To Marrakesh by train - Part 3: The oasis landscape, rooted in place and sustainability

Just like the word "desert" evokes views of sand dunes, the term "oasis" brings to mind a small lake surrounded by dunes and a couple of palm trees. 

Back in Portugal. We are "researching" what to visit in Morocco. We zoom in on an area south of the Atlas mountains. The satellite images show large areas of trees with square patterns on the soil. What are these patterns? We are intrigued. 

A week later we travelled by train, bus and ferry to Tangier. (I describe here crossing Gibraltar's straight to Morocco). On the next day, we took the train to Marrakesh (more info on the route and emissions soon). There we rented a car, and drove southeast across the Atlas. The evening light was fading as we drove down the mountains, across towns and villages, full of life along the road. 

The sun eventually set, and the last long stretch without settlements was made in the dark. We got a glimpse of some lights down in the valley, and finally reached our destination: Agdz. It is around 20h00 and we see shops open, restaurants, butchers. When we get to our accommodation, we are warmly welcomed, and treated to a big tomato-chickpeas soup bowl with some bread.

We see a few palm trees in the terraces, but it is too dark to discern the landscape around us. We went to bed with that special feeling of arriving somewhere after dark. Enveloped in the temporary mystery of falling asleep in the darkness of a place, which you will only get to see as the sun comes up.

The morning and our hosts greeted us with a clear blue sky, a mild temperature (for January), and a lovely breakfast with Moroccan bread and tea. 

Outside, we could finally see the landscape from the satellite images up close. The famous oasis! Because I had always associated the word oasis with a couple of palm trees by a small lake, I was not prepared for this "forest" of palm trees that stretched far along a wide valley. Oases are palm "forests" or groves, I realized. Wow.

We went for a long walk, following a path through the oasis that connects several villages. There was a lot of life. Children walking or cycling to school, men and women on foot, donkeys or motorcycles. We were spotted as tourists and greeted mostly with the French "Bonjour!". Sometimes in the Arabic "Salam aleikum", which we heard often around us, or the even more local "Azul" (hello) in Tashelhit - a Tamazight language of the original north African population, the Amazigh. 

In Portugal, palm trees are exotic solitary figures, large trunks decorating the front garden of some houses, or thin tall sentinels in a park or beach promenade, moving with the wind. In the Draa valley, they were finally at home, supporting a whole landscape. 

The palms were majestic, very tall, some with several large trunks rising from the same stem, and spreading a generous shade, supporting the moisture in the soil. 

These were date palms. It had never crossed my mind to wonder where dates came from. And there they were, hanging from the palms, like branches of earrings decorating both sides of the palm tree head. We learned that dates mature on the trees. The locals harvest them ready to eat, sweetened by the warmth, dryness and the ever-present sun. 

Can you see the earrings? Those are the date fruit clusters.

The palms looked deep at home in this landscape, but our host told us they had been brought there. The story goes that once olive trees dominated the valley. As the caravan trade crossed the valley, the Arabs would eat dates and spit the pits on the soil. From that date palms grew, forming the oases that we now see. 

Once we saw the landscape up close, the square grid was made of earthwalls (the bigger squares), and of little mounds of soil precisely demarcating small agricultural plots.

We were wondering, why this geometric approach to organize the land? We got some information from the locals and from literature. The region has a complex system of managing water as a commons, which means that each person has a certain timeslot where they can water their fields. Water being such a scarce resource, the divided plots by small soil mounds ensure that only those plots which are in use are watered. The system also allows for directing water to the plots. Openings are made in the mounds of soil, and then covered again.

But the date palms were not the only trees in the oasis. A local guide recited to us the harvest calendar:

May - apricot, wheat

June - apples

July - almonds

August - pomegranate, figs, indian figs, grapes

October - dates

December - oranges.

We saw some of these trees in between the square plots, and other crops as well: alfafa, okras. As we passed along a field, a farmer with beautiful blue vests waved at us, holding some carrots. We said yes, and she brought us two handfuls of large carrots, freshly washed, in exchange for some dirhams.   

According to the map we crossed many rivers, but we only saw actual water flowing in the outskirts of Tangier, in the green north of Morocco. Partly, that is common for the region, as the whole river bed only floods in extreme periods of rainfall, or snowmelt. But other factors are at play in this case. 

 Our host told us that for the past ten years the region and the whole Morocco were undergoing a very serious drought, for the past ten years. He told us that a dam had been built in the Atlas mountains, and since then there was less surface water coming downstream. The goal had been to manage water better, to store it up in the mountain and prevent that it would evaporate along the long wide valley. The system implemented works in a way that all farmers along the 200km long valley use water at allocated days and times. A paper on the connections between water, energy and food systems in this region adds that it is common for farmers and locals to dig their own wells to supplement their water supply, but for that they need to use diesel for the pumps. 

The dry Draa river bed with argan trees, overlooked by Jbel Kissane the local peak.

The smart management of scarce resources was not only seen in the water sharing system, but also in traditional architecture. Clay and sand was abundant, so they were used to build the old fortresses and villages, and walls delimiting land. The old citadels and fortresses had tall thick earthwalls, which were very effective at keeping fresh temperatures inside the dark wide streets. 

Inside the Kasbah of Tamenougalt

While the old villages used to be built in the oasis, the modern ones are being built away from the palm groves, closer to the main roads. In some places you  can find a large ruin of the old village in the middle of the oasis. Half broken down buildings show the structure from which floors were made. Beams made of tamarisk trunks, covered with bamboo or canes, and a mixture of clay and straw on top. 

The palm tree leaves, when harvested and left to dry are used for making fences. 

Its' trunks are used for structures, small bridges, beams. 

Another example of sustainable use of resources is the hammam, the public bath. Citing wikipedia: "In Islamic cultures the significance of the hammam was both religious and civic: it provided for the needs of ritual ablutions but also provided for general hygiene in an era before private plumbing and served other social functions such as offering a gendered meeting place for men and for women."

Generally, the hammam has a room for undressing, and then three rooms with increasing temperatures, where you can fill a warm water bucket, sit and wash yourself. Hammams are usually close to the mosque and next to communal ovens where bread is baked. The heat is used for the hamman, also serves for baking bread. 

When I visited one of the town's hammams, I asked for "savon beldi", a soft Moroccan soap made from olives which is used to exfoliate and hydrate the skin. The lady at the counter, gave me a piece of it in a piece of paper ripped from a newspaper. 

In a bakery in Tangier, the bread I bought was given enveloped in paper with two "ears". It was good to see these old/sustainable ways of packaging.

In those few days, I witnessed an environment where resources are well used, with creativity. I felt closer to how people used to live all around the world (and many still do). Using local materials, creatively, for their needs, adapting to what is abundant and scarce in each region. Making things that can be repurposed or simply decay and feed the soil again. 

Hearing about the drought, seeing the lack of water in January, and the thin flow of water in our bathroom, were all signs that we should care to use it very little. 

A few days later, in the region of Agadir, by the beach, on a recently opened surfing bed and breakfast, the strong water flow on the taps and shower communicated silently: "You do not need to worry about saving water. You are back in the modern world which refuses to be "limited" by local resources".

That was not the message of that particular bed and breakfast. That is the message of the whole modern western society, based on cheap fossil fuels and extractivism, which tell us that we can use as much water as we want, as much energy as we can pay.

The ease with which all can be acquired and disposed, the mass advertising, the mass infrastructures made to provision us with any and every thing. Harbours that keep expanding for larger container ships. The countryside being conquered by massive boxes of Amazon warehouses and AI data centres. Supermarkets filled with packages with packages inside, and full of highly processed food. Many products travelled more than us, in their short lives. 

This modern society seems to produce abundance. But at what cost? We hear a lot about greenhouse gas emissions, CO2, labour exploitation, pollution, deforestation. But perhaps the greatest damage is immaterial. The deep connection to the regions we inhabit. The capacity and creativity of creating abundance out of our environments. To develop agricultural methods, architecture styles, and economies that are embedded in the earth around us, in our regions. Instead, we have a fossil-fuel dependent model that is sold as "progress", exported and implanted all over the world, independently of local water sources, types of soil or ecosystems. 

I wrote my PhD on consumption, so I am quite aware of all of this. But the background of my daily life in the Netherlands and Portugal normalizes this way of living, which is almost completely disconnected from where we live. 

In the oasis landscape of precious small-scale agriculture plots in between fruit trees and palms, and surrounded by red arid mountains, the simplicity is striking. 

Living without producing waste seems impossible, from the perspective of our daily lives in the so-called "developed" world, but there are many places where people live without producing waste. Where "sufficiency" is a common way of living. Where the large systems of mass production, mass consumption and mass waste disposal did not take hold (yet?). 

Besides, this wasteful paradigm of living completely disconnected from place is actually very recent. It was particularly developed in the 20th century and it accelerated in the last 70 years. 

All places have histories of sufficiency and of creative use of local resources for their needs, just as there was always trade for non-local things. I believe we can look to the past for inspiration, like the Low-tech magazine often does. There are techniques we can relearn to live without fossil fuels, but perhaps the most important thing to recover as people (not only individuals) is the common-sense of using what grows (or can be grown) around us creatively, of adapting to where we are, using things in ways that are regenerative and not depleting, and that there is not such a thing as waste.

Note: I should add that in Agdz, we were away from big retail chains and supermarkets, but the town had shops, groceries, a pharmacy, cafes, restaurants. There was a big weekly market, next to the river bed, among the argan and tamarisk trees (pictures below). Afterall this valley was crossed for centuries by one of the routes of the trans-saharan caravan trade.