According to the dictionary a kasbah is a North African palace or castle. Wikepedia had a nice photo of one but little to say about them. Giorgio is almost obsessed with them and I found them intriguing with their fortress-like hill top presence providing a birds eye view of the village and surrounding landscape. Come and explore some with me. Kasbahs make a facinating change from Italy's Roman ruins and people still live in parts of some we explored. I will introduce you to some of the people we met along the way.
The sky really was that amazing shade of blue.
This kasbah has been restored whilst others we explored were crumbling ruins. Their structure of mud and straw would be high maintenance. I wondered how effective the bamboo and mud roof was at keeping rain out.
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A group of women we met in a little village when we were exploring a crumbling Kasbah invited us into their home for mint tea. This is traditionally made with green tea, fresh mint leaves and large amounts of sugar and it’s drank in copious quantities in all the areas we visited. It is always poured (hot) into a glass from a great height. I didn’t work out why the height was required other than it looks impressive … and that tourists feel inadequate when they spill it everywhere trying to do the same!
Which one is the cutest?
At another Kasbah stop a group of boys curiously raced to the car before we had a chance to climb out. They all loudly volunteered to be guardians of the car, arguing between themselves about who had arrived first and could claim the role of chief guardian.
As I wandered around the ruins the boys wove camels from reeds and proudly presented them to me. When we returned they all held out their hands for payment! One was unimpressed that he was paid in euro cents not Moroccan dirham. Paying a car guardian is wide spread across Morocco especially in the cities, for both car parks and street side. A better option than our money gobbling parking metres as the car is kept safe as part of the parking fee.
As we explored the kasbahs we often found animal enclosures for goats, sheep, calves and chickens plus tethered donkeys. Traditionally kasbahs were used as places to keep people, animals and food stores safe from invaders, hence their hill top look out towers and high walls surrounding many little rooms and courtyards, terraces and flat roof tops with multiple uses including drying dates. I read of one housing 60 people and others we saw were larger.
This animal inclosure was a combination of mud walls woven bamboo and wire that appeared to be the guts from an old mattress! Useful materials are recycled but I was often disappointed to see plastic bags and other rubbish strewn everywhere. Rubbish bins were an endangered species so even as responsible tourists disposal of waste was not easy.
Only one Kasbah had an entrance fee and used the money for restoration. They had a small 'museum' which included these wooden door locks. Can you figure out how they worked?
In the past Giorgio has regularly organised group tours of North Africa, usually through the deserts on motor bikes with support vehicles. We were trialing a new route for less adventurous tourists, and those that can't ride a bike (like me), which includes exploring a number of the historic kasbahs. It's one aspect of a new website he has been designing for people that want to explore another culture not just chill out at a tourist resort. Check it out at http://www.colortravels.it/
We did in fact journey to the edge of the desert... I've saved it for the next blog and promise to write it while I am on a roll... and snowed in!!
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