Festival of Roses

For the last week and a half we have been running around the province meeting various Moroccan officials whose language we do not speak. There is a ton of bureaucracy that we have to go through in order to work here, and you never know how long something is going to take or even if they will have time to meet you for a scheduled meeting. As a result, we’ve spent 4 out of 10 days away from our new home. These are necessary evils, and thankfully, the volunteers who are already here have been extremely helpful in facilitating all these meetings.

There has, however, been some enjoyable time away from home. Last weekend was the Festival of Roses in nearby Klaa L’Magouna. Several of the health volunteers in our province set up an AIDS education booth at the festival, and so Sean and I as well as many of the other new and existing volunteers were able to help out. We actually didn’t really do much in the way of helping because we don’t know the language, but we were able to see first hand how events like these work and to talk to the old volunteers about all the work that goes into putting together an event like this. Next door was a booth the Small Business Development volunteers helped organize to sell products from the cooperatives they worked with. It was a great opportunity to meet and network with volunteers from all over the region.

Of course, we also got a chance to see the festival. The region surrounding Klaa L’Magouna has an abundance of wild roses that grow there. They are famous for their soaps and beauty products, and the whole town smells delicious. Many of the roses had already been harvested for the festival, so we didn’t see many in the fields, but normally there are vast fields of pink for miles. We knew that we were getting near the festival as we began to see kids selling rose necklaces on the sides of the road. There were many other vendors selling everything from soaps and oils to rose candies and heart-shaped rose wreaths--and everything was pink!

In addition to the rose-related festivities, there were also lots of other carnival-like things going on. There was a variety of song and dance performances with people dressed in their tribal garb. The outfits varied from tribe to tribe, but generally, the women wore a variety of brightly colored scarves with bells and sequins and black coal on their eyes. The women from the local tribe wear long black lace tied over one shoulder over their normal clothing. The men wear long white jellabas, white caps or scarves, and yellow pointed slippers. On the first day, they had a marathon, which we saw the tail end of, and on the second day, they had a parade. There was even a Ferris wheel and carousel!

Sean and I left a little early on the second day because we wanted to get back to our site for a language tutoring appointment. We were also pretty exhausted from all the travel and just wanted to relax and settle into our new life. The festival was a great way to get started, though!