June 17th

Just a quick update today as I have a mountain of work waiting to be done...... I am about to embark on writing a marketing plan! First I have to work out what one of those is.

It has been really really hot here this last week... so hot that even inside my lovely cool flat it has started to get very hot around midday! All the cats come home and throw themselves onto a cool bit of floor somewhere and drowse around for the rest of the day. Finally yesterday we had thunder and lightening and rain and this morning is much cooler.

I have at last managed to get all the paperwork done for the renewal of my Carte de Sejour... now I just have to turn up at the police station once a month to get my receipt stamped again and see if the new card has arrived....... I have just realised one of the bad things about moving to Wikaren will be that I have to go to the awful police station in Agadir to renew my card next year. They were really unfriendly and unhelpful - as well as being inefficient. At least in Taroudant they are friendly and helpful.

Mohamed has been getting up every morning and heading off for Wikaren. He has been gathering all the building materials and getting a temporary water supply sorted out. The land has more or less been cleared of stones .... and more stones gathered for building and I think they have started digging the foundations. We are going to build as much as we can of the outside walls in stone as this will be cooler in the summer than concrete blocks. This will make the building process much slower though.

Mohamed is on the look out for somewhere local to rent while we are building - to save on the 70km round trip every day. But I dread moving twice!

Anyway I had better get on with some work

not last night.....

At last the land is registered.... all we need to do now is build.
I am in the throes of renewing my carte de sejour - must go out and get a new letter from my bank manager. I am not sure the relevance of this... would they throw me out of the country if I didn't have any money?
We currently have grandchildren visiting. Well actually 3 little kittens who bear a striking resemblance to Sami and Elvis/Marmela so they could well be offspring from Max or Elvis. I know that we can't really keep them (five cats is quite enough, 8 is more than enough) but at least they will be a bit stronger to deal with what life throws at them. Yesterday Marmela decided to be a surrogate mother to them and she is keeping them licked and cuddled - I am not sure if she is actually producing milk or not.

News

So sorry for the gap.... I was waiting for some final details to get sorted - but then I realised that final details always take longer than you think they will....soooo



We have just bought another piece of land. This is a small piece in a little village on a hill about 15 minutes from Agadir. The idea is that we can build a little house and live in it till things sort themselves out in Taroudant (land registration, title, development of University etc etc). The piece of land is called Place of Stones in a village called Wikaren (which is Berber for the place of Karen - I think Karen must have been someone's name (not as in the Scottish girl's name)). We are in the process of selling one of the trucks to finance the house building and I have more or less finalised the house plan. The land was very cheap (I bought it with part of my oDesk earnings!) and it is a great spot at the top of the village - the photo on this post is from Google earth and our plot is right at the top just to the left of the middle. The photo on this page is the view north-ish. The drawback is that there is no mains water. OK that sounds pretty bad but the water is being put in along the road and should get to the village in a couple of years and in the meantime we will buy a tank and get it filled periodically.

In the paperwork the land is described as bounded on the West by the road - which I find quite funny as the road to the west is a sort of stony sheep or goat track. You can see it on this photo on the left of the thorn boundary hedge. We have bought just 200m sq of this ground.

We have the necessary paperwork to register the land as ours so we should get that done this week (though we are playing it safe till we get the house built and just doing it in Mohamed's name so the Tourist card isn't played). We should get started clearing the ground and building the platform (as opposed to digging foundations!) pretty soon. Well I need to remember this is Morocco but I feel that it is the light at the end of the tunnel!

I had the idea of doing this because I thought it would be good spot to use as a holiday rental when we finally build our house here. It will be close enough to Agadir to tempt people who would like a bit of both worlds, it is also close (but not too close) to the new Agadir-Marakesh autoroute and of course Taroudant and the Atlas mountains.

Being closer to Agadir will be good for lots of other things as well, I think Mohamed is thinking that finding work there will be easier than in Taroudant. He has done some translation work on line but it is not really very steady.

I have finally got a writing job! I will be writing a blog about living in Morocco...... I will have to make it a bit more interesting and informative than "This week I have mainly been eating couscous.." or whatever. The blog is for a Danish lady property developer currently in the UK but planning to move out to Morocco. She already has a house in Marakesh and a property development business and wants to include a blog about what life is like here. I will let you all know when the blog goes live.

A smaller purchase but very appreciated was a water filter jug - the water here is very very hard and my coffee machine gets very chalked up. What a difference using the filtered water makes to the taste of the coffee. But if anyone is thinking of coming out can they bring me one of those metal fur collecting thingies that you put in kettles.... thank you!

What else... well Honey has a bit of a bladder/kidney infection so we are taking her to the Vet this afternoon. There is a new vet in Taroudant with a cat drawn on his advertising - so hopefully he will know one end from the other. In the meantime poor Honey is desperately trying to find the right place to pee - but wherever she tries she still cannot relieve herself, poor girl.

Ooh and last time but one that I was at the land (in Ouled Said) depositing the compost vegetables and watering Little Grey (she has lemons!) I spotted a critter crossing the road in front and diving into the bamboo bushes. When I got home I looked it up and it was a Mongoose! Just as well since it has been reported (by nervous sister in law) that there are snakes in our land!

We also had our own domestic wildlife adventures. The cats were very interested in the tiny space underneath my desk the other night and on investigation we finally found quite a large lizard hiding in the tubular metal of the desk leg! I was a bit worried it might have been a scorpion................... if I ever get cut off in mid blog you will know what has happened to me! Anyway the lizard, without part of it's tail which I had found earlier in the week, was released to the wild (much to the digust of all the cats) and I will be looking for some rubber stoppers to fit over the ends of the leg posts.

I think that just about covers it for now.

dogs, horses, trucks

This morning I am sitting with a little puppy at my side....... I just know this will end in tears. She was sitting outside the house last night and Mohamed took pity on her enough to let her sleep outside the front door wrapped in a blanket but I don't think he will be keen to keep her (the blanket was his idea). True enough the flat is not really big enough for a little dog as well as 5 cats. She was hungry and full of fleas and has a sore leg. We have fed her and sprayed her to deal with the fleas but I am not sure what is wrong with her leg. Little girl dogs get put out on the streets because no one wants the hassle of constant puppies. Update... little doggie has gone :(

Wednesday was our wedding anniversary. We went out horseriding for

the day at a new place that has opened just outside Taroudant. What a lovely day I had - and I think Mohamed enjoyed himself as well. The horses were Berber Arab stallions, very well looked after. I set out on a four year old chestnut called Aloueen - which means "God Help You" (yes I know - it put me off a bit as well but actually this is a common term used almost like a blessing in Morocco - the sort of thing you would say if someone walked past carrying a heavy bag or was about to start a major task). He had a beautiful trot and a nice smooth canter but was rather full of energy and shook his head a lot and tried to buck me off at one point when I was holding him back in canter. I didn't want to overtake Mohamed - as this was only his 2nd time riding.

Aloueen also at one point decided that a sandy part of the track was the perfect place to get down and roll! I thought at first he was just trying to grab a bite to eat - and was not at all ready for him to go down onto the ground. I managed to get my leg out of the stirrup and as I put one hand on the ground to try and get myself away from under him he realised that he had me on his back and had better get back up. Luckily I managed to hang on!

Lascen, our guide, made me swap with him so for the rest of the ride I was on Kalel - a very nice dark dapple grey. We rode through fields of ripe barley, along little tracks and dirt roads till we came to a small village at the start of the High Atlas and then turned back towards Taroudant. They do run overnight treks into the hills... a definite for a trip sometime - maybe when I have some horseriding visitors! You can see that although things are getting dry, there are still wild flowers growing along the tracks. It would have been truly lovely just after the rains earlier this year.

So I can just about sit down and walk normally again now.... I must try and get some more exercise this year.

We have a house full of visitors again... Mohamed's mother and two of his cousins. She had been staying with her brother for a week and the girls (one from her sister and one from her brother) came back with her to visit Aicha and have a look round Taroudant.

Things are just getting back to normal following a huge transport strike. Morocco has a really awful road safety record - in 2000 there were 10 fatalities a day from RTA - 1996 figures show that there were 20 deaths per 10000 vehicles compared with 1.5 in the UK. The figures have only gone up since 2000. So the new minister for transport is trying various means to improve the situation. He has tried education campaigns and is now looking at implementing stricter fines and sentences for people speeding or driving under the influence of alcohol (yes it does happen).

The problem with this is twofold (or is it threefold?).

Moroccans do not generally respect the LAW - there is a deeply ingrained belief that you only need to obey traffic law if there is a policeman watching. This is only reinforced by the corrupt and lazy police force. The increase in the level of fines just means that you have to pay more corruption to the police when you are caught... and so the average moroccan is at a big disadvantage.

Morocco is a poor country. Most people subsist on wages that allow them to keep a roof over their head and food in their family's mouths. People do not have the cash to buy anything other than the minimum daily requirements, the smallest packet of washing powder, single helpings of cheese or sachets of shampoo - they do not have extra money to buy in bulk never mind save for holidays etc.

As a country it gets by because fresh food is cheap. As a developing country it is trying to expand its export market and here the countryside is full of orange trees and polytunnels growing courgettes and aubergines, tomatoes, bananas etc etc. To be able to sell to the west, it needs to keep the price of production down.... so for example in order to keep the cost of oranges down, the factories pay trucks like ours to transport loads that are in fact twice the legal limit for loading (we carry 16 ton when we should only load 8!) If we carried less we would only get half the price and that would only cover fuel and driver costs and we would go out of business. So everyone overloads... and as you pass the frequent police stops you just hand over 10 or 20 or 30 dirham. With this new law we would have to pay 100 or 200 or 400 dirham just to keep on the road.... so no profit in the trip and the reason for the strike.

What is the answer? The factories should pay twice the price for the loads..... but then will Tesco and Asda continue to buy oranges from Morocco if the price goes up?

I said threefold but maybe I should have said fourfold or more .... the other elements are that most Moroccans have not passed a real driving test - pay the right level of corruption and you are guaranteed to pass. So the standard of driving is not high..... and then there is the fatalistic approach to life in general. Inshallah!

random

I have an ideas hamster in my head.  Now anyone who grew up with a hamster (or maybe a gerbil) in their bedroom will know exactly what I mean.  Your hamster gets up in the middle of the night and runs and runs on its treadmill.... not like a directionless drudge but actively working that wheel.... really getting somewhere.

 

Well that is how my ideas hamster is .... it works away at ideas until they either arrive as a good solid concept or the whole thing spins out of control (sometimes both).

just thought I would share that with you

Babylon 5

I just remembered this old tv series the other day.  I used to really love it - Channel 4 Friday night I think.  It was sci-fi and started with "It was the best of times, it was the worst of times"  so guaranteed to pull me in.  Anyway apparently the world is full of Babylon 5 fans (I only know 2 - Rob and Stewart that's you) and the whole 5 series, tv movies, extras and the follow on series (Crusade) are all available for download.  My days now revolve around checking my torrents to see how the download is going.  Unfortunately not many other people are downloading so it is taking forever.  I don't think waiting is the best part!

April Showers

We had some wild weather at the weekend, thunder and lightening, rain and HAIL! As things were starting to get dry and yellow/red again it was nice to get some more rain for regreening .... back to sunshine again now though. We really do need wet springs every year - though I don't suppose the scandinavians who come here to escape winter would necessarily agree.

They have started harvesting the barley grown in the field at the back of our flat.... poor cats used to love running around in there hidden from sight. This early harvesting is one of the reasons why I keep getting confused about what month it is.... that is July and August activity not March/April.

So What is New

Well I realise that I forgot to say that my arabic classes have been cancelled. Well I had to abandon them because the French guy stopped coming and the cost would have gone from expensive to exorbitant.... I had a feeling that he might drop out but there was little I could do. It is a real shame as I was starting to make progress. I will keep trying to practice what I had learnt and maybe learn some new verbs and hope that either the mysterious 3rd person (who was supposed to start classes with us but didn't) shows up or we find another class.

Marmela is much better. The day after the vet came the abscess burst. I think Marmela got a bit of a fright when it happened and ran around so we had blood and pus all over the flat. However it is starting to heal over nicely now - though she still has a big scab it no longer takes up half her head.

The pictured cat is Smokey Robertson (yes well the vet's assistant was too young to realise that she had got the name wrong on the vaccination card) who recently moved in with my sister (Aberdeen). He is a lovely big fella and really does talk to you - though a limited vocabulary (so far) "Why?" was a favourite and I am pretty sure I heard "Allah".