Orange Groves

Driving out to Bou Al Ajat you pass by the some of the major estates cultivating oranges for which this part of the Sousse valley is famous. This area north of the town is set to benefit from the building of the new dam for irrigation and the investment in the new bottling plant  (By which I assume they mean some sort of Tetrapak).

This is cultivation on an industrial scale, the trees planted densely in rows. Many are grown in huge permanent green houses made of large frames of outward cantilevered posts covered usually in green mesh rather than plastic although sometimes plastic is used. The sides can be ruched up like austrian blinds to allow even more air circulation.

Some times they just use long lengths of mesh to wrap individual rows.

Others are left entirely unwrapped. We were unable to discern any particular rationale for wrapping , or covering , or not; perhaps it is a mechanism to extend the season. 

they seem to need a lot of pruning. The prunings are taken presumably as forage on the most overloaded vehicles, motorbike pickups, donkey carts, bicycles. This is not really a problem on the remote valley roads but on the dual carriageway to Agadir it is another matter. we long ago realised that if you see a tree in the middle of the road, particularly on coming towards you down the wrong way down the fast lane of the express way it is not an illusion.

The Agadir

Agadirs are fortified granaries usually with a tower. Bou Al Ajat still has it's agadir. There used to be a large one , now destroyed  at the coastal city bearing the name. Popp et al have mapped all the agadirs in the western Anti-Atlas rating them on level of preservation. The paper copy of their map is readily available in the Tafroute area and makes and excellent walking map. There's a link about them at
http://www.stadtgeo.uni-bayreuth.de/fr/publications/agadir/
which includes a pdf edition of the map.
Our friends took us to see the agadir  explaining how the area was very tribal and that the tribes used to raid each other and steal their stores so thet was why they were built. I explained similar problems with the reivers in the Borders and Peel towers; and that cattle raids were frequent partly because the border between England and Scotland was moveable for centuries. He nodded and muttered, "Ah, like Algeria".
The tribal feeling remains though. Our friend Roudani born and bred explained that he had tried to buy a house , not in this village but another one nearby, equally close to the town, and had been told, "You can't buy here. you're not one of us."
The agadir at Bou Al Ajat is set in the top of the village at the edge of a steep drop and with panoramic views of the Sousse valley below.

Bou Al Ajat

Bou Al Ajat is a village about 10 km from Taroudant in the foothills of the Atlas just at the point where they start to rise from the valley floor. We were taken there a couple of weeks ago by some friends and would never have found it without them because the road out of town although established and metalled is being re-routed  at Lagashe where the market and building developments are and is only accessible through a few hundred metres of mud and sand.
Sod's law meant that we had no camera with us so we reurned to take photos of the agadir.
The village itself is divided into two parts (or there is a neighbouring village with no name shown on the map). The part you come to first has a market square with a wednesday market , 3 permanent hanuts, and a butcher's just outside the square. There is one official building our friend said was a clinic, but describes itself as an Argan Co-operative, and an electricity sub-station.

 and may be fifty houses in a mixture of modern and traditional  construction. 

The pise houses with traditional  roofs of wooden branches overlaid with mud look quite anachronistic with their satellite dishes.

 Each house has a small area fenced of with prickly pear cacti and laid cut thorns.

This part of the village used to have water but the cistern is abandoned

 and villagers go to the further part on their donkeys bearing racks of gallon plastic jars on each side to fetch water. The difference can be seen clearly in the cultivated fields of the far village. 

Bureacracy

We are back to Wales in a week and sadly I think that will be until October. We have a house to sell in Birmingham which will stop us returning in May, perhaps the best month for Morocco. I am not looking forward to it as although the 30C+ heatwave has ended, it is still high 20s here, but there is snow forecast for the Welsh hills and Pennines. Anyway we are being good citizens and doing our outstanding business. 

Today we managed to pay the rates. This has caused us some trouble this year. No demands are sent, you just have to know you have to pay them and where. They are only payable upon dwellings in the town limits, people in the villages are rate free, but then they don't get their rubbish collected, whereas we have a collection every day except Sunday and Bank Holidays. New houses are exempt from rates for the first five years if the right forms are completed and when we didn't get a demand we didn't worry. It was only this year when we had had the house five years that we made enquiries only to find we should have been paying it all along. The level of payment is dependent on the size of the property and there is a 50% reduction for a second home. Asking other ex-pats we expected to pay about £200pa . Sadly a foreign property only counts as a first home if you are from France, Germany, Italy, Spain or some other country with a reciprocal tax agreement with Morocco, and not the UK, so our rates are more like £400pa. As we had not paid for 5 years there was a 50% penalty for late payment for each year. We had to send to our British bank.

We did not want to pay a penalty for 2014 so we begged to be allowed to pay there and then, to the incredulity of the staff who were unused to people saying "please, please, take our money", but were told we had to pay in April or May. That was problematical as we will not be in the country then. Unlike the Electricity Board they do not seem to do direct debits. Eventually we were told we may be able to pay at the end of March. We went today.
Initially we were told we must pay in April.We explained that we would be in Britain then. We were told we needed a piece of paper. We explained we hadn't got it. All this was in "French", although the person speaking to me was the second person in that office to tell me that they didn't speak English and I must speak french when I was. Cowley Grammar School for Girls obviously didn't do much for my accent. Beloved has an excellent accent (his direct grant school had a language lab),  just little French (although dealings with french bureaucrats is rapidly improving it) so we ended up in a trianglular conversation and at last determined that if we went to a separate building down the road we could obtain the necessary piece of paper. We got the official to write down exactly what we wanted in arabic so there could be no mistake.
We went to the other building. There is no proper queuing system so we just pulled colonialism and approached the first free official with the paper. It worked! He got out the form, carefully filled it in and stamped it carefully with different stamps in two places. We took the form and were about to leave when he said something to us. Seeing we did not understand he summoned a minion and indicated we should follow him. We were taken further down the corridor to another official who applied a further two stamps. The minion then indicated we should go downstairs and give the paper to "la femme". There was no woman downstairs but and empty desk with a screen  such as you may pay money to a cashier. We were quite heartened thinking we would not have to back to the first office to pay but after a while waiting and looking at the empty desk we thought we may as well go and pay there. Fortunately a man arrived and went behind the desk. We handed him the paper and got out the chequebook , but it wasn't needed. He took the paper logged into the computer and then applied another  stamp to it and gave it back.
However when we got back to the first office it was fine. They actually agreed to take money off us!
It is said that when the French left Morocco in 1956 they took with them more administrators than the British had when they left India in 1948  With systems like this I begin to see why.
Anyway we had a drive round the other side of town where the landscaping has been progressing and the planting round the sculpture park has grown up and is looking good, so here's some pictures.

Results

For those of you sad people interested in sport like sweetheart here are the results of the events listed in my last blog.
The Lalla Meryam Bowl was won by 17 year old Charley Hull from Kettering after a playoff with  frenchwoman Glwadys (she must really be welsh with a name like that surely) Nocera. Sophie Giquel- Bettan took 3rd place.
The 240,00 euro first prize in the Hassan II Trophy was won by Alejandro Canizares of Spain, with Andy Sullivan of England in second place and Magnus Carlsson of Sweden in third. Sadly Wales could only come joint seventeenth with Stephen Dodd but he still got 18,400 euro.
The men's 10km race was won by by a Moroccan, Hassan El Abassi in 28minutes and 4 seconds, with another Moroccan, Aziz Lahbibi, second and Daniel Chebii of Kenya third.
The women's race was won by Asma Laghzaoui of Morocco in 32.31, with Bouchra Benthami of France 2nd and Melly Joan Chelimo of Kenya third.
The fastest man listed from Taroudant, Abderrahman Kachir, was only 2 mins behind the winner,  but the fastest local woman, Sanaa Asbane was 16 minutes behind her leader. 

Agadir Golf and Sport

                                      
                      
We are told that Prince Albert II of Monaco has arrived in Agadir for a holiday. The timing is slightly suspicious as next week the resort is hosting the 41st Hassan II Trophy at the Royal Palace Golf Course

 and the 20th Lalla Mariam Bowl at the Ocean Golf Couse.

 Both are part of the european tour although it seems that reportage in Britain is confined to Ryder Cup team hopeful Paul Lawrie not attending so that he can watch Aberdeen in the Scottish Cup Final. The old King of course was a great golfer and encouraged the establishment of numerous golf courses. The Ministry of Tourism is capitalising on the event to hold a conference on tourism opportunities in Morocco in Agadir in the middle of next week. Preparations include erecting circles of flagpoles at the coast roundabouts bearing the  country's flags of  competitors.
When we there on Thursday a smaller event was taking place on the beach where a scrambling circuit had been set up on the beach between the loungers and various french motorcyclists were screaming round. It didn't seem a very good spectator sport because the bikes really churned up the beach and you were liable to get an eyeful of sand. Beloved sniffed and said they weren't very good.

Competitive Skies

The Palais Salaam has had a hoarding proclaiming a festival of parachuting since January. It has all reached a climax this week with the 5th Arabic and 1st African  International Display Parachute Team Competition. 
There are seven teams participating from Morocco, Saudi Arabia, Palestine, Egypt, Bahrain and Libya. The Libyan team was particularly proud to attend and had had considerable difficulties getting here given the still riven state of the country, so it is particularly tragic that one of their team was sadly killed in competition.
We had spent the week looking out for the odd parachutist but saw none, only empty blue sky, 

so drove out to the Sidi Dahmane airfield to have a look. The airfield had new signage and banners displaying its hosting of the event and a number of tented pavilions erected. It also had a military road-block on the main road by the entrance so we did not stop to take pictures.
The winner will be decided in an event this afternoon and the finale is tomorrow with the awards ceremony.
Meanwhile the town is preparing for this year's 10 km race which is on Sunday. It is as usual sponsored by a coffee and tea company and stalls are going up round the fountains in preparation. 

 It is 33C here at the moment which is a bit hot for racing but they are threatening light rain and showers for the day itself.

Ait Mansour Gorge

Ait Mansour is about 30km SE of Tafroute You take the Tiznit road past Napoleon's Hat. (Tafroute was established by the French as an administative centre and foreign legion outpost; everything has french based names),and turn left at the Tissarart turnoff and then keep going after  the town. The road descends into a steeper and deeper valley which flattens out into a steep sided gorge. 

"Ait" means "spring" and as you get into the gorge there is suddenly lots of running water and the vegetation becomes thick and lush. It is a flat 4km walk through but we decided to drive it. Every house had it's own road sign identifying it in arabic, berber and french. 

We were stopped by two old berber women who spoke to us urgently. We did not understand a word. They repeated themselves more loudly. We did not understand. They repeated more loudly still. If they spoke loudly enough we would understand fluent arabic. Eventually I heard the word "waloo", "nothing". They were telling us there was nothing down the road. We knew the metal road would run out and we would have to turn round without a 4x4 but it was" zshween", pretty so we went on a bit and then turned round.