Well Finn, this has been a month of getting to know people..it seems we have now arrived in the medina and the ville.The supernatural.
(There’s a ghost in the house! Or was it just something that I ate?)
The other day I spoke to Abderahim about the Djinn that are said to live in the houses of the medina. Djinn are spirits that, I think, are said to live on blood, and which very much like the Little People in Ireland, inhabit a house and cause all sorts of things, generally mischief but at times much worse. They are acknowledged as existing in the Koran, and as such most, if not all Moroccans, acknowledge their existance. Abderahim at first scoffed at this saying that I shouldn’t be worried about such things.
However one afternoon having both returned from lunch, I heard Abdulrahim chanting in the basement. I thought he was just praying but he seemed more fervent than normal. Eventually I asked him what he was doing and he replied that he had heard noises in the house and remembering what I had said about the Djinn, he had decided to say a special prayer from the Koran called the “Ayet el Curlsi” to ward them off.
He patted me on the back and said that with this there shouldn’t be any more disturbances from them...I couldn’t tell him that unfortunately in that instance I was sure that these noises had more to do to the impact of the several days of eating beans in the souk, than the utterences of evil spirits, but if his prayers can get rid of these too, then I’m sure your mum will be chanting them sooner rather than later.
The Official.
In addition to our guests from the nether world, we’ve had our share of temporal visitors now, official and community. There’s alot of rebuilding going on in the medina and as such the local authorities are doing their best to monitor and benefit from the opportunities that present themselves. Thus it is really important to try to ensure that you have all paper work in place or at least someone who can provide a sufficient cloak to mask any short commings, should you need tham. Both ways are effective and both ways have their pros and cons.
Currently we are trying to do things by the book, but of course we’ll need to know a man who can, and at times where most appropriate, cogs of any machine need oiling...but we’ll save that for later!
So to begin actually working on a house you need a document called a V2. This is a low level building authorisation and allows you to grat, decap (strip the wood in your house), and lay the canneling for electricity and plumbing pipes.
Picture of the baladiers Office.
However this is not sufficient to actually lay any pipes themselves...this, as with all structural changes, requires a different authorisation called a ROXA, that needs a certificate of structural stability from an engineer, an architects plans including original house design and changes and proof of ownerhip, including a topographical report...don’t worry Fin if this sounds complicated, it’s not that bad, though it does require various trips in Petit taxis from the Baladier (town planning department) to several other offices in town, all of which are obviously a significant distance from each other, and all of which require the joining of various scrum type sieges of lone officials’ desks, to collect another signiture or form that is then to be taken to....where? where’s that, and to whom? Oh and they’re closed untill..when? oh because of an official public holiday, oh the person I need to see has gone to their village for a wedding/funeral/naming ceremony (circle as appropriate..)..oh but you know someone who might be able to help...oh come with you...where?...now...oh after prayers/lunch/training//your return from your village where there’s a ...thanks!
Yes it’s a bit like that
Before getting the V2, we had to ask for an official from the Baladier to come round to check the property. Aziz arived a very nice man armed with brief case, pen and an air of officialdom. He had a good look and asked what we intended to do with the place.
Now fortunately I’d been previously warned at this “trick” question. And so I vaguely mentioned that it was to be our private house but we might do something different later depending on money, Alah and of course Aziz! ....who smiled and reminded me to play by the rules. That he was “controller de la quartier” and would be checking that I did everything by his book...his book, I queried...yes, there are right and wrong ways to go about everything, and currently there are no problems...so we’ll see. He hasn’t been round again... yet!
Another bit of learning...try to smile whenever possible if faced by tricky oficialdom...somehow it often helps.
Anyway after a few days we eventually got our V2 and started gratting and decapping. I’d been on site all day, every day, but the one day that I wasn’t there, I reurned to be told that the Caid (quartier manager) and the Mkadum (the caids man on the street) had visited and were lookin for my V2.
Phew it’s in my pocket..it was in my pocket...it should be in my pocket...oops where is it.........
Ask the Djinn......the little terrors..anyway I eventually found it but not before the Mcadum had collared me on the street telling me it had to be shown to him immediately...and was I sure that I appreciated who he was as he sipped his tea and patted his pocket!
I got back to the house to meet up with Zak, who’s working for Jono, an English guy with a lovely house just up from ours and Zak informed me that he had met the Macadum just after me, and he had emphasised my need to know that his was a pocket that needed something.
Jono, one of our English neighbours
Now here’s the dilema. We know that at some point we might need to bend the rules a bit, so you need these people on your side. However is it better to oil a little before you need to, or to wait until needs must.....I don’t have the answer to that just yet Fin, but it’s a quandry.
However given that we have all that’s needed in terms of documentation, I thought I’d leave any oiling untill later and so off I went to meet the Caid who assured me that he was there to be my greatest help, but to ensure that I kept to the rules...a term sufficiently interpretable, for us both to fully understand his meaning!
So, so far so good.
The neighbours!
Visitors haven’t only been official. Although we’ve owned Tazi for about 10 months, I’d only really met two of the possible neighbours surrounding us.
One set, who you’ve been to several times are absolutely lovely. They’ve had us for dinner, always invite us in for tea and are generally really friendly. Unfortunately they suffer from a genetic disability and all the females in the family have a form of muscle wasting disease. Thus most are house bound and the younger women in the house you can see are in the early stages of the disability. However they are amazingly philosophcal about it all, or rather they are supported by their religion. It is God’s will and they live with that.
I’d need alot of faith to believe in that if it were me, but people here live with their religion in such a way as it supports them celebrate the good and live with the bad.
Anyway here’s a picture (above) of you eating with this family. What an amzing spread, wonderful food.
So apart from these it was only the neighbours whose wall I’d broken in to, who’d made any contact and I must admit that I was very inquisitive to see who they were. The thing is, the medna is such a warren that it’s difficult to just knock on a neighbours’ door as it might well be in a street a way from our house. You might say hello over the roof tops, but contact had been limited.
But how that changed once we started the gratting. In one day we had visits from 5 sets of neighbours, all stating that the work was knocking their houses down and to come and look at the damage. Great a chance to nose around,
The thing is this house used to be part of a huge series of houses that was home to one famly, the then Pasha or “king” of Fez. So the chance to snoop around was eagerly taken if it was only offered under less than absolutely amicable circumstances.
Picture of neighbours house.
And of course there was damage being done, but in the context that almost all of the neighbouring house were in seriously advanced states of decay and degredation. One neighbour showed a small pile of dust that had fallen during our work, from a wall that was being up held by board and wood.
Another had a wall that had already collapsed and advised that we would seriously undermine the current structure....but there isn’t any structure...it’s a collapsed wall!
But that’s al part of the game..the game you have to play by the rules, which mean you scratch my back and then turn round! A classic in this was when we enetered the neighbours house, shown in the picture. It’s a huge and beautiful house, which they had already told me would cost at least twice what we’d paid for Tazi. Thus I knew it would be beyond our pocket...but you can but dream.
When we visited, the owners asked if I’d like to buy the house. In all honesty this simply isn’t an option whether we wanted to or not. The purchase price is too high and the work that would be needed is clearly extensive...and expensive. So i said that we wouldn’t be looking to buy, but that it was a beautiful house nonetheless. Abderahim gave me one of those looks that told me I’d clearly given the wrong answer. When we had left he told me that I should have said that I was interested, as such they would have had reason to humour me and our build...Instead they now cry out every time we start gratting and are threatening to go to the Caid and claim we are destroying their house!
So we’ll be including minor repairs to a few neighbours, on the understanding that it will be done when we have finishd here and that it does not involve major structural supports. Having said that, there’s a few of our neighbours whose houses are, shall we say, less than structurally sound...infact Tazi is definately, structuraly, the best of the lot.
The engineers!
As said above, to get on further with the build you need to have an engineers report (certificate de stabilite....a contradiction in terms in some houses that’s for sure!). As such we’ve had a couple of engineers come round. Now it would seem that these guys come from two schools. There’s those that are, shall we say, flexible, and are recommended because of this. Thus they will turn a blind eye to certain things as long as their (short) days work is amply paid for.
Beccie talking to engineer.
Then there are others who arrive and tell you that your house is going to collapse if anyone so much as lets out a windy pop and that you will need to put in place major structural supports to avoid imminent collapse and loss of your investment. These guys seem to work on the premis that the worse the picture they paint the more you will pay for their now obviously essential services that must include weekly or daily visits at significant cost per visit, and additional incentives for working in such dangerous environments!
The problem is that of course you need to ensure that your structure is sound and that all work is being completed in such a way as to ensure that the structure is being secured, rather than anything risky having a blind eye turned from it, and thus leaving you, us and anyone who happens to be here, at significant risk of leaving with lumps of the building imbedded in their corpus.
We’ve currently got our list down to two, one from each school, so we’ll see which we go for and hopefully rebalance any bias that they show.
He patted me on the back and said that with this there shouldn’t be any more disturbances from them...I couldn’t tell him that unfortunately in that instance I was sure that these noises had more to do to the impact of the several days of eating beans in the souk, than the utterences of evil spirits, but if his prayers can get rid of these too, then I’m sure your mum will be chanting them sooner rather than later.
The Official.
In addition to our guests from the nether world, we’ve had our share of temporal visitors now, official and community. There’s alot of rebuilding going on in the medina and as such the local authorities are doing their best to monitor and benefit from the opportunities that present themselves. Thus it is really important to try to ensure that you have all paper work in place or at least someone who can provide a sufficient cloak to mask any short commings, should you need tham. Both ways are effective and both ways have their pros and cons.
Currently we are trying to do things by the book, but of course we’ll need to know a man who can, and at times where most appropriate, cogs of any machine need oiling...but we’ll save that for later!
So to begin actually working on a house you need a document called a V2. This is a low level building authorisation and allows you to grat, decap (strip the wood in your house), and lay the canneling for electricity and plumbing pipes.
Picture of the baladiers Office.However this is not sufficient to actually lay any pipes themselves...this, as with all structural changes, requires a different authorisation called a ROXA, that needs a certificate of structural stability from an engineer, an architects plans including original house design and changes and proof of ownerhip, including a topographical report...don’t worry Fin if this sounds complicated, it’s not that bad, though it does require various trips in Petit taxis from the Baladier (town planning department) to several other offices in town, all of which are obviously a significant distance from each other, and all of which require the joining of various scrum type sieges of lone officials’ desks, to collect another signiture or form that is then to be taken to....where? where’s that, and to whom? Oh and they’re closed untill..when? oh because of an official public holiday, oh the person I need to see has gone to their village for a wedding/funeral/naming ceremony (circle as appropriate..)..oh but you know someone who might be able to help...oh come with you...where?...now...oh after prayers/lunch/training//your return from your village where there’s a ...thanks!
Yes it’s a bit like that
Before getting the V2, we had to ask for an official from the Baladier to come round to check the property. Aziz arived a very nice man armed with brief case, pen and an air of officialdom. He had a good look and asked what we intended to do with the place.
Now fortunately I’d been previously warned at this “trick” question. And so I vaguely mentioned that it was to be our private house but we might do something different later depending on money, Alah and of course Aziz! ....who smiled and reminded me to play by the rules. That he was “controller de la quartier” and would be checking that I did everything by his book...his book, I queried...yes, there are right and wrong ways to go about everything, and currently there are no problems...so we’ll see. He hasn’t been round again... yet!
Another bit of learning...try to smile whenever possible if faced by tricky oficialdom...somehow it often helps.
Anyway after a few days we eventually got our V2 and started gratting and decapping. I’d been on site all day, every day, but the one day that I wasn’t there, I reurned to be told that the Caid (quartier manager) and the Mkadum (the caids man on the street) had visited and were lookin for my V2.
Phew it’s in my pocket..it was in my pocket...it should be in my pocket...oops where is it.........
Ask the Djinn......the little terrors..anyway I eventually found it but not before the Mcadum had collared me on the street telling me it had to be shown to him immediately...and was I sure that I appreciated who he was as he sipped his tea and patted his pocket!
I got back to the house to meet up with Zak, who’s working for Jono, an English guy with a lovely house just up from ours and Zak informed me that he had met the Macadum just after me, and he had emphasised my need to know that his was a pocket that needed something.
Jono, one of our English neighboursNow here’s the dilema. We know that at some point we might need to bend the rules a bit, so you need these people on your side. However is it better to oil a little before you need to, or to wait until needs must.....I don’t have the answer to that just yet Fin, but it’s a quandry.
However given that we have all that’s needed in terms of documentation, I thought I’d leave any oiling untill later and so off I went to meet the Caid who assured me that he was there to be my greatest help, but to ensure that I kept to the rules...a term sufficiently interpretable, for us both to fully understand his meaning!
So, so far so good.
The neighbours!
Visitors haven’t only been official. Although we’ve owned Tazi for about 10 months, I’d only really met two of the possible neighbours surrounding us.One set, who you’ve been to several times are absolutely lovely. They’ve had us for dinner, always invite us in for tea and are generally really friendly. Unfortunately they suffer from a genetic disability and all the females in the family have a form of muscle wasting disease. Thus most are house bound and the younger women in the house you can see are in the early stages of the disability. However they are amazingly philosophcal about it all, or rather they are supported by their religion. It is God’s will and they live with that.
I’d need alot of faith to believe in that if it were me, but people here live with their religion in such a way as it supports them celebrate the good and live with the bad.
Anyway here’s a picture (above) of you eating with this family. What an amzing spread, wonderful food.
So apart from these it was only the neighbours whose wall I’d broken in to, who’d made any contact and I must admit that I was very inquisitive to see who they were. The thing is, the medna is such a warren that it’s difficult to just knock on a neighbours’ door as it might well be in a street a way from our house. You might say hello over the roof tops, but contact had been limited.
But how that changed once we started the gratting. In one day we had visits from 5 sets of neighbours, all stating that the work was knocking their houses down and to come and look at the damage. Great a chance to nose around,
The thing is this house used to be part of a huge series of houses that was home to one famly, the then Pasha or “king” of Fez. So the chance to snoop around was eagerly taken if it was only offered under less than absolutely amicable circumstances.
Picture of neighbours house.And of course there was damage being done, but in the context that almost all of the neighbouring house were in seriously advanced states of decay and degredation. One neighbour showed a small pile of dust that had fallen during our work, from a wall that was being up held by board and wood.
Another had a wall that had already collapsed and advised that we would seriously undermine the current structure....but there isn’t any structure...it’s a collapsed wall!
But that’s al part of the game..the game you have to play by the rules, which mean you scratch my back and then turn round! A classic in this was when we enetered the neighbours house, shown in the picture. It’s a huge and beautiful house, which they had already told me would cost at least twice what we’d paid for Tazi. Thus I knew it would be beyond our pocket...but you can but dream.
When we visited, the owners asked if I’d like to buy the house. In all honesty this simply isn’t an option whether we wanted to or not. The purchase price is too high and the work that would be needed is clearly extensive...and expensive. So i said that we wouldn’t be looking to buy, but that it was a beautiful house nonetheless. Abderahim gave me one of those looks that told me I’d clearly given the wrong answer. When we had left he told me that I should have said that I was interested, as such they would have had reason to humour me and our build...Instead they now cry out every time we start gratting and are threatening to go to the Caid and claim we are destroying their house!
So we’ll be including minor repairs to a few neighbours, on the understanding that it will be done when we have finishd here and that it does not involve major structural supports. Having said that, there’s a few of our neighbours whose houses are, shall we say, less than structurally sound...infact Tazi is definately, structuraly, the best of the lot.
The engineers!
As said above, to get on further with the build you need to have an engineers report (certificate de stabilite....a contradiction in terms in some houses that’s for sure!). As such we’ve had a couple of engineers come round. Now it would seem that these guys come from two schools. There’s those that are, shall we say, flexible, and are recommended because of this. Thus they will turn a blind eye to certain things as long as their (short) days work is amply paid for.
Beccie talking to engineer.Then there are others who arrive and tell you that your house is going to collapse if anyone so much as lets out a windy pop and that you will need to put in place major structural supports to avoid imminent collapse and loss of your investment. These guys seem to work on the premis that the worse the picture they paint the more you will pay for their now obviously essential services that must include weekly or daily visits at significant cost per visit, and additional incentives for working in such dangerous environments!
The problem is that of course you need to ensure that your structure is sound and that all work is being completed in such a way as to ensure that the structure is being secured, rather than anything risky having a blind eye turned from it, and thus leaving you, us and anyone who happens to be here, at significant risk of leaving with lumps of the building imbedded in their corpus.
We’ve currently got our list down to two, one from each school, so we’ll see which we go for and hopefully rebalance any bias that they show.
The Friends at Crech.
And of course another visitor has been you begining crech in the ville, here's pic of you with your new friends. You've only just started and so far you seem to be enjoying it. They are all very nice and friendly, but you're the only English boy, hope you learn some Deriga soon.
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