A little info about our village...

We thought we’d take a little bit of space to tell you about our douar (village) and community. Just some basic stuff like who lives here, what we do for a living, how many of us there are, and all that. Hopefully too a little bit about what is worn here, what kinds of things are eaten…but let’s start with the basics!

First, here is a little map of our douar and the ones around us. We didn’t put names of douars for security’s sake, so it is a little vague, but gives the general picture. Our douar is about 4 kilometers from the main road, and the farthest douar (the one we haven’t visited) is 11. These are all considered our site, or area to work, although it isn’t expected that we’ll hit all of them equally, just that we’ll seek out the greatest needs and people interested in working with us.



Okay, so, our douar has about 1100 people in it, and that translates to about 125 households. Some employment is in our local government or schools, in the little city about 15 km away, or in one of our little shops in town. There is a large percentage of men who seek jobs in other parts of Morocco, both in private businesses and in the military. Also, some families have sons and daughters living and working abroad. France is very common, because French is taught in schools to all children and used in official documents, etc., but places like Spain or Italy are possible as well.

The whole of Morocco is composed of people of Arabic and Berber descent. We are located in the province of Tata, which is composed primarily of people of Berber descent who speak a Berber dialect called Tashelheet. For a reason we don’t know yet, our little group of douars, except for one, speak Arabic. Despite this, in most of the douars there is strong Berber influence on the culture. In addition, there is a strong cultural influence from the south of Morocco and the Saharan culture there. For example, the way we demonstrated of making tea is generally acknowledged here to be “Saharawi.”

Dress is one readily apparent thing influenced by this mix of cultures. From the south comes the Saharan wrap that is worn by some women here. (For a picture of me displaying it, click here. In some of the douars here, that is all that is worn. In our douar about half of the women wear that, and about half wear the Berber influenced dress. For some women, it just depends on the day! The Berber women’s wear consists of a multi-layered satiny skirt, usually in white or light blue, and long of course. On top they wear a black scarf. Aha, I found a picture...



(From this website...http://lexicorient.com/morocco/tata.htm)

Just a quick note, pictures are sensitive things in this culture. People are often hesitant to let you take them, unless they know you well, because they are not sure who all will see them, and that they will be respectfully used. For that reason we've been slow to use our camera in town. We imagine eventually we'll start taking pictures of people we know and memories around town and all, but even when we do, we can't post them online without asking the people in them... Many people in town are quite unfamiliar with the internet, but even if they did fully understand, probably wouldn't feel comfortable with pictures in such a public place... We want to share our lives with you, and so we just want to explain why pictures of the people around us may be scarce, but we'll do our best!

That’s probably a good amount of info for now, we’ll add some more next week, and let us know if you have any particular questions you’d like us to answer!!