Travel to Beni Mellal brought me back to my Peace Corps days. We journeyed by jeep, van and car and then the back of a market truck. While other teachers continued on in a jeep, I was in the back of the truck with ten teenagers. The ride was a four hour ordeal on dirt roads. Dust was everywhere. Everyone was coated in a layer of gray. As usual, I gathered more on me than anyone else.
Usually, where ever I stopped in Morocco, there was someone to come out and stare. On this trip we were so far out in the middle of nowhere that there were often no other people. We spent one night in a shepherd's hut up in the mountains just below the snow line. When we left, we didn't see any people the whole day until we made camp that night in the middle of a field of sheep. Think about it. What was all over the ground everywhere if there was a field of sheep?
I liked the isolation but I also like to see the Berber people in the few
villages we passed. The kids were adorable and I would have enjoyed little
more time for some visiting and a little less time walking across sheep
droppings.