Mini-Field Trip

The K-5 team met up with Matt and Sarah (outgoing Environment volunteers) bright and early. We had coffee at "the cafe." Although there are a lot of cafe's in Khenifra, this one is on the corner of the major intersection in town and is right by the hotel. I think it will become our main point of reference. By the way, there are 3 hotels in Khenifra – one is out of our price range, even though its only $25 per night. The one we stayed at is less than $10 per night and supposedly there is one thats about $5 per night and offers the same "amenities" as the $10 one.
After our coffee, we walked to the MEDA office for a meeting with our boss. Mr. S speaks French and Moroccan Arabic. The K-5 all learned Tamazight, so there is a language barrier. Luckily, outgoing Sarah speaks French and translated during the meeting. Mr. S gave us some information about MEDA and information specific to our sites. He had a packet for each of us, complete with a report about our village and some office supplies to get us going. He invited us to go to a workshop later in the morning at Elizabeth's village. After some consultation about logistics and luggage, we all decided to attend.
I was slightly intimidated by Mr. S because, according to Matt and Sarah, he is a big shot in the world of development. He was no-nonsense during the meeting, directing people do make copies, write this down, translate that. It seemed he commanded everyone in the office. Plus, he smoked and he'd wave his hand with the cigarette in it. For some reason I associated that image with something not entirely positive.
We all piled into a couple Land Rovers and drove out to Elizabeth's village. Along the way we asked Mr. S about the project and learned a lot more about what we'd see when we arrived. In an effort to raise the income potential of families in this and surrounding villages, MEDA had done an extensive survey of the land, people, etc. People are currently growing wheat and barley, which is by no means a cash crop. By switching them to medicinal plants, their income potential increases 2 to 3 fold. MEDA is helping facilitate this by building a "factory" to extract essential oils from the plants. The factory is male territory. MEDA is also building a drying station to allow women to dry herbs that they can then sell. In addition, they developed Elizabeth's village as the center of all of this activity. They are building a cafe where patrons can sit with their feet in water scented with a byproduct of the factory, and they built up the amenities in the village. This includes a new "source" where water is gathered for drinking, a separate area for animals to drink, washing stations where women can wash clothes (instead of in a stream) and a system for collecting the waste water and sending it through a natural treatment system. A source is simply a naturally occurring spring. Some have infrastructure that allows for more sanitary collection of drinking water, which is one of the things addressed with this project.
Matt had helped design the factory and drying station to take advantage of passive solar heating and light, so he was giving a workshop about that. It was cool to see him speaking English, Sarah translating to French and then one of the MEDA staff people translating the French to Arabic. After the workshop we went to Elizabeth's house for tea and all 20 or so people crammed into the living room.
It was a good day – we got to see Mr. S out in the field and he's much more relaxed and easy-going. He's taken a liking to Elizabeth, so he was teasing her about something on the ride to the workshop. We also had an opportunity to meet more of the MEDA staff.