#ouezzane

Ouezzane, also known as '' Dar Dmana '', is an important religious center.

Ouezzane, également connue sous le nom de ''Dar Dmana'', est un centre religieux important. 

وزّان، التي سميت كذلك بـ "دار الضمانة"، مركز ديني مهم

Invest in ancient fig cultivars in Morocco, invest in the future

Moroccan fig trees are a part of Ahmed Hakam. Until he was nine years old, Ahmed never ventured outside of his birth village near the northern city of Ouezzane. He vividly remembers the local fig harvest, when, every year, he, his mother and scores of women and their children from nearby villages would gather to dry figs on palm shrub leaves. While women worked, children were socialized among fig…

In the middle of nowhere… with heavy bags and no map, getting out of here was going to prove our biggest and most stressful challenge to date.

Shortly after arriving in Ouezzane we came to the realisation that we didn’t have a clue where we were. All we knew was that we was at least half way to where we needed to be and that we should be able to get there from here. Fortunately we met a nice English speaking local who was also on his way back to Chefchaouen after the holidays to work in his shop, and he was more than prepared to be our saviour. Or so it seemed!

As the bus pulled in to stop there was several young men waiting outside with trolleys looking for a bit of work helping anyone with big bags, with a special eye for tourists. I got this impression when I locked eyes with one of the men and he continued to stare at me as I waited to get off the bus. I was a marked man and he had me in his sights. So much so that when I collected my backpack he attempted to take it off of me and pile it onto the trolley whilst fighting off the other contestants. I strongly rejected his offer as we weren’t walking far at all and he moved on to get work from elsewhere.

So our so called saviour, whose names escapes me said he would help us find the next bus but we would have to wait for maybe half an hour. Or so he said. The problem that we faced was that it was the end of Eid and people were either going back home or going on holiday and it just so seemed that Chef was the hotspot amongst the locals in the height of summer.

This caused a problem because buses from this station were a free for all where the driver would get off and shout out his next stop to the patrons of the café we were rightly sat at. Causing mass panic as people rushed with their bags and paid the price they demanded. This wasn’t an issue at first because we had started the day early and it was only early afternoon when we got to Ouezzane.

At first a couple of drivers approached us and we were delighted to hear that a bus was here so soon. But thanks to our ‘saviour’ we missed those early opportunities because he wasn’t happy to pay the price they wanted. It was nothing to us, but we were empathetic to how much that might have been to him. And he had been so nice this far.

But he kept telling us and telling we could definitely get it cheaper and we believed him. After spoiling our first 2 chances, no other bus we needed came for hours and hours and when it did we started to struggle to catch one as each bus filled up with locals that were fluent in Arabic and able to snatch up any spare seats. It became a game of cat and mouse and we stood and ran with our bags and bid for a place on the next bus only to be rejected and slump back into our seats at the café. It started becoming ridiculous and there was no more hope that we were going to be successful.

After about 6 hours or so we were becoming increasingly frustrated with our local friend who was honestly just trying to save us a few pennies and decided to sack him off. We knew there was a taxi rank around the corner waiting to rip people off who couldn’t catch the bus, and we were more than prepared to take that opportunity after wasting a day forever waiting for buses.