My Grandmother went and bought....

Sunday is market day. The market is north of the town where the standard walled market area houses the food market. To the north of this is and area selling mostly clothes and floorcoverings. Through the market you come to a smaller area described by the Rough Guide as a flea market but selling what beloved described as "a scrapyard of wasted metal which no-one could possibly want to buy". This from a man who hoards "useful pieces of string" and bits of wire which "may come in useful". Through this you come to the wholesale vegetable market with huge mounds of carrots or onions or gourds. There is also the beast market; mostly sheep and goats, but I did see cattle. This was interesting as though I drink lots of milk and eat beef which is cheaper than lamb, I had only previously seen about a dozen cows in five years worth of visits. Circling back to the vegetable market you pass through an area of tented cafes selling tea and fried fish to the stallholders.
It is light here about 7.00 by 8.00 the wholesale and beastmarkets are in full swing and the fish fryers are just staring up trade. The vegetable market is still partly setting up. If you go into town it is dead the shopkeepers and stallholders there not getting going until about 10.00, but later in the day the town comes alive with many more street traders than a weekday. The Sunday market is basically for small farmers from all over the Souss and this part of the Atlas to sell their produce. They will have left their villages well before dawn and need to sell before they can buy which accounts for the timetable and the need for a fish breakfast.


Taroudant sunday market




Hay for sale Taroudant Sunday market




A very small part of a carrot wholesalers




Vegetable for sale Taroudant Sunday market

 This is the only place where people have been uncomfortable about me taking general photographs so there are fewer pictures, sorry.

Terrace progress.

The table arrived yesterday. Beloved fetched it From Agadir. At first I was absolutely delighted because the colours turned out even better than I expected. On closer examination I was a little disappointed because some of the work is not up to the standard of the tables on display out side the shop. The centre in particular looks in places as though an apprentice has been let loose on it. Apparently when beloved and lorry arrived it had pieces missing even though they'd rung up last week and said it was finished. We suspect a quality control person (the boss) had said some bits needed redoing but because we had not rung first, well they had said it was finished, they hadn't redone it and then had to do it in a great hurry whilst the lorry waited. I can't blame beloved for accepting it as we had paid a 1/4 the total cost for  the lorry. Anyway it shows that it is all hand made. The table in the patio area superficially seems better quality but closer examination shows that the centre piece which features curves was clearly machine cut.
Yesterday was the hottest day so far , about 28C. It took 5 men + beloved  to get the table up the stairs. It is incredibly heavy and we'll never be able to move it, 2m x 1m and about 1" deep. Moha had divested his jacket in view of the heat and was only wearing his shirt and a thick sweater. The driver had shirt, sweater and thick jacket.
Then this morning the bell went early and my peacock cushion arrived. Mariam (Moha's wife) had made the tapestry up for me. I was very pleased with the result.
The terrace is the most used room in the house at the moment. It will be too hot in summer and the moroccans never use theirs this way but at present it is really pleasent to lunch in the sun  and then I sit out and do needlepoint. In a couple of months we'll be hiding from the sun on the patio or reaching for the air conditioning but at the moment it is perfect in a short-sleeve silk shirt or thin Tshirt. (note the contrast with the locals sweaters and jackets).



The peacock cushion





The new bespoke table




The inherited patio table





The hand chipped centre



This centre is machine cut

My next project - Gloriafilia's marbled cushion



zellij work

Zellij is a traditional craft setting pieces of tile into cement to make intricate patterns. In the past palace walls were decorated wit high quality zellij in highly intricate and complex patterns. Nowadays it is mostly used for tables and fountains in more workaday and less intricate patterns. There are no zellij workers in Taroudant but if you go to Agadir and go south towards  Inezgane there are a number of workshops more or less opposite the Royal Palace.
We commissioned a table for the terrace from one of these and beloved went to collect it today.
Cost varies depending on complexity of pattern. We wanted quite a large table so opted for a fairly basic one. The mosaic can also be made from numerous little squares of differently coloured marble which is more expensive.



The zellij workshop




Fountains




Various designs. The table on the right is marble.




Our table awaiting collection




The workshop floor displays a complex pattern




Chipping the tiles to shape




A marble topped table




Hand basins to the front, fountains to the rear



Spanish Bouganvillea

                                                       


As Tripadvisor forum gets excited about demonstrations and broken windows in Marrakesh and american papers report peaceful demonstrations in Rabat and Casablanca I have to report that revolution has passed Taroudant by. Today is market day and everyone just wants to get on with business. So I blog about my new bouganvillea. 
It was Southern novels Tenessee Williams (OK, he's drama) and particularly James Lee Burke's Robicheaux novels that made me want bouganvillea. They made me want jacaranda too until I saw the size of the tree it grows to so I made do with plumbago. We planted several bouganvillea of different colours in the containers last year when we set up the terrace. They did not survive the summer heat and Moha replaced them but they cannot be said to be flourishing.
We have always planted small ones on the grounds of miserliness but we wondered if a more established plant with a bigger rootball may stand a better chance of surviving the summer. So when we went to Agadir we bought the largest in the nursery. Not only that we paid half as much again to have Spanish bouganvillea as opposed to your everyday bouganvillea.
The "flowers" of bouganvillea are not flowers at all but coloured bracts. As such they do not bloom and fade so bouganvillea is constantly in "bloom" all year round.They come in a variety of striking colours; magenta, purple, orange, scarlet and white. The spanish bouganvilla has bracts twice the size of ordinary bouganvillea and has two colours on one plant, presumably grafted. I wanted cerise to stand out against the turquoise terrace wall and was not too sure about the additional white, but I certainly wanted the larger bracts. We kept it a while before planting whilst we tried to find a space but took the plunge and planted it on friday. It now looks a rather unhappy plant and I can only hope it will recover  from it's root disturbance. We had brought quantities of water retaining gel from Wales which we used liberally so if it survives the transplant it may insallah survive the summer.

The tanneries

Fes tanneries are a cliche of  guidebooks and postcards with their multi-coloured vats of dye. Taroudant's a more shades of grey but the visitor experience was vastly superior. Firstly they don't smell as much. We were given sprigs of basil but they were unecessary. I think this is because although they use pigeon poo they do not use cow's pee as a mordant as in Fes.Secondly whereas in Fes you gaze down at a distance from a rooftop in Taroudant you walk round and can see much more of what is being done. 
The whole tanning process takes 6 weeks but it only takes about half an hour to be shown round. The guide had excellent english.
The animals are slaughtered at the slaughter house across the road. The skins are first washed in soap and water then hung out to dry. They are then soaked in lime which loosens the hair so that they can be scraped. They are then steeped in pigeon poo the ammonia of which neutralises the lime which would otherwise cause the leather to crack. They are then soaked in flour and water to get rid of the pigeon poo and washed again. The colouring is done by soaking in a solution of bark. The sheepskins are whitened with pumice stone.
The wool which is removed from sheepskins is used for spinning wool to make clothes but not for carpets for which only shorn wool is used.
Taroudant tannery being far south is noted by the guidebooks as from time to time having exotic skins whose sale is forbidden and which cannot legally be imported into Europe but yesterday the most exotic skins were of gazelles and camel legs.
Some leather workers have studios there and the tannery sells some high quality crafts, particularly handbags, boots, shoes and sandals.  Beloved was handling the camera and unimpressed by this female flummery so I only have pictures of belts and luggge :(. I was taken with a spectacle case but unfortunately my rather large sunspecs would not fit in it.



Skins washed in soap and water Taroudant tannery




Trough with bark for tanning Taroudant tannery 




Washed skins drying Taroudant tannery




Lime baths Taroudant tannery




Pumiced fleeces drying Taroudant tannery




Hides drying Taroudant tannery




Hair is scrapped of the hide Taroudant tanery




Goat hides drying Taroudant tannery




Sheep and goat skins drying Taroudant tannery




The skins are dampened and dried before folding




Gazelle skins Taroudant tannery




Smoothing the skin Taroudant tannery





Cutting the skins for rugs




Measuring the rug Taroudant tannery




The cured hide is scraped to smooth it. Taroudant tannery




Whitening the fleece Taroudant tannery





Quality belts Taroudant tannery




Weekend bags Taroudant tannery



Where's the cream?

Fruit and vegetables in Morocco are seasonal.  They suddenly appear and you seize on them as a change . Then there is a glut and they become everyday and then they disappear until next year.  Seasonal fruit in particular is sold not in the shops and market stalls but from the handcarts the best of which seem to be found outside the mosque around noon prayers. When we were here in November it was pomegranates which were in season which I'm not particularly fond of but at the moment it is advocados and strawberries :) !
They are not the small sweet english strawberries but more like the larger spanish varieties. However unlike the spanish strawberries sold in Tesco in the winter or those we had at Huelva when we visited in the strawberry season they are not disappointingly turnipy but sweet and ripe.
Sadly Morocco is not big on dairy products and even Marjane could not supply suitable cream, so I am having to make do with icecream. Life can be very hard.

A handcart of strawberries and avocados at Taroudant Sunday market 13.2.11.

Babouches

Moha's neighbour in the Souk is away visiting relatives so Moha is looking after his shop too and selling babouches. These are the traditional footwear of morocco slip-ons with turned down heels worn like mules. Traditionally men wear round toed shoes and women pointed. Men wear yellow and women red. But you can get round toed shoes for women too and Beloved has a pair of pointed red babouches he wears as slippers; as he is a size 10 these were hardly made with women in mind.
The quality of the babouches varies depending on whether only the top is leather and the lining and/or sole synthetic or whether all parts are leather and on the quality of the leather. The everyday babouche has rubber soles like the old-fashioned "Birthday" sandals I wore as a child. The most expensive ones at the rear of the shop all have pointy toes and the leather mimics dyed alligator or snakeskin.
There are special babouches local to the Souss area. These have soles made of recycled tyres. This is because Argan trees have very sharp spiky leaves or needles. They can penetrate even leather soles but not the tyres so they are used by people walking in Argan areas. I can't walk in babouches or mules; I need a heel strap. I once tried some for a couple of days but nearly killed myself on the stairs so I think I'll stick with my Docs which certainly have Argan-proof soles.
Babouche are another very portable purchase. £10 should get you a pair of the finest quality, lesser quality will cost less.



Every day composite sole babouches




Women's open work babouches




The best quality leather babouches




Special babouche with tyre soles for walking over Argan

Five years ago in Marrakech Beloved bought some lesser quality babouches in the Souk, black ones. He wore them at the swimming pool that afternoon and the lack of quality showed in that the dye came off immediately. We took them back the next day and the young men were earnestly explaining why we could not have our money back as their father was not there. I had a broken arm at the time and could not do much so I sat on their stool at the front of the shop and when ever any potential tourists came into view waved the shoes and shouted "bad shoes , bad shoes, don't buy, bad shoes". Needless to say it did not take that long for us to  get our money back and the whole performance was watched with great amusement by the neighbouring stall holders. Just a cautionary tale not to think getting the cheapest quality is a bargain (unless it is the everyday babouche worn by everyone). Beloved bought his red babouche from Moha's neighbour 2 years ago and has worn them daily when we are here, in the bathroom and to hotel pools and has had no problems with the dye so it is not a universal failing.