Busy busy

As promised some photos of the house building. The walls are made from local stone "stuck" together with local mud.. .though we are using concrete and steel uprights to give it a bit more strength.

You can see why it is called "the place of stones".

Because of the lie of the land we have decided to add some basement rooms - these will be much cooler in the summer. They are just about finished building the walls now and should start filling in the land to level it ready for the platform.

Mohamed came home on Monday night really pleased with himself. He had gone off with one of our builders who had spotted a bee hive lodged between some rocks along the hillside, so they went and raided some honey. Mohamed came back here late at night with a few honeycombs and the next morning I woke up to a patio full of angry bees..... I don't know if they were the same bees or not but there must be some proverb about "he who steals the honey must face the bee"..... (yes of course Mohamed was sent to deal with them!)

Mohamed is also trying to get the village together to get a better water supply. They sank a well last year which has lots of water but it is apparently not quite drinkable so they just left it. He is going to see if he can get an association together to buy a filter for the water and even if it is not good enough for human drinking it will do for animals and for washing etc.

I had 3 goats on the roof the other day! I think every one here keeps goats and what with their bleats (and the patter of their hooves on the roof) the donkeys complaining about something or other and the insects (I keep thinking I have left the pressure cooker on) life is never quiet in the village. Mohamed has been talking about getting a goat or two but we will see if we can buy a bit more ground for garden and goatpen or not and I would rather have a donkey than a goat.

Apart from that all goes on as normal... weather is hot, cats are sleeping all day and roaming at night and I am just about managing to work despite a terrible internet connection. My Maroc telecom mobile has a really bad signal in this house. I discovered the other day that I could only make a phone call if I stood on a chair in the corner of the patio, held the phone above my head and shouted into it! I think the signal is better up at the top of the village. We also heard that the Hotel along the road had started to lobby Maroc Telecom for a fixed line but they said it wasn't worth it for one customer. Perhaps with us and the French guy living in the village also lobbying we might even get a fixed line in? I must be feeling particularly optimistic this morning.