More on the Moroccan desert

What ideas did you have about Morocco before you started reading my blog? If you imagined deserts, sand, camels, and nomads and their tents, you weren't alone.

As I hope my blog has illustrated for you, though, Morocco is a geographically diverse country. I didn't see any camels until I had been here for a few months, and my recent trip to the desert was the first time I saw a landscape that I thought might be described as "stereotypically" Moroccan or North African.

The transition to a desert landscape really begins south of Midelt. The mountains are always close by, but the land slowly becomes dustier, and the vegetation becomes more sparse and scrubby.

There was an unexpected number of hotels along our route from Midelt to Merzouga. Some of them were shockingly (and, we all agreed, too optimistically) grand. As we drove by these hotels, we saw that the vast majority had virtually empty parking lots.

We had originally made reservations at such a hotel (although not nearly as new as the one pictured to the left) in Erfoud. It was such a depressingly outdated and empty place, though, that we quickly ditched it for a smaller and grubbier – yet less deserted and more comfortable  – hotel.

The way people look changes, too, as one approaches the desert. Skin gets darker, and by the time we got to Erfoud, we hardly saw the faces of any women, most of whom were covered from head to toe with abaya-like black garments, some with brightly colored embroidered patterns on them. The Rough Guide to Morocco says that Erfoud gives one "a first, powerful sense of proximity to the desert, with frequent sandblasts ripping through the streets." We arrived in this normally dusty town during a time of unusually strong winds, and the coating of grit that quickly accumulated on my body, along with a  constant sense of impending danger to my eyes, made me immediately understand the benefit of full body coverage.

Babies

This is not a great picture because I didn't have my nice camera with me, but I thought these young lesser kestrels on the rooftop of a house were just too lovely to pass up.

Spring in Ifrane

Cherry trees in full bloom

Chaffinch

Ain Vittel

 More pictures behind the cut...

The water problem

No, this post isn't going to be about the couple of times I've gotten up in the morning and had no running water in the apartment, but I could see why you might think it would be. (Maybe that topic will be saved for a different post titled "Indoor Plumbing: Right or Privilege?")

This post is about bottled water, or more specifically, the bottles the bottled water comes in.

Before T and I came to Morocco, we did a lot of research on food and water safety. All official advice says "don't drink the water!" but that seems to be blanket advice given to people traveling from the U.S. to any poorer country--which, as far as I can tell, includes all of Africa, Asia, South America, and North America south of the U.S. border. When we sought advice from individuals who had actually traveled to and/or lived in Morocco, though, most told us they drank the water without problems. Nevertheless, we decided we would start with bottled water, move to boiled tap water, and then slowly start integrating straight tap water to allow our systems to adjust.

When I started trying to add boiled tap water, however, I discovered two things about it. First, it is so high in mineral content that there are white specks and white sediment in the water after boiling it. (I have read that these minerals can cause health problems for people who didn't grow up drinking such water.) Second, the water tastes absolutely horrible. It has a chlorine taste that both T and I find unbearable. When we were trying to do tap water rather than bottled, we just didn't drink anything. Not good.

The environmentally offensive Mr. Ali

And so we persist in our environmentally-destructive consumption of bottled water. We buy it in 6-packs of 1.5 liter bottles and go through at least two of those 6-packs a week. There is no recycling center to take the numerous empty bottles to in order to help placate our consciences. Every couple of days I throw the bottles in the garbage bin outside Building 31, with a sick feeling in my stomach.

What happens to those bottles after I throw them away? Do they get picked out of the dump and reused in some manner (this happens with many items that are thrown away in poor countries)? Do they get burned, releasing toxic chemicals into the air?

In some ways, I think my negative impact on the environment is lower than it was when I lived in the states. My home here is smaller, so energy consumption should be less. I walk almost everywhere rather than driving, and when I do go places, I'll be taking public transportation. I am buying fewer food items in disposable containers. Most things I buy that would be in plastic, glass, or aluminum containers in the States are given to me here wrapped in bits of newspaper.

But am I just listing these things in order to make myself feel better about my unjustifiable and wasteful consumption of a non-biodegradable product made from non-renewable resources?

What choice do we have? What is the balance between personal health and environmental health?

Difficult questions.