We rolled our bikes into the courtyard of the little house. After about half an hour they were able to find the key of their living room and they invited us in. We sat down for dinner, which was home made bread, olive oil, olives and hard boiled eggs. It was delicious. The olives and the oil came from their own land, as well as the flour they used to make the bread. The woman served Moroccan tea. A handfull of Chinese tea in boiling water, a piece of a sugar cone as big as a fist and what they call sheeba for the taste. During the winter they add sheeba to the tea and in the summer mint. The tea is poured in the glass, poured back into the pot and sometimes another time. I did not understand exactly why, but it has to do with working with the spirit of the tea. Making Moroccan tea is a process, much fun and when being served very tasty. Would we accept to stay with this family another day?
We got to sleep in a bed made up of couch and blankets. Moroccan couches are low to the ground and everyone uses the blankets to keep themselves warm during the evening, since there is no central heating. This evening there was no electricity either, but later at night is started working.
The next morning the woman whose name I cannot write in English cooked some kind of breakfast donuts, very very fat but delicious. Of course served with olives and olive oil. Now the oldest son, who was on holiday from school, left to pick olives with his father. They brought a horse to carry the harvest and had to walk 14 kilometers into the Rif Mountains. The woman and the youngest son stayed at home. Today I was going to help her around the house. This basically meant that I followed her around to look what she was doing. Managing a household in Morocco is quite different from doing the same in Europe.
First, the house had to be swept. Since the house was small this did not take much time. It made everything very dusty though. I can only imagine what ended up in pots and pans and on kitchen tools. Remarkably, women use a broom which is so short that they have to bend deeply in order to be able to sweep. I couldn`t figure out why they make it so hard on themselves. Why not use a broom with a long stick? After this she picked up clothes and put them together for the laundry. The next day she would take a wash bassin and a washing board and scrub everything clean by hand. Then she took the dishes from breakfast and dinner the night before. Next to the house she had running water, straight from the mountains. She carried a little table outside, filled a bassin with water, took powdered soap from a little pot and did the dishes. I helped her rinse. The water was icecold.
While doing these things around the house she was trying to keep the chickens out of the courtyard. All their food was outside anyhow, since that`s where she threw all the leftovers from the house, edible and non-edible. After the dishes we went to the goats. Some of them had to have their legs tied together, before going outside. The woman had to fight a stubborn male goat before she got him where she wanted. We took the goats outside. Through an olive orchard, over a field, down a little hill. Obviously all this was their property. Just like everywhere we had been so far, there was trash spread everywhere. In the orchard, in the field, down the hill.
Now it was time to start preparing lunch. It was a Friday, which is the holy day for the Muslims. Like every Friday the family would eat couscous. Would we prefer the belly of a goat with it, or its head?

We went to the place where they sell meat. 20 meters before we reached the shop she told me to wait. Ten minutes later she returned with a big smile on her face and a bloody goathead and four goatfeet in a plastic bag. This was going to be a feast. At home she started a fire and put head and feet straight in. She burned all the hair off the head and scraped it clean with a knife. She put it back into the fire and took out the feet, from which she removed the hooves. Then she put it all in a bucket with a lot of soap and water. With a rough brush, she cleaned the head and the feet thoroughly. She picked up an axe and split the head, giving the brain to the chicken. All of this went into the cooking pot and with peeled and squeezed out tomato, an onion and half a liter of olive oil it wasput onto a butane gas stove. After a while of cooking it in a pressure cooker, she added some water, spices and colorant. Finally she washed the couscous and steamed it hot. She served it on a big serving plate. The couscous was spread out with the meat mixture on top and three leaves of cabbage that she had added to the meat. The oil was poured on top. We, the women and her neighbor and the little boy sat down for lunch. Antoine and I were surprised that this meal was eaten for lunch, while half of the family was not home. Hours of cooking and the meal was finished within minutes. They ate and they ate and they ate. She had given us a spoon, although we do not mind to eat `the Moroccan way` by using our hands. She was picking up handfulls of couscous and rolling it into balls. The biggest deal was the meat of course, which she encouraged us to eat a lot of. I had a hard time at first, having been a vegetarian for eight years, but I told myself not to whine, not to think and eat. But when the leftover was served for dinner, I gently declined. I had had enough oil for a year.
Both Antoine and I were enjoying the oil for several more days afterwards. Our Western bellies do not appreciate such a lifestyle.