My First Glimpse into the Oasis

Nothing prepared me for my first glimpse of the Oases of the pre-Sahara. After hours of watching the terrain get progressively drier it seemed almost impossible that the earth would open up into the vibrant greens that were before me. The photo below will I hope give a small indicator of how truly massive this ecosystem is.

It was explained over the next several days of our trip that an oasis is not a natural ecosystem. While a small number of plants will hug the edge of most any desert river, an oasis will spread out as far as the local community can sustainably grow it. Starting with an unmodified river mud is dredged and mixed with organic material to start the process of manufacturing soil. This soil is used to plant the first palm trees, which will act as the upper layer of the canopy and provide the necessary protection for other plants to follow in suit. After the palms, in the case of the oases we visited Date Palms, fruit trees of varying types will also be planted, providing the middle layer of the oasis. At the very bottom is a network of small irrigation plots to allow for different seasonal vegetables and fruits to be grown. A truly critical element in oasis development is the private ownership of every tree and plot of land, nothing is communal. This style of ownership has persisted for centuries and developed into strict caste systems that dictate who may own what and where. This value system is preserved into the 21st century by a decades old decree from Morocco's Monarchy stating that in the oases’ old tribal laws are allowed to remain, while in almost every other part of the country more modern laws have been put into place.
While ownership of the plants of the oasis is very fragmented, with some families only owning a fraction of a tree it is still possible for those families to live off of the revenue produced by that single plant.

Winning a Lion

Never, ever, mess with SAO; I’m pretty sure they will kill you if you mess with their scheduled events. The big activity for evening was the all important Ice Breaker Games, a byzantine collection challenges intended to promote “breaking the ice”.
While the challenges themselves were quite doable finding willing participants to stay on your team proved nigh impossible. Starting the race you were asked to roll a dice to determine what terrible concoction you would be ingesting before being spun around in an office chair before you sprinted to the next stage. Unfortunately no matter how fast you were personally it was still required to have the entire team past the line before phase two. Phase two involved filling a jug with water from a leaking bucket. Part three was a devilish two man sack race where two players had to hop in concert. Next was the sand crawl, players were asked to move a basketball from one side of a sand pit to another, not too difficult until you consider the net that kept you close to the ground. After each player got through they had to toss the ball back to a waiting team member. Personally I considered the bobbing for ping pong balls the most degrading, we were asked to pick ping pong balls out of what I think was flour and water, place the ball in a spoon, and then carry the spoon in your mouth across the line. All of this just to run down a slip n’ slide.

My first team spent a healthy part of the evening’s activities trying to find someone willing to actually run the gamut, while I started on a team made up of myself and five Moroccan girls; by the time we were running the list of players on the team had changed too many times to properly keep track. It must be said that a team founded in fire and tribulation has the potential to be the diamond in the rough that you always hope for. With a strong start team six was able to keep the lead for the entirety of the challenge. Even after getting a face full of sand during the belly crawl it felt good to win the match. After my first race I was asked to help a group of Moroccan students flush out a team, but like the my first team player retention before the event was rather difficult, but “God Bless America” we were able to find two more Americans to flush out our team, to say that we played well would be an understatement, we were miles ahead of the team we raced against, providing us with the 2nd fast time of the night. With that wonderful time we had earned a glorious title and a stuffed Lion, the mascot of AUI and the city of Ifrane.

Holding my prize Lion

Don’t tell the parents about PDA

Getting integrated into AUI’s student life has been a tedious affair of many lectures that simply seem to reinforce the fact that we are, gasp, being introduced to a different culture and should expect things to be different. While I understood why they wanted to verbally prepare us for the differences between Western Culture and that of Morocco, I have never felt power points presentations were really the best way to approach introducing people to something outside of their realm of experience.
The moment that drove home that I wasn’t in the Great North anymore, was looking at the questionnaire that was issued to incoming Freshman, I will try to find a photo, that provided very two very different choices when it came to what kind of employment your parents might have.
During the same lecture that I was given the freshman survey it was simply fantastic to have a member of AUI’s faculty start talking about PDA (Public Displays of Affection) and how he didn’t explain what the acronym stood for during the parents visit because he wanted to avoid the controversy of more conservative parents learning their child might hold hands, or more, while going to college.
When I went to the SAO (Student Activities Organization) sponsored Karaoke night it was quite the experience watching girls wearing head scarves singing along to songs with pretty explicit lyrics. For me there was some light embarrassments earlier in the evening when I tried to sing Queen’s Bohemian Rhapsody, while my partner (her name escapes me right now) and I had a relatively weak start we managed to finish with quite a bit of overly dramatic flourish. After coming down from in front of the audience I learned that Eddie Izzard was completely correct when he said its 70% how you look, 20% how you sound, and only 10% of what you say.

Fasting on My Birthday

After being asked by way too many freshman why I was not fasting during Ramadan I decided that the best time to try it out would be on my birthday. Yes kids, Obie will give into pear pressure. When Karaoke went on past midnight, I was left with some pretty limited options for getting back to the Annex, I could either wait until 1:45 for the last shuttle or walk the 6 kilometers, being the motivated kind of dude that I am I decided to head out at roughly 1 AM, expecting to beat the shuttle. This plan might have worked perfectly had I not attempted to get all clever and try out a “short cut” that I had never walked before. Thirty minutes of walking down roads that I had no geographic reference for I decided that it was high time that I back track and try to find out where the hell I was. At 1:30 in the morning trying to back track is quite the experience, especially when you aren’t 100% sure where you are to begin with and you keep running into feral dogs, either alone or in packs. Fortunately after following some random hunches, as backtracking completely failed me, I was able to find myself back on the highway headed towards the Annex.

A critical oversight that occurred when I was getting for bed that night, was that I did not bother to set my alarm for an early enough time for me to have some kind of meal before sunrise.

To expose the exchange students to the idea of taking a Grand Taxi, an intercity taxi service, we were told to sign up for a time we would like to head to the town of Azrou and wonder around for a while. As I was supposed to fast that day I tried my best to resist the urge to drink water, but I will admit when I lack the will power to uphold arbitrary personal decrees at 36 C, or 96 F, it was way too hot to avoid drinking water while walking around.

After getting back to AUI it took all the energy I had to simply sit in front of my computer and be useless, as soon as Adam asked to borrow my laptop I was out like a light. For the rest of the evening I was exhausted with the major highlight of the night being a short call home to say hi to the family.