Day One in River Village

We were first introduced to the River Village community in Ali’s* living room, a long, skinny room full of overawed, silent PCTs and chattering women, plus Ali, MCing the whole event. My host mother turned out to remind me enormously of an old family friend, which was comforting. Her cheeks are round and pink, and appear to be engraved by decades of smiling. She suggested that we PCTs talk amongst ourselves while the women talked among themselves. It was a nice suggestion. J

Some of my new siblings took me for a walk after lunch, which was great. I learned some useful new vocab: azro = rock, jbel = mountain, aswo = whooping crane [Later note: no, it doesn’t - it means wind - and besides, it was a stork], ayur = moon, aman = water. My host sister-in-law kept trying to teach me the names of all the plants and trees, God bless her, and I just kept smiling my way through this mix of Eden and Lilliput. (My oldest host brother is almost my height, but everyone else in the family could walk under my outstretched arms.)

The local geology is striking for its conglomerates of GINORMOUS rounded clasts, which are poorly (if at all) sorted. This area must have been near the headwaters of a really massively large river, many moons ago, if I’m remembering my Sedimentology notes correctly. The matrix is a very clay-rich sand. It’s surprisingly resistant, given how readily the clasts fall out. The result is massive cliffs that look like they’re made of a pinkish-tan swiss cheese. [Later note: it’s not just the clasts that fall out…the house Ali grew up in was destroyed when heavy winter rains soaked into the cliff face, ultimately dislodging a ~250 cubic foot chunk of mountainside that fell into his home. It isn’t a slump or a landslide or an avalanche…it’s an intact chunk of cliff that fell less than 20 feet. Is there a name for that? It knocked out several walls, obviously, and the family moved up to the top of the cliff.]

* I know I said I wouldn’t use proper nouns in this blog. But Ali is probably the second most common man’s name in Morocco, after Mohommad, so it’s not particularly identifying. Plus, there are already too many people with A names in this blog – it’s getting confusing.