During Which Our Heroine Travels to the Heart of the Third World

On my first trip to Morocco, my sister-in-law (La Petite for our purposes) took me with her deep into the middle of nowhere southern Morocco. Our destination was a tiny village where lived the family who had been in service with Mr. Fresh Hell's family when he was growing up.

Disclaimer: before any egalitarian soul decides to speak up in support of beleaguered domestics everywhere, please keep in mind that it is a fact of North African culture that middle and upper class families employ domestics; while domestic service is menial labor it does provide income for a family that perhaps cannot support themselves in any other way. I am sure there are many people who treat their domestic servants badly, but that is emphatically not the Fresh Hell family way.

Our arrival in the village was heralded by excited throngs of small boys surrounding our taxi, and our welcome in the house was no less ecstatic. Watching Zara and La Petite embrace each other tightly brought a lump to my throat - it was an embrace of authentic sisterly longing and familial acknowledgement.

La Petite's annual visit and my presence (outsider status and Mr. FH's spousal status combined) turned an ordinary day into a small family festival. Extended family and friends drifted from other houses to participate. I could hardly keep track of who was related to whom - in the end, it didn't matter, as the festival feeling prevailed overall.

The children took me on an energetic tour of their outdoor courtyard and its denizens; the goats, dogs and cats, and the bunnies (one of which later turned into the legendary "bunny" tagine of earlier posting).

The family has no electricity or central running water. There is an old-fashioned water pump in the courtyard. The house is an example of traditional regional architecture; a large central square courtyard open to the elements, planted with a small grove of trees to provide shade and visual interest, and small covered rooms on all sides of the square - kitchen, men's salon, women's salon, and bedrooms. The bread is baked in the courtyard in a small conical shaped clay oven built above ground and fed by a wood fire. Ingeniously, there are pipes that filter the warmth of the bread oven's fire directly to a large teepee-like structure close by used for bathing.

During the course of the day, there were several memorable photo ops: me baking bread in the oven, me riding a donkey (while small and spindly, it could have easily supported my weight on a 25 mile trek), me posing in the couryard with the extended family.

There were quieter yet still memorable moments: taking tea with Grandma in the best salon (she killed a giant bug on the wall barehanded - whoo hoo!); enjoying a splendid lunch; sharing family news. There were some language barriers - I spoke French throughout to La Petite, who translated everything into Arabic for the family.

Much later that evening, when La Petite and I had returned to our modern hotel in Agadir, about 55 miles to the west, I looked at a night sky festooned with stars and thought about the family I had visited.

Judged by Western standards, they had nothing - no elecricity means no lights, refrigerator, radio, television or computer. No running water means no instant hot showers or flush toilets. They didn't have the latest fashions, television, shopping, or coffee - any of the things I thought must constitute proper living.

Yet during all that day I didn't hear any voices rising in discord; there was only laughter and contentment, the harmony of family love and tradition as yet unmarred by the discontent born of a modern civilization. Every family member has their place, their job and their status - every person has worth.

This family lives their lives in the same century and on the same earth as I do, yet we couldn't be further apart in tradition or a philosophy of everyday living if we tried.

While I've never fogotten them I find I can't simply view them as automatically holding a special secret of the perfectly contented life simply because they live without the benefit of mod cons.

But they certainly do have something going for them.