Every time we go back to Ouled Mgatel, I remember the flood, and the night when we slept in the office, because we were afraid that the walls of our bedrooms would collapse because of the torrential rain.
What happened these last few months can be read on the walls of our house.
That’s a sad story…
A painful story…
The story of what we build, that we will have to rebuild.
The story of a house that has changed so much.
Big day for Fred. A new storytelling show at the French Institute, in French and in Arabic, for the very first time. I’m proud !
- and you may have noticed that our house of Ouled Mgatel is in the picture too!
The Moroccan spring brings us good news. As promised by our neighbors, and by the sun, the road is now passable. Even if it rains a lot, the soil has dried out, and the road will stay passable until… well, October at least.
That’s very, very good news. But of course, we cannot live in the house. I cannot live in the house right now. Fred would probably try though. but without running water - the pump is broken, with the ground being wet in most rooms, with all the dust, the walls of the bathroom that are not really upright. That’s a lot of problems.
We’ll stay in Fez then, until we fix the house.
And the house will be fixed. And maybe even better. Because we want to make it bigger. The main reason being that Fouad and Bachir have been sleeping in the living room for months, and that’s not very pleasant for them. We want them to have their own room, where they can put their stuff, and have a break from their families when they want.
But how are we going to build a new room? Without money, without time to do it? Well, we’got the most important thing: the water, a lot of water, and a well that has never been so full. The water that brings a big smile on the faces of people in Ouled Mgatel, and the water that is necessary to make mud bricks - as well as earth (we’got plenty of that), and straw.
The boys are making the bricks as we speak, and soon our house will be a better place to live.
No pictures for now. Just a picture taken from the car, a picture of what we see on the road to Ouled Mgatel.
