On the frontier

Sometimes living out here in the middle of nowhere, I feel like I know to some extent what it was like to live on the American frontier. The houses here are scattered around the landscape like seeds of grain tossed onto a freshly plowed field. Though the distance between houses would dictate that no one is close neighbors with one another, there is a sense of community here. Every family knows every other family in the valley, and whenever there is a wedding, the entire tribe shows up to usher in their new life together.

When I say tribe, you may think of a Native American tribe and not be able to associate that image to the north of Africa, but the truth is not that different. The beni ourayn people have been here since before America was a fledgling nation. They have their own dialect and a sense of pride in retaining their berber culture. To this day, most will marry only others within the tribe, for only they could really know what it is to be ourayni.

The people here still plow their fields using teams of mules and wooden plows tipped with iron. The truth is, there really is no other way. These hillsides are far too steep and rocky for modern machinery, so everything must be done by hand. The mules plow the fields, the grains of wheat are scattered by hand, and the harvest is by sickle. The only mechanized part of the whole system is the actual sorting and separation of grain from the rest of the plant. This is a far cry from modern American agriculture. Perhaps this way of life isn’t as efficient, and maybe they don’t get as many kilograms per hectare of food, but they know exactly where that food comes from; they can see it growing from their front doors.