Village Voices of Kinship
I am often drawn to chaos, like a moth to a flame. Anything that ignites all five of my senses… and I wonder if a small part of that is the challenge. Can you cross the street without getting run over? Dodge the donkeys and camels in the streets? Barter your way in the souks? Or build up your adrenaline from the unexpected? Can you still maintain your cool and keep your peace? Finding a contradictory stillness amongst all that chaos is a very powerful thing.
High up in the Atlas Mountains of Morocco, approximately 40km-60km south of Marrakesh, exists a gathering of villages that are local to the Berber, or more contemporarily known as the Amazigh communities. A culture that is still predominantly nomadic, along the Saharan desert. While the word ‘berber’ originates from the Greek ‘barbarous’ signifying ‘barbarian’, which historically marginalised this community, although they are far from the backwards connotations that are acquainted with their name, and quite simply are the indigenous ethnic group that inhabit North Africa.
After speaking to a few of the locals in this region (albeit in a mixture of Arabic, French and Spanish as opposed to the native Berber language), their core values in life lay ground for the importance of kinship, their connection to the land, and the preservation of their language and identity (including Tashelhit, Tarifit, Kabyle, Tamazight, and Tamahaq.)
On the 8th of September 2023, this particular region of the Atlas Mountains, was hit by an earthquake with a magnitude of 6.8. Even now, three months later, you can see the impact of the ‘zilzel’. I walk along the Ourika valley with one of the locals, Hamza. Of course there is the classic, ‘you are travelling alone?’ chatter that is often accompanied with solo travel, but also a wealth of knowledge.
As we hike up towards the waterfalls of Setti Fatma, he points out the various broken infrastructures of rubble, and pipelines that have had to be reconstructed, the roads that had to be taken from travellers that came to aid with the aftermath of the earthquake in September. He explained to me how the Berber people are ‘mountain people’. This is our home, he pointed out repeatedly.
He introduces me to an elderly man with crow’s feet along his eyes, and palms that are calloused but loving. He tells me that everyday he carries up the food and then carries down any waste in an attempt to distribute any it to families, but also in an attempt to push for a more eco-friendly sustainable environment that has been polluted by tourists.
