In Morocco's southeastern desert, a rare downpour has recently brought lakes and ponds back to life, with locals -- and tourists -- hailing it as a gift from the heavens. The rain has come amid the North African country's worst drought for 40 years and after its driest year in 80, according to an October report from the General Directorate of Meteorology.
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00:30I asked you to bring the cakes to your home,
00:34so that you can eat them at work.
00:38It's not easy.
00:40We've been living in this place for a long time.
00:44If we don't want this place to have water,
00:47we have to fill it with water.
00:51That's what I heard.
00:53That's what I know.
00:55If we don't want this place to have water,
00:59we have to fill it with water.
01:02That's what I heard.
01:05The last time I saw water in Yasmina Lake
01:08was 20 years ago.
01:10I think it was 19 or 20 years ago.
01:13And all these last years have been catastrophic.
01:16We even wondered where we were going,
01:18because there was so little water.
01:20And the rain was a gift from heaven.
01:23We don't recognize the landscapes anymore,
01:26but we measure the chance that the population has
01:29to have this water,
01:31because we see that the desert becomes green again,
01:34the animals have food again,
01:36the plants come back to life,
01:38even the palm trees come back to life,
01:40and it's a huge happiness.
01:54I had eyes like a child opening his Christmas presents,
01:58because I found landscapes that I had seen
02:0130 years ago, 20 years ago, 15 years ago,
02:04because in the years, as I told you earlier,
02:07in the years 2008, this lake existed.
02:09We saw it.
02:11And we saw the evolution around the Erchebis
02:14in relation to tourism,
02:16the demand that there was,
02:18because at the time there was the dune,
02:20and that's all, there was nothing.
02:23That's what I was talking about.