Morocco
Snapshots -2- Drought
Morocco (and most of the Maghreb) and southern Europe were swept by record high temperatures this Spring. In Volubilis, the remarkable 1800 year-old Roman ruins in the northern third of the country , the temperature in April was over 105 degrees, a sandy, exfoliating record.
In the Moroccan Sahara, summer temperatures near 125 degrees are now much more frequent. Local guides have built a business burying European tourists in the sand during those months. Sand hammams, sand bath therapy, is booming. Let me know how it goes for you really hot yoga fiends.
Zaid, our guide, will race four wheel vehicles recklessly to bury you anywhere in the Sahara. He’s particularly fond of jumping out of the car without warning and running along side while it drives on its own.
These are not self-driving Teslas. Once, a Spanish woman in the back seat decided she’d follow his lead and fell out of the car and rolled down a dune. ‘Not hurt too bad’, he reports. Zaid intends to get married — in a few years, when he has a ‘steady job’ and can pay to have the entire town celebrate for three days, which is their way. He plays Saharan soul music constantly, particularly Daraa Tribes. Highly recommend. Start with Sastanàqqàm by the ‘soul rebels’ Tinariwen — you will have to move. For your deep soul, here’s Savane, by the great Ali Farka Touré; “Je trouvai le metro …. N’est pas un petit voodoo.” Mesmerizing — hot sweat without the sand.
Drought, the Sahara relentlessly sucked north by climate change, has steadily worsened for Morocco for the last two decades. Terrifying, incessant beauty.
The nomadic Amazigh followed their flocks for centuries from water source to water source across the sands. COVID and drought have driven many to sell their camels and goats, ‘settling’ on sand near tourists. Well-meaning Spanish groups teach their children, one week at a time. Settling, and cities, are anathema to nomads. Yet here they have to be.
The Moroccan government has responded to the drought by trucking in water. The Amazigh do not trust it, and instead rely on ancient tunnels which bring dune-wrung water underground to oases. It is, they say, terrible for their teeth … but safer.
This week, two climate articles recalled our recent trip to the Maghreb sèche. Jakarta is a city of 30 million, more than the entire population of Morocco. Climate change is sinking the Indonesian capital, and this wondrous article explains that they are looking to replace it with Nusanta a new, green, walkable city.
Pylons jut; pythons slither. No matter what fixes have been tried for this energetic, vibrant capital, Jakarta sprawls and smells and sinks.
In northeastern Colorado, the Republican River has disappeared, and the farms are drying, and dying. Kansas, Nebraska, Colorado and the federal government are all reckoning with the result.
This is the nightmare of overuse and drought and climate change that haunts all of Colorado now, from the Republican on the east, to the Colorado River headed west, to the Rio Grande in the San Luis Valley, headed south. Sheriffs carrying state engineers’ orders to shut down farm wells, and the American ideal of farms run by families blowing away on the hot winds.
A sustainable, inclusive world is so beautiful — and has to be our heritage.
