Ougadougou to Ourzazate

Ougadougou to Ourzazate

You must be falling from your seats! You must be thinking I can hardly pronounce today's two words: Ougadougou and Ourzazate. The reason I can pronounce them is that I heard them as a young boy. And repetition makes for a better memory.

Also, my parents are both Africans. African Jews! They are Africans from Morocco in North Africa. And in southern Morocco sits a Berber city, Ourzazate, south of the High Atlas Mountains. It is so stunning that Hollywood and European film studios have filmed there, including the films Star Wars and Sheltering Sky. It has a population of only about 55,000, but its altitude is way up there at 1,160 m!

South of Ourzazate in the West African nation of Burkina Faso, you have Ougadougou, the nation's commercial, cultural, and capital city. It has a population of 1.5 million people. Per capita, Burkina Faso is one of the poorest countries in the world.

As a kid going on trips to Prince Edward Island or Quebec, my family would play a game called Cities, Provinces, Countries, and Rivers. So we might begin with Ougadougou or Ourzazate, or usually something easier like Ontario and Orleans (near Ottawa and Paris respectively), and the next person would need to come up with a City, Province, Country, or River ending with the last letter of the place given. Now the game could go on forever! And my parents, God bless them, would come up with gems like Ougadougou and Ourzazate. I always loved that Ougadougou had 3 Ou's! Is that not amazing! And that Ourzazate evoked images of a Saharan oasis!

To get an idea of what these two mythical cities look like, I have attached two pictures: The casbah of Taourirt in Ourzazate on top, Ougadougou's Grand Mosque on the bottom. What I also love about Ougadougou is that it means "where people get honour and respect." Ourzazate also has a beautiful meaning in Berber: Alternatively "without noise" or "without confusion". In the hectic world of today, where people, events, and things might seem like mere passing ships, do we not all need to honour and respect each other more? To be present, really present, with all those we meet. Do we not all need time to just sit, contemplate, and meditate without background noise or confusion? The brilliant French mathematician and philosopher Blaise Pascal (1623-1662) once remarked: "All men's miseries derive from not being able to sit in a quiet room alone.”

Who would imagine that a game I played as a child would turn into a blog entry? Who would imagine that words are like race horses firing the hitherto neglected regions of our hearts? Who would imagine that in Ougadougou and Ourzazate I could still dream long after the light of childhood had faded in the passing years? I have never been to either Ougadougou or Ourzazate. We dream of places we want to return to and other places we still want to see!

Tamir Bar-On