Tafilalt, aka the desert, but not really

Sorry I'm rather slow at updating, but I was sick this weekend, and I have a midterm this coming Friday. Anyway, last weekend my contemporary issues class took us to the Tafilalt oasis. It was another long bus ride, with only one or two available rest stops, but this time it was only 6 hours, instead of the 8 to Marrakech. The hotel was pretty nice, and I stayed with the same roommate I had last time, but for some reason, the room had one double and one single bed. Also, the shower was insane and sprayed water over the curtain and all over the bathroom. On Saturday, we did the usual tour of a bunch of significant sites - we went to a village in the oasis, and saw the irrigation system, which is actually a big issue here, since they put in a "modern" irrigation system that doesn't work for multiple reasons. First of all, it doesn't work with the traditional water ownership laws, and it doesn't deliver the water to the right places, so people have broken and redirected the new concrete irrigation system and channeled it back into the old routes. Then, on top of this, they built a dam on the river, and the authority that controls when the water is released from the dam is different from the authority that the deals with maintaining the irrigation system, so nothing is coordinated and the dam is opened at bad times, agriculturally. So, long story short this part of the oasis is dying. Because of this, a lot of people are leaving the region to move to the cities and the landscape is dotted with abandoned homes.
We also went to the ruins of Sigilmassa and the Qasr of the current royal family (a qasr is a type of walled village, usually made of mud brick) which has been turned into a museum. The curator of the museum was a friend of our professors, so after we looked around, we were treated to tea and peanuts. The tea in the south is different from the tea in the north, which is mintier and not as sweet. It was rather intense
After lunch, we went to the fossil museum (this part of Morocco is famous for fossils) and saw all these ridiculous fossilized creatures that looked like they were out of a sci fi movie. Then we went to Sidi Tuhami, which is a local qasr. We were supposed to go into the local association, which works to improve literacy, but the women were having Qu'ran lessons, so we had to leave the building (well, the men did, and both our teachers are men, so we went with them). Instead, the man who runs the association took us on a tour of the qasr. It was really interesting to see. The whole structure is made of mud brick, and many of the passages are completely enclosed to keep out the heat, so it was totally dark at points. As we walked through the qasr, we accumulated a group of about 13 or 14 children that were following us. They were super cute, and really polite, and I wanted to take pictures of them, but that is socially inappropriate. The guy who was giving us the tour then took us to his house, and served us tea and cookies and watermelon. While we were sitting in his parlor, one of his daughters kept waving at me to come over. I asked my teacher if I could go, but he said no, it was inappropriate. However, later the females in our group got permission to go out and meet the wife and the rest of the family. She was really nice, but she only spoke darija, the Moroccan dialect, and most of us knew very little darija, so it got a little awkward. As soon as it was time for us to leave, she disappeared into the kitchen, so the men in our group wouldn't see her.
After that stop, we headed to the Zawiyya al-Ghazi, which is one of the last functioning zawiyyas in the region. A zawiyya is sort of like a sufi mosque. The people who run this one are all descended from the founders of the zawiyya(a grandfather and grandson), who started it some time in the 16th century, or something like that. They treated us to the recitation of some passages of the Qu'ran and some poetry written by one of the founders and answered questions that we had. They didn't speak English, so one of our professors had to do some translating.
Then, just when we were getting into it, there was a huge commotion. Apparently, a resident of the zawiyya had recently had an operation and needed to get to the hospital, so they asked our driver to take him there, because no one in the zawiyya has a car and in order to get to the hospital, you need to find the ambulance, and the driver, and that could take too long. However, this is against the school's policy, so there was a big discussion, and eventually it was agreed that the driver could take the guy to the hospital as long as there was someone else with him to take responsibility and we didn't tell the school. The mood was sort of dead after that, so they served us dinner (special vegetarian versions for me) while we waited. They made this really good bread called medfouna (it means "buried") that is filled with onions and eggs and almonds and spices and meat for the meat eaters. Then after dinner, they did more recitation using drums and one guy even got up and went into trance (sort of looked like dancing).
However, it was around this time that I started to feel hot and exhausted. I went outside for a little while, and then felt a little better, but when I stood up after watching the recitation, I got incredibly dizzy. It was around 12:30 in the morning at this point, and I guess I had gotten too much sun or dehydrated or something (even though I wore a hat and drank lots of water) during the day. Anyway, I felt really horrible. I tried to rehydrate before I went to bed, but I still felt really sick in the morning. So while everyone else went out around town, I lay in bed eating little bites of toast and drinking little sips of water. Then we had to get back in the van to return to school. It was a rough trip back for me, although after lunch I felt a little better. We got back to school at 5 and I rested and did some reading and was pretty much okay by Monday.
I realize I haven't really said what I have been doing on campus, but this entry was really long, so I'll save it for another time, or not. Just let me know what you want to hear about. I promise pictures soon.

UPDATE: Photos posted.

Love,
Jacinthe