Each for Equal

I always blog for International Women's Day but this year instead of wading through statistics I'll give you this link.

https://www.moroccoworldnews.com/2019/03/267531/womens-day-change-morocco/


One of the themes for this year's IWD is female sportspeople  so here is a shout out for Nawal El Moutawakel




She is a board member of the IAAF having been a Vice-President of the IOC and Chair of the Co-ordination Commission for the Rio Games and served as Moroccan Minister for Sport. She originally came to international attention in1984 when she won the inaugural Womens 400m Hurdles at the Los Angeles Olympics.


                                                 

More room for prayer

There is a small square in the middle of the Arab Souk home to vegetable stalls and vendors of second hand furniture. We were intrigued in November when most of the buildings on one side were demolished and the stalls cleared out to accommodate mounds of earth from  pit being dug in their place. When we returned this year stalls had returned and construction was well under way.

 Beloved was convinced it was a sign of "progress" and that a shopping precinct was being constructed to replace market stalls.
When we went back the other day it had topped out and was clearly a mosque

.This is surprising as the is another mosque 50m away, one at 100m and two further mosques within 200m. Still it is good to know that traditional religion has not been replaced by the worship of Mammon.

The plasterers

Whilst we use our garage as a garage most people round here use them as some sort of business or workshop. the ones opposite have been used as garages and storage for a minibus and equipment for a children's charity and as a car wash. The car wash proprietor was very nice but it was extremely noisy particularly in the evening when we wanted to watch television so it was a bit of a relief when a competitor opened up round the corner and the business folded. It has since been empty but when we returned after xmas a new business had opened. It is a plaster workshop and had moved from smaller premises across the main road. Now they have a double garage and whilst one side just has sacks of plaster the other stocks all sorts of moulds for making  elaborate traditional cornices and stucco work. 

Water

The model-maker commented how nice to see somewhere where the only water was in  swimming pool and it may be appealing to Brits dodging floods and storms but people here would love some of that water. Not floods , the last time they had some people died because their pise mud homes disintegrated in the night, but some rain would be welcomed. 

We flew into Marrakesh and coming here by motorway you pass on of the main reservoirs for the area. It was almost empty. I am told that whilst I was ill there was a faint line of snow on the Atlas. It was much less than usual and and did not last. We have had the house twelve years now and there is noticeably less snow over the past few years than when we started coming.

 So we thought we'd go and see how the Sidi Abdullah dam was getting long. They seem to have been building it for the past decade and we thought we my be able to gaze on a lake by now, but sadly not as access is now restricted by  barrier but it has come on and looks like a dam now.

Meanwhile our water supply at home has improved greatly. It has always had variable pressure. We thought this was a method of rationing as it would be particularly low after noon prayers and recover after the next azan and of course it would give up completely on Friday mornings when everyone needed to wash at the same time.

When we came back in the autumn work had clearly been done to our external supply pipes. Now it seems to have been completed for the whole area and the pressure is much improved. We can have showers not just baths in the upstairs bathroom (We'd only been able to have hot showers downstairs) and wash up at 2pm if we wish.

Water management is key here,Morrocans would be scornful that in a country with Wales' rainfall that you could have floods in winter and hosepipe bans in summer. Marraakesh could only be built in the 11C because water was brought 50km in underground tunnels from the Atlas mountains.

Sun and smug

I haven't blogged yet this year because I came out with  a respiratory infection and spent the best part of 3 weeks more or less in bed. Beloved had wanted to go and spend his birthday in a posh hotel in Agadir but declared me too ill to go  so it was postponed to last weekend as a sort of Valentines combination. You can't quarrel with the view from the bedroom window or the sound of the sea at night but that large swimming pool  was unheated so nobody actually ventured a toe.
The weather was good though. Whilst Brits battle Ciara and Dennis we have been having temperatures of 28C+. So a couple of days of sun and sea and restaurant meals was a wlcome break. Now we are back home and I'm desperately trying to work out why my pachypodium remains a single leafless stem. We planted it just before we left and it lost all it's leaves so the gardener cut the top off expecting it  to grow seperate stems but none so far. Meanwhile the Jnane Soussia specimens grow increasingly multiple stems.

Anyway, blue skies for the model-maker.

Goodbye Sun

December 10th and a perfect T-shirt day for a farewell meal at the Jnane Soussia. Lots of blue skies for the modelmaker. We fly back tomorrow just in time to VOTE LABOUR, although I think Friday 13th may be a bit of a nightmare politically speaking. 
Lots of sun a good summer's day in Wales, but here the cats don't seek out a rare patch of sun to stretch out in but hide in the shade under the tables.

Crocdile Smiles

We went to the Crocopark. They clearly have enough crocodiles; at least a few hundred.It is owned by a French concern with links to a similar venture in Djerba, Tunisia, where all the Agadir crocodiles were sourced.

Apparently there were naturally occurring crocodiles in the Draa delta until the 1970s but they have now died out. The Crocopark is a conservation initiative but I don't think there are plans to re-wild any, particularly as all the crocodiles are just the one species of Nile Crocodile which is the fiercest and most aggressive of the sixteen true crocodile species extant today.

Crocodiles can't control their body temperature except by utilising external factors, basking in the sun, or immersing themselves in water.  They like to be at around 30C and it was only in the low 20s so  all very lethargic lying in the sun, trying to warm up. It probably means we saw more crocs than if we'd visited in the height of summer because they'd have dived into the water to cool off and they can stay under water for hours without needing to breath.

The park has a lab area where they were raising babies. The female lays eggs in sand and guards the area for 3 months whilst they incubate and then helps them to water. The tiny lizards are vulnerable and there is a 90% attrition rate in the wild.

Interestingly they don't seem to have  sex chromosomes to determine gender. The determinative factor in deciding the sex of a hatchling is the temperature at which they incubate. If it is below 30C they will be female; if it is over 32C they will be male; intermediate temperatures produce a mixture of gender

The park is well designed for children. There are two main playgrounds, one near the cafe. Various question boards round the park  impart basic information in a fun way (and in three languages). The cafe offers burgers, pizza and ice-cream and a daily adults' special . Then there is adult interest in the setting of Botanic Gardens.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7HkBW_FgobM