Camel Safari!!

Day 5- June 5
Thursday marked the halfway point of our first full week. We are now starting to feel comfortable in our placements and how to maneuver around the city. That afternoon's class was about cooking and Arabic script. Khadija first taught us how to make Chicken Tagine which gets its name from the ceramic tagine people cook with. They use many, many spices with many, many vegetables. She also taught us how to make their infamous tea they drink every opportunity given to them. The Arabic script was very interesting as they read and write it from right to left and each sign signifies an enunciation rather than a letter. All of the signs in Morocco are in Arabic followed by the script. That evening some friends, Dustin and I went to the bar "The Upstairs" which is an American bar which had a 2 piece band playing songs in English but ironically the waiter knew no English :)

Day 6- June 6
Friday was our last day at placement of our first full week. We grew from 5 people on Monday to close to 20 on Friday. We do not have afternoon classes on Fridays as everyone is getting ready for their weekend trips which led us to Merzouga for a CAMEL SAFARI!!!

Twelve of us CCS volunteers left at 2:00 pm on Friday for a 10 hour drive southeast through Morocco to a small village called Merzouga. Along the way we stopped at a few overlooks and oasis's and stopped to play with the monkeys at Azrou all while winding our way around the Atlas mountains in a 12 passenger van :) We arrived at our hotel at 1:30 am which was a wonderful riad with amazing rooms and the cutest camel pool. We met up with our group at 10:00 am Saturday to take a tour of the village with Alli and explained their water system which is a very little channel system that runs between the farm lots. Each lot has a channel coming from the main that directs the water to their area. The lots are allotted 4 hours of water each week and the water is diverted to their lot by blocking the other channels with sand. Each family is obligated to block their channel with sand after their 4 hours is up to move it to the next lot. Their houses and buildings are made of a mixture of hay and a type of clay. They also use a lot of cement when they can. In the desert, they have access to water which is only a few feet below the ground. They dig wells every 15 feet or so so if there is a blockage of water they can check the wells to see where the problem is. It is a very simple way of living yet we take so much for granted!! Next we went to an old slave village (that is actually what Alli called it) where they had a shop set up with hundreds of rugs and carpets and other items they make. Of course, we had to have tea with them first :) We then went to a little building where they played their music and danced, with tea as well... We finally went out to a deserted lot where they let the camels graze while they are not being used. Each camel is branded so the owners know which ones are theirs. We were able to go back to the hotel and sit by the pool for about 3 hours before saddling up our camels :) At 6:00 pm, we met behind the hotel to board our camels which we rode for 1.5 hours winding through the Sahara until we arrived at our Berber tent village. This was made up of about 15 tents (7-8 on each side) equipped with solar electricity for lights and makeshift kitchen. They later told us the solar panels are very expensive but the tourism brings in so much money they need them to make the experience worth it. We each got our own berber tent with a full king or queen size bed. We all ran up to the top of the sand dunes to watch the sunset and ran back down to have our supper but don't forget about the tea :) That evening some of the workers performed their music on bongos and those metal pieces again. We woke up Sunday morning to ride the camels back to the hotel and watch the sunrise. It was all very surreal, and I still have to look back at the pictures to tell myself I was actually there. We then boarded our 12 passenger van for the 10 hour drive back to Rabat. (I won't bore you with the details of the overused air conditioning leaking all over us on the way there to it breaking down/not keeping up on the way home so it was extremely stuffy, but hey, when else are you going to experience a 10 hour hot and sweaty bus ride through the amazing land of Morocco with 12 other fantastic friends you met a week and a half ago :) NEVER)