Grim era of the White Well swamp

Three families, five farm workers, twenty-five people, about one hundred cows, one hundred and fifty sheep and goats, chicken, turkeys, dogs, cats without counting many birds and other small wild animals, shared a marshy land called the “White Well” crossed by a stream and a river without springs and four wells dug to provide enough water during the summer for these living beings.

As a sign of wealth, a racehorse was tied in front of a large house made of mud bricks and straw stuck in a hill overlooking the marshy green land which is home to several small animals and different species of plants depending on the season. The house looked like it comes out of the ground with four rooms and a huge kitchen that is surrounded by a large open-air courtyard. This courtyard served as a living room and a dining room where all the three families gathered with a big fireplace for cooking, heating and also crying because of the smoke coming back into the room. Next to the house was a stables four times bigger than the house fitted out for the animals.

In front of the house not far from the racehorse, there was a heap of wood used to warm in the winter and next to it is a dump formed by a heap of ashes from the fireplace and vegetable peelings. The discharge was odorless and does not gather flies, and children can play on it without any bacteriological or microbial danger. Sometimes the ashes were used as fertilizer for planting in the garden.

Each family was headed by an adult couple, but no stranger to the swamp could tell which child belonged to which couple. The three male heads of household are brothers, their children call them by their first names. This was due to the first child who imitated adults and no one ever corrected it. This fact was a small detail in the swamp where children behaved like siblings and were treated the same as they are no more important than a calf, lamb, kid, chick, foal or a poult. No doubt the children were very happy in this landscape even if they were invisible to adults. Indeed, whenever one of them caught a cold with a fever, everyone took care of him. In fact, it was the only illness they contracted from their thin clothes and worn shoes.

This marshy where human worked hard to care on animals and the nature that surrounded it, in which no animal of the “Animal farm” by George Orwell, would revolt against its owners. The animals rendered a great service to human by supplying milk, which will be transformed into whey, cheese, cream, butter. The animals also provided him with eggs, wool, fast, light or heavy means of transports. The earth provided vegetables and fruits including tomatoes, onions, peppers, potatoes, wheat, barley, corn, peas, beans, broad beans, quinces, apples, figs, pomegranates, prickly pears and without forgetting medicinal plants. The white storks were good witness that the marshy was in good health, these great travelers settled there half of the year and added a touch to this landscape colored by its flowers, insects, birds, small fish, frogs and locusts.

During the summer, the dried cow dung was collected to make the fire for cooking. This task returned to children like days of fun. Their smoke was also used to make bees docile to collect honey or when inspecting about thirty beehives installed a few meters away from the house. Wet cow dung was used as interior cement for grain silos. Don't worry, it didn't smell bad, it came from natural swamp grass. It is called ORGANIC in modern parlance.

In this swamp the law of Antoine Lavoisier is in order: nothing is lost, nothing is won, everything is transformed. Animals die naturally or of old age which offered a feast to the crows, sometimes they sold some to buy others. The margin made on these sales was used to buy things that the swamp could not invent such as clothes, soap, oil, tea, matches, and a lot of sugar, was also used as candy for children. Meat is also needed to buy because they didn't kill the farm animals.

This peaceful, delicious and harmonious life where everyone played their role without any violence or order lasted until the 1960s before the children grew up and became the bridge between the swamp and the civilized world outside. In the mid-1970s, a pickup truck arrived to take the place of the racehorses in front of the house. Talks about animals and weather are replaced by quarrels over brands, ashes and peelings of vegetables are replaced by cardboard boxes, plastics, newspapers, cans, soda bottles, wrappers candy, chewing gum and cakes, cigarette packs and butts. Even though no one can see a smoker, shoddy make-up wraps but still rubbish, worn shirts and shoes. The landfill became the scene of insects, cats, rats and sometimes animals came to feed on it. It smelled bad for tens of meters. The storks didn’t show up, it observed the winter of the swamp had definitely lost its period of snow, the stream dried up towards the month of May. The tractor and combine have replaced mules and horses, the number of animals is divided by teen, milk and its by-products are considered to be the food of the uncivilized.

The swamp, like an old body with tuberculosis, was going through a grim milestone, had lost its beauty, its colors, and it was emptied of its occupants who had understood that there was nothing more to do around here. Its only source of water came from two wells, which still resist drying out and are used to water a small garden and a dozen living beings in this dusty and yellowish landscape. The big replacement has arrived, as snakes, scorpions, spiders, toads, weeds and thorny plants grow everywhere, dangerous thunderstorms with lightning in midsummer sweeping this misery across the stream and river bringing in evidence a rocky landscape.

Young people began to call their parents mom and dad with a shy look in a ridiculous way that was not appropriate for their age. They went from invisible people to huge influencers. The three families were torn apart and a good separation ensued. Two of the families went to neighboring towns and the third kept what was left with this desert full of wastes.

No one knew or wondered where this change came from. Each individual has continued to weave is way into the future the hope of finding a place in the modern world shrouded in colorful stuff that is filling our planet with garbage. Only the storks were knowledgeable and knew the truth as they were the only travelers to have passed through hundreds of landscapes. Indeed, they noted that near the marshes there was no industry, and the passage of cars and trucks were rare. There was neither no train or plane. They knew that this change came from somewhere far away that the living beings of the swamp cannot control. To save their feathers, they were the first to leave without telling anyone, hoping that their absence would set off the alarm bells.

Currently, what remains of the marsh is maintained by Moulay the youngest of all humans born in the marsh. He loves this land which offers him little. Maybe because he was too young to remember the beautiful days of the swamp. He has restored the house, cleaned up the landfill, takes care of some animals he owns and waters a small garden where he grows vegetables. Sometimes some of the other swamp children, who have now become men and women with children, visit him out of nostalgia and to taste the farm products that have become expensive and fashionable in the civilized world. Bravo my dear Moulay! it is sure that the marsh must love you like its great-little one.