The first thing we learnt when looking to buy a property in Morocco was not to consider anything that wasn't finished. The picture above was taken last month of a deveopment at Tamagroute we were considring in autumn 2007. We were taken to the site and assured that the ground would be broken the next month after Eid. In fact the ground was only broken last autumn and as you can see progress has not been great.
Similarly the house near us which we watched being built las year has still not been finished out,let or sold but they are starting another next to it.
As houses as there is still an islamic aversion to even the new halal mortgages and are therfore often bought for cash and completed as and when there are funds available there seems to be an acceptance of delay that we don't have in Britain where houses have to be finished to a standard to be mortgageable. Our friends who are building a house to the north of town assured us last May that they would have moved in when we returned in September and then gave us the same assurance this May. We wait to see.
Sometimes this piecemeal building works against itself. There is a new development just outside town which was making good progress last autumn staring with the mosque.
We watched the development with interest last autumn and they were tiling the roof with green tiles. When we returned in May progress had ceased and the tiles were now slipping and and would have to be relaid.
We noticed some business development near us in Sidi Belkas. The coffee shop on the point of opening when we left seemed to be going strong. more niticeable the shop next to the hanut at the end of the street which used to sell roasred nuts and other unrecognisable treats is now a butchers and done out in the traditional red and white chequered tiling of butchers. Whether is will be useful to us as such is uncertain. I have trouble with butchers, even in Marjane. The difficulty is that animals are butchered the french way and labelled as such, not only do I have to translate but work out how the frech cut relates to english butchery so as to k now how to cook it. I therefore tend to ignore anything relating to an actual butcher and just pore over the packages of prepared meat to work out what methods of cooking are suitable. Real butchers in Taroudant are even more difficult. Not only do they speak arabic but as everybody is usually going to cook in a tajine they seem to abandon the concept ot "cuts" and just hack off the next available piece of meat on the carcass. I still am stuck in the british tradition of wanting specific bits for different recipes.
The more annoying new business is the opening of one of the garages to the flat acroooooss the road as a car/carpet cleaning business. when it is hot and the windows are open the noise from the pressure hoses are very annoying and drown the TV. Also whilst the garage and fabricators shut up shop in the evening , this appears to be the peak period for the car wash as people bring in vehicles after work, and friends of the proprietor moonlight work vans to collect and deliver carpets.
