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Village houses in the Medlawa valley

Away from the valleys in the Ait Bougammez and Toubkal regions, where tourism has brought about steady expansion and a higher standard of living, life in the majority of High Atlas valleys continues as it has done for centuries, but even here changes are afoot. Most accessible villages are now being connected to the national electricity grid, and richer households sport satellite dishes on their rooftops. New pistes (dirt tracks) are being pushed ever higher and further into once remote valleys, and longer-established pistes are being surfaced with tarmac. Travelling in the back of small trucks to and from the nearest town has become the local means of travel, but, tragically, the combination of poorly maintained vehicles and precipitous pistes and roads result in frequent fatalities.

Baking bread in communal village ovens

Despite the Berber people's often meagre possessions, they are on the whole a friendly and welcoming people. Men plough the fields, maintain the irrigation systems, thresh the barley (if mules are still used), build houses and discuss village politics. Women, who will often shy away from (eye) contact, are the carriers in the majority of villages, where they can be seen bearing huge loads of firewood, bundles of barley to be threshed or animal fodder on their backs. This workload, on top of home-making, cooking, making bread, cutting animal fodder, bringing the family cow out to graze and child rearing, generally means that women live shorter lives than men in these villages.