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Soggy Surveys

Amslane Day 8- Rainy days and lengthy interviews

poppies and brassica flowers by the football field

Getting warm by the taket oven

The past few days have not been the sunny Morocco I was expecting, and today was just as wet. Thankful did not fall in the river like yesterday while I was doing plant surveys along at the north end of the village, (my shoes are still damp haha). Collected plants on the lower mountainsides near the road and fields for botanical identification tasks. Although given that the women gather everything and let the animals graze on anything its more just to find if there are plants they don’t like to use since all seem to be edible to livestock so far. Souad was tired and walked back so I continued to hike up the mountainside and explored more of the earthen canals by the football field. Found a wild spinach relative and snacked on it while scaling the rocks and ditches. Quite tasty, really missing having fresh greens, the diet here is more focused on cooked carrots potatoes and cauliflower in the daily lunch and dinner tagines this first week.

Souad and I ventured to the neighbour Iesha’s house. She Fadmah and Halti Mina all live there together and are the same family (cousins) of Brahim- so Idider as well. They served a delicious all vegetable tagine and has such nice light oven baked arrom (bread). After we conducted a household questionnaire- using the new questions we trialed before and ranking activity. The ranking activity was trickier than expected and since we had tea, tagine, and tea again before starting the interview questionnaire and activity it was quite a long visit to their house, hoping those in future are a little more smooth, they seems to be improving all the time with each group.

Did some ecological and botanical surveys on the mountainside later. The residents who saw me seemed to confused and were watching most of the time I was hiking and setting string quadrant plots. Choose an area where sheep were grazing and while I was working a woman was collecting tescara (s spiky Asteraceae) nearby. It was so cold and windy on the slope I had a hard time writing and staying focused when my hands were too cold to write, but it was great to see the diversity of plants. Right as I was finishing the sun came out, sending welcoming golden rays to the grey eastern slopes.

Souad and I went walking around a more central part of the eastern douar, and were greeted by a few older women who had come to visit Brahim’s house before. We were invited in to conduct another household questionnaire and ranking activity. (with a break for tea and bread in the middle- routine part of our interviews by now haha). Going to refine the questions a bit more since its just taking too long and Souad and I are having communication issues still- a week isn’t really long enough to get to know each other and establish a translation rhythm. She speaks fairly good English, but nuances in language on topics around ecology climate and cultural practice are not something she understands, not having been trained in it, also tediousness of research methods seems to be tiring. Still a productive session, and she is so helpful mediating and finding more people to meet with in the coming day which I really appreciate.

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