00:00 Chasing after a woollen ball,
00:02 these nomads in southern Morocco
00:04 are fighting to keep the game of moqasha alive.
00:06 It's just like hockey,
00:09 but it's played on sand,
00:10 with barefoot players wielding palmwood sticks.
00:14 "It's part of our ancestral heritage
00:17 that has been passed down from father to son.
00:20 We've been playing it for years."
00:21 "Our ancestors played this game in their spare time.
00:29 When they travelled in caravans and stopped to rest,
00:33 they made the ball from camel wool
00:39 and the sticks from palmwood,
00:41 whatever they had on hand."
00:43 Nestled in Morocco's deep south,
00:48 on the edge of the Sahara,
00:49 Mohamed el Ghazlan used to be a stop
00:52 on the Trans-Saharan caravan route to Timbuktu,
00:55 a trading post for gold and salt
00:57 that grew rich in the 14th and 15th centuries.
01:00 Today, this oasis town in southern Morocco
01:05 is still inhabited by nomadic people.
01:08 But increasingly, moqasha is losing its popularity.
01:11 These players are trying to revive the game
01:15 by organizing competitions
01:17 and encouraging other players to join them.
01:19 Other forms of sand hockey can be found in Ethiopia and Tunisia,
01:25 All of them set to date back hundreds of years.
01:28 [BLANK_AUDIO]
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