Sefrou, Morocco

There are a few weekends in our community based training that Peace Corps allows an overnight stay somewhere other than your community. On this weekend, we headed to Sefrou, a lovely town near Fes. 

Sefrou was once called Little Jerusalem because of the high percentage of jewish population there. It is well known for it's summer cherry festival. The medina, though smaller, is older than the winding medina of Fez, and most of the walls are white washed, giving it a fresher feeling. It is tucked amongst the foothills of the Middle Atlas mountains with beautiful walking trails and lookouts. It is only 30 km from Fes, and costs 7 MAD, about 1 dollar, on a bus. 

There are only a couple hotels in town, and we stayed here, an old berber jewish home. It was lovely. Our purpose was for decompression, and sitting on a low ponch, drinking tea, reading emails, looking out of stained glass, and eating strawberries from the souq was a little slice of heaven.   

After dragging ourselves out of the hotel heaven, we explored the surroundings of Sefrou. Our intention was to hike to this waterfall and return back to the medina.

However, we made three kid friends that were more than excited to show us around their stomping grounds. Consequently, we saw everything that would be important to kids; neat caves in the rock face, a place to skip rocks and catch minnows, an abandoned villa, little sheep trails through the hills, snails to eat, etc. We ended up going on quite a long hike up the foothills and through neighborhoods, and it was perfect. The one girl, with curls sticking out of her hood and a slight lisp, had enough gumption for all of us. As soon as we would arrive at a lookout, sitting point, or cool bug on the ground, she would yell and gesture "Yallah, Zid!" meaning lets go, add steps. You can imagine the face-off when Zach stopped to join in with a group playing guitar/drums. Because we are approached so frequently by faux tour guides or kids asking for money in our community and when we travel, these kids were awesome. They just wanted to play, and they would have played with us or without us. There were no visible past or future expectations of us, and we had fun being completely in the present. As we walked, they talked in Darija about how we were nice grown ups, and they were nice kids.