Oualidia

The lagoon has been used for far longer than the village has existed. The sheltered water behind its rock bar made a natural anchorage on a coast of cliffs and surf, and the Carthaginian navigator Hanno is said to have put in at a lagoon on this coast. By the 16th century the Portuguese were established on either side of it, at Mazagan and at Safi.

The village takes its name and its fort from the Saadian sultan al-Walid, who ruled from 1631 to 1636 and had a kasbah built above the lagoon in 1634 to guard its entrance. The fort's ruins still stand on the slope. Around it a small farming and fishing settlement grew, working the sandy oulja, the coastal strip whose shallow water table allows vegetables to be grown close to the sea.

Oualidia's modern character dates from the French protectorate and the decades after independence. Oyster farming was introduced to the lagoon in 1956, and the village became known nationally for its shellfish; a villa beside the water, built as a private holiday house rather than a palace, still belongs to the royal family, and fixed its reputation as a discreet retreat. From the 1970s a modest resort trade grew, with guesthouses and restaurants along the shore serving Moroccan families rather than foreign tour groups. That balance has held: the village has stayed small, the lagoon is a protected natural site, and building has been slow compared with the coast around Casablanca.

Oualidia belongs to the Doukkala, the Arabic-speaking plain behind this coast, and village life follows the plain's rhythms: the weekly souk, the moussems held at local shrines, tbourida displays at summer festivals in the surrounding countryside, and long family meals on Fridays. It is a small community where fishing families, oyster workers and market gardeners know one another, and where the seasons are marked by the harvest and the tides rather than by a calendar of events.

Its second identity is as a holiday place, and it is a distinctly Moroccan one. Where Essaouira and Agadir draw foreign visitors, Oualidia has long been where Casablanca and Marrakech families come for a weekend of oysters and calm water, and where Moroccans living in Europe return in August. The result is a village that switches between two registers: quiet and workmanlike for most of the year, busy and sociable for a few weeks, with the shore lined with parked cars and tables of shared seafood.

Manners are those of rural Morocco, a little more formal than in the big cities. Greetings are long and include enquiries after family, hospitality is pressed on visitors, and dress in the village is modest even though the beach is relaxed. Surfing has added a younger presence, with instructors and camps working the beaches outside the lagoon, and birdwatchers arrive quietly with telescopes in the cooler months.

Oualidia is a rural commune of about 15,000 people, most of them living in the farms and hamlets around the village centre, and it has belonged to Sidi Bennour province since that province was created in 2009. It has a school, a clinic, a small police post, a mosque and a line of shops along the main road, and residents travel to El Jadida or Safi for anything larger.

Three kinds of work sustain it. Oyster farming and fishing use the lagoon and the open coast, with mussels, clams, sea urchins and sea bass alongside the oysters. Market gardening on the oulja supplies carrots, tomatoes and other vegetables to Casablanca and beyond, worked by hand and by small tractors on sandy plots. The third is tourism, concentrated into the summer and the weekends, employing people in guesthouses, restaurants, surf schools and boat trips.

The day starts early with the tide and the market, slows through the afternoon, and picks up again in the evening in the cafés on the main road. Young people leave for the cities for study and work, as elsewhere in rural Morocco, and seasonal jobs keep some of them. Water is the shared worry: the shallow groundwater the gardens depend on is under pressure from years of poor rain, and the lagoon's health matters directly to the shellfish trade, so pollution, silting and the management of the rock bar's openings are regular local subjects.

Oysters are the reason most Moroccans know the name. They are farmed on tables in the lagoon, sold by the dozen at the water's edge and in the restaurants above it, and eaten raw with lemon, sometimes with a little harissa. Other shellfish follow: clams, mussels, sea urchins in winter, and prawns. Fish comes from both the lagoon and the open Atlantic — sea bass, sea bream, sole, mullet and sardines — usually grilled over charcoal or fried, with bread, cumin, salt and a chopped tomato and onion salad.

Away from the water the food is that of the Doukkala plain. Tagines of lamb or chicken with vegetables from the oulja, couscous steamed on Fridays over a broth of meat and seven vegetables, harira soup in Ramadan, and rfissa — shredded msemen soaked in a fenugreek, lentil and chicken broth — for family occasions. Bread is central: round khobz baked in the neighbourhood oven, flaky msemen and semolina harcha for breakfast with honey, butter or olive oil.

Drink means mint tea, poured from height into small glasses and usually very sweet, and strong coffee at the village cafés; freshly squeezed orange and avocado juices appear in summer. Alcohol is limited to a few licensed hotels and restaurants on the lagoon, where it is served with the oysters. Sweets are the Moroccan standards — almond-filled kaab el ghzal, sesame and honey chebakia in Ramadan, and dates with milk to break the fast.