27 Months of Couscous: Visiting Karim's family (look how pretty it is here!)

One thing that Peace Corps repeatedly tells us, in reference to integrating into our new sites, is that we should never pass up an opportunity to visit families either for just tea or whatever they suggest. To preface this a little, there's some information about Taounate that might be necessary. We are the provincial hub for our region, meaning that the head of local government is based here, as well as all the important government stuff. We're essentially in the state capital. Because of that, we have a decent number of people from the smaller towns nearby who have homes in Taounate, too. Anass' best friend, Karim, is in this situation. His family lives in a little duwar (kind of like suburb) called Bromile.

Anass, Karim, and Zakariah (another friend) were planning a trip out there to visit his family and go swimming in the river on a particularly warm day, so we were pretty excited when they invited us along. We left at about 7 AM last Monday to take a grand taxi out of town. They warned us that there would be some walking to get there, but we didn't know really how far they meant. We took the taxi for about 15 minutes and got out to start walking. This is where the fun starts!

We took about a 4 kilometer (2.5 miles) hike to get to his house. First of all, it was gorgeous. It was through the Rif Mountains and you could see olive trees and the river and all sorts of pretty plants along the way. It's also worth noting that it was just hills the entire way. And like 95 degrees. But look how pretty!

Anass, Zakariah, Karim, Toby, and Alexis (pre-"walk")

"A small walk" they said.

These cacti are everywhere - and huge! (Alexis for comparison)

After getting to the house, we promptly collapsed for a few minutes because, well, we spent our first three months in country not doing any physical activity and eating four huge meals a day. But it was still gorgeous. (At this point, we weren't yet thinking about the walk back...)

We were then treated to a big ol' lunch, prepared by Chef Karim. His house is much different than any of the city style houses we had been to, thus far. It was really more of a compound. They have a bunch of chickens, a donkey, a cute puppy, and probably some other critters that I never got to see. There is a big, old-school, wood-fired oven. The house itself was more like four or five individual rooms built surrounding a courtyard. They also already have their sheep for Eid Kbir (end of Ramadan feast)! We named him Johnny.

At this point, it was reading midday and getting pretty hot, so when Anass suggested that we go down to the river, we assumed it was a good idea. As soon as we started the walk down to the river, we knew that coming back would be a little bit of a struggle. Regardless of the walk, the river itself was amazing, It was cool enough to be cold, but warm enough that walking in was clearly the right thing to do. We spent a few hours there before heading back up to the house. Here's the impressive walk to the river - it was about another kilometer each way.

After returning to Karim's dar (house), we were able to spend a little time with his brother, mom, and aunt. They gave us plenty of cold water (to follow the completely vertical walk) and then made us a lovely tea time.

And finally, we walked the four km back to the taxi, but this time it was significantly more downhill than up.