The Koranic Schools

I have previously reported the progress, or lack of it on the new mosque on the road to the bridge. Work stalled and the roof tiles which were nearly finished fell off and had to be replaced. My informant tells me that the problem was corruption in the Ministry of Religion and someone making off with the funds, but that informant believes all Ministers and their  gofers are corrupt. Anyway work was resumed and the project is nearly finished. I expect it will be in use when we return in the autumn. 

It is not just a mosque but a residential school complex devoted to Koranic Studies. Since the post arab spring election of a government with a mildly Islamic agenda (I don't use Islamist as that word has been hi-jacked by the western press to suggest connections to terrorism and something bad) there seems to be an increased investment in such schemes as the rebuilding of the Tamagroute zaouia illustrates. This development is very attractive and there are palm trees being planted outside so it's quite something.

Nevertheless nobody can quite understand why there is the equally attractive development about a km away opposite the taxi rank.

 This is also a new mosque (although it does not appear to have a mineret) and residential Koranic School. We don't understand why two institutions are necessary and, if capacity is the difficulty, why they didn't just make one bigger. My friends, whilst actively practising muslims, do not circulate in the higher echalons of the the faithful so perhaps there is to be some difference of interpretation in the teaching, or perhaps there are two schools to segregate the student population by sex. No-one has yet been able to tell me.

Greening up Nicely

Whilst the new park on our side of the walls awaits planting that on the other side planted a couple of years ago is greening up nicely. There's work been done there too, yet another football pitch but with new parking spaces.

The basketball court is being used by some teenagers, basketball being one of the sports taught in High School.

 I am just thinking it's a shame all this seems aimed at young men and women are missing out (although the local women's football team is much more successful than the men's) when we come across a group of girl's playing the same skipping games we (well not really "we", I never  could skip, I was thrown out of Brownies for not being able to skip backwards when I couldn't even skip forwards, so, more, my contemporaries) played at school. Still if I had designed it, rather than quite so many football pitches, I may have had a couple of tennis courts and some of those concrete table tennis tables they have in french campsites. Also you could have one of those torture routes they have in some parks were you jog a bit and get to a bar and do chin ups and then jog a bit more and do step ups etc Obviously this something I would never have done at any time in my life but if you are into it a circuit of the town walls would be an awesome setting for circuit training. Just the 5km jog is probably enough for most people and that's really doable now on a flat paved surface. I won't be joining in. 
The planting round the sculpture park is doing really well and their hibiscus hedges are much better than ours and in flower. They are denser and do not have the holes that ours has because they were much more ruthless with the pruning in the first two or three years. Still, it's too late for us to go back and be ruthless. 

I wonder what the snowbirds make of it all. They are out in force by the prefecture.

The Park Round the Walls and the Mouse

Part of the town wall restoration project seems to be to create a park all the way round the outside of which the sculpture park and the fountain court were just the beginning. This year they have been working a lot on our side, the wall running north from Bab Taghout and it looks as though it is going to be good. There is new pavement and fancy railings separating it from the park area. There are a number of bed which thus far have only a few palm trees planted, two football pitches and two playgrounds for small children with swings and seesaws etc and a basket ball pitch these all being protected by wire netting to keep children in and balls of the road. It's going to be good.

The downside for us is that this was previously waste land like the other side of the road,

 but it did have a very useful large rubbish skip were beloved could take his empty wine and beer bottles ( the neighbours worry the binmen may think them false muslims). The other thing I don't understand is that I haven't seen anyone working on the actual walls this autumn and winter but they are not wholly finished. One guy was digging holes for trees right up near the base of the walls and of course the whole park is preventing further access to heavy machinery but  this area is clearly one where the walls need work.

 They remain red rather than yellow because they aren't new but they need doing  because they still have the cracks from the 1960 earthquake and some parts are broken down.

The cynic in me wonders though if this isn't just to sell the town for touristic development. The latest news is that a consortium of US and Saudi businesses have signed a $1.3 billion contract with the town council to build a theme park, 3 hotels, a golf course, and a medical facility and spa specialising in women's appearance and fitness matter.The theme park will cover 650 acres and be operated by a "internationally well-known american company".

The most Dangerous road in Morocco and the Valley of Figs

The Dades Gorge north of Boumalme is the twin to Todra. It doesn't have the reeally narrow part so to my mind is not as impressive but it goes on for longer with true hairpin bends and gets high son the the view back down is terrific. There is a hotel/restaurant at the top where we had an excellent lunch on a terrace overlooking the precipice. It is not a place to take the acrobat.
This road has a reputation as the most dangerous road in Morocco, which is surprising as there was hardly any traffic. Whether that causes people to hurtle round the bends on the wrong side of the road so that they would collide with any uphill traffic or whether drivers are so mesmerised by the view that they drive off the hairpins is a matter for speculation.
The mouth of the valley is known for its figs.I was surprised by the fig trees. Having watched Monty Don instruct British growers to remove fruit forming in the autumn as the would not mature in the UK climate I expected them to be like oranges here, in leaf and and with fruit maturing all year, but they are obviously totally deciduous.

Todra Palmerie

Coming down from Todra gorge there are the most wonderful panoramic views over the palmerie to  Tinehir.

The Todra Gorge

North of Tinehir is the spectacular Todra Gorget's very accessible as a metalled road runs through it.  At this time of year the light only gets in a mid-day and gorge remains cold. When we went 10 years ago in the summer it was a blessed relief from the heat. It seems to be more commercialised now as there was a row of  stalls set up near the narrow bit but being off season they were deserted.

 The hotel at the top is off grid and supposed to be an "eco-hotel".

 If you have a 4X4 you can go north to Imichil or across to the Dades Gorge but having the hire car we just turned round and went back. Sweetheart did not seem particularly impressed by it all.

Malian Connections at the Hotel Timbuctu

In Tinghir we stayed at the Hotel Timbuctu which was built as a Kasbah for the local "super-caid" in 1947 but turned into a Hotel in 1996. It is themed around the trans-Saharan caravan routes and each room is named after a staging post on the route with a framed map and explanation. We were in "Sijilmassa".
Continuing the theme there was an exhibition of sub-Saharan artifacts. One was from Equitorial Guinea but the rest were from Mali. They were labelled with their tribal origin and all were for sale. The masks were mostly between £200-£800 and the cloth was somewhat cheaper at £40-£100 for about 2 metres.

Dino-man and the Search for theTooth

Sweetheart's boss is a real Dino-man. He spends all his holidays on the north coast of the Isle if Wight, hammer in hand, searching for fossils.

When he heard she was coming to SE Morocco he became very excited and asked her to purchase him a dinosaur tooth. He gave instructions on how to tell the difference between a dinosaur tooth and a crocodile tooth which seemed very clear on paper but less so when we were looking at actual teeth.

The difficulty is that there are a lot of forgeries about as well as crocodile teeth masquerading as dinosaurs'. The dealer who sold me the table we indicated that there were indeed 4" dinosaur teeth available from some dealers but they cost about 2500Dh (c£200) which was rather over Dino-man's budget.  We bought something smaller for rather less and which we thought looked like the pictures. Dino-man is reportedly satisfied.
 Anyway before we hit town we saw this shop/museum by the road and thought we should at least look round for their efforts;faking 3 large dinosaur skeletons as an advertisement takes some work.

The museum part was actually very interesting.I wanted to get something for Madre and would have liked to get a strombolite as I remember her teaching me about them when I was about 7 or 8. She has no recollection of that now and says she doesn't know what a strombolite is. Strombolites or stromatolites are accretions of calcium carbonate built up by cyano-bacteria and are the earliest form of fossils. 

This picture from the US Geological Survey shows some from the moroccan field in situ. Unfortunately calcium carbonate is effectively a rock so the impressive ones on display were far too heavy for the suitcase home.

There were some very impressive specimens inside.