We have had some more horrible weather – though I know it is nothing like the weather that you are experiencing in UK/Europe at present. On Wednesday night I had a really sleepless night listening to the wind moving everything round on the roof. We had to get up halfway through the night to try and anchor down the rain hood over the stairs…. I have to admit it sounded much worse than it actually was - I mean I don’t suppose it would qualify as gale force winds or anything, but it made for a really bad night’s sleep. I also found my that modem (which is on the roof for a better signal) had been blown off the wire…. lucky I found it I suppose. Anyway when I plugged it in the next morning my pc refused to recognise it so we had to take it apart and dry it with the hairdryer before putting it back out on the roof. This time I created a waterproof (I hope) house for it… in a little water bottle, which was a bit fiddly to achieve - like a ship in a bottle, and we lashed it to a post…. But the connection is so slow I think I would be better coming and knocking on all of your doors with my little story.
Which is why Mohamed is up there just now, searching for the best spot…. I think we might have to try a Maroc Telecom modem as well to see if we get a better signal as work is very difficult with such a slow internet connection and my patience is fast running out even if my (dear) employers’ is not.
When it is not windy and or rainy it is lovely outside, everything is greening up. I am going to take some photos from the backdoor and post them so that you can see the change as it happens…. I know there are some very sceptical people out there when I say it is getting lovely and green here. So this first shot was taken on 6th January and the second just 2 days later.
Already you can see that the little bit of Argan forest is looking much greener, but I will add more as time goes by.
This is part of the same view as the photo on the blog page proper... though you can see that the road along the valley has now been tarred. It is still mostly used by people with their donkeys heading along to the fresh water spring for drinking water.
Last night I heard some more yip yipping of the wild dogs/foxes/wolves. I would love to see what was making the noise. We have seen quite a lot of foxes and hares since we moved here and I am inclined to think it was foxes rather than wolves.... no lonesome howls.
We took a trip into Agadir the other day (first time in daylight for me for a while) and it was amazing how much greener everything is already. In the Argan forests the crops planted between the trees are starting to grow – and there is that beautiful emerald green of fresh shoots. The Argan forests are owned by the government and protected, though there seems to be sort of common grazing rights and some way of claiming land under and around the trees for agriculture. The Argan tree is only found in this part of the world and produces a nut with a thick fruity outer skin (picture of the tree in our garden). The fruit is what the goats climb the trees for. They eat it and then the indigestible nut is left on the ground (after it has been through the goat) making it easy for harvesting. The nut is then dried, split open and the kernel squeezed for oil. The oil has a nice nutty taste and is used in cooking, to make the delicious amlou (like a runny sweet peanut butter only made with almonds) and also for cosmetic purposes. The nutshells are burned on cooking fires and the Argan trees (when available) are used to make really good charcoal ….. and that is the Argan tree story.
Elvis was out all night and came back with a bit of a scratch on his nose but otherwise OK. There is a bit of a battle going on with a grey and white cat (similar to Little Boy from Taroudant who I rescued from poisoning). Marmela came running in the other day spitting and hissing at everything because she had had a run in with him… luckily Martha "the enforcer" rushed out and saw him off. Marmela goes a little berserker when she gets in a fight and just turns on anyone who looks at her … she often ends up fighting with our cats long after the intruder has been beaten off by the others and will growl , hiss and spit at me until she has thrown off her fighting mood. So far we have had no sign of the ginger and white tom who caused all the trouble down at the pink house.
Amazingly with all the bad weather we have not had any power cuts for a while (stops to save document before she is punished for tempting fate like that).
As it turned out the best signal was in the kitchen and slightly less good in the bedroom. We were going to buy a long usb cable so that I could have the modem in the kitchen and keep working in the spare room. But usb cables don’t work when they are more than 5 m long unless they have their own power supply. We are still investigating that and in the meantime I have moved the pc into the bedroom – though I think I might still end up in the kitchen. Mohamed has a little more building work to do in there so I don’t really want to move just now. The good news is that my future office will be just above where the kitchen is now, so even if the signal is not so good up there I can easily drop a wire through the floor. Unless, of course, Maroc telecom are good enough to run a fixed line into the village before then.
We also have had a blocked toilet…. oh woe is us.
At last I am back online... and at a reasonable speed though I still can't listen to the Archers :(
and the toilet is unblocked :)
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