lunch at the top of the world

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Page 20 COSTA NEWS, November 17-24, 2011

Derek Workman took a bike ride at the end of March through Morocco's High Atlas Mountains to raise funds forEducation For All, a Moroccan-based charity that builds boarding houses for girls from the poorest of familiesfrom remote mountain villages, to help them continue their education. He wrote a diary about the six-day ride,High, Ride and Handsome - by bike through the High Atlas Mountains from which this excerpt is taken.

Lunch at the top of the world

ACHING bones, gurgling stom-ach, not feeling I can do it, butthe moment we get into thesaddle for a rapid descent of acouple of kilometers, the achesand pains ease and the slightchill wakes me up. We're intoday three of the week-long ride,and the glorious spring sun hasgot me raring to go.

We begin the climb to Asni,where we are going to make aquick visit to one of the housesthat Education for All havebuilt. We're all looking forwardto meeting the girls who live at

Dar Asni, but as luck wouldhave it, the teachers at theirschools are on strike and thegirls have all gone home. Appar-ently this isn't an unusual eventand highlights one of theanomalies of the Moroccan wayof educational life for girls.Sometimes a single class will beheld in the morning and thenanother in the afternoon. Boyswill simply stay at the school,but it's considered unsafe for

girls to do that, and are expectedto return home. Often they havewalked considerable distances,and on occasions when time-tab-ling is particularly erratic theywill miss a day's schooling com-pletely. For the girls at the EFAhouses they simply walk acrossthe road, as the three houses areall built within a couple of min-utes walk of the schools.

After a quick chat withhouse mother Latifa, we beginthe seventeen kilometre climbup to the Kasbah du Toubkal,the Berber Hospitality Centre

whose five percent surcharge onclients bills funds a series of pro-jects in the villages of the ImlilValley, as well as substantialpart of the costs of runningEFA.

As we leave Asni the tightbends gradually even out, re-vealing a patchwork of tinyfields, brilliant green with theearly growth of corn, and smallcherry orchards, a mixt of fluffywhite and deep pink blossom.

Sparkling water gurgles overrocks at the side of a narrowstream, which can turn into araging torrent when the snowsmelt, as happened in 1995, whenImlil was devastated, as floodswashed away forty parked carsand a large part of the ancientvillage of Taouririt, the oldest inthe valley, leaving only fivehouses perched on an erodedmound.

It's gas re-fill day, and at vari-ous points along the roadsideblue metal gas bottles stand,sometimes guarded by a smallboy sat in the shade, waiting for

the wagon to come along and ex-change their empty bottles forfull ones. Forget, and you couldbe cooking over an open fire fora week. Many of the tiniest vil-lages high up in the mountainsare little more than stone andadobe shacks, and can be veryisolated; no busses, with theonly regular traffic being de-liveries of vegetables from theSaturday market in Asni. Youmight be able to hitch a ride onthe delivery wagon, but other-wise it's simply having the pa-tience to sit by the side of theroad hoping that a vehicle willpass to take you on your way -and there's pretty little trafficpassing on those dilapidatedroads.

My pace is leisurely com-pared to that of the others, butI'm enjoying the ride, slowlyturning the peddles at a comfort-able speed and taking a walknow and then to savour theview. I find a gentle stroll for acouple of hundred metres workswonders when the legs begin to

ache.When I arrive at Imlil, the

village at the foot of the Kasbahdu Toubkal, my legs are aching,and the idea of sitting on some-thing that doesn't burn the but-tocks is a joy. But the climb isn'tover yet. Our lunch is waitingfor us five hundred metreshigher, on a knee-crunchingwalk that Mike McHugo, the or-ganiser of the bike ride, de-scribes, in his ever understatedway, as a 'walk that gains alti-tude'.

After an exhausting ride anda tiring climb up to the Kasbah,

all I feel like is a stretch-out on afirm Moroccan sofa before I eat,but a delight is in store. The Kas-bah has its own hammam, thetraditional steam bath, and weall pile in, throw off our sweatycycling gear and languor in thesteamy heat before scrubbingourselves down and heading offto the roof terrace for lunch. Weeat a tajine at top of the world -or at least that's how it feels.Above us is Djbel Toubkal, thehighest mountain in North Af-rica, still covered in snow.

As much as I'd love to havespent the rest of the day soakingup the sun, it's back down therocky road to Imlil to pick up thebikes, and an incredibly exhil-arating whiz down the moun-tain. As I casually free-wheeldown a shallow slope I see acouple of young girls chattingunder some eucalyptus trees.One of them has a stick and iskeeping a watchful eye on asmall herd of goats munching atthe grass on the roadside. Shelooks about fourteen, the sameage as some of the girls who livein the Education For All board-ing houses, and I can't helpthinking that there but for thegrace of God and hundreds ofstrangers, go the hundred or soyoung girls whose lives will bechanged because of the chanceto continue their schooling. Aslovely as it is to feel the sun onyour back in mid-March, andgaze off into the long views ofthe snow-capped Atlas Moun-tains hovering hazily in the dis-tance, this isn't just a jolly cyc-ling holiday to get into shape forthe summer. There is a veryserious intent behind the Mo-roccan hospitality and modestluxury. The aching legs at theend of the day will be eased everso slightly, knowing that thanksto your efforts a young girl froma poor family in a remote villagein the High Atlas, the name ofwhich you have probably neverhave heard of, never mind be

able to pronounce, will be giventhe opportunity to study, to dis-cover a life away from her com-munity, and perhaps one day goto university, or perhaps just re-turn to her village to develop thecycle of opportunity she hasbeen fortunate to become partof.

When the week came to anend and we'd battled our waythrough the traffic into Marra-kech, I felt a sense of achiev-ement I'd not felt in a long, long

time. Six days in the saddle,tackling some pretty difficultterrain on the highest roads inAfrica, had been exhausting attimes, but it proved one thing - Imay be well on the shady side ofsixty, but I'm not too old and de-crepit after all. Even with my ac-hing bones I could take part, andthe truth is that forcing myself

to keep on keeping on wasworth more than the idyllic ideaof snoozing the day away by thepool. I can do that at home inSpain. Permit me to repeat my-self; I'm not too old and decrepitafter all!

And neither are you.You can read the full story

Derek's bike ride for EducationFor All at http://bit.ly/ridemo-rocco. If you would like to knowmore about the ride in 2012 youcan learn all about it at

www.educationforallmo-rocco.org, as well as the wonder-ful work Education For All doesto help young girls from impov-erished families in the remotevillages of the High Atlas Moun-tains to continue the educationthey so richly deserve. You cancontact Derek at derek@spai-nuncovered.net for more details.

Chatting with the ladies of Dar Asni Moroccan mountain village

Fording a river

Kasbah du Toubkal garden

Who's going fastest!On the upLunch at the Kasbah du Toubkal

The study room at Dar Asni