Help us building our house in the Atlas mountains, Morocco

  • Favourited 80 times
  • Last activity: 25 Mar 2024

Availability

  2024 

 Min stay requested: No minimum

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Details

  • Description

    Description

    My name is Abed. I come from a big Berber-Tuareg family. After many years of living a nomadic life in the Atlas mountain, our family settled down in a village called Tagin. While my parents now live in a house in Tagin, I decided to move to Seattle Washington, to live and work.
    My wish is to rebuild and expand the house with natural materials. The place carries many memories and the history of our ancestors.
    The village is one of the oldest villages, and it was discovered by Ishak Aquim, around 2500 b.C. This place was used a lot by the people who lived here, for making a lot of traditional hand works and for trading.


    My father comes to the house every day with his donkey, to work in the gardens and to help with the work that is needed for the house, and sometimes my brother comes to help. We will do different work: rebuilding the mud house, fixing walls, working on the electricity that needs to be installed, taking care of the donkey and 5 cats, walking our dog, picking almond, cooking, making bricks, and digging a hole for the water reserve. We also need help with social media and marketing.
    You can choose the work that you would like to do, and everyone does what he can or wishes to do. Please don't worry about the need for any special skills. We will be happy to show you what to do and we will be thankful for any help you can do.

    We will have meals three times a day, cooked by ourselves and everyone will get a chance to learn how to prepare the real Moroccan dish. In winter, sometimes we make a fire for cooking or we play music and sit around the fire to warm our selves.

    In our gardens, we grow wheat and grass at this moment. Our wish is to grow all kinds of organic vegetables and fruits in the gardens that belong to our piece of land. With the drought here in the south, water is a big difficulty, but we are trying our best to find solutions and all your ideas about growing ecological food are of course very welcome :-)


    The house is based in a calm area, and you will find yourself in a green oasis consisting of olive trees and the gardens. We have a donkey, a dog and one mother cat with 4 young kittens at the moment :)
    We still don't have electricity or internet yet, which makes the place even calmer and you feel that you are very direct into nature.
    The place where we are settled can give you a good experience to get many ideas about the basic way of nomadic life. For a moment you can discover and understand how technology can change your life and at the same time, it is a good opportunity to enjoy some quietness and escape from the rush of modern life for a period. The weather here is sunny every day, you will enjoy beautiful sunsets every evening and at night you will see the millions of stars in the sky.

    We would love to meet people from different backgrounds and all kinds of cultures. In this way, we hope to exchange the cultures and different pieces of knowledge and ideas from all over the world. Since we have learned a lot from our parents and grandparents, it will be our pleasure to share with you in return this knowledge of our basic Bedouin life and to show you the Atlas mountain. We will be very happy to host you here!



    It will be great if you can come to help us! We will do our best to make everything as comfortable as possible for everyone so we can all experience a great time.

  • Types of help and learning opportunities

    Types of help and learning opportunities

    Gardening
    DIY and building projects
    General Maintenance
    Creating/ Cooking family meals
    Farmstay help
    Help with Eco Projects
    Help around the house
    Animal Care
    Charity Work
    Language practice
    Art Projects
    Help with Computers/ Internet
    Teaching
  • UN sustainability goals this host is trying to achieve

    UN sustainability goals this host is trying to achieve

    UN goals
    No poverty
    Zero hunger
    Good health and well-being
    Quality education
    Gender equality
    Clean water and sanitation
    Affordable and clean energy
    Decent work and economic growth
    Industries, innovation and infrastructure
    Reduce inequality
    Sustainable cities and communities
    Responsible consumption and production
    Climate action
    Life below water
    Life on land
    Peace, justice and strong institutions
    Partnerships for the goals
  • Cultural exchange and learning opportunities

    Cultural exchange and learning opportunities

    It is our pleasure to have you as a part of our project and we will be happy to have you in our family house.
    In the work, we will show you our old and traditional ways to build rooms in a natural and simple way. Of course, it will also be amazing to teach you how to cook some traditional Moroccan dishes and some Arabic if you are interested.

    This part is the most interesting one. As I have mentioned before, the main objective of my host is reciprocal learning. Learning my cultural heritage and comparing it to the workawayers one. Here are some cultural exchanges we will be doing:
    1- Exploring the Amazigh and Moroccan cuisine like How to prepare tea, tajine, couscous, Berber pizza...
    2- Exploring the lifestyle of Amazigh people in the village.
    3- Exploring historical monuments. The techniques and materials used in building old houses.
    4- Discover the geographical destinations like mountains, rivers, olive trees, star-filled sky...
    5- Organising group evening discussions related to different topics ...
    6- Learn and talk Tamazight or Arabic with my family and locals after I teach you some familiar expressions...

  • Projects involving children

    Projects involving children

    This project could involve children. For more information see our guidelines and tips here.

  • Help

    Help

    The tasks could be all kinds of different tasks, varying day by day or week by week, like:

    - Creating different rooms in the house. We want to build some new sleeping rooms and a big living room. For the building, we will use mud bricks made of sand, straw, and water
    - Internet. We need help with our social media and especially with marketing techniques.
    - Cooking, every help with cooking is very welcome! :) We are happy to teach you our Moroccan meals and happy to learn new recipes.
    - Washing and cleaning
    - Building the water reserve
    - Making/installing electricity
    - Fixing and cleaning the old rooms and walls (made with mud)
    - Make new door entrances in the rooms
    - Gardening. We need to plant new palm trees and we want to grow organic vegetables and fruits in the near future
    - We need to take care of our animals: our dog Sou Sen, the cat Poffertje, her kittens, and the donkey Khanaffi. The plan is to have some other different animals in the future.

    We will need help with planting and making mud bricks so we can start building some of the rooms. Also, we need some people to help us with installing the internet. And we would love it if there are some helpers who can help us in practicing languages to make it better.

    We are always thankful for anything you can help with.

    3 hours every day and 5 days a week, we start after breakfast and we stop after lunch. The rest of the day you have the day off, where we can walk together to the for the sunset or have a rest in our gardens.

  • Languages

    Languages spoken
    Arabic: Fluent
    English: Fluent
    French: Fluent

    This host offers a language exchange
    This host has indicated that they are interested in sharing their own language or learning a new language.
    You can contact them directly for more information.

  • Accommodation

    Accommodation

    When you arrive, you will find me waiting for you at the station or the airport. There I will take you to our family house where we will drink some tea with our family and you can have a rest if you wish. Here, we have three rooms that you can use and share with the other volunteers. You can use mattresses, pillows, and blankets for sleeping. All the meals will take place together in the old living room, or outside in the shade. We will cook and eat together in the same place where we work.
    We have a traditional Moroccan bucket shower and toilet which you can use!
    Next to the house, there is a wonderful garden where you can relax and enjoy the many beautiful sunsets.

  • What else ...

    What else ...

    BUS TIMES
    There are many departure times of the busses, sometimes the times will change, and we can help you to arrange and find out about these times.

    Marrakech to Taroudant by the CTM bus (fixed bus time, departs every day):
    leaves at 11 am, arrives around 9 pm in the evening.

    The night bus from Agadir to Taroudant (fixed bus time, departs every day):
    leaves at 9 pm, arrive at 6 am in the morning.

    There are also many shared taxis (grand taxi) you can take at any time.



    Some other practical information:
    - The weather is sunny every day and the sun is very hot so bring sunscreen
    - Bring with you comfortable shoes for walking
    - Please let me know what kind of transport you will use so that I can be waiting for you at the right time
    - Let me know if you eat vegetarian or vegan! We are flexible about the food
    Thank you for your understanding and please don’t hesitate to ask any questions you have in mind!

  • A little more information

    A little more information

    • Internet access

    • Limited internet access

      Limited internet access

    • We have pets

    • We are smokers

    • Can host families

  • Space for parking camper vans

    Space for parking camper vans

    This host can provide space for campervans.

  • Can possibly accept pets

    Can possibly accept pets

    This host has said they are willing to accept those travelling with a pet.

  • How many Workawayers can stay?

    How many Workawayers can stay?

    More than two

  • ...

    Hours expected

    Maximum 4-5 hours a day, 5 days a week

Host ref number: 567982764312

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