On The Road with Ibu

I've come to Morocco with a dozen friends, old and new, who want to meet Ibu artisans, get a personal introduction to their work, and support that work through the new non-profit arm of the Ibu Movement, WeAreIbu.org. Our days with women here have us on our knees, so generous is their hospitality, so real and palpable the connections, so wide open are their homes and hearts. Our Ibu Foundation Director carries those stories to tell, and will tell them soon. 

But Morocco is everywhere luring me down it's creative alleyways, and the in-between moments give me time to see beauty at work:  potters at the wheel, weavers at the loom, olive trees spilling olives, 8th century architecture still arching, metal workers hammering, woodworkers carving, the colors of sand and coral rubbed into ancient walls.  And of course the legacy of Yves St. Laurent, now memorialized in museum, home, gardens, making my head spin.

Beauty is speaking everywhere and I know now more than ever I want to be a student of its grace, its discipline.  I want to learn the thousand shades of pink in zellig tiles, or the shape of the tiny tattoos which outline a Berber woman's face and ornament her weaving. I want to remember that beauty is bigger than we ever imagined - our preferences are merely ours, and momentary.  Real beauty has its own wide skies and a million ways to be born among us.  

All the best from Marrakech,
Susan Hull Walker