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.