Ait M'hamed Days 10 & 11
Day 10
Had a hard morning throwing up again but since Abdellatif was ill yesterday I still wanted to get some interviews done. Despite there being lost of animals, I have only seen women carrying touga once to their homes (not sure where they sources it). Although I have seen touga drying and in animals pens each day walking around the douar, I have yet to see an active collecting aside from participating in two. The heavier focus on grazing here seems the main interaction with wild fodder plants. And Grazing seems largely to be guiding the herds- hiking and standing by them- and throwing rocks near the animals to keep them in the right areas.
We found Touda amongst the many bustling stalls at the Saturday souq (market). She introduced us to several women with whom to conduct interviews and surveys. Although this proved more of a challenge, sounds smells and sales happening all around, and a few of the women were doing some shopping at the same time, purchasing dates, special Ramadan confections, olives and mint for the week ahead of special iftar and suhour meals for the holiday.
I was getting so nauseous and light headed so we finished early but still got 6 interviews and one PO- a good day. Interestingly similar to Esne in Imegdale, cows are not eaten here, not that people are against eating cows since only pigs are forbidden to eat in Islam, but they seem to present more value and give more food when just used for milk products and selling the calves, but the use of milk products in diet was more prevalent in Amslane from what I’ve seen here. Although it now being Ramadan its harder to observe the dietary habits except with a few families and Malika.
Day 11
Glad I’m here in spring while so much is in bloom- much easier to identify the plants with the flowers still vibrant. We waited for Touda and managed to do 3 surveys and some plant identification with women, one grazing by the river. One was Touda’s neighbour who had some very sweet children, kids here are shy but still seem so interested these strange foreigners visiting. After we went on a long hike though the hills behind the school and Malika’s douar and Abdellatif and I had some interesting conversation about Islam and holidays in Morocco- but at one point we had to divert course since the dogs were being very aggressive. I was able to take pictures of a few more wild touga species that have been mentioned to us. When we reached the bigger washing river we met another women grazing and walked with her and conducted a survey as well- although she was quite hesitant at first until she heard we were working with her neighbour Touda. People are vary wary of foreigners, I wonder what the experience of other researchers is like, and if there were an bad events that led to this, (other than the obvious colonial and other invading forces). After we crossed the river I took more pictures of wild touga in a touga/timzine field (one of Hassan’s father’s rental fields).
On the way back into town we took a different path along the river and walked by the mosque. The houses in that part of town- by where the many souk stalls are erected each week- are quite small and seem much more derelict than the homes on the hills but painted and constructed in a similar style. Felt rather faint since I have not eaten in two days (sick and fasting) so we decided to finish and meet tomorrow when more people would be in the centre (Sundays are always washing days and souks in other communes so little activity to observe).
Back at Malika’s house, I was doing my washing by the front door two little cats ran inside, I thought both had gone back outside but half an hour later another ran from the kitchen and I opened the door to let it back outside. Love all the cats but wish they were less afraid. The ones in Marrakech sometimes are more friendly and let you pet them, but the ones here just hang around for food and get close to people but not close enough to touch.