May 21, 2009

Today was one of those days where I had no idea what was going to happen, in retrospect. I took up my counterpart’s (with the Department of Water and Forests) offer to ride along with some of the foresters to see what sort of work they do. I thought I’d ride around with them for the morning, and then go back to town, so I planned on doing a bunch of things in the afternoon. Well, the day started off bright and early at 7am, and I rode with 4 other guys in their truck to meet up with about 4 other guys from other W&F offices in the area. It was tricky from the get-go, because most of the guys spoke darija (Moroccan Arabic) and French, and a few words of English. I thought to myself “great, my limited Tamazight knowledge is sure going to help me out today.” I found out later in the day that most of the guys also spoke Tamazight, so it was just fine. The task for the day was to locate points on a map with GPS units. These points were supposed to be forested areas, problem was, they were incorrect, so we ended up in a couple fields. They measured the distance to an actual forested area, and then they marked and described 20 trees close to the GPS points. I actually comprehended the task when they explained it, which amazed me. Every year after this a W&F specialist will visit the spots to see if the trees are still there and in good condition. After doing two such plots, I was feeling kind of hungry and figured we’d head back to town and that would be that. Boy was I wrong, and I’m glad I was wrong. We stopped in a small village and picked up another W&F guy and had lunch at his neighbor’s (or family member’s, I’m not quite sure) house. What a feast. We had tajine AND cous cous, followed up with a plate of bananas (you can guess how I reacted to that) and delicious honeydew melons. The guys quizzed me on the basics of Tamazight (what is: table, tea, tajine, house. Yeah, I got it).
After lunch we headed in the opposite direction of my town for about 30km to what I guessed was our last plot point. I guessed right on that one, finally. The area we were in was absolutely gorgeous. I’m happy I felt that way, because we spent the next 4 hours hiking up and around a mountain range, trying to locate that damn point. That was some of the steepest hiking I’ve ever done, and several times I thought I was going to slip and tumble to my disfigurement or death. Some of the "trails" were about half as wide as the width of my foot. It was so much fun. I was pretty tired afterward, but I think the day went swimmingly well, and I came away with some nice new acquaintances/friends. It was nice to come back to town and be able to kinda/sorta communicate with my friends in Tamazight. Well, I’ve got pictures up from my first three weeks in town, including today’s hiking.