Our trip to Midelt started off an adventure into the lesser traveled parts of Morocco. We hiked to a small mudbrick village, visited a carpet and embroidery workshop to empower Moroccan women, and rode camels in the Sahara.
Kimberly
For photos, click here: Midelt and Sahara.
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| Midelt | Sahara |
Midelt
In Midelt, we visited the mudbrick village of Berrem, where relatively few foreigners visit. Still, the children had learned somewhere that tourists often bring candy…and were quick to ask for it!
We also visited the Kasbah Myriam, a carpet and embroidery workshop run by Franciscan nuns with the aim of providing sustainable employment and healthcare to local Berber women. Teenage girls start working here learning embroidery…but also how to read and write. The older women teach the younger women the traditional skills, and the nuns focus on improving their literacy. It is incredible to imagine Myriam moving here 50 years ago from France to try to improve the lives of the women in this community.
The best part of our time in Midelt was staying in an old “castle” the Auberge Jaafar! (Yes, I think he’s the bad guy in Aladdin, right?) The building was this incredible construction alone in the middle of the rugged desert—-set against a mountainous backdrop. And, of course, we enjoyed another feast for dinner. Complete with music and dancing…definitely check out the photos to see some of Dan’s skills!
Auberge Jaafar
Berrem, Midelt
+212 (0) 35 36 02 02
The Sahara
This was the quintessential North African experience…riding a camel through the sand dunes in the Sahara to overnight at a Berber camp in the desert! After a very long drive, we finally arrived at the edge of the Erg Chebbi dunes. We packed up overnight bags, put on our turbans, mounted our camels, and headed off into the desert. The scenery was breathtaking, the camel ride was too…in an exhausting kind of way. Let’s just say that riding a camel is not an especially comfortable experience!
We arrived at our campsite in the late afternoon, so I (stupidly) decided to run up the side of a sand dune to get to the top before sunset. I was hacking and coughing for the next two weeks…getting all that sand in your lungs is a bad idea! (And getting to the top of the dunes is harder than it looks…for every step you take, you slide a half step backwards!) But the sunset was beautiful.
That was just the beginning of our desert experience though. We were staying with a Berber family, who graciously cooked us all dinner and even sang Berber lullabyes to us before we went to sleep. (Click below to listen to the video...you’ll have to imagine the incredible desert sky filled with stars, my camera didn’t pick it up so well.)
The next morning, we rose before sunrise to try to catch the changing colors of the sand dunes. I do really think that something is different about the sand in Namibia, because the colors were not nearly as spectacular here. (FYI, if you’re going to visit one set of sand dunes in the world, I’d say go to Namibia…far more spectacular, and littered with far less trash. But, you can’t ride a camel through the desert or sleep in the middle of the dunes…)
And with another uncomfortable camel ride, we were back on the road, onto our next destination!
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