Happy Birthday Katharine!

We have had a return to horribly hot weather again after a week of just hot weather and I had to sleep on the roof for a couple of nights.

Yesterday Ruby and I went for a long walk, heading upstream along the river bed,



then following the village aqueduct to the source,

then heading vertically up the hill onto the road and down to the fresh water spring... where I had hoped to meet Mohamed and the car. No luck there and I had walked all the way back along the road till I was just opposite the house when I saw the car heading off down the hill...



and since I hadn't taken my house keys with me, we had to wait for Mohamed and go back to the spring with him.



He had gone to collect Francois - the other foreigner in the village, to show him where the fresh water spring was. Francois has been living in the village for about 2 years, building a house into the side of the hill, but I think he is a little lonely. He is a composer - I am looking forward to hearing some of his music sometime.

There was, surprisingly, still some pools of water along the river, full of little frogs and late tadpoles and beautiful orange and blue dragonflies. Also (much to Ruby's delight) lots of ground squirrels and really pretty, plump quail. On the way back home we saw a whole family of squirrels sitting in the evening sun... but they were too far away and too quick for any decent photos.

Ruby and Mohamed have been out picking wild thornberries.... they have a strangely sweet woody flavour... not revolting but, for me, not very moreish - Ruby and Mohamed (and other moroccans) are quite addicted to them. The thornbushes are quite awesome though - infinitely more superior in stopping power and at inflicting wounds than the man made mimic - barbed wire!

I found this little chap (ess?) the other day... and I saw a Chameleon while out for a walk last week.



Ruby and I are enjoying our walks, she is getting more confident and has (I think) decided that she is my dog.

Mohamed has managed to enroll at the university in Agadir to study English Literature.... though I am not sure exactly what the syllabus is going to be - I think the first year is fairly general and includes french and arabic studies. I am looking forward to getting access to the library!! He is also picking up some work repairing and reformatting pc's and satellite receivers.

.... and that is all the news.

Happy Birthday Kat!

Ruby's Story

Mohamed was talking to one of the locals who helped with our building work yesterday. Ruby went out with him and ran up to the neighbour as if she knew him. He recognised her and told Mohamed what he knew about her background.

On the hillside to the north of the village, there is a collection of beehives and a little tent where the men sleep when they are working with the hives. Our neighbour spends quite a bit of time there with his bees. Some men from a neighbouring village took Ruby up there earlier this year and left her there to watch the hives. I suppose she would have been OK as long as she was able to scavenge or hunt food or while there were men in the tent. She (of course) got pregnant and had 8 puppies but this was at the height of the really hot weather that we had. I don’t suppose she had enough milk to feed the puppies and they all died and eventually Ruby had to leave to try and find food…. and that is how she came to us.

The neighbour said that one of men had asked him just last week if he had seen her and he said no, because he knew she was with us and would have a better life with us. (...thinking about it that is quite a big deal - telling a lie during Ramadan! I am really grateful to him - though I suppose it will get round the village grapevine that she is here.) He thinks she is something over a year old.

I think at the moment Ruby believes that she is still their dog but hopefully with time she will forget them. In the meantime I won’t be taking walks in the direction of those hives!



On Friday, the Eid (holiday at the end of Ramadan) we went along the coast to Tagazhout. Ruby was a little bit slathery during the car journey (first time in the car) and we had to stop to give her some fresh air. It was also her first time on the beach (euch it is all wet!) and in a restaurant for lunch (I took some biscuits for her which the cats came and ate – not our cats the restaurant cats). She is wary of traffic and large groups of people but got her confidence walking back along the beach. We drove back to Agadir and had a walk along the corniche (prom, paseo whatever you want to call it) down at the quiet end. She was walking really well on the lead but did not want to go back in the car.



Yesterday we walked up the riverbed for while and saw some striped ground squirrels running up the rocks and about 12 magpies all together.

I am so happy that Ramadan is over. It has been really difficult this year as it was so hot and also the days were longer.

Today is the first day since the end of Ramadan that we have had sunshine in the morning, it has been quite overcast, but this morning I will be having my coffee and croissant sitting on the roof.

Say Hallo to Ruby

So I was out feeding leftovers to my proxy dog last Monday night when I turned around and found the most pitiful little skeleton of a dog standing patiently in the hope that she would be fed.

So of course we took her indoors and tried feeding her. For the first 24 hours, while she would drink, she didn't seem able to eat anything - nothing tempted her. I ended up making a sardine smoothie and forcing it down her throat with a syringe. Little and often is apparently the trick with dogs who have been starved. When I had managed to get that down her I moved on to chicken mashed with rice and slowly she started to eat again. We have now graduated to Pedigree Chum biscuits (though I did have to spend a while teaching her to eat them) and she is slowly gaining weight. Still a long way to go but she no longer looks so much like a cross between a toast rack and a bicycle. We have also managed to get rid of the legions of ticks that were sucking the blood out of her.

Here is a photo of when she first arrived (looking like a pin up for the PDSA)



The cats are not overly impressed but so far there has not been too much trouble. She is behaving almost impeccably. There is a little bit of growling if they walk past while she is eating, which isn't helped by Marmela stealing her biscuits at every opportunity. I am training her not to go into the kitchen so that the cats have their own space while they are eating. In fact she is quite cautious about coming into rooms... though she does come and sit beside me while I am working.

Mohamed has had his heart set on an Alsation puppy which he would then train to do all sorts of amazing tricks as well as guard me from all potential threats. He was not at all keen on keeping this girl, but has relented, bless him.


We have started going for little walks down to the river and back up... so this will be good exercise for me and yesterday I woke up with her name in my head - Ruby.

Yesterday Marmela and Martha came with us. More to keep an eye on me than to keep Ruby company.

Other news.... well only a week left of Ramadan and the weather has cooled down a bit - thanks goodness for both!