0095 The Carnival in Tiznit (Mor 006—revisit)
Felt it'd be nice to take my brother-in-law, Youssef on a short road trip--so we headed off Thursday afternoon to the grand taxi station... Turns out the Essaouira taxi didn't leave from there...
"How about Tafraute?" I suggested... so off to Tafraute we went...
It was getting a bit late when we arrived in Tiznit--so we decided to wander around a bit and maybe stay the night there.
Good choice.
Just happened to be that the carnival was going on at that time (I forget what it was called). As music played and a man chanted in a sing song voice, folks in sheepskin and other costumes--a tree costume, a double-man camel costume, etc... then the guys in sheepskin broke out into the crowd, chasing people and (playfully) whipping them--kind of like what goes on after Eid Kbir... I found it all quite fascinating--especially considering that this is the Berber Heartland--and Berbers are not folks that encourage a lot of goofiness...
Afterwards, we went outside the medina walls to find a quiet place to parkbench... found a nice spot and met some good folks there...
One thing I noticed very quickly in Tiznit was that I didn't win anybody's heart by speaking in Arabic--Arabic is definitely the language of outsiders here. And you will not hear anything but Berber music coming out of the various shops in the market... It's actually quite a comforting feeling... because I know how peace-loving the Tashlhit culture is...
