Summary On Berber food

Summary

Berber food is an important part of their lifestyle. Due to their location, the Berber are limited to the supplies and recourses available to them to make the food. They are located in the mountains with there supplies being the crops they grow or trading at a local souk in the area. To flavour the food they make they use a variety of spices in there tagines and other dishes. Some dishes like bastilla are only made on special occasions for there expense and time consumption.

They Berbers use clay ovens to cook the majority of their food, tagine pots are used to place the food over the stove. To light the clay oven they bring twigs and wood and burn them. The Berbers cook their food for a long time to make sure it is cooked thoroughly.

Foods such as bastilla and Couscous are eaten widely on special occasions such as weddings, they are fiddly to make and are normally expensive and time consuming. Berber food plays a big role in a wedding, because without nice food there wouldn’t be a good wedding.

The Berbers have many dishes such as Beef tagine with prunes, Chicken with olives, Ground meat with sauce and egg. Accompanied with these great tasting food is bread and of course the famous Mint tea.

They use many different ingredients to flavour there food, such as : Cumin, salt, paprika, Black pepper, Thyme, Rosemary. They also use olives preserved lemons and Harissa paste widely through there dishes.

The Berbers are a essential part of Berber culture and tradition. Without the Berbers Morocco wouldn’t be what it is today. When the arab conquest came and invaded Morocco they brought there spices and ingredients with them and enhanced and slightly altered the food that the Berbers had already been making.

The Berber Culture

The Berbers are unique people who are quite different then the average person living in a city in Morocco. If you were a Berber, you’d be a living a basic life in the mountains. Also, because the Berbers are so far away from everything, things like: electricity, processed foods, Electrical equipment and loads of other things are not available. The Berbers also have a completely different daily routine compared to us. We wake up, have breakfast and go to school and then come back from school and spend time at home or go somewhere. However for some Berbers school isn’t a option, they would have to work, boys with their fathers looking after animals or helping them out and girls stay at home with their mother and help with the cooking and cleaning. They would start this from an early age of 7!! If you compared how much work we do to how much the berbers do there would be a big difference. Most foods that the Berbers eat are either grown or bought from the market. There are a few small shops around however there aren’t any supermarkets like Marjane, Aswak Aslaam and Acima which we have here in Rabat. Some Berbers don’t even have clean water! As you can see the berber life seems much more harsher, however most berbers have been brought into this culture so they have adapted to it.

Transport in Morocco

In Morocco transport is always a big issue. There is no possibility of going on buses, your not even able to see which ones go where. The train is OK however it still could do with some changes and maybe more stops. The trains at the moment stop in single places, it would be nice to have a tram or a train to go around the actual city. In England, London where i lived before i came to Morocco it had a great transport system that although wasn’t cheap was A LOT more easier to use to get into the center of the city and places that are hard to drive to (for parking). I do however understand that the trains in Morocco are overground so it would be harder to fit them in between streets. London however has a underground train system and also a overground one too. Its bus system is also well planned out consisting of a chart and a bus stop which would tell you which buses stop there and where they are going to. Taxi’s in London are barely used due to how expensive they are. Here in Morocco however taxi’s are used as they are the only other way around the city other then car. But to be honest going in a taxi here in Morocco is really NOT a good choice. The cars are tiny and are literally falling apart, the drivers drive recklessly and its hard to believe that they are actually able to drive. Having other transport would be nice just for variety and because there is also a lot of traffic and having a train would help to get around. Although the transport in Morocco is quite chaotic there are loads of other great aspects that shapes Morocco to be a unique and different country.

Berbers in Morocco

Ive just spent five days in the High Atlas mountains of Morocco learning and experiencing the life of Berbers. I will be studying the Berbers this year in my course, and would like to share with you my knowledge about them. In my course we will be introduced to Berber customs, traditions, dynasties and tribes and other different aspects that make up the Berbers life. Berbers in my opinion are unique people that live in a complete different lifestyle from me and many others. I learn't many different topics on this trip which include: Berber education, Family life, Changes, Daily life, Year and Day, Buildings and Engineering, Agriculture and Animals. I will be talking about all of these topics and other information in this blog. We also compared our lives with the Berbers, as you would probably guess there were many differences however there were barely and similarities. I would like to help you get aware of this topic and learn more and understand more of how harshly Berber people live compared to how we live.