Sometimes pictures speak a thousand words, and I will let the pictures do most of the talking. I spend two days with my family. The whole week of the festival of sacrifice it is customary that the families visit each other. So I, like kid nr 10, get dragged along. How many mint tea and nuts and cookies procedures can you undergo, being the stranger and therefore subject to curiosity? A wonderful experience.

We spend time playing endless amounts of football, nothing for them, but for me the thin air in these high altitudes mean I feel like an old man compared to these kids that just never tire. I join the eldest son for a regional football match, where he is goalie – this is serious stuff in Morocco. The kids insist on filming “grand match” and I have to set up not one, but two video cameras. They do not tire from running, and neither from watching grand match on the computer, again, and again, and again.

In all of this wonderful exchange across cultural and language barriers, there are two more pressing and very pragmatic issues to deal with. Firstly, I have not washed in 2 or 3 days. At some point they gesture to me to come for a shower. This takes the form of a pole in the courtyard next to the donkey, around which they put a large plastic sheet, a bucket of warm water inside. That is your chance, use it well. I did, and it was one of my best showers ever.

The second was that no-one showed me where the bathroom was… And for some time I kind of had a little emergency… But I learnt that while running water was already existing through home made means through a water reservoir higher up the mountain, and  the family had access to electricity and a TV satellite dish, certain things are still performed au naturel behind the mountain top… 🙂