Restore the oasis and traditional adobe home at the edge of the Sahara, Morocco

Detalhes

• 

  Descrição

  Hello dear people,
  
  We are Said (37) from the Sahara and Linde (34) from the Netherlands. It is our pleasure to meet you here!
  
  Since 2019 we are working on recovering a 200-year old adobe house, located next to the small village Bani Hayoune, 5 kilometers outside Tagounite. Behind the house there is a large garden which needs a lot of care and work. Our biggest dream is to bring back trees and plants and grow enough food and to be a hopeful example for the local community. Due to a huge lack of water, we are still at the beginning of this big project.
  
  Our wish is to recover and expand this house by (mostly) natural materials and to make this area liveable again. The place carries many memories and the history of our ancestors. As a child, Saids family still moved around as nomads, but would sometimes visit the older tribe members in this area, who had already stopped in the area of Tagounite.
  
  After rebuilding this old house, the goal is to bring back the oasis life - plants, water, birds, insects - in the gardens and help tackle desertification, as it is a severe and growing problem in this area. We will also create a small guest space for travelers, a cultural workshop space for the local children and an empowering space for the women in this area.
  
  The village Bani Hayoune used to be one of the oldest jewish villages in Daraa Valley, and it was discovered by Ishak Aquim, around 2500 b.C. This place was used a lot by the moving nomads and by the people who lived here: for trading and making traditional handcrafts.
  
  Said, previously a Saharaoui nomad, comes from a Tuareg-Amazigh family that used to move for many years through the Sahara desert. Their style of life is nowadays very rare. After living a long life in the desert with no more than a few goats, camels and their family members, they moved to Beni Hayoun, next to the Sahara.
  
  Linde is an artist from the Netherlands & Denmark and also co-founder of the project. Her past experience includes working in Waldorf kindergartens, creating workshops with children and families in a refugee center, and caring for people in homes for the disabled. While living in the project & house for most of the year, Linde helps in and around the project and with organising of the work.
  
  We are doing various work: repairing the old adobe house, plastering walls, building a new space for the sheep, taking care of the animals, taking care of the palm trees, cooking, cleaning, making bricks, giving shape to our garden and repairing the water reserves.
  
  The work is varying each period and season. Please don't worry about the need of any special skills. We will be happy to show & teach you what to do and we will be thankful for any help you can do! And feel free to relax when needed.
  
  We prepare 3 healthy meals a day & Moroccan tea, cooked by ourselves and everyone can get a chance to learn how to prepare authentic Moroccan food. In winter we sometimes make fires in the evening for warming ourselves up.
  
  In our gardens we grow date palms and alfalfa all year round, and in certain seasons barley, sorghum and okra. Our big aim is to setup a forest garden and grow many more trees (belonging to the climate here), organic vegetables, fruits and flowers in the gardens and through this contribute to biodiversity.
  
  With the extreme drought here in the south, having access to water is a big difficulty. We are trying our best to find solutions on how to keep the plants growing & project going. We recycle all the water and have also created some small water recycle systems. It is each year a big challenge to maintain the garden especially during our very hot (it can go up to 60 degrees celcius) summers, with little water and with stray donkeys coming during summer to eat from the garden, haha.
  
  The house is based in a calm area, and you will find yourself in an oasis consisting of a couple of date palms and several fields. We have a donkey, two dogs, chicken, a few sheep and a goat and many cats :)
  
  Since a short while we have some electricity and we have created a simple plumbing system for water. There is no WiFi in the house (you can get a cheap sim card in Tagounite if you need internet) and we sleep in a very old, simple but traditional building made out of adobe bricks, which makes the place even more calm. The house is half open (rooms have a roof though) because it has no roof in the middle, so that the stars and the moon are largely visible inside the house, giving you the feeling that you are very directly in nature.
  
  The place where we are settled gives you a good experience to get a lot of ideas about the basic ways of a "simple" life. For a moment you can discover and understand how technology can change your life. At the same time, it is a good opportunity to enjoy the peacefulness and quietness and take a distance from the rush of the every day life. The weather here is sunny every day, you can enjoy many incredible sunsets and at night you can see the millions of stars or the beautifully bright moon in the sky.
  
  We enjoy meeting people from different backgrounds with each their own unique story, and are grateful to be able to share this communal meeting place with so many people. Through this way, we hope to exchange knowledge, ideas and various stories. Welcome to our little corner of the earth :)
  
  We will be very happy to organise a tour into the Sahara desert if you are interested in this and as a volunteer you get a discount on our tours. It is Saids pleasure to show & tell you more about his roots and the surroundings of the Sahara where he was born and where he grew up. Said learned a lot from his ancestors and happily shares this with you.
  
  ARRIVAL
  When you arrive to Tagounite, we (Said or Said & Linde) will come to the bus station to meet you there. After that we will find a transport to go to the project in Beni Hayoun (most of the time we call a tuk tuk-taxi, this costs standard 70dh, or Said takes you by his motorbike).
  
  It is our pleasure to host you in our home and we are thankful to receive your help! We will do our best to make everything as comfortable as possible for everyone so we can all have a good experience.

• 

  Tipos de ajuda e oportunidades de aprendizado

  Prática de idiomas

  Ajuda em projetos ambientais

  Jardinagem

  Construção/faça você mesmo

  Cuidar de animais

  Ajuda em fazenda

  Criar/cozinhar refeições caseiras

  Ajuda a cuidar da casa

  Manutenção geral

  Ajuda com computadores/internet
• 

  Interesses

  

  Autodesenvolvimento

  

  Mascotes

  

  Trabalho beneficente

  

  Fazenda

  

  Cultura

  

  Livros

  

  Escrever

  

  Astronomia

  

  Desenho e pintura

  

  Arte e design

  

  História

  

  Cuidar de plantas

  

  Idiomas

  

  Jardinagem

  

  Culinária e comida

  

  Animais

  

  Atividades ao ar livre

  

  Yoga/bem-estar

  

  Montanhas

  

  Camping

  

  Naturaleza
• 

  Oportunidades de intercâmbio cultural e aprendizado

  Within the work we can sometimes show you old and traditional techniques (depending on the work we’re doing), and show you how to build with natural natural materials. You learn how to treat water carefully, live simply, live with the natural light and to live in peace within the moment and with yourself. We can teach you how to cook traditional Moroccan food and how to prepare the Moroccan tea. There are many stories to tell about our history, ancient way of living and about the Sahara desert, where Said's roots lay. We will be happy to share our stories with you.

• 

  Projetos que envolvem crianças

  Este projeto pode envolver crianças. Para mais informações, veja aqui nossas diretrizes e dicas.

• 

  Ajuda

  The tasks could be all kinds of different tasks, varying day by day or week by week, such as:
  
  Daily or weekly:
  - Harvesting alfalfa & barley
  - Daily care of our animals; our dogs, the cats, donkey, chicken, sheep and goat
  - Walking the dogs daily
  - Cooking. We are happy to teach you how to make traditional Moroccan meals & tea, and happy to learn new recipes
  - Everyone helps in keeping the house & dishes clean
  - Watering the plants. We use recycled water for watering the plants
  - Moving rocks, palm leafs, wood
  - Organising and ordering the kitchen, the volunteers bedroom and living area
  
  Depending on season and possibility:
  - Learn about traditional building
  - Making adobe bricks
  - Preparing the fields for planting
  - Planting seeds and trees
  - Filtering sand for covering the walls
  - Creating covers for the water reserves
  - In certain periods we need help with collecting water
  - Digging canals for water
  - Create irrigation systems
  - Help with watering the fields
  - Recovering and cleaning the old rooms and walls (made from adobe)
  - Building a wall around the project
  - We currently need help with finding funds
  - And with English writing and marketing for our desert tour website
  
  We are always thankful for anything you can help with! Besides the work there will be a lot of free time where you can relax, and we can go together for walks through the palm yards. If you like to visit the nearby village Tagounite and its weekly market, we can arrange a visit to go there all together by tuk tuk.

• 

  Idiomas

  Idiomas
  Árabe: Fluente
  Berber: Fluente
  Inglês: Fluente
  Holandês: Fluente
  Danish: Intermediário
  Francês: Intermediário
  Alemão: Iniciante
  Italiano: Iniciante

  Este anfitrião oferece intercâmbio de idiomas
  Este anfitrião indicou que tem interesse em compartilhar seu idioma ou em aprender um novo.
  Entre em contato com ele para obter mais informações.
• 

  Acomodação

  When you arrive in Tagounite by bus or taxi, you will find us waiting for you at the CTM busstation. From there we will go to Beni Hayoun, sometimes by motorcycle but we most likely will call a tuktuk (70 dirham) for you.
  
  In the house we have one shared dorm which you can use and share with the other volunteers. We sleep on the floor, and you can use our mattresses, pillows, blankets and sheets for sleeping. We also have one large bed if desired.
  
  The meals will take place together in our open space inside the house or sometimes outside in the gardens. We will cook, eat and clean together.
  
  We have a traditional Moroccan bucket shower and toilet which you can use. We recycle all our water and have several systems for this, which we are happy to explain to you when you're here. As we use a part of the recycled water for the garden, it would be helpful if you bring a natural soap.
  
  Next to the house there is a wonderful palm garden where you can relax and enjoy the many beautiful sunsets.

• 

  Algo mais...

  BUSTIMES
  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 Tagounite by the CTM bus (fixed bustime, departs every day):
  leaves at 11.30 am, arrives around 9 pm in the evening.
  
  The night bus from Agadir to Tagounite (fixed bustime, departs every day):
  leaves around 9 pm, arrives at 6 am in the morning.
  
  There are also many shared taxi’s (grand taxi) you can take at any time.
  
  WORK & FREE TIME
  We work around 3/4 hours every day and around 5 days a week, but the amount of work is always depending on the weather, how much water we have available for the work & on the type of work we're currently doing. Life here is calm but at the same time never predictable.
  
  There is enough free time, where we can walk together into the palm oasis before the sunset or rest in our gardens, read, write, play cards, have conversations over Moroccan tea and listen to the beautiful stories Said has to tell. We can also organise to visit the nearby town Tagounite together and sometimes visit the weekly market. If you want to visit the Sahara, we are happy to organise a tour for an additional cost (cost depends how many will join, which camp/tents and which driver is available) .
  
  
  IMPORTANT AND PRACTICAL INFORMATION:
  - Water is limited, we treat all our water with care.
  - If possible we'd ask you to do your laundry before or after arriving to us. If really needed, you can use our water for (small) laundry too.
  - The weather is sunny everyday and the sun is very hot, so bring sunscreen.
  - Bring with you a comfortable shoes for working and some flipflops.
  - In summer (April - October): bring mosquito repellant and if possible a mosquito net.
  - Bring your own towel and if possible natural shower soap (as the water goes into the earth & garden).
  - If possible bring your own pillow case.
  - Please bring clothes that cover the legs and shoulders, out of respect for the locals.
  - If you are traveling in Morocco you will find two “kinds” of drinking water: the local tap water and mineral water that you find in the shops. For your own comfort, it is probably best to start with buying the bottled mineral water. If you are already used/adapted to the local water, the tap water might be alright.
  - Please let us know what kind of transport you will use so that we can be waiting for you in right time.
  - Let us know if you eat vegetarian / vegan, or if you have any allergies. We do our best to take in mind any allergy, but the range of products in town are limited and we cannot promise that we can accommodate everyone's dietary wishes. We often eat traditional Moroccan food, and use bread instead of cutlery. There is no gluten free bread anywhere nearby.
  - During winter the nights are very cold, so bring warm clothes as well if you are coming in winter.
  - We are very happy to organise a Sahara tour for you, if desired.
  - Due to wild dogs and passed on responsibility, walks outside the property will be enjoyed only together. This does limit your ability to explore the area alone, but opens doors for closer connection to the land and yourself.
  
  
  Thank you for your understanding and please don’t hesitate to ask any questions you have in mind!

• 

  Mais alguns detalhes

  • 

    Acesso à internet

  • 

    Acesso à internet limitado

  • 

    Temos mascotes

  • 

    Somos fumantes

  • 

    Pode hospedar famílias

• 

  Pode hospedar nômades digitais

  We don't have Wifi but you can get a Moroccan simcard for free in most airports and add gigabytes to it in any kiosk / shop. Currently Maroc Telecom works best in our region.

• 

  Espaço para estacionar campervans

  We have built an entrance into our garden for cars/campervans, or you can park at the side of the road directly behind our house.

• 

  Pode aceitar animais

  Yes we do. Please take in mind that we have two dogs (outside), cats (inside), sheep and a donkey.

• 

  Quantos Workawayers pode acomodar?

  Mais de 2

• 

  Meus animais / animais de estimação

  

  5 still nameless chicken :)

  

  Vinke (1 ano)

  Daughter of Miso

  

  Spinke (1 ano)

  Son of miso

  

  Family sheep

  

  Deydi (1 ano)

  

  Khanafi

  

  Rock

  

  Susu / Sousen (6 anos)

  

  Miso

  Mother of 4 :)

  

  Grugru

Segurança do site

Converse com Workawayers que já visitaram este anfitrião

+110

Comentário (122)