that Morocco was a top level hunting resort. Last lion of the Atlas was killed in 1922, and jackals, hyenna and panthers are more than seldom and threatened of local extinction.

So, our two Moroccan kids go to the mountains with their goats, and I'm still waiting that we arrive in Tazzarine (or Tazarine as they write in the movie), because we are more in the M'Goun, or Saro or off-road in the area of M'semrir and Tamtatouchte.

And here comes the sikmeth (another arabic word in english) our two kids argue about the gun, the oldest shoots really badly, and says that the gun is wrong, the youngest shoots correctly and wants to prove his brother the gun is good, he aims the bus and shoots, nothing happens, yes it does, the bullet is somewhere near the throat of the beautiful blond Cate who was sleeping at the window.

Worse than the accident in the Tichka pass this winter !

Sorry, I can't buy it, for many reasons.

The gun is expensive. The father pays it around 500 dirhams, for poor families without regular wages like the one shown, it is a huge amount (a manual worker receives around 50 dirhams for a 10-12 hours day work), this gun is precious, and I can't believe it is trusted like that to the kids, without warning and training. Specially as the father sees that the oldest shoots really bad. And we are here in a tribe of

Berber living in the mountains, these ones who rebelled the longest, being pacified around 1935. War, feuds and what means a weapon and his dangers are still something the people know by experience. And these children are young, yes, but they live in a world where you have to kill and prepare your own meat, and not buy it under plastic in a supermarket.

They know better than our children what life and death means, and I can't believe they would act like the stupid youngs of our suburbs....

But you have to make a movie, haven't you ?

After that comes the worst.

Our bus is of course schocked anpeople ask what to do. Ouarzazate is too far away, 4 hours drive, no hospital nearby, the bus driver offers the shelter of his home in Tazzarine, the bus makes a U-turn and heads to Tazzarine (wo we were more in the area of Alnif, and our goat keepers in the Saro).

So we reach Tazarine, at some point of time a sign says to turn left (eh ? Tazarine is on the main road). We see the entrance of Tazzarine, this I know, with the way leaving on the left to our doyar, and on the right the teleboutique (small shop where you can phone), often closed, at the foot of the hill with the old fortified tower on the top.

Tazarine and its palm grove

That's all we'll see of Tazzarine in the movie.

Instead of heading ahead to reach the center (where you have the tank station, the hotel, the caidat, and a little bit further away the big hotel with its swimming pool, that you reach in five minutes), the bus crosses a village of small house with flat roofs hanging on the slopes of the mountain, on a small road without tarmac, just like a berber village in the mountains. We see passing by women dressed... not like the women of Tazzarine, but like Berber of the mountains (do you feel I'm repeating myself a bit ?) or heavily veiled like Arabic women.

A woman veiled with the Arabic way in Marrakech

In the South, the clothes are still very traditionnal, and specially for women. When you really know the country, you can recognize their village (and hence their tribe) the way they dress. Women of the Draa valley have large skirts, a headdress of bounty colors and a large black cotton shawl embroidered with gaudy wool. When you see a woman plainly veiled from the top of the head to her shoes in a long heavy black veil without decoration, you can be sure she belongs to the few Arabic population, not the the Berber.

Woman of the Draa valley (in Agdz)

So we're in Tazzarine, there is no tarmac because someone decided to remove it, and just for the occasion, many women from different villages of the area decided to have a walk in the village. Come on !

Finally, the bus takes on the right (where you have actually a mountain in Tazzarine) and climbs.

Tazarine is a village in the Draa valley. Old houses are in the ksours, a kind of fortified village with very narrow streets, often covered, where such a bus would never ever pass. The houses in the ksour are over several levels, and they are not separated one from the other, like shown in the movie. And the very few houses built on the highs are modern ones, made of concrete.

Finally the poor woman is laid in a house, on a ground just covered with a small rug. It's hot, the sky is cloudy, the other tourists believe in an attentat, are scared and want to leave. Brad Pitt try to convince them to stay, the bus could be of any use (I still wonder which one), and he finally runs to the only telephone in the village, to try to get in touch with his sister, in the States, and have her manage everything, "call the embassy, they can find us, we're in Tazarine, take care of the kids..."

Even,... even if there was not an impressive quantity of teleboutiques (phone cabins) in Tazzarine...
Even... if the story happens before ADSL and Skype...
Do you really believe a Moroccan bus driver, in charge of a full Pullman bus, and without a cellular phone ?
Do you really believe in a Moroccan village without a cellular phone ?

I don't. And if you believe it, you've never been to Morocco.

The story becomes more and more irrealistic, the so-called sole ambulance (actually, we have two ambulances in Tazzarine, and two nearby) does not arrive, without us knowing why, and the scared tourists leave in the bus while Brad Pitt is making his phone call. Here also, I can't believe it. It's totally unamerican.

For the ambulance, we'll learned at the end of the movie that the embassy did not want to use the it, because it was Moroccan, and wanted to have them taken away in helicopter (like in Iran), and Moroccan authority did not want to open their sky to an american helicopter.

I bring to the attention of the scenarist that Moroccan army, Moroccan emergency services and international emergency companies like Europ Assistance have available a certain number of helicopters, and that, in any case, nobody would ever leave a wounded woman bleeding and risking her life in a place like depicted in the movie - and even in Tazzarine - for more than one day before help arrives. Moroccan civil services can be surprising, but they have, as Americans, a good sense of priorities.

(writing that I find it so stupid I really have to check on Babel's website, yes, it's for more than a day... )

And, cherry on the cake, the suture episod... Cate is bleeding, her wound must be stitched, and the bus driver looked for a doctor. The only doctor in Tazzarine... which will be a vet (and an old man, you see, not the style to have learned his tradein Casablanca's university). He will make the stitch with a big needle hardly sterilized on the flamme of a lighter, with a thread not so clean, which you don't want to imagine where it was before.

Nowadays, only the most remote places in the mountains have no nurse. In Tazzarine, not only have we two ambulances, we also have, permanently, a nurse, and there is a doctor. Nurse whom I met last time I was there. And who uses the most sterilized material, for example for the circumcison !

I agree, in a way I'm nitpicking. I focused on Tazzarine, because I was told the movie took place here. Instead of Tazzarine, it would have been a small village lost at the end of a track, in Saro or Jebel Kissan, I would haven't been disturbed by all these details.
But that story does not make sense either. It is impossible to bring such a Pullmann bus in such a place, so remote places at the end of a few off-road drive.

That's a small Berber villge in High Atlas

I can't have an enlightened opinion on the plausibility of the japanese part, I don't know this culture, I might be surprised by things which are possible...

In a way, it is a pity to remain outside of a story for such details. The purpose of Babel is not to describe Morocco, it is to show, in all parts of the world, people isolated in their sufferings and problems, at the same time very far away one from the others, in different situations, and at the same time very near and similar (well... if I understood correctly). But the film speaks (and not so well) of a place I love, it uses the name of Tazzarine, it pretends to show the life in this village, and what he shows is false. Would it have been so difficult to take another name ? Even to invent one ?

Tazzarine is already not so well treated in Lonely Planet and other guides, who pretend there is nothing to see... if it presented like a middle of nowhere, without ambulance, doctor, hotel, cyber...

On the other hand, one thing I really love was the photo. Sets are splendid, and, to fit with the dark mood, the sun is away. Landscapes, under this heavy blanket of clouds, are muted, red, ocher, dark, and splendid. Our country is beautiful under the sun, and beautiful also without sun...

Palm grove in Skoura

And I'm obviously not the only one to think so ! See here

The drums of Ashura

In my bedroom on the terrace of the ryad, small drums give rhythm to the evening and seem to come from everywhere around. The sun is down, the birds don't sing anymore, and the sounds of the city reach the roof. But the shouts of the merchants, donkey drivers, roars of bikes hardly passing through the narrow streets are covered by the laughs of the children preparing Ashura.

The day of Ashura, the tenth (ashura) of the month of Muharram has very diverse meanings and connotations through the Muslim world. Day of grief and sorrow for the Shiites who revive every year the martyr of Hussein and his family, Muhammad's grandson killed by the ommeyades in the struggle for the power, it becomes much less important in the Sunni world, where it is nothing more than one of the two days of fast that became optional after the institution of Ramadan.

It can also be associated to the deads, and the visit to the cemetery where candles will be burned, like in Tunisia. At the same time, and specially in north Africa, it is linked with the very old and pre-islamic rites of resurrection, and, again like in Tunisia, bonfires are made, and children jump over them singing, like in our Saint-Jean.

In Morocco, Ashura is, above anything, the celebration of the children and family. Like any celebration, it is a day of charity, and also repentance, which comes from the very first signification of Ashura (taken by Muhammad from the Jewish fast of Yom Kippur, the Great Forgiveness), remain linked to the religious fast.
But for children, there is nothing but fun and feast, a strange mix of Carnival and Saint Nicolas. They receive new clothes, small toys, music instruments, and stroll in the streets, asking a few dirham to the people passing by, and preparing themselves for the great day of the morrow, "Zem-Zem".

"Zem-Zem" is the name of a well in Mecca. In Morocco, Zem-Zem is the day of watering. Every child (normally under 12) has a complete freedom to water the grown-ups, and they run around the fountains to take some water with them and go back spraying friends and neighbors.

In the countryside, other rites near to Carnival also exist. Men disguise themselves into women and pass from one house to the other singing...

In our south, in Tazzarine, a man is going to dress in a somehow frightening way, and put on his head some burning palms, like horns. Followed by all the children of the village, laughing and singing, he goes from one house to the other, knocking at each door to ask for Gaddid (meat of the mutton of the Aïd El Kebir, spiced and dried, which can be held for a whole year). He insists and stays in front of the door as long as he has not received his part. He always wins over the avaricious, and finishes his day, with all the children, in a remote part of the ksour, sharing generously his gaddid with them in a happy and delicious meal.

This year, Ashura will take place on the 29th of January. One week before, the whole city is preparing itself. In the narrow streets of the medina I see many small kids sitting in front of a large plate full of candies, at each corner a small shop sells drums... these very same drums that play in the beginning of my night.

My dunes are not yours

A man died in the sand dunes yesterday evening. Dunes we walked through a few days ago, wondering about the vivacity of the small green sprouts surging everywhere after the rain.
The desert was green. A very relative idea of green, of course, nothing to see with the Wales or Yorkshire, more a simple shade, like a muslin veil thrown over the erg, hard to distinguish as soon as you come nearer, but undoubtedly there.

Plants are fixing the desert. Sand progresses, in Morocco like in Mauritania, like everywhere. In a few months it can passes over the wall of our Oasis, and after a sand storm, large roads like the one between Erfoud and Rissani looks like a Saharan track. Lines of reeds are planted, tightly, to fix the dunes and stop their progression.



One day is enough for the Dakar to destroy that.

Of course, the Dakar is also (a little bit) profitable for local people. For two or three days, a large number of tourists land in a city, support teams, journalists, real and false V.I.P., people offered a small trip by their company, people following the Dakar, people making photos, people feeling important, adventurous, etc. Ouarzazate was traffic-jammed yesterday, a very unusual view of Mohammed V avenue, once littered with cars. You even had to walk a few meters away to park your car ! Not a rental car available anymore, not a free hotel room anymore.
For hotel, for car renters, for some restaurants, Dakar is a good opportunity, bringing several hundreds of customers at a high price, and off-season. But for the others ? Dakar brings its own infrastructure, a large part of the support (food, mechanics, even fuel) is brought directly from Europe… Hotel managers in Ouarzazate are not the Aït Haddidou nomads whose grazing areas are partially destroyed by the race, neither the inhabitants of Tazarine who see, some years, a flock of a new kind of locusts fly in for a day, leaving the tracks damaged, if not utterly destroyed.

Dakar is a killer. Was there a year without a death ? Participant, organizer, or worse even, a child looking at the cars passing by and not jumping aside quick enough.
Is the game worth it ? Surely for those who take part in it. Any death is deeply unfair and sad, but to die instantly, in the middle of a race, at a time one realizes his dream, seems not so sad, not so unfair as the fate of a child being killed by a machine appearing out of a sand cloud, the modern humming mowing-machine, as hard to understand for these kids of the remote doyars as could be the first trains for the peasant of the last century (actually the next to last century, I have a tendency to forget we are now in the 21st century!).

Dakar has been a real adventure, it has been the opportunity for a beautiful race, opened to amateurs like professionals, it has been the immersion in splendid, difficult and awesome landscapes. It has also lost all of that, becoming a huge organisation, a machine to make money. But it has never ever been the discovery of the desert.

Desert is loneliness, endless repetition of the same empty landscape, to and over the horizon, time passing by without anything moving, anything else than the feet of the nomad walking along his camel. Desert is abrasion by time and nothing, sun burning, salt burning, cold at night, dried lips and eyes tired by reflections over the black stones. It is silence, when one starts to perceive the small moves of insects, the far away echo, feeble as the dream of music in the oasis, the sudden fall of some sand under a bird.

How can you discover the desert when you cover in one day the distance nomads made in more than a week ? How can you actually see the landscapes, amidst the sand clouds of cars and trucks ? How can you feel desert's heat when you're sweating in you protective clothes and helmet ? How can you hear the furtive gliding snake going to meet the Little Prince among the roaring motors ?

The most accurate about the Dakar is its name. Dakar is a raid, a quick incursion into one's territory to rob him and leave him poorer than before. The small news clip showing Elmer Symons laying dead along his bike, with pieces of it scattered around was shown and shown again. Dakar does not even respect those who are part of it.

New generation of school teachers

Like in any school in the world, good pupils are in front, and the more troublesome try to hide behind. Our arrival has troubled the quiet school, all schoolmasters are in front of their classrooms, which are full with the laughs of the children. They saw us, and expect a very welcomed diversion, shortening their 45 minutes lessons. We are in the month of Ramadan, in the end of the morning, and everyone is happy to stop for a while.

In the Aït Ballouk doyar, in Tazzarine, there are five schoolmasters in the primary school. The class are reasonably populated, between 20 and 30 pupils.


Mohammed Khalloufi is one of those young teachers who do everything they can imagine to help their pupils, to push them a little bit further, learn other things than the official program and make them discover the world. He has an incredible IT equipment, a laptop, a DVD burner, a satellite card with which he can record TV shows from the whole world. A beamer, loud-speakers, also, and he regularly organises, in his class-room or at home, slide shows. In his class-room they are serious ones, at one, more fun, like cartoons, but he always uses them to teach something new.

He uses topical events, special days like « World Day of Ozone » or « World Day against Tuberculosis », of the Moroccan Day for safe driving (so much needed). He builds his slide-shows with videos, texts, looks for references on Encarta, to keep it short he acts like did our old schoolmasters, and try to bring his pupils all the knowledge available on Internet.

Tuberculosis for example is a question of health and biology. But also history (who did discover it), and prophylaxis. Each of his slideshows tries to give practical things to do. And he hopes the children will transfer the message to the parents. Because books are very rare here, and there is no other source of information than TV


ADSL, which arrives in the countryside had really changed Mohammed’s life !!

Education is one of the biggest challenges of modern Morocco. With a birth rate over 22%, young children are more and more to knock on schools’ doors, when, with action against illiteracy, women and adults come back to study after school hours.

These two last years saw proud proclamations from the Ministry of Education, with a schooling rate of nearly 99% of the children of age to enter primary school. The main black areas are in the remote mountain villages, specially in Middle and Anti Atlas, and by the nomads, for obvious reasons. Also many children leave school early, and leave at the end of elementary school, to become apprentice.

But, one after the other “colleges” (from 13 to 15) open, offering general or technical cursus. It is easier for a young to pass his baccalaureat (equivalent of A/O levels), and grants are given for poor families to send their children to university.



Everything is not perfect, far from it. There are still a lot of old school masters, hastily trained after the independence, some of them even did not know the topics they taught their pupils just by asking them to learn their books by heart.

Today, Morocco still misses many teachers, and the lessons can start quite late after the official date, even with one month delay.
Young teachers sent in the remote doyars (villages) have a very hard life, even more when they are Arabs (and from the city) in Berber area, their contacts with the population can be limited to nearly nothing, because of the language gap, and a quite old mistrust.

A Moroccan primary school teacher earns at the beginning around 200 euros per months, and up to 600 per month at the end of his career. (Minimal salary is 180 euro per month). He has quite often a high diploma, 3 or 4 years at university, but he had to take this profession, by lack of other opportunities. He wants to help his pupils as much as possible to improve their future.

If you pass by Tazzarine, Mohammed will be very happy to open his classroom to you.

If you want to help a class or a school in Morocco, you can :

• give school stationery, which you purchase in Morocco (it helps the local shops, and, « all inclusive » it is cheaper than bringing it from Europe), like notebooks, pens, chalks, school books, etc… and even aprons and satchels. The school teacher or the caïd (administrative manager of the village) will distribute them to the families needing them
• give material for the class, glob, maps, posters, IT equipment, books and dictionaries. Here also, it is better to buy as much as possible in the village, even if some of it can be found only in the cities. Even in Ouarzazate everything is not available and we sometimes have to go up to Marrakech
• when you’re a teacher yourself, you can organize an exchange with one of your classes. Letters, exchanges, even a long-term sponsorship (and why not a school travel ?) would be a wonderful opportunity for both sides.