Morocco- Amellago- 2nd part
A place where we can imagine staying longer… we enjoyed it a lot.
So where did we spend the rest of our time in Morocco? In Amellago! It wasn’t us who chose this place but our donkey Beddu! In our last blog we wrote about our hike in the mountains with our “tired and old” Beddu and that we could not hike any further, so unfortunately we had to make new plans. We were a bit disenchanted and did not know exactly how and where to travel further. We stayed at Hamid’s place and had beautiful conversations and a great time with him.
After a few days staying there we met a woman; she went to town and the first things she asked us were if we needed some Red Bull or…
A love story started right in the moment when she invited us to her house! Kathi is her name; she is from Ireland and has the age of our parents. Kathi was the reason and inspiration for staying in Amellago for 6 weeks. We cannot describe how happy we were just to be there.
She was busy with building a chicken house in her yard and we thought that it would be a great idea to help her. So we parked our van in her yard and dove into another atmosphere and had splendid days together. Maybe it sounds a bit exaggerated but when we think back at the time with Kathi we look up to a high peak.
And now we are going to tell you why ;) She has all kind of wood tools you can imagine! That’s all… and maybe because she can use them very well and can teach a lot without using a lot of words. And after using them she cleans every single tool carefully. Kathi is wonderful and she has real and good vibes. She never works but plays; everything she does is done with love and care. We always spend very funny evenings, other where very deep and spiritual, she plays passionately the guitar and loves our favorite games “Wizard and Rummy Cup”! Time was not important! Every day we enjoyed in a peaceful atmosphere created by us three
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Thanks to the one who let crossing our paths!
Kathi lives in Amellago since many years. She found this place randomly by traveling with her caravan like us and immediately fell in love with the place. Amellago is situated in the Atlas on around 1700m altitude and there is just peace and tranquility. Many years ago Kathi bought some earth ruins and started rebuilding them all to one traditional earth house, which is just beautiful. Every day we discovered more gorgeous details. And when we woke up we had an amazing view to the mountains, the fields and river. Heavy loaded donkeys or women were passing by the house coming from the fields.
Every day we learned something about building and the chicken house became a chicken palace. It was lots of fun building with earth, making a door out of reed or cutting it. We got lots of inspiration for building and so we started refreshing the inside of our van, too and could hardly stop... a new roof rack, bench, pillows, wardrobe, paintings and a dragon…
After 3 weeks Kathi was leaving to the States and we did some housekeeping. Every day we enjoyed being in her house. But in Morocco you are never alone and far away from the touristic places the people are very friendly, open, curios and so we had a lot of contact with the inhabitants of Amellago. This was the first place where we did not have the sensation of being tourists. Staying longer at one place helped us breaking through a membrane making friends. We spent a lot of time with the Moroccans and learned a lot from each other. In the evenings they came to cook some traditional food for us, David was playing Bool with the other men in a little café, we got fresh butter or milk which was soooo tasty. We both can integrate and adapt to different cultures which was very helpful in Morocco.
But sometimes there was no way to understand their way of acting. Even if you are relaxed and not thinking like a western person you will think what the fuck?! Things have to be done over and over again, because they don´t listen, care... Actually Moroccans can improvise very well, why? Because everything they build will break down after a while and they are forced to rebuild it without the right material and tool. Luckily it is never a problem from their point of view. They always will tell you: “pas de problem!” It happened that we both freaked out because of this sentence. Why is it so hard to admit a problem and to talk about “problems”? From our origin and way of thinking it is hard to understand. But with such cultural differences you have to deal with or leave if you cannot. Anyway you sometimes need lots of patience...
BUT beyond that the most impressive thing is their hospitality. In the village you can go everywhere to ask for bread, the people invite you for some tea and they are very lovely. Also the children are very open and curious…. After a while they came every day for playing badminton and with the Frisbee. It is so different to Europe because the children spend the whole day outside without parents and they are very handy. They go fishing in the river, playing in the mountains or stealing a chicken. Which child in Europe would know how to kill and pluck a chicken, making a fire and cook it on it… unluckily it was Kathi’s chicken they stole ;)
December 2016, Terror and Christmas in Europe, the end of the year and almost the end of our stay in Morocco. We could feel that a lot that things went wrong in Europe; the guys from the Internal security often came to us just checking if everything is fine. They were scared and we never knew why?! We wished that the peace of Amellago would spread everywhere. In Morocco we never felt unsave but back in time and we loved staying without television, reading news and going back to basic things in life. e.g. making your own butter, bread, carpets, building with earth, working in the fiels without big mashines but animals, having animals like cows and chickens in your house and cooking over fire.... and not using pesticides! it felt so great and healthy being there.
We also had nothing to do with Christmas and New Year’s Eve party. This was the first time in our life that we haven’t seen all this commercial Christmas stuff, no hectic, and stress searching the right presents... This was so great and calm. Of course we missed our family and friends a bit more than usually but it was an interesting experience for us. We celebrated New Year’s Eve with two other Moroccans in the mountains. We cooked a tasty tajine and a fresh 100 % natural chicken… and one beer each since a long time...
How shall we finish our story in Morocco…?
Like everywhere you have rumors…one day a guy told us that the people from the village think that we ran out of money and that this is the reason why we can`t drive back home. We told the people that it is not like this but that we love the place and that we will leave Morocco when our visa will be expired.
The evening before we left we made a little farewell party with some barbecue and the next morning we said goodbye to everybody. But then our closest friend Atman came with an envelope full of money. He wanted to give it to us. We were speechless. He tried to give us the money serveral times because he thought we might need it. This was so sweet and kind and hard to believe. For us these people are very rich, maybe not in money but in their values and lifestyle. Beate started crying; a man who has to work hard for this money to feed his family wanted to give us so much. Of course we did not accept but we very touched emotionally.
The poorest are the most generous!
more pic, click here!