dense igran of Asfalou

After eating lunch in our Asfalou language and cultural madrassa, I often walk through the fields of beans, alfalfa, & wheat to find a spot to sit and draw. This usually involves negotiating the low dirt ridges that channel the irrigation water through groves of olive trees filled with noisy birds, and finding the shade of a tall date palm to sit in, then finding room on the ground between the buzzing ant hills. I'm hoping this place burns into my head.

between the Atlas and the Sahara

Home for these first months in the Maghreb has been a farming village by a small river draining from the High Atlas Mountains capped with snow in the background. A system of irrigation ditches helps maintain a narrow strip of lush fields growing wheat, alfalfa, olive and almond trees and date palms.

Above these fields about 600 people and their livestock live in low houses made of clay mud blocks or concrete. Surrounding this and other nearby villages is a barren yellow and red landscape of rocky ridges stretching to the high dunes of the Sahara.


Daytime sounds of motorcycles or trucks passing through, donkeys braying, and the lone muezzin calling out prayer times gives way at night to the silence of wind and stars.

Morocco or bust!

Jma el Fna, Marrakech

A disorienting few days being quickly ushered through piles of policies and paperwork in Marrakech culminated in a long, windy road trip for more orientation and training in Ouarzazate. Going over the High Atlas Mountains was a good match for what was happening in my head. The road increasingly turned back on itself as we climbed ever higher. I had to grit my teeth to distract from the growing nausea, but the sights through the window compelled me to keep looking. The smooth, newly upholstered, gendarme-escorted bus seemed to make the the dizziness worse.

For several days after arrival in North Africa, we were semi-sequestered in calm, non-threatening hotel resorts. Instead of the immediate confrontation usually suffered upon arrival in a foreign country (which somehow leads to quickly getting one's bearings and adjusting to the new smells and sounds there), we were cared for and protected... and I kept failing to feel prepared or properly oriented.

But the excitement over the next two years, and the distant mountains and desert held my focus enough to make it through the dizzy period.

crossing the Tizi-n-Test Pass, High Atlas Mountains

arrival in the dessert