On Morocco, Islam and Faithfulness
221224, Marrakesh. Why Morocco? Several reasons. It is a birder’s paradise which lies at the confluence of several important flyways connecting Europe and Africa. It combines cultural and natural diversity and therefore makes a great destination for a family. After a bit more than two years reverse culture shock of returning to Austria, I wanted to break out of the European mindset and dive into a different, unknown culture. When being for longer than two weeks in my originating society I have a feeling of being grounded in a straitjacket. I can’t breathe and suffer under a too well-known monoculture. But there is also this lure of Islam, this religion which has captured so many humans in mostly desert countries, which is the largest cultural realm that is still alien to me. We traveled in 2003 to Xinjiang, a Muslim province in China, and that was already an interesting experience. There are Muslim Hui Chinese all over the country and we often ate in their restaurants. But my interest has been for the last 20+ years with China and the three religions it entails: Buddhism, Taoism and Confucianism. There was no space for Islam.
Being back in Europe, Islam plays a significantly more important role in our life. Two thirds of the pupils in our son’s school are Muslim. Our flat is just across the street from the Muslim community center in town. Most restaurants in the area where we live are owned by Turkish people. Kebab and Dürüm have replaced Frankfurter and Käsekrainer as the favorite snacks in most German speaking cities. Islam is without doubt a strikingly important cultural influence in Europe. It has however a negative reputation which I wanted to test firsthand in one of the countries of origin. What is it that “the Western” person does not like about Muslims? What creates the rift between people being culturally conditioned by Islam and Christianity?
My superficial knowledge of Muslim culture is limited to my high school graduation in religious studies, my interest in Sufism and my deep love of everything Islam has brought to Spain which indeed is the reason why I choose Spain over other European countries for my Erasmus studies in 1997/98: flamenco music, azulejos craftmanship and majestic architecture and design in Granada and Malaga. I am aware that despite a long common history of Austrian and Hungarian people under the Habsburg dynasty, it was the several hundred-year long Ottoman influence over the Hungarians, which renders them same but different from the Austrians. The cultural blend between the moderate climate zones of Christian Europe and the subtropical and semi-desert climate zones of Muslim Central Asia and Northern Africa exist both in Spain and the Balkans. Vienna was twice besieged by the Ottomans, but Hungary was like Spain for several centuries under the control of Muslim rulers.
Being on the ground in a country like Morocco which is located in a region that is basically Muslim since Mohammed started to spread his sermon, offers a direct encounter with the people that live a religion as part of their cultural tradition. The first thing that crosses my mind: you have been brainwashed by Western media about Muslims like Chinese media brainwashed you about the Japanese. Even if we believe that we are resistant against media or don’t follow daily news, there happens something on a subconscious level, when a person, a country, a religion is repeatedly described in the one or other way. It turns into the only thing you know about that subject and therefore it turns into a point of reference.
My point of reference for the Muslim part of this world is a cluster of key words like one of the most widely spread religion on the planet, in such countries as Malaysia, Indonesia, Nigeria, and pretty much every country where deserts plays an important role, terrorism, ISIS, oil sheiks, gender inequality, fundamentalism, astronomy and mathematics prodigies of the middle ages, economic backwaters of modernity, Quran fanaticism. What will remain of these points of reference which have been put into my mind by the Western media machinery?
Being back in Europe, Islam plays a significantly more important role in our life. Two thirds of the pupils in our son’s school are Muslim. Our flat is just across the street from the Muslim community center in town. Most restaurants in the area where we live are owned by Turkish people. Kebab and Dürüm have replaced Frankfurter and Käsekrainer as the favorite snacks in most German speaking cities. Islam is without doubt a strikingly important cultural influence in Europe. It has however a negative reputation which I wanted to test firsthand in one of the countries of origin. What is it that “the Western” person does not like about Muslims? What creates the rift between people being culturally conditioned by Islam and Christianity?
My superficial knowledge of Muslim culture is limited to my high school graduation in religious studies, my interest in Sufism and my deep love of everything Islam has brought to Spain which indeed is the reason why I choose Spain over other European countries for my Erasmus studies in 1997/98: flamenco music, azulejos craftmanship and majestic architecture and design in Granada and Malaga. I am aware that despite a long common history of Austrian and Hungarian people under the Habsburg dynasty, it was the several hundred-year long Ottoman influence over the Hungarians, which renders them same but different from the Austrians. The cultural blend between the moderate climate zones of Christian Europe and the subtropical and semi-desert climate zones of Muslim Central Asia and Northern Africa exist both in Spain and the Balkans. Vienna was twice besieged by the Ottomans, but Hungary was like Spain for several centuries under the control of Muslim rulers.
Being on the ground in a country like Morocco which is located in a region that is basically Muslim since Mohammed started to spread his sermon, offers a direct encounter with the people that live a religion as part of their cultural tradition. The first thing that crosses my mind: you have been brainwashed by Western media about Muslims like Chinese media brainwashed you about the Japanese. Even if we believe that we are resistant against media or don’t follow daily news, there happens something on a subconscious level, when a person, a country, a religion is repeatedly described in the one or other way. It turns into the only thing you know about that subject and therefore it turns into a point of reference.
My point of reference for the Muslim part of this world is a cluster of key words like one of the most widely spread religion on the planet, in such countries as Malaysia, Indonesia, Nigeria, and pretty much every country where deserts plays an important role, terrorism, ISIS, oil sheiks, gender inequality, fundamentalism, astronomy and mathematics prodigies of the middle ages, economic backwaters of modernity, Quran fanaticism. What will remain of these points of reference which have been put into my mind by the Western media machinery?
221227, Marrakesh. What we have learned so far is that people are super friendly, but friendliness is a trait that is part of the business culture. There is a seamless spectrum from somebody smiling at you in the street and someone approaching you to offer his services as local guide. In the first few days we are taught by half a dozen encounters that if one does accept friendly gestures, they almost always lead to the request of payment for offered services, even if they were not asked for. In this sense Marrakesh, the capital of Morocco’s burgeoning tourism industry, becomes for us a training location to follow our own plan and intuition, and separating it from the many traps which one can step in every day.
We have only a roughly sketched plan for this trip. Getting a feeling for the country in the first few days in Marrakesh, where we spend a total of 4 nights in a riad (traditional townhouse turned into b&b) which is located in the medina (old city quarters). Drifting along the souqs (bazaars) and sucking up the feeling of being in Northern Africa. On Dec 28th we will return to the airport to pick up a rental car, which is the most reasonable mode of transportation for a family, to cross the Atlas range and explore the oasis dotted Draa valley in Marrakesh’s southeast leading into the Sahara Desert and the Algerian border area. From there we will head west, cross the anti-Atlas into the Souess valley, the most important agricultural region of the country to stop in its cultural center Taroudant. The last days are scheduled as a recovery from travelling long distances at the seaside towns of Tagazhout and Essaouria, from where we circle back to Marrakesh.
Having no clear daily schedule makes it surely more likely that a friendly person showing up at the threshold of your hotel after a late breakfast drags you in a completely different direction than the one you would have taken without manipulation. We experience theatrical scenes and world class acting skills with people pretending to have just bumped into us on their way to work but ending up going completely out of their way by bumping a second time into us when being on an “important errand” which enables them to show us a part of the medina which is two kilometers away from where we met them first.
We let this happen three times after we are completely fed up not being able to follow our own intuition and enjoy our holidays. The decisive experience was a fake guide telling us about a special market taking place “only today in the morning hours” who takes us to the tanneries, which are indicated as a local attraction for those who have prepared for it and are really into learning about ancient techniques of leather dyeing. If you are not prepared for this experience, the smell and sight of men working large patches of animal skins in intensively stinking earthen pits filled with poultry excrements and different colors will make your stomach wrench.
We turn on our heels and walk back from where we came, observing a few other foreign families being guided into the direction of the tanneries by other “faux guides”. This game seems to be part of the Marrakesh experience. I start to wonder however if this is part of the culture or the result of a certain economic development stage. Some of our encounters are a display of advanced magic, i.e. the skill to manipulate the mind gracefully. Diversion and change of attention are applied in the most complex manner, tying into the general hustle and bustle of souq atmosphere to create a slippery path throughout the day. Trying to stay with one’s own intuition turns under such conditions into a training of will power. Sadly, one learns over time a habitual reaction: that friendliness is never genuine, but always an effort to sell something.
I am not blaming in any way, but rather try to understand the economic dimension in this behavior. If friendliness between strangers is mainly an attitude which is the result of economic activity then we need to conclude that much lying, deceit and fraud is the consequence of economic inequality and a lack of social welfare systems. As an individual that has been socialized in Austria, one of the pioneering countries in general public health care and social insurance, I am in particular unexperienced in dealing with people of societies that do not know the welfare institutions which have become standard in some parts of the world.
I wonder, if the introduction of a universal basic income could create a global culture of honesty and friendliness which is based on the knowledge that we are not anymore competing tribes or nations, but one humankind which ought to collaborate in order to survive. If the lack of a universal basic income creates not only misery, suffering and striking inequalities but also less discussed traits like lying, deceit and fraud, we should not wait much longer to eradicate the parts of culture which are rather the consequence of a socio-economic development stage. We must hurry in this undertaking, because the elements of culture which ought to be preserved, i.e. goods and services which are created by ethnic groups through their hands like the stunning Berber woodworks, Muslim masonry, carpets and textiles, and culinary specialties are being lost rapidly as more and more people shift under economic pressures to cash crops and cash services like argan, safran and unsustainable tourism.
We have only a roughly sketched plan for this trip. Getting a feeling for the country in the first few days in Marrakesh, where we spend a total of 4 nights in a riad (traditional townhouse turned into b&b) which is located in the medina (old city quarters). Drifting along the souqs (bazaars) and sucking up the feeling of being in Northern Africa. On Dec 28th we will return to the airport to pick up a rental car, which is the most reasonable mode of transportation for a family, to cross the Atlas range and explore the oasis dotted Draa valley in Marrakesh’s southeast leading into the Sahara Desert and the Algerian border area. From there we will head west, cross the anti-Atlas into the Souess valley, the most important agricultural region of the country to stop in its cultural center Taroudant. The last days are scheduled as a recovery from travelling long distances at the seaside towns of Tagazhout and Essaouria, from where we circle back to Marrakesh.
Having no clear daily schedule makes it surely more likely that a friendly person showing up at the threshold of your hotel after a late breakfast drags you in a completely different direction than the one you would have taken without manipulation. We experience theatrical scenes and world class acting skills with people pretending to have just bumped into us on their way to work but ending up going completely out of their way by bumping a second time into us when being on an “important errand” which enables them to show us a part of the medina which is two kilometers away from where we met them first.
We let this happen three times after we are completely fed up not being able to follow our own intuition and enjoy our holidays. The decisive experience was a fake guide telling us about a special market taking place “only today in the morning hours” who takes us to the tanneries, which are indicated as a local attraction for those who have prepared for it and are really into learning about ancient techniques of leather dyeing. If you are not prepared for this experience, the smell and sight of men working large patches of animal skins in intensively stinking earthen pits filled with poultry excrements and different colors will make your stomach wrench.
We turn on our heels and walk back from where we came, observing a few other foreign families being guided into the direction of the tanneries by other “faux guides”. This game seems to be part of the Marrakesh experience. I start to wonder however if this is part of the culture or the result of a certain economic development stage. Some of our encounters are a display of advanced magic, i.e. the skill to manipulate the mind gracefully. Diversion and change of attention are applied in the most complex manner, tying into the general hustle and bustle of souq atmosphere to create a slippery path throughout the day. Trying to stay with one’s own intuition turns under such conditions into a training of will power. Sadly, one learns over time a habitual reaction: that friendliness is never genuine, but always an effort to sell something.
I am not blaming in any way, but rather try to understand the economic dimension in this behavior. If friendliness between strangers is mainly an attitude which is the result of economic activity then we need to conclude that much lying, deceit and fraud is the consequence of economic inequality and a lack of social welfare systems. As an individual that has been socialized in Austria, one of the pioneering countries in general public health care and social insurance, I am in particular unexperienced in dealing with people of societies that do not know the welfare institutions which have become standard in some parts of the world.
I wonder, if the introduction of a universal basic income could create a global culture of honesty and friendliness which is based on the knowledge that we are not anymore competing tribes or nations, but one humankind which ought to collaborate in order to survive. If the lack of a universal basic income creates not only misery, suffering and striking inequalities but also less discussed traits like lying, deceit and fraud, we should not wait much longer to eradicate the parts of culture which are rather the consequence of a socio-economic development stage. We must hurry in this undertaking, because the elements of culture which ought to be preserved, i.e. goods and services which are created by ethnic groups through their hands like the stunning Berber woodworks, Muslim masonry, carpets and textiles, and culinary specialties are being lost rapidly as more and more people shift under economic pressures to cash crops and cash services like argan, safran and unsustainable tourism.
221228, Dar Mhamid. We arrive late after a long drive from Ait Ben Haddou in Dar Mhamid, the last town accessible by sealed road before the Algerian border and the Sahara dessert. I still feel very alien in this culture, which is said to have existed twice as long as China, one that was separated from the rest of the North African world by the mighty Atlas range, which is comparable to the European Alps.
Our host confirms what we suspected when hiking in the river basin of Oued Draa around Ait Ben Haddou earlier today: there is no rainfall and the river has almost dried up. Climate change is one reason for water shortage; instead of around 1ºC night temperatures the thermometer shows between 7-9ºC. The Atlas mountain shows only little snow at the peaks. According to our host the snow fell low into the Atlas valleys when he was a child. Palm trees suffer and instead of lush green, they are yellowish or even without any palm leaves: a microbe disease which spreads with the continuous drought kills the palms.
The other cause seems to upset locals however more. The dam at Quarzazete drains the Draa valley of its life and produces electricity for the king who sells it dearly to his subjects. A new PV power plant follows the same principle: more technology and power for the ruler, less sharing with the people. Before the dam at Quarzazete was built, next to the local attraction of Erg Chigaga (mountain like sand dunes), so our host says, and old maps show, was another natural attraction: Lac Iriqui, a paradise for birds and gazelle. Ever since the Draa river is drained into the Quarzatate reservoirs, the lake and with it, the wild life is gone. An imagined solution to one problem creates another problem because it does not take into account the impact on existing human and non-human ecosystems.
Our host confirms what we suspected when hiking in the river basin of Oued Draa around Ait Ben Haddou earlier today: there is no rainfall and the river has almost dried up. Climate change is one reason for water shortage; instead of around 1ºC night temperatures the thermometer shows between 7-9ºC. The Atlas mountain shows only little snow at the peaks. According to our host the snow fell low into the Atlas valleys when he was a child. Palm trees suffer and instead of lush green, they are yellowish or even without any palm leaves: a microbe disease which spreads with the continuous drought kills the palms.
The other cause seems to upset locals however more. The dam at Quarzazete drains the Draa valley of its life and produces electricity for the king who sells it dearly to his subjects. A new PV power plant follows the same principle: more technology and power for the ruler, less sharing with the people. Before the dam at Quarzazete was built, next to the local attraction of Erg Chigaga (mountain like sand dunes), so our host says, and old maps show, was another natural attraction: Lac Iriqui, a paradise for birds and gazelle. Ever since the Draa river is drained into the Quarzatate reservoirs, the lake and with it, the wild life is gone. An imagined solution to one problem creates another problem because it does not take into account the impact on existing human and non-human ecosystems.
221230, Erg Chegaga. On the way back north in the Draa valley the impressions of being 24 hours with former nomads reverberate. Oman and Mustapha run a family business in Dar Mhamid which their father founded. They are seven children, two sisters and five brothers and they are in the midst of massive social transformation. Their parents still had a full nomadic life and spent most of their time in the desert, but they only spent their early childhood as nomads. After years of drought, more and more nomads settled in Dar Mhamid for good and gave up their wandering lifestyle. More and more wells dried up and less and less rainfall meant that survival in the desert became impossible.
While Mustapha’s parents still married young, he says that people marry now whenever and whoever they want. His sister married into a family in West Sahara. There are almost no arranged marriages anymore while it was common to marry within the family tribe only one generation ago. Mustapha is in his thirties and still single; he prefers to spend the summers which can be as hot as 55˚C at the seaside in Essaouria. His parents stay, but the question really is how much longer it is possible to sustain life in the Draa valley if there is no water.
Once lush green palm trees are barren yellow, and it is quite possible that increasing tourism means more water consumption. But it seems to be impossible that the locals will ever go back to be nomads. Even if the water returns, Omar tells us, the young people don’t want to work in the fields anymore. Everybody wants to earn more and work less. Tourism is not exactly an easy trade, but in a family run business there is enough profit to be made to keep family bonds tight. And what might be more important: tourism is a window to more freedom from royal oppression. It is not allowed to criticize the king, but there is agreement among the people we talk to that he is not caring much for his subjects. Tourists bring a source of income which was not available up till recently and therefore lifts many to new levels of economic independence.
That a feudal system is still in place in large parts of the country, is revealed by the special rights Quatarians enjoy directly derived from the king. When two Toyota landcruisers pass our car, Mustapha tells us that they come here to hunt for birds. “They are rich and have a palais in Marrakesh”, he adds. His account sounds as if the king trades fossil fuel with land rights and hunting permissions. Feudalism is just another aspect of the country which is so much out of my comfort zone. Thinking of folks who fly from Quatar, i.e. the Eastern end of the Sahara, to Marrakesh residing in their palais before they go on hunting trips in the Western end of the Sahara, is rather mind boggling.
Erg Chigaga, so Mustapha tells us, means “dune where conflicts are settled”. In former times, when there were disputes among the tribes, they would meet at Erg Chigaga and talk things out. How big are those tribes? I want to know. Mustapha’s mimicry indicates that he has no clue, that this time is already beyond his own experience, but he knows that there were the large tribes, the Saharians, the Berber and others, and among those, there were many smaller tribes, like the one his family belongs to, which has maybe 500 members. Modern nation state meets tribalism. It was not exaggerated what Lonely Planet wrote about Thami El Glaoui, aka Pasha of Marrakesh, the Lord of the Atlas, who ruled until the 1950s over a medieval society, which only corrodes since the introduction of the nation state system upon the return of the Sultan, now king.
While Mustapha’s parents still married young, he says that people marry now whenever and whoever they want. His sister married into a family in West Sahara. There are almost no arranged marriages anymore while it was common to marry within the family tribe only one generation ago. Mustapha is in his thirties and still single; he prefers to spend the summers which can be as hot as 55˚C at the seaside in Essaouria. His parents stay, but the question really is how much longer it is possible to sustain life in the Draa valley if there is no water.
Once lush green palm trees are barren yellow, and it is quite possible that increasing tourism means more water consumption. But it seems to be impossible that the locals will ever go back to be nomads. Even if the water returns, Omar tells us, the young people don’t want to work in the fields anymore. Everybody wants to earn more and work less. Tourism is not exactly an easy trade, but in a family run business there is enough profit to be made to keep family bonds tight. And what might be more important: tourism is a window to more freedom from royal oppression. It is not allowed to criticize the king, but there is agreement among the people we talk to that he is not caring much for his subjects. Tourists bring a source of income which was not available up till recently and therefore lifts many to new levels of economic independence.
That a feudal system is still in place in large parts of the country, is revealed by the special rights Quatarians enjoy directly derived from the king. When two Toyota landcruisers pass our car, Mustapha tells us that they come here to hunt for birds. “They are rich and have a palais in Marrakesh”, he adds. His account sounds as if the king trades fossil fuel with land rights and hunting permissions. Feudalism is just another aspect of the country which is so much out of my comfort zone. Thinking of folks who fly from Quatar, i.e. the Eastern end of the Sahara, to Marrakesh residing in their palais before they go on hunting trips in the Western end of the Sahara, is rather mind boggling.
Erg Chigaga, so Mustapha tells us, means “dune where conflicts are settled”. In former times, when there were disputes among the tribes, they would meet at Erg Chigaga and talk things out. How big are those tribes? I want to know. Mustapha’s mimicry indicates that he has no clue, that this time is already beyond his own experience, but he knows that there were the large tribes, the Saharians, the Berber and others, and among those, there were many smaller tribes, like the one his family belongs to, which has maybe 500 members. Modern nation state meets tribalism. It was not exaggerated what Lonely Planet wrote about Thami El Glaoui, aka Pasha of Marrakesh, the Lord of the Atlas, who ruled until the 1950s over a medieval society, which only corrodes since the introduction of the nation state system upon the return of the Sultan, now king.
221231, Zagora. Omar drew a map of our trip to Erg Chigaga before we left Dar Mhamid which showed three distinct areas covering the 65 km to their desert camp: the small dunes, the rock desert and the large dunes. Mustapha, his younger brother, who drives us to the camp, explains that they played a lot in the rock desert. He stops for us and explains us how to look for fossils. He clearly enjoys identifying rocks and tells us that he spent long hours in the desert looking for nice rocks. I ask him if his parents did also teach him about plants and he confirms. How many, I want to know. He is not sure, but probably about a hundred. He points at a shrub which is typical for the small dune desert: “This one is toxic, even animals avoid it. But this one is a good medicine, and that one over there: you will be crazy if you eat it.”
I am intrigued by nomadic knowledge and at the same time saddened by seeing how it disappears. Mustapha is the last generation of Saharians, who have acquired this knowledge directly from their elders. He explains that his tribe is spread over Morocco, Algeria and Mauretania, and is different from Berber. The Berber inhabit rather the area in and north of the Atlas. His people are at home south of the Atlas, where the desert intersects with the lower ranges of the mountains. He knows every stretch of land by name, every well by water depth. When he was a boy ground water was reached at 20m depth; most wells have dried up, and people have to drill 200m and more.
Morocco is a modern nation state which has set political borders that ignore the ecosystems in which people have lived for ages. It is however not Morocco which established this order, but colonialism. The current king’s father only continued a mixture between the earlier Sultanate and the French imported concept of nationalism. Mustapha’s answer, whether he considers himself Moroccan, is straight forward. “They gave me the papers which say that I am Moroccan. They also give the people in the West Sahara papers which tells them that they are Moroccan and on top of that a government allowance which enables them to live without working. Their life is good over there in Dakhla.”
National identity based on passports and social welfare. Interesting. But what if the very foundation of identity is in peril? Morocco reminds me in its path of modernization of Ladakh as described in the documentary “Economics of Happiness”. Economic growth takes place at the expense of cultural collapse and environmental destruction. The pictures at the Musee de Photographie in Marrakesh which show the country’s rich variety in dance and music between 1870 and 1950 are in contrast with commercial tourism and wasted landscapes. Plastic packaging covers all but the most remote areas carried from cities and suburban areas into the open wild. Settlements are half living areas half waste dumps where modern pampers are disposed in ancients kasbah structures. The Atlas towns remind me all too much of Chinese settlements in Tibet.
The amount of solid waste surrounding every step makes our efforts to collect solid waste in Shanghai or St. Pölten look silly. But then again I think that this would be purposeful movement, if children in these schools collected once a week for a full day waste in their towns and villages, in order to repair what their parents have destroyed. Who if not them must be responsible for building a future which can sustain their very own survival? Instead of spending all time in school buildings where no purposeful movement can happen, they should go out and perform action which is directed at the restoration of the environment.
I am intrigued by nomadic knowledge and at the same time saddened by seeing how it disappears. Mustapha is the last generation of Saharians, who have acquired this knowledge directly from their elders. He explains that his tribe is spread over Morocco, Algeria and Mauretania, and is different from Berber. The Berber inhabit rather the area in and north of the Atlas. His people are at home south of the Atlas, where the desert intersects with the lower ranges of the mountains. He knows every stretch of land by name, every well by water depth. When he was a boy ground water was reached at 20m depth; most wells have dried up, and people have to drill 200m and more.
Morocco is a modern nation state which has set political borders that ignore the ecosystems in which people have lived for ages. It is however not Morocco which established this order, but colonialism. The current king’s father only continued a mixture between the earlier Sultanate and the French imported concept of nationalism. Mustapha’s answer, whether he considers himself Moroccan, is straight forward. “They gave me the papers which say that I am Moroccan. They also give the people in the West Sahara papers which tells them that they are Moroccan and on top of that a government allowance which enables them to live without working. Their life is good over there in Dakhla.”
National identity based on passports and social welfare. Interesting. But what if the very foundation of identity is in peril? Morocco reminds me in its path of modernization of Ladakh as described in the documentary “Economics of Happiness”. Economic growth takes place at the expense of cultural collapse and environmental destruction. The pictures at the Musee de Photographie in Marrakesh which show the country’s rich variety in dance and music between 1870 and 1950 are in contrast with commercial tourism and wasted landscapes. Plastic packaging covers all but the most remote areas carried from cities and suburban areas into the open wild. Settlements are half living areas half waste dumps where modern pampers are disposed in ancients kasbah structures. The Atlas towns remind me all too much of Chinese settlements in Tibet.
The amount of solid waste surrounding every step makes our efforts to collect solid waste in Shanghai or St. Pölten look silly. But then again I think that this would be purposeful movement, if children in these schools collected once a week for a full day waste in their towns and villages, in order to repair what their parents have destroyed. Who if not them must be responsible for building a future which can sustain their very own survival? Instead of spending all time in school buildings where no purposeful movement can happen, they should go out and perform action which is directed at the restoration of the environment.
230101, Agdz. Our host in Riad Tabhirte is full of hope. In only about two months the water pipeline between Marrakesh and Zagora will be opened. This explains the many 50cm wide and 15m long plastic pipes lying next to N-9, the national road we travel along. Water scarcity is the number one issue in Morocco. If it is true what Mustapha in Dar Mhamid told us, that there hasn’t been any rain in 12 years; if it is is true what my French birding guide writes that as of 2002, i.e. 20 years ago, the Quarzazete water reservoir was at only 12% capacity, then it is without question that the Draa valley is dying. I am not convinced of a 50cm water pipeline connecting the northern Atlas valley with the southern, but it is the only possibility to survive in here, as our host puts it.
The reasons for this regional water scarcity are multiple and complex. There is global climate change as one major factor, but not for as long as the last 20 years. I am more than convinced that the regional climate has been tremendously impacted by the Quarzazete hydropower plant. In such an arid region, even small changes in the hydrological system will impact the climate substantially. Water which continuously flows from the mountains into the semi-desert and from there to the sea, evaporates along the way, turns into clouds and occasionally these clouds empty themselves not far from where they appeared. If a river basin is only once or twice a year artificially filled with water for a few days, then this water cycle is permanently disrupted and desertification the natural consequence. Therefore, the hydropower plant and population growth caused water use increase are to be blamed firstly; global climate change is rather a secondary cause in my humble opinion.
What can be learned from this? That the choices are in our hands if people are empowered. Centralized power and infrastructure like a hydropower plant are a net negative impact on society and nature. Morocco should have long ago tried to move more into distributed photovoltaics, but even in this renewable energy technology, the country reveals its centralized power approach: it is home the world’s largest concentrated photovoltaic power plant which is also located close to Quarzazate. Water use for the cleaning of the solar mirrors amounts to 2.5-3 million m3, which is drained – guess – from the hydropower plant nearby. Leaving the people in the Draa valley with power but without water.
The reasons for this regional water scarcity are multiple and complex. There is global climate change as one major factor, but not for as long as the last 20 years. I am more than convinced that the regional climate has been tremendously impacted by the Quarzazete hydropower plant. In such an arid region, even small changes in the hydrological system will impact the climate substantially. Water which continuously flows from the mountains into the semi-desert and from there to the sea, evaporates along the way, turns into clouds and occasionally these clouds empty themselves not far from where they appeared. If a river basin is only once or twice a year artificially filled with water for a few days, then this water cycle is permanently disrupted and desertification the natural consequence. Therefore, the hydropower plant and population growth caused water use increase are to be blamed firstly; global climate change is rather a secondary cause in my humble opinion.
What can be learned from this? That the choices are in our hands if people are empowered. Centralized power and infrastructure like a hydropower plant are a net negative impact on society and nature. Morocco should have long ago tried to move more into distributed photovoltaics, but even in this renewable energy technology, the country reveals its centralized power approach: it is home the world’s largest concentrated photovoltaic power plant which is also located close to Quarzazate. Water use for the cleaning of the solar mirrors amounts to 2.5-3 million m3, which is drained – guess – from the hydropower plant nearby. Leaving the people in the Draa valley with power but without water.
230102, Taroudant
The long drive from Agdz to Taroudant makes me think a lot about the paramount impact of public policy as vehicle to achieve a sane society. Even if I don’t speak one of the local languages and don’t understand anything about this complex society which is the result of several pre-nation state nomadic ethnicities summarized under the umbrella term Amazigh, a 1500 yearlong change of Muslim dynasties and a 200 yearlong influence of the colonial powers Spain and France, I am able to observe policy priorities. One such observation is the almost complete lack of waste collection and waste recycling facilities and therefore serious solid waste pollution all over the country. Wherever we arrive, we are welcomed on our neighborhood strolls with wild waste dumps, which are mostly found in or around the kasbah, the fortified citadels which were built by the Amazigh to protect commercial interests along the trading routes leading from the Sahara Desert over the Atlas range towards the port cities along the Atlantic and Mediterranean coast.
Most kasbahs have been abandoned in the course of modernization but are like old European castles the repositories for the highlights in architecture, craftmanship and arts of the past centuries. One would expect that a country which is for Europe similar to what Thailand is for Asia in regard to cultural uniqueness, outstanding cuisine, and touristic attraction, that heritage buildings are preserved, but quite on the contrary, we encounter dilapidated and unattended structures which have been turned by the local population into wild waste dumps.
One could now argue that town and village governments are responsible for waste recycling infrastructure and cultural monument preservation but in a country where a sultan who calls himself now king rules with almost absolute power, we find a centralized governance method which creates helplessness and passivity. It is therefore the responsibility of the king and his bureaucrats to install nationwide such services and make the necessary expenditures therefore available. This is obviously not done, and I don’t see that there is any interest in doing so in the foreseeable future. It is therefore not surprising that people are not satisfied with their king.
What I observe instead of a policy focus on environmental and cultural preservation is a focus on traffic control. We encounter every few dozen kilometers one or two police cars with two to four police officers blocking the road similar to a national border crossing in Europe where all cars slow down to walking speed, some (always locals, never tourists) are stopped and checked for papers. We see several police officers who check driving velocity with radar pistols. We see police officers with large BMW motor bikes stopping locals on their cheap Dokker scooter; the local brand name for widely used Jialing motorbikes from China which have replaced older and probably more expensive Yamaha models.
Why this public policy focus on traffic control? Why no public policy focus on waste collection and waste recycling infrastructure although a clean environment is the very basis for agriculture and tourism? The answer is an excessive concern with maintaining power instead of governing with a sense of purpose. Societies like Morocco which are only in the transition to becoming nation state economies, are in between the “red” and the “orange” organization paradigm and put power first. Post-national public policy is usually in a transition from a “green” to a “teal” organization paradigm, which demands from policies and bureaucrats to act with an evolutionary purpose.
My impressions about the Draa valley are confirmed as we branch off into the Anti-Atlas region following route national 10. The palm trees look immediately greener and as we approach Taliouine, the center of Morocco’s safran production it is clear that the Draa ecolypse is the result of ignoring the laws of the regional ecosystem rather than global climate change. Despite the much higher altitude, there seems to be enough water to grow and water large crocus plantations.
Entering the Suess valley which stretches between Atlas and Anti-Atlas, a green carpet of farms shows a completely different picture of south Morocco. The water levels of the Oued Suess are very low, but at least the river flows as a small creek. Taroudant presents itself as an atmospheric small version of Marrakesh which keeps all the upsides but drops business, tourist overrun and heavy traffic. We set up camp in a riad close to the central square where we explore the souq and have eventually headspace to focus more on Morocco’s cultural offerings.
The long drive from Agdz to Taroudant makes me think a lot about the paramount impact of public policy as vehicle to achieve a sane society. Even if I don’t speak one of the local languages and don’t understand anything about this complex society which is the result of several pre-nation state nomadic ethnicities summarized under the umbrella term Amazigh, a 1500 yearlong change of Muslim dynasties and a 200 yearlong influence of the colonial powers Spain and France, I am able to observe policy priorities. One such observation is the almost complete lack of waste collection and waste recycling facilities and therefore serious solid waste pollution all over the country. Wherever we arrive, we are welcomed on our neighborhood strolls with wild waste dumps, which are mostly found in or around the kasbah, the fortified citadels which were built by the Amazigh to protect commercial interests along the trading routes leading from the Sahara Desert over the Atlas range towards the port cities along the Atlantic and Mediterranean coast.
Most kasbahs have been abandoned in the course of modernization but are like old European castles the repositories for the highlights in architecture, craftmanship and arts of the past centuries. One would expect that a country which is for Europe similar to what Thailand is for Asia in regard to cultural uniqueness, outstanding cuisine, and touristic attraction, that heritage buildings are preserved, but quite on the contrary, we encounter dilapidated and unattended structures which have been turned by the local population into wild waste dumps.
One could now argue that town and village governments are responsible for waste recycling infrastructure and cultural monument preservation but in a country where a sultan who calls himself now king rules with almost absolute power, we find a centralized governance method which creates helplessness and passivity. It is therefore the responsibility of the king and his bureaucrats to install nationwide such services and make the necessary expenditures therefore available. This is obviously not done, and I don’t see that there is any interest in doing so in the foreseeable future. It is therefore not surprising that people are not satisfied with their king.
What I observe instead of a policy focus on environmental and cultural preservation is a focus on traffic control. We encounter every few dozen kilometers one or two police cars with two to four police officers blocking the road similar to a national border crossing in Europe where all cars slow down to walking speed, some (always locals, never tourists) are stopped and checked for papers. We see several police officers who check driving velocity with radar pistols. We see police officers with large BMW motor bikes stopping locals on their cheap Dokker scooter; the local brand name for widely used Jialing motorbikes from China which have replaced older and probably more expensive Yamaha models.
Why this public policy focus on traffic control? Why no public policy focus on waste collection and waste recycling infrastructure although a clean environment is the very basis for agriculture and tourism? The answer is an excessive concern with maintaining power instead of governing with a sense of purpose. Societies like Morocco which are only in the transition to becoming nation state economies, are in between the “red” and the “orange” organization paradigm and put power first. Post-national public policy is usually in a transition from a “green” to a “teal” organization paradigm, which demands from policies and bureaucrats to act with an evolutionary purpose.
My impressions about the Draa valley are confirmed as we branch off into the Anti-Atlas region following route national 10. The palm trees look immediately greener and as we approach Taliouine, the center of Morocco’s safran production it is clear that the Draa ecolypse is the result of ignoring the laws of the regional ecosystem rather than global climate change. Despite the much higher altitude, there seems to be enough water to grow and water large crocus plantations.
Entering the Suess valley which stretches between Atlas and Anti-Atlas, a green carpet of farms shows a completely different picture of south Morocco. The water levels of the Oued Suess are very low, but at least the river flows as a small creek. Taroudant presents itself as an atmospheric small version of Marrakesh which keeps all the upsides but drops business, tourist overrun and heavy traffic. We set up camp in a riad close to the central square where we explore the souq and have eventually headspace to focus more on Morocco’s cultural offerings.
231203, Taroudant
I am however the first time in my life severely limited in enjoying our travels. My mind is filled with worry about the future of Green Steps, my family and myself. The Draa valley has become a metaphor for my own situation. I am dried up since a very long time and in urgent need of substantial irrigation. Despite my 2016 conviction that I must put the second part of my life into the service of reforming education, I learn from this journey more than ever before, that I too, am part of nature and die without the required natural, emotional, psychic and financial resources which I need at this stage of my human development.
Instead of keeping the water flowing down my own valley of life, I have blocked large amounts of water - like the Quarzazete hydropower plant - for Green Steps during the last 5 years. I have not generated any new income but used up all my savings and sold our family home in Austria to pay salaries, operation expenses and our own living costs. The home we had in Austria, was the aggregated energy of three generations which my father bought with is inheritance from my grandfather when he was only 27 years of age and which he enlarged partly with his own hands into a large two family home in what is now one of the finest neighborhoods of a wealthy and ecologically healthy city. When he died in 2010 the house was in a condition which demanded repair and substantial maintenance and I invested around EUR 400k to prepare it as a safe harbor for my family in case things would go wrong in China.
In 2019 I sold it however for two main reasons: it looked like we would stay in China for good and I wanted to invest into Green Steps. My wife had bought with my in-laws support a downtown apartment in Shanghai and I had rented and renovated a house in the countryside, which I transformed into a Montessori inspired nature education center. We were relatively happy in China and I had no desire to return to Europe despite the unmistakable signs that the Xi Jinping administration would gradually change the attitude towards its own subjects as well as foreigners.
Looking back at 2022, I look at a depleted Quarzazete reservoir and a dried up the Draa valley. I have to face my wife who is unhappy about her husband’s priorities and decisions. Like the king – and only to a much smaller extent global climate change - is responsible for the devastating ecological situation his country, I am responsible for the devastating financial and emotional situation in my family. We have given up so much comfort and what has been quite joyful has become misery. I need to make changes without knowing where to start. There are however four quotes which cross my mind in describing the current situation.
The first one is from Jeremy Goldberg, the co-host of Sinica podcast who said that “Courage is knowing it might hurt, and doing it anyway. Stupidity is the same. And that's why life is hard.” It describes what I did when choosing social entrepreneurship in 2017 over a cozy early retirement in particular after my initial experience at Green Initiatives. My 2018 summary of an unsuccessful one year long collaboration with an Indian born architect should have alarmed me that any form of enterprise, but in particular a social enterprise which shifts the vice of greed from the realm of finances to the realm of esteem, is full of unexpected and unwanted challenges.
So, the question I ask myself is simply if I am stupid, naïve or courageous in believing that a new world order and evolutionary leap can be initiated in humankind, and that I can contribute to it’s emergence? Looking at all the pain that I have gone through and all the suffering that I have caused my family to endure, I am clearly stupid and it is difficult to argue over this assessment. When one chooses a path and suffers more or less calculated difficulties, things are to a certain extent endurable. One can regret but can endure. The new emotion which made 2022 so difficult was remorse. Remorse is a different dimension of regret which appears when we have sacrificed well-being and comfort that our loved ones should have been entitled to. It is like the buddhist double arrow which causes first pain to yourself for sacrificing but then also paralyzes the energy drawn from the sacrifice because one sees the suffering it caused to one’s children.
Back in 2016/17 my insights into the forthcoming transformation of the world labor market at the forefront of the Chinese robot revolution, made me think that retiring with my family to Europe would be a shortsighted choice: 20 years of living in a safe bubble at the expense of the entire world going to hell. I knew from my bi-annual headquarter meetings in the corporation I worked from 2010 to 2016 that both private and public executive management did not understand anymore in which direction the world did evolve. Too little did and still do Western nations take into account the impact of China on the planet and too little system awareness makes most people linger in apathy over the ecological devastation which eats up our common home.
The question was for me what purpose I should give the second half of my life: retire as a fulltime father with the knowledge of my children being not able to have children on their own or working with the resources available on a transformation of the status quo? My wife tells me over and over again: “how can one person change the world?” and surely, she has a point: one person alone can’t change the world. One person, as we have seen in human history, can however initiate change, change which captures many who make the transformation possible. How did Margaret Mead once say: “Never underestimate the power of a few committed people to change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has.”
So, instead of letting remorse making me sink deeper and deeper, because I have deprived my family during the last few years and probably a few more years to come of comfort and joy, instead of lamenting that we rent a small apartment instead of owning a large house, I need to shift to the positive force that has motivated me throughout my life and find a balance between what is important and what is urgent. It is important that we find a solution to climate and social crisis. It is urgent that I provide to my children a childhood they want to remember. I have put during the last five years Green Steps in first place, but it turns out that I am the only one taking such a high bet. My partners and colleagues continued to enjoy their fortunate livelihoods while I made cut after cut in order to keep things moving for the organization.
The most powerful emotion a father can feel is the joy of watching one’s children grow up in safety and bliss. It was the outlook that I would not see my children and their children grow up which made me focus on contributing to Green Steps. Maria Montessori summarized this force as such: “If life owed its survival only to the struggle of the strong, the species would perish. So, the real reason, the main factor of the survival of the species, is the love that the adults feel for their young.” The deep guilt that became unbearable in 2022 was caused by putting the well-being of all children over the immediate well-being of my own; and that reminded me of a third quote by Buddhist sage Chogyam Trungpa, which tells me that I need to put as of 2023 my own family again in first place: “If you want to solve the world’s problems, you have to put your own household, your own individual life, in order first. That is somewhat of a paradox. People have a genuine desire to go beyond their individual, cramped lives to benefit the world. But if you do not start at home, then you have no hope of helping the world. So the first step in learning how to rule is learning to rule your household, your immediate world. There is no doubt that, if you do so, then the next step will come naturally. If you fail to do so, then your contribution to this world will be further chaos.”
I am not sure about where to start and what to do, and considering the health issues which stroke me in early 2022 it seems to be an overwhelming task. I have scheduled two surgeries early in 2023, one two fix a loose screw in my right knee and another one to deal with the disc prolapse I suffered in February 2022. How can I recover under such conditions five years of no income and about one million Euro, which was the value of our Austrian home, in reasonable time; that is as long as my children are still children? It seems as if I have messed up big and what Trungpa wrote is of course true: my suffering and my family’s misery doesn’t help others nor the planet. It makes things only worse.
There is some consolation in the fourth quote which the Muslim sage Rumi offers: Yesterday I was clever, so I wanted to change the world. Today I am wise, so I am changing myself. Not changing the world today is not the same as a thousand years ago, when there were barely 100 million humans on this planet. We need to be both clever and wise in the Anthropocene. But the bottom line remains the unchanged: I need to change myself, not others. Bringing my financial situation in order and providing my family with a home must come first even if our common home, planet Earth is collapsing. If I can create a blossoming garden in one little corner of this world, I create a microclimate of healing and that is enough contribution or the only contribution I can really make.
I am however the first time in my life severely limited in enjoying our travels. My mind is filled with worry about the future of Green Steps, my family and myself. The Draa valley has become a metaphor for my own situation. I am dried up since a very long time and in urgent need of substantial irrigation. Despite my 2016 conviction that I must put the second part of my life into the service of reforming education, I learn from this journey more than ever before, that I too, am part of nature and die without the required natural, emotional, psychic and financial resources which I need at this stage of my human development.
Instead of keeping the water flowing down my own valley of life, I have blocked large amounts of water - like the Quarzazete hydropower plant - for Green Steps during the last 5 years. I have not generated any new income but used up all my savings and sold our family home in Austria to pay salaries, operation expenses and our own living costs. The home we had in Austria, was the aggregated energy of three generations which my father bought with is inheritance from my grandfather when he was only 27 years of age and which he enlarged partly with his own hands into a large two family home in what is now one of the finest neighborhoods of a wealthy and ecologically healthy city. When he died in 2010 the house was in a condition which demanded repair and substantial maintenance and I invested around EUR 400k to prepare it as a safe harbor for my family in case things would go wrong in China.
In 2019 I sold it however for two main reasons: it looked like we would stay in China for good and I wanted to invest into Green Steps. My wife had bought with my in-laws support a downtown apartment in Shanghai and I had rented and renovated a house in the countryside, which I transformed into a Montessori inspired nature education center. We were relatively happy in China and I had no desire to return to Europe despite the unmistakable signs that the Xi Jinping administration would gradually change the attitude towards its own subjects as well as foreigners.
Looking back at 2022, I look at a depleted Quarzazete reservoir and a dried up the Draa valley. I have to face my wife who is unhappy about her husband’s priorities and decisions. Like the king – and only to a much smaller extent global climate change - is responsible for the devastating ecological situation his country, I am responsible for the devastating financial and emotional situation in my family. We have given up so much comfort and what has been quite joyful has become misery. I need to make changes without knowing where to start. There are however four quotes which cross my mind in describing the current situation.
The first one is from Jeremy Goldberg, the co-host of Sinica podcast who said that “Courage is knowing it might hurt, and doing it anyway. Stupidity is the same. And that's why life is hard.” It describes what I did when choosing social entrepreneurship in 2017 over a cozy early retirement in particular after my initial experience at Green Initiatives. My 2018 summary of an unsuccessful one year long collaboration with an Indian born architect should have alarmed me that any form of enterprise, but in particular a social enterprise which shifts the vice of greed from the realm of finances to the realm of esteem, is full of unexpected and unwanted challenges.
So, the question I ask myself is simply if I am stupid, naïve or courageous in believing that a new world order and evolutionary leap can be initiated in humankind, and that I can contribute to it’s emergence? Looking at all the pain that I have gone through and all the suffering that I have caused my family to endure, I am clearly stupid and it is difficult to argue over this assessment. When one chooses a path and suffers more or less calculated difficulties, things are to a certain extent endurable. One can regret but can endure. The new emotion which made 2022 so difficult was remorse. Remorse is a different dimension of regret which appears when we have sacrificed well-being and comfort that our loved ones should have been entitled to. It is like the buddhist double arrow which causes first pain to yourself for sacrificing but then also paralyzes the energy drawn from the sacrifice because one sees the suffering it caused to one’s children.
Back in 2016/17 my insights into the forthcoming transformation of the world labor market at the forefront of the Chinese robot revolution, made me think that retiring with my family to Europe would be a shortsighted choice: 20 years of living in a safe bubble at the expense of the entire world going to hell. I knew from my bi-annual headquarter meetings in the corporation I worked from 2010 to 2016 that both private and public executive management did not understand anymore in which direction the world did evolve. Too little did and still do Western nations take into account the impact of China on the planet and too little system awareness makes most people linger in apathy over the ecological devastation which eats up our common home.
The question was for me what purpose I should give the second half of my life: retire as a fulltime father with the knowledge of my children being not able to have children on their own or working with the resources available on a transformation of the status quo? My wife tells me over and over again: “how can one person change the world?” and surely, she has a point: one person alone can’t change the world. One person, as we have seen in human history, can however initiate change, change which captures many who make the transformation possible. How did Margaret Mead once say: “Never underestimate the power of a few committed people to change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has.”
So, instead of letting remorse making me sink deeper and deeper, because I have deprived my family during the last few years and probably a few more years to come of comfort and joy, instead of lamenting that we rent a small apartment instead of owning a large house, I need to shift to the positive force that has motivated me throughout my life and find a balance between what is important and what is urgent. It is important that we find a solution to climate and social crisis. It is urgent that I provide to my children a childhood they want to remember. I have put during the last five years Green Steps in first place, but it turns out that I am the only one taking such a high bet. My partners and colleagues continued to enjoy their fortunate livelihoods while I made cut after cut in order to keep things moving for the organization.
The most powerful emotion a father can feel is the joy of watching one’s children grow up in safety and bliss. It was the outlook that I would not see my children and their children grow up which made me focus on contributing to Green Steps. Maria Montessori summarized this force as such: “If life owed its survival only to the struggle of the strong, the species would perish. So, the real reason, the main factor of the survival of the species, is the love that the adults feel for their young.” The deep guilt that became unbearable in 2022 was caused by putting the well-being of all children over the immediate well-being of my own; and that reminded me of a third quote by Buddhist sage Chogyam Trungpa, which tells me that I need to put as of 2023 my own family again in first place: “If you want to solve the world’s problems, you have to put your own household, your own individual life, in order first. That is somewhat of a paradox. People have a genuine desire to go beyond their individual, cramped lives to benefit the world. But if you do not start at home, then you have no hope of helping the world. So the first step in learning how to rule is learning to rule your household, your immediate world. There is no doubt that, if you do so, then the next step will come naturally. If you fail to do so, then your contribution to this world will be further chaos.”
I am not sure about where to start and what to do, and considering the health issues which stroke me in early 2022 it seems to be an overwhelming task. I have scheduled two surgeries early in 2023, one two fix a loose screw in my right knee and another one to deal with the disc prolapse I suffered in February 2022. How can I recover under such conditions five years of no income and about one million Euro, which was the value of our Austrian home, in reasonable time; that is as long as my children are still children? It seems as if I have messed up big and what Trungpa wrote is of course true: my suffering and my family’s misery doesn’t help others nor the planet. It makes things only worse.
There is some consolation in the fourth quote which the Muslim sage Rumi offers: Yesterday I was clever, so I wanted to change the world. Today I am wise, so I am changing myself. Not changing the world today is not the same as a thousand years ago, when there were barely 100 million humans on this planet. We need to be both clever and wise in the Anthropocene. But the bottom line remains the unchanged: I need to change myself, not others. Bringing my financial situation in order and providing my family with a home must come first even if our common home, planet Earth is collapsing. If I can create a blossoming garden in one little corner of this world, I create a microclimate of healing and that is enough contribution or the only contribution I can really make.
Mapping New Coordinates for 2023 and Beyond
What concerns Green Steps as an ecosystem, a small water pipeline coming in from outside like the one from Marrakesh to the Draa Valley, would be a welcome miracle to keep at least going and harvest the opportunities we have prepared.
We have lots of reason for hope:
At the end of 2018, the year I joined forces with Joan to work within Green Steps on the transformation of education, we made a five-year plan on what we want to achieve. It was part of my intensive learning phase about how to use Trello for task management, how to create focus in one’s daily work and succeed in reaching long term goals despite major challenges. I built with Trello and Leo Babauta’s The Power of Less and sort of a SOP which I have followed up till the end of last year. Four years have passed and it’s time to assess if this plan and the method have worked. Its also time to think what the next five year plan might be.
5 year goal: GS is a multinational organization which empowers a decentralized & transgenerational outdoor education model worldwide
I later added two more subgoals for Green Steps STP:
Looking at these ambitious goals, I ask myself if we haven’t aimed much too high for a 5 year plan. But then again: would I have ever started to work on this project without the economic dimension which is so crucial in order to create an enlightened and sane society? From my last talk with Joan about his draft business plan for Green Steps, I was able to confirm once more that our vision is different. Joan’s vision stops at the environmental dimension, while mine goes beyond the environmental dimension and includes an economic one. It might well be that this difference in vision was the root cause for too much conflict.
I have no doubt about the three step strategy – on the contrary, I feel that the next 5 year plan must be about scaling the environmental dimension and building alliances for the economic one. But I need to admit that my method of setting focus is flawed. Instead of defining a 5 year plan for an organization which absorbs all attention, I should have defined a 5 year plan which includes the three realms that make a human life well balanced: family, friends and work. I forgot about my family and about myself. My focus on work has destroyed pretty much all of my friendships. Most of them think probably that I have gone nuts. I am a loner in every regard driven by a mission that made me forget the importance of living.
What concerns Green Steps as an ecosystem, a small water pipeline coming in from outside like the one from Marrakesh to the Draa Valley, would be a welcome miracle to keep at least going and harvest the opportunities we have prepared.
We have lots of reason for hope:
- the Mobile Campus pilot project with more than 25 routes, which waits to be implemented in STP and scaled into other cities
- finally, and as a result of so much hard work: an opportunity to spread Green Steps into the formal schooling system through promising collaborations with local schools in Austria
- a three-level online Nature Guide training
- access to European volunteers and the Erasmus+ network as an opportunity to spread Green Steps – in particular the training – to a substantial number of young adults
- genuine interest of several institutions to cooperate with us on the national grant program “co-creation spaces”
- several filed grant applications, which can breathe new life into Green Steps
- an app which can turn Green Steps from just another organization in the field of education into a transformative high tech company: the very foundation to receive investment in this tech driven world we live in.
At the end of 2018, the year I joined forces with Joan to work within Green Steps on the transformation of education, we made a five-year plan on what we want to achieve. It was part of my intensive learning phase about how to use Trello for task management, how to create focus in one’s daily work and succeed in reaching long term goals despite major challenges. I built with Trello and Leo Babauta’s The Power of Less and sort of a SOP which I have followed up till the end of last year. Four years have passed and it’s time to assess if this plan and the method have worked. Its also time to think what the next five year plan might be.
5 year goal: GS is a multinational organization which empowers a decentralized & transgenerational outdoor education model worldwide
- Subgoal 1: financial stability to pay staff decent salaries and scale impact
- Subgoal 2: standardized & scaleable NG training has been developed and is facilitated through ARK
- Subgoal 3: ARK empowers and connects our international team to drive our mission of connecting people with nature
I later added two more subgoals for Green Steps STP:
- Subgoal 4: tree/feature inventory = environment part of ARK is online
- Subgoal 5: DAO implemented = economy part of ARK is online
Looking at these ambitious goals, I ask myself if we haven’t aimed much too high for a 5 year plan. But then again: would I have ever started to work on this project without the economic dimension which is so crucial in order to create an enlightened and sane society? From my last talk with Joan about his draft business plan for Green Steps, I was able to confirm once more that our vision is different. Joan’s vision stops at the environmental dimension, while mine goes beyond the environmental dimension and includes an economic one. It might well be that this difference in vision was the root cause for too much conflict.
I have no doubt about the three step strategy – on the contrary, I feel that the next 5 year plan must be about scaling the environmental dimension and building alliances for the economic one. But I need to admit that my method of setting focus is flawed. Instead of defining a 5 year plan for an organization which absorbs all attention, I should have defined a 5 year plan which includes the three realms that make a human life well balanced: family, friends and work. I forgot about my family and about myself. My focus on work has destroyed pretty much all of my friendships. Most of them think probably that I have gone nuts. I am a loner in every regard driven by a mission that made me forget the importance of living.
230104, National Park Souss-Massa
We take a 3 hour walk in the national park starting from the closed information center to the seaside following the Oued Massa. The park is in an alarming condition and it is certainly not an ICUN approved facility. There is less, but still substantial plastic waste within the park territory, probably brought downstream through the river rather than dispersed by the wind. Nobody seems to care about the visitors. I read that the park has a total area for 33800 ha, but it seems that the “protected” area is only about 5 times 1 km at Oued Massa. A growing tourism development is located at the seaside end of the national park in a place called Sidi Rabat and upstream, the village which I assumed to find called Agbalou, appears to be a sprawling city half the size of Taroudant.
We are however blessed with spotting a few stunning birds. The lack of national park rangers, and the lack of any indicators where visitors can or must not walk, allows us to follow the northern river shore. We spot four spoonbills (Platalea leucorodia), a species of bird which is to my knowledge reduced to globally 2000 individuals, of which around 100 breed during the summer months in Neusiedlersee national park. Quite thrilling to see them here in the wild. There are many Grey herons (Ardea cinerea), which take off as the first birds as we come closer. We know them well from back home where they are regulars along the Traisen river. A new species for us is the Glossy ibis (Plegadis falcinellus), the cousin of an almost extinct species, the Bald ibis (Geronticus eremita). The bald ibis is somehow Morocco’s flagship bird, because 95% of the world’s total left population of now about 600 pairs are within found in the region of the Souess Massa national park.
We don’t get to see that rare species, and I wonder if it is endangered because its habitat of river wetlands is almost gone in north African countries like Egypt or because its summer migration habitat in Europe. The bald ibis was breeding parts of Austria and Italy but wild individuals have gone extinct in Europe. Whatever the reason, visiting the Soues Mass national park puts the COP15 negotiations into another light. Considering that so many biodiversity rich regions on our planet are inhabited by relatively poor humans, it is without question that there is not yet enough awareness for the protection of non-human species. I am convinced that the key to reversing biodiversity collapse is a conditional universal basic income – that is the mutual protection of the human species - but preserving large parts of this planet by law for other species is without question another measure that must happen.
We identify a pair of cranes (Gruidae) which I have seen the last time in 2020 close to Berlin, a Great egret (Casmerodius albus), one of the regulars around Shanghai’s Dianshan lake. We watch two colonies of Great cormorants (Phalacrocorax carbo), which we also see every winter at Viehofen lakes in St. Pölten. Why do these cormorants prefer to stay in relatively warm Morocco, but others migrate for the winter months to St. Pölten? There are a small number of Black-winged stilts (Himantopus himantopus) which we also know from Neusiedlersee national park, and larger flocks of Common sandpipers (Actitis hypoleucos).
If the flock of Glossy ibises (Plegadis falcinellus) feeding and soaring was not the highlight of the day, then it might have been the flock of Flamingoes (Phoenicopeterus roseus). I have seen this species the last time in Doñana national park close to Seville in 2014. Today I learn that they are in the same group of birds like herons, storks and ibises and are characterized as wading birds which have adapted to feeding in shallow waters with extremely long legs and necks. Their beaks show different shapes with the same purpose of filtering nutrients from the waters they spend most of their time in.
Two more species captured my attention. The striking and distinctive gooselike Ruddy Shelduck (Tadorna ferruginea), which I have never seen before. A truly beautiful bird, in particular when flying, so I took a number of pictures when the flocks of birds we encountered made their way down the river estuary. The other was a single raptor, which soared over the reed on the other side of the river in quite some distance. The size and the its almost black appearance indicates that it was a Black kite (Milvus migrans). Anther first time sighting and according to Merlin’s bird ID a rare one, too.
We take a 3 hour walk in the national park starting from the closed information center to the seaside following the Oued Massa. The park is in an alarming condition and it is certainly not an ICUN approved facility. There is less, but still substantial plastic waste within the park territory, probably brought downstream through the river rather than dispersed by the wind. Nobody seems to care about the visitors. I read that the park has a total area for 33800 ha, but it seems that the “protected” area is only about 5 times 1 km at Oued Massa. A growing tourism development is located at the seaside end of the national park in a place called Sidi Rabat and upstream, the village which I assumed to find called Agbalou, appears to be a sprawling city half the size of Taroudant.
We are however blessed with spotting a few stunning birds. The lack of national park rangers, and the lack of any indicators where visitors can or must not walk, allows us to follow the northern river shore. We spot four spoonbills (Platalea leucorodia), a species of bird which is to my knowledge reduced to globally 2000 individuals, of which around 100 breed during the summer months in Neusiedlersee national park. Quite thrilling to see them here in the wild. There are many Grey herons (Ardea cinerea), which take off as the first birds as we come closer. We know them well from back home where they are regulars along the Traisen river. A new species for us is the Glossy ibis (Plegadis falcinellus), the cousin of an almost extinct species, the Bald ibis (Geronticus eremita). The bald ibis is somehow Morocco’s flagship bird, because 95% of the world’s total left population of now about 600 pairs are within found in the region of the Souess Massa national park.
We don’t get to see that rare species, and I wonder if it is endangered because its habitat of river wetlands is almost gone in north African countries like Egypt or because its summer migration habitat in Europe. The bald ibis was breeding parts of Austria and Italy but wild individuals have gone extinct in Europe. Whatever the reason, visiting the Soues Mass national park puts the COP15 negotiations into another light. Considering that so many biodiversity rich regions on our planet are inhabited by relatively poor humans, it is without question that there is not yet enough awareness for the protection of non-human species. I am convinced that the key to reversing biodiversity collapse is a conditional universal basic income – that is the mutual protection of the human species - but preserving large parts of this planet by law for other species is without question another measure that must happen.
We identify a pair of cranes (Gruidae) which I have seen the last time in 2020 close to Berlin, a Great egret (Casmerodius albus), one of the regulars around Shanghai’s Dianshan lake. We watch two colonies of Great cormorants (Phalacrocorax carbo), which we also see every winter at Viehofen lakes in St. Pölten. Why do these cormorants prefer to stay in relatively warm Morocco, but others migrate for the winter months to St. Pölten? There are a small number of Black-winged stilts (Himantopus himantopus) which we also know from Neusiedlersee national park, and larger flocks of Common sandpipers (Actitis hypoleucos).
If the flock of Glossy ibises (Plegadis falcinellus) feeding and soaring was not the highlight of the day, then it might have been the flock of Flamingoes (Phoenicopeterus roseus). I have seen this species the last time in Doñana national park close to Seville in 2014. Today I learn that they are in the same group of birds like herons, storks and ibises and are characterized as wading birds which have adapted to feeding in shallow waters with extremely long legs and necks. Their beaks show different shapes with the same purpose of filtering nutrients from the waters they spend most of their time in.
Two more species captured my attention. The striking and distinctive gooselike Ruddy Shelduck (Tadorna ferruginea), which I have never seen before. A truly beautiful bird, in particular when flying, so I took a number of pictures when the flocks of birds we encountered made their way down the river estuary. The other was a single raptor, which soared over the reed on the other side of the river in quite some distance. The size and the its almost black appearance indicates that it was a Black kite (Milvus migrans). Anther first time sighting and according to Merlin’s bird ID a rare one, too.
230105, Tagazhout. We have arrived at Morocco’s Atlantic coast and thereby have left behind what can be considered the less touristic part of the country where genuine encounters with its traditional culture are more likely than along the increasingly developed beaches. The area north of Agadir, a busy and Marrakesh sized metro is probably in a development stage like Spain’s Costa Blanca in the 1980s. Tourism has both a destructive effect on traditional culture as well as a constructive effect on economic development. At least some parts of the beaches are cleaned when Hilton or Hyatt facilities are not too far away. We enjoy after a rather exhausting journey so far to move into our private apartment in a well-maintained resort like complex, which is literally abandoned.
Tagazhout is a former fishing village which has become something like Morocco’s Faro: a surfer’s paradise where a mixed crowd of Bully driving and board riding youth and upper-class tourists from Europe and Morocco put up camp to enjoy waves and sunsets. Tagazhout is the anti-thesis of traveling to understand a host-country’s culture but relaxing in one of the quiet resorts can open space and time to find oneself. My body and mind are tired from the previous days traveling and driving substantial distances by car. I literally break down and savor a good rest before we return to Marrakesh and fly back home.
Tagazhout is a former fishing village which has become something like Morocco’s Faro: a surfer’s paradise where a mixed crowd of Bully driving and board riding youth and upper-class tourists from Europe and Morocco put up camp to enjoy waves and sunsets. Tagazhout is the anti-thesis of traveling to understand a host-country’s culture but relaxing in one of the quiet resorts can open space and time to find oneself. My body and mind are tired from the previous days traveling and driving substantial distances by car. I literally break down and savor a good rest before we return to Marrakesh and fly back home.
230108, Essaouria. Why is Morroco poor? That’s a question which crosses my mind on several occasions during this journey. There are these collapsing or collapsed Kasbahs which display ancient wealth which had to be secured along the trading routes from the desert to the sea. They display beautiful artisanry, doors of sophisticated woodwork, intricate ceilings and murals. The port of Essaouria is another example of old wealth but the desolate buildings give the impression that this fortunate era is long, long past. It turns out that this is not the case.