From Thursday through Sunday, our village hosted a festival known as a mussim in honor of a local saint (a mirabout). The first two days were strictly market days where vegetables, meat, trinkets, a few rugs, and especially candy were sold. There was also a homemade Ferris wheel, a monkey or two, and some magicians. Saturday was a day of rest except for a couple of soccer games where our team played against one from a nearby village. Sunday was the biggest day by far. The vendors where in full force, several troubadour bands were present, and several thousand men, women, and children. Most had come to see what is known as fantasia. A group of men in white robes, traditional wear and carrying rifles rode into town on ornate horses. They marched through the center of town with the throng of people closely following and chanting. Behind souk, a young cow was slaughtered in the midst of a huge crowd and the eerie, high pitched wail of women (like that scene in Lawrence of Arabia) who were crowding the rooftops that commanded a good view. No one was hurt. After a few words by a local holy man, the horse riders moved to a different location where they could get their horses into a full run. For about half an hour, the horsemen would ride from one end of the clearing to the other occasionally firing their rifles.
We used the mussim as an opportunity to do some educational activities. The previous week, students from the middle school painting club and environmental club designed environmentally themed mural ideas on large pieces of construction paper. The teachers and a few volunteers then voted on their favorite paintings. The winning two ideas will soon be painted next to the door of the local market area. All of the classes in the middle school had a chance to view all of the drawings, affording an opportunity for the headmaster and myself to do a few short, environmental lessons. During the mussim, all of these designs were displayed on a prominent wall for several hours, offering more opportunity for environmental lessons. In addition, 5 other volunteers came to the festival to help with health education booths. On Thursday, we talked for several hours in front of approximately 500 people about how to treat water for drinking as well as the importance of drinking enough water. Free samples of water helped draw in a crowd. We also tried to get some hula-hoop competitions started amongst the kids, but most were too shy to give it a try. On Sunday, a booth was set up to educate about SIDA (French AIDS). The PC librarian created an audio CD which included educational talks about AIDS as well as songs and rhetorical questions to help education about AIDS prevention. This CD was played on repeat for several hours. Simultaneously, we handed out about 400 informational pamphlets as well as red ribbons. A bean bag toss in the shape of an AIDS ribbon was made, and kids had a lot of fun trying to get the bean bag in for a ribbon. Posters were also displayed throughout the mussim.

Gardening at Middle School

This past week was the Prophet’s birthday so we had a five day weekend. We took this chance to head north to the Rif mountains and to the city of Fes. We visited a town called Chefchaouen (described as the most beautiful small town in Morocco) in the mountains known for its blueness (many walls and walkways and doors are blue-washed.) The whole area was beautiful and green, a drastic difference to the south of Morocco. We stayed in a small pension called Hotel Mauritania, which was small and cozy and with good character. We spent our time there wandering the streets and taking lots of blue photos and hiking in the mountains nearby. The area is also known for it’s marijuana which is why no peace corps volunteers are in the Rif. There are quite a few farmers offering agro-tourism of their marijuana farms. There is also a very heavy Spanish influence there (makes sense, very close to Spain.) The textiles and even the music had a definite Spanish twist and Spanish is spoken before French which is used in most of Morocco. After exploring Chefchaouen for two nights we headed by bus to Fes, described as the most complete medieval city in the Arab world. It’s a big modern city with many ancient monuments hidden in its windy streets. Fes is known for its leather tanneries which we were able to visit and its old medersas or Islamic colleges. We spent our time there wandering the streets. We’ve been watching quite a bit of bizarre foods with Andy Zimmern, so we decided to try lots of street food. We had a chance to taste makootas (fried mashed potato cakes), pastilla (fried meat pie filled with chicken or beef or rice or noodles), camel burger, spleen sandwich, variety of fried fish and a variety of fresh baked breads. We didn’t try everything though, there were lots of unidentifiable organs and fish in lard that we chose to pass up.