{"id":29,"date":"2013-07-22T16:48:29","date_gmt":"2013-07-22T16:48:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/maghrebi-voices.swarthmore.edu\/?p=29"},"modified":"2024-04-19T19:24:16","modified_gmt":"2024-04-19T19:24:16","slug":"ifrane-first-impressions","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/maghrebi-voices.swarthmore.edu\/?p=29","title":{"rendered":"Ifrane: first impressions"},"content":{"rendered":"

We seem to be experiencing an odd kind of culture shock here, one partly composed of seeing familiar things in unfamiliar contexts.\u00a0 We knew in advance that Ifrane was a French hill station\u2014a cool mountain village where the colonial powers could retreat from the heat of summer.
\n\"SONY<\/a>
\nWe knew that the houses were constructed as \u201cvillas,\u201d and that the town itself was known as \u201cLittle Switzerland.\u201d\u00a0 But we didn\u2019t fully recognize what it would be like to live in this mixture of European and North African elements.
\n\"SONY
\n(Aziz, the “guardian” of the house, brings me roses from the garden nearby!
\nWho would have expected these?)<\/p>\n

\"SONY<\/a>
\nThe sun is so strong and the light so correspondingly bright that life feels a little like an over-exposed photograph.\u00a0 There have been very few spells of rain: what rain there is reliably comes on the days when we have laundry drying on the line\u2014but even after a drenching, our clothes dry in less than half the time they take at home.
\n\"SONY<\/a>
\nAhmed the gardener comes to water the garden after dark, after he\u2019s broken his fast with his family.\u00a0 The flow of water is stronger after dark, he explains, and it\u2019s cooler besides.\u00a0 Ahmed works at the palace as a gardener during the day (the king has a palace in Ifrane, one of many royal residences); gardening at the Smith\u2019s house is a second job for him.<\/p>\n

When Ahmed and I talk plants, it\u2019s very useful to have scientific names to draw on.\u00a0 Yes, he agrees, that tree is indeed Gleditsia tricanthos<\/i>: the same honey locust that grows in front of our house in Swarthmore.
\n\"P1000754\"<\/a>
\nJust as in Swarthmore, there are volunteer\u00a0Gleditsia<\/i>\u2019s all over the town: at least they\u2019re fixing the nitrogen, enriching the soil, I think. \u00a0This one is feeding a small rose bush. \u00a0There\u2019s another Gleditsia<\/i> here, though, with delicious drupes: that\u2019s the kind you really want to plant, Ahmed tells me.
\n\"SONY<\/a>
\nBut even the weeds are familiar here: how can that be?\u00a0 It takes days for my brain to wake up: of course, this is postcolonialism. \u00a0Even the normal flora of the country has been changed by French imports. \u00a0Perhaps the most striking example are the sycamores that line the streets in Ifrane and even many of the major roadways in Morocco.
\n\"P1000751\"<\/a>
\nJeremy loves Ifrane\u2014\u201cI want to live here the rest of my life!\u2014and he loves to serve as guide around the town.\u00a0 He has found his bearings better than either Zo\u00eb or I have, and he takes me by the hand and leads me around the town in the cool of the morning.\u00a0 He likes to walk down to the duck pond and visit the large stone-carved lion which seems to be Ifrane\u2019s major tourist attraction.\u00a0\"\"<\/p>\n

He also likes to go out in the evening to look at and listen for the storks which nest in the chimneys of the houses here.\u00a0 I asked Kevin Smith if storks were considered good luck in Morocco, and he answered, “Well, they bring the tourists.”
\n\"SONY
\n<\/a>
\nThe storks clack their beaks at evening, and sometimes they make a kind of gargling sound. \u00a0I wonder if they stay through the winter. \u00a0I guess we’ll find out.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

We seem to be experiencing an odd kind of culture shock here, one partly composed of seeing familiar things in unfamiliar contexts.\u00a0 We knew in advance that Ifrane was a French hill station\u2014a cool mountain village where the colonial powers could retreat from the heat of summer. We knew that the houses were constructed as … Continue reading Ifrane: first impressions<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[8,6,3],"tags":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4JDdJ-t","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/maghrebi-voices.swarthmore.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/maghrebi-voices.swarthmore.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/maghrebi-voices.swarthmore.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maghrebi-voices.swarthmore.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maghrebi-voices.swarthmore.edu\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=29"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/maghrebi-voices.swarthmore.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":110,"href":"https:\/\/maghrebi-voices.swarthmore.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29\/revisions\/110"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/maghrebi-voices.swarthmore.edu\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=29"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maghrebi-voices.swarthmore.edu\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=29"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maghrebi-voices.swarthmore.edu\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=29"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}