Zaouia

About 15 minutes from us is a Zaouia - a shrine sometimes surrounded by a village. There are many of these all over Morocco and each one is also named after the Muslim saint buried there. This particular one is unique in that almost all the homes in this tiny town have at least one room that is a cave. "Ifrane" is thought to mean cave because of this village and the many small caves in the area.

Karen and I went to go visit a woman there who had a small cut on her foot a year ago. It got gangrene and she had to have almost all of her leg amputated. This is one of the many sad, sad examples of seeking medical care too late.

To get to the woman's house, we passed by their stable (first picture) - I had to peek inside to make sure Mary and Joseph weren't in there too! The third picture is the woman's daughter-in-law who was fixing us some tea. As you can see, their kitchen is in a cave. The left wall is bricked in as is the wall connecting the kitchen to the rest of the house. Everything else is the cave. You can see how low the ceiling is and that it is impossible for an adult to stand up inside. Amazingly, they had electricity coming in and the kitchen even had a refrigerator!

Later we were invited into another home pictured second. Passing through the rest of the house, we entered the cave through a round doorway and went down several steps into the room. All the walls had paintings telling the story of the wiseman who founded this town many years ago. You can see our friend telling Karen the story in this picture. And yes, the little pink marshmallow is Kendra.

The story goes that in the 1100s, a wiseman and his wife settled in what is now Ifrane from the Sahara Desert. From here there are two tales of why he moved - one is that his wife said it was too cold and wanted to move below the snow line - the other is that he loaded his donkey and followed it to where the town/zaouia is today.

In those days, the king of Morocco lived in Fez - an hour away (by car, that is!). The story goes that one of the king's wives was a little risky and decided to take a bath outside. Much to their shock, the king and several other men discovered her bathing a little while later. She quickly scrambled up a tree leaving everyone with quite a crisis - how to get the queen down from the tree while preserving her dignity and the dignity of the king??? So the wiseman was called and consulted. Again, there are two stories as to what happened next. One is that he prayed and clothing came out of heaven for her. The other is that he told the king that she simply needed to wait for the night - and that the darkness would clothe her. Either way, it is said that she got down without too much humiliation (other than the fact that people are still talking about her 900 years later). In gratitude, the king gave the wiseman and all his descendants freedom from military service, a great deal of land, and an annual stipend. Each king has had the option to sign this agreement since then, and amazingly, each one has except for the current king, but he is expected to do so as well.