Tales of Benshasha
Created | Updated Jul 31, 2011
Sheep are the Benshasha stock market - pure and simple and the system would work perfectly well if they were white rabbits or gerbils.
The Daily Fare
As a French protectorate, the Benslimane region was one massive market garden, serving the needs of Casablanca and Rabat as well as contributing to the dining tables of France. It employed virtually the entire rural population and is – indeed – the reason why Benshasha is there at all. Agricultural workers were paid very little, if they were paid at all. However, they made up this deficiency by helping themselves to the produce.
It was, by all accounts, an equable arrangement. The (French) farmer got his crops attended to for a pittance, whilst the labourers ate pretty well. In addition, they were 'allowed' to built their hovels anywhere, so long as the ground was not much good for growing anything on. Thus it is that Benshasha sits on a rocky outcrop in the middle of what were enormous, flat, rectangular fields and it was thus that, sixty years ago, Ardifa arrived from Essafi, with two small grandchildren and set up home.
This has all changed, but not quite for the same reasons that the agrarian revolution changed the face of the countryside in England. It would also be unwise to say that it is because modern farming techniques are more efficient and have replaced the need for manual labour. The actual reason is simple: with the departure of the French, the entire countryside just dropped to bits. If anything, it was an agrarian revolution in reverse.
As several previous generations had worked on the land, one might be forgiven for assuming that the present one might know - at least a little - about the rudiments of horticulture. If you had, you would have been wrong. The concept of vegetable gardening does not exist, not even so much as growing a tomato. They are 'hunter-gatherers' pure and simple, and as far as the hunting goes, anything that moves much faster than a gastropod, will outrun them.
This is rather sad because, if but one of them had the wit, they could grow their entire vegetable needs on the ground they use to keep their donkeys and howlers. They don't, and therefore have to buy most of their vegetables even though they have no money.
What land is still farmed is all just put down to 'farine' for the simple reason that it is easy and requires a minimal amount of effort. Even this is done in a pitifully inefficient way and produces probably about a tenth of what the land is capable of. It yields less and less each year since, even the relatively simple concept of 'crop rotation' is a non-starter as there is only one crop.
The ineptitude and inefficiency of the present farming has left one small benefit. Many of the vegetables which used to be grown as crops now grow wild. Thus it is still possible to gather most of what you need in the way of vegetables from the wadis, the cropless fields and, illegally alas, from the central reservation and verges of the motorway, which runs about 1 km inland from the village. This natural resource will not last any more than a few years, with the possible exception of the motorway reservations. The rural population is growing exponentially and what was sufficient for a handful of people is not enough for the hundreds who now live there.
This isn't the only reason however. For every person in Benshasha and the likes, there are about three sheep. In my ignorance, I had assumed that sheep were kept in such profusion for the ridiculous ritual at the end of Haj when everyone has to slaughter one of the poor brutes, and that they all keep sheep in the vain hope that, at the last minute, the price will go through the roof and they will make their fortune overnight.
This is not actually the case. There are always far more howlers - bigger fatter, tastier ones imported from Australia and New Zealand - than there are people to buy them. But even if you were to try and buy a ram from uncle Mohammed round the corner (as I have), you would find that there were none for sale - there never are.
The vast majority of scrapie-ridden, skeletal Moroccan animals remain, year after year, until they die of old age and then rot in the wadi where they provide a meagre repast for the village dogs. It seems utterly senseless, but it is not. Sheep are not just a sign of wealth, they are a form of currency, the more sheep you have the richer you are - but you are so in real terms, not just 'sheep' terms.
Sheep are a 'commodity' - a financial 'derivative'. An animal is worth (for the sake of argument) 500 DH. It lives (in Benshasha) for about five or six years during which time each animal will produce (on average) three offspring - 1,500 DH. Eventually, the original animal dies (and rots in the wadi), but you are still left with the three progeny to be getting along with.
It is actually, not in your interests to sell a sheep (not even the excess rams) for food as it removes it from the chain at just the wrong time. However, if you need cash at any time, you can always sell one or two of your sheep to another sheep trader. Sheep are the Benshasha stock market - pure and simple - and the system would work perfectly well if they were white rabbits or gerbils. But they are not, they are sheep, and probably for the simple reason that they are slightly less easy to steal! In any case, it has always been done like that and 'things' change very slowly in Benshasha.
Thus it is that uncle Mohammed with fifty sheep is also the family banker and if anybody needs a few hundred dirhams 'cash', it is to him - or one of the other 'farmers' - that you go begging, as they always have access to cash - from each other. It is an interesting banking system that actually works. Your credit rating is based on character-risk, NOT collateral. It is incredibly localised and, as such, offers the lender considerable 'security' as he 'knows' the borrower.
The cows - far fewer than sheep - are a different conundrum. They are not financial derivatives, they are - quite simply - the 'cash-cows'. It is a little known and unpublicised fact that 75% of milk to service the needs of Morocco's Laitière Centrale , comes from farmers with five cows or less. It is an unbelievably complicated (and inefficient) system but it does provide a regular and secure cash income to farmers, and they would rather have this than the trouble and risk of selling the milk locally. So - like Europe - although there is plenty of locally produced milk, you cannot buy it, but for very different reasons.
The trouble is, that nobody has any land on which to keep livestock. Animals live in the shanty houses along with the humans. They are taken out, shortly after dawn and are 'grazed' on anything and everything with the result that the area is fast becoming a desert. It would be a fair bet to assume that within five or six years there will be nothing left growing - other than the farine.
At the end of the summer, when it first rains, every damn thing that pokes its head out of the ground is eaten before it gets a chance. My first thoughts were that, if you were to do just one thing to improve matters, it would be to ban anyone from owning sheep, goats or cows unless they have sufficient land on which to keep them. But it is not nearly as simple as that.
On the assumption that 'you are what you eat', these animals are almost inedible and bear little resemblance to what you might know as 'lamb'. I have, on one occasion, eaten one of uncle Mohammed's animals and, as far as the texture and taste went, it closely resembled re-cycled plastic, which is, I suppose, what it really was.
While there were still vegetables to be had, Fatima and I made the most of it and 'country walks' became a matter of just getting lunch. We never walked anywhere without taking a bag and a knife. Fatima is remarkable and has a phenomenal memory. Even though she has not lived in the countryside for decades, she still remembers every plant - which ones humans can eat and which ones are good for the donkey. Every new find is accompanied by My big mother tell me .... and going on to explain the exact use of the plant. In the eight months I was there, more than 50% of what we ate was 'for free'.
In nearly 50 years the vegetables have changed, gradually reverting to their natural state. All of them are much smaller than their cultivated cousins but more to the point, the taste has changed considerably - sometimes out of all recognition. Most of them have acquired a distinct bitterness, but this is combined with a far stronger flavour.
The result of this was some highly inventive cooking. You got what there was, not necessarily what you wanted, and even if the best cook-books in the world had been available, it is doubtful whether they would have been much use in such circumstances.
Asparagus, leeks, onions and spinach all grew in comparative abundance and could be relied on - provided that you went for your walk in the right direction at the right season.
There were also several other leaf vegetables: lovage, borage, chervil, goosefoot, dill and some sorts of kale, none of which I (then) knew the names of. Most came to be known by my own idiomatic names, such as 'dog's vomit' for obvious reasons when you see it cooked. But looks and packaging or even knowing the correct names were not high on the list of priorities in Benshasha and, whatever they look like, the various plants available were certainly palatable (if you like such things as spinach), probably very good for you, and certainly did me no harm.
As important (to me) basil, mint, oregano, rosemary, sage and thyme all grew like weeds, everywhere. There was a logical explanation for this. Between Benshasha and Plage David, there used to be a garden that grew nothing but herbs and plants for the perfume business. As such plants are indigenous to the region, they didn't suffer too much when the French went home.
However, by far the best natural resource were the mushrooms. From September to December, you could pick them by the hundredweight. About a kilometre along the road there is one field about 500m wide, which runs from the road right down to the beach. For some reason it has never been cultivated and serves only as grazing for the Benshasha sheep. The result of this is that, when the weather conditions are right, the ground is a carpet of mushrooms, enough for all.
Eating these took me straight back to my childhood when we would be sent out by my grandparents to scour the edges of Dartmoor at the crack of dawn. Here, they tasted as good, if not better, and a plate-sized mushroom filled with wild onion, garlic, asparagus and herbs, butter and a couple of fresh eggs, really was an absurd luxury in such basic surroundings, except that - other than a small knob of butter - it was entirely free.
Most of the field mushrooms were collected and sold on the roadside well before I could get my hands on them, but there were always enough available from other, less well-known places. Fatima had an uncanny knack of knowing the most improbable places, including one particular 'patch' that is right at the back of the beach - and I, for one - had no idea that mushrooms ever grew as close as 200 m from the sea!
Much to my surprise, Fatima also turned out to know which fungi were edible and which not. She and the rest of the family eat all sorts of strange things and, as far as I know, none has died of food poisoning, but I did tend to stick to the mushrooms that I knew.
For the rest, vegetables come from the Sunday souk in Ouisier. The weekly souks in Morocco are held on the outskirts of most larger towns and go back to time immemorial. They are extraordinarily similar to the 'market-days' of West Devon and my childhood, so I felt quite at home in them or rather, I would have, had I been allowed to go. I was not - this is a weekly outing for the women – and it is a lot more than just a shopping trip.
This is the one chance that women have to escape from the confines of the village (and their ever watchful male relatives). It is a chance for them to meet and to gossip and to make assignations with 'men', that have absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with the weekly shopping and general family welfare.
The souk vegetables are superb, as they are in most of Morocco, where the concept of supermarkets was still in its infancy. Unfortunately that is changing all-too rapidly. Vegetables, or the ones that find their way to the weekly souks are grown for their taste rather than their looks and are all the better for it. They are also still remarkably cheap and the equivalent of $20 (in 2000) would buy enough for everybody (10-12 people) for a week. This is changing however and as with most poor countries the prices are rising about three times as fast as people's incomes - mostly due to Uncle Sam's free-trade agreements - but also because of the inexorable power of the supermarkets, forcing growers away from local markets and prices up.
