Contrasts

As last weeks of the year make their entry on the calendar, Rabat prepares like in the rest of the country their national slaughter ritual next week for Aid Al Adha. Millons of sheep will be killed in a traditional halal way. Billboards mention that you can win three sheep while dialing the right number, or for a certain amount of groceries you will get one sheep for free. I am not a meat person and so is the rest of the family. So the whole thing about animals and meat, isn't really my piece of cake. The Avenue Mohamed VI is decorated with season lights. The main avenue that links the most important spots in the capital of the country. Flags are pointing out central places and fly overs at the high ways. The king and his family, Royal and other high placed persons can come by. Just leaving this important Avenue is where we live. At the corner of our road which makes the edge with the holiday residence of the late Mister Bongo of Gabon and an open field with its shantytown. It's a sharp contrast that's so cristal clear for the Moroccon society. We pass every morning with the car when driving to the American School. The people in this tiny shantytown were since long asked to leave and have been paid to live elsewhere in the city, in new constructed social housing projects. But the families aren't interested to leave.The field is the playground for the children, open containers and trash is all over the place. The children don't go to school, play soccer with older guys and have their mothers around them. When days become colder, we smell the fires our neighbours make in the early morning, and often these fires smoke all day and night. Last year during the traditional slaughtering celebration the smell penetrated the air. Huge fires and lots of smoke. Just across the street is the last farm of this area. The last twenty years all farms in this area disappeared. The cattle contains foremost sheep and some cows. The sheperds arrive just in front of our gate and sometimes we need to wait and let the cattle walk by. The farm seem constructed in different time periods, there is still the land within the walls, crops look abandoned, old Mercedes cars make their attendance. The main house is huge and is repainted recently in virgin white. Around the corner is the shanty town. It's almost as if our street is the border line between two worlds.