Snow Exoticism.....

It is finally snowing. la neige…

It s interesting to watch how people reacted to the lack of snow in new England. “let there be snow”, “let it snow”- signs on the streets.. and all the silent prayers that people whisper. we never saw this kind of weather foe last 100 years. walking in small towns at this time of the year when it is all cold. there is something missing. it is cold, yes but there is no snow and all the exotic pictures (see top right) of new england get disrupted. it is not as exotic as the text books of primary schools tell us.

in small school in the sahara desert of morocco. Ssi Mohamed , lmu3allim, was doing his best to teach French in a real French way. he was good about coming to terms with our abilities, as small berber kids from the other village, to speak while afraid . the Berber speaking part of the village. we were less smart and more backward than our little colleagues, the Arabic speaking little crowd. we picked Arabic quickly and with it all the exotic staff about france, england and the US of A as very powerful countries.

we learned the difference between “peu” and “pu” and all the nuance of the “u” pronunciation. and all the things round “é”. so we could pronounce la “neige” correctly. we never saw la neige. and we were not going to see it in our village. it just does not snow in the sahara deserts. fact. science.

as i walk in these little towns i am remembering how disappointing it is to my little mind to watch all this winter pass by without seeing the snow. i am sure people from here get disappointed as they hit the sahara, we all want the world to meet our little images. it is easier to disturb the world than our images about this world. it is better to cry over lack of snow when it is big and dangerous to think about global warming and how we messed up with the world wide weather.