Now as ever it seems that I’ve been absent from this story telling. But infact I haven’t. You see time seems to go by so quickly that I never get round to matching pics to writings. The thing is tho’, as I’m realising, I do actually do a bit of writing and imaging, but just don’t Bloggit!
So this is a piece that I wrote up at the end of Feb. Reading it back and with hind sight, of course there are a whole lot of things that should be elaborated…I’ll see how I 
can do this as we go along.
February has been a funny month that has shot by and left us …or at least me, wondering where it has gone. I’m currently sat in the chantier at Dar Finn where we’ve been “pushing forward” for probably the best part of a month and I find myself wondering where has been the real progress.
Empty space...Do we call this progress?
The issue is of course that there has been progress, tho given that so much of what we are doing is again new, we find ourselves staring up at another learning curve wondering when it will all normalise…other than the ever present feeling of being engulfed by the Great Cloud of Unknowing!
Look at the size of this job…
I thought it would just be a case of knocking down and making a garden…but then we found the river, and then we had this whole beton armee structure, and after we’d emptied several hundred bags of foundations…we got started.
What is good is that we are now working more methodically, which is to say that we are finishing from the top down. This has meant that we have focussed upon the terraces and are trying to finish these before moving on to anything else.
Work on the terraces.
The focus upon the terraces has been something of a shock. It is often that familiarity breeds blindness and as such we really have failed to see the amount of work that we needed to do up here. We’ve also had to finally make a decision regarding the solar panels and given the vandalism of some neighbours and the cries of blocked views from others, we decided to completely change our water heating system to electric. Hardly “eco” but it’s all that we can do.
Thus this month we’ve managed to complete the ceiling of the “Pashas’” bathroom, put in a bar and seating, complete part of the façade/balcony facing Fez and also re do the halka cover/grillage around the halka. It’s good to bite the bullet here and get it done, but it feels like this should already be finished.
Driss and Rachid...Troublesome Twins?
This is being done by two new masons, brothers Driss and Rachid. Again it’s difficult as we both end up feeling that they are working slowly, but feel that there is little we can do about that other than sacking them. We now spend all our time, one or other of us at the chantier, trying to chivvy things along. Does it work? I don’t know but it feels like watching paint dry!
Mason Kiff…gone in a puff of Smoke.
Around the house we also had another mason who’s been doing “bricollage” which is to say the bits and pieces that need doing. We call him Kiff as he takes the odd toot. Again we don’t like it but he works and thus we let bygones be just that. The aim is to get the brothers to finish the terrace and then be able to move down in to the basement where they’ll complete the work that has been ongoing these past four months down there....the only thing was he was useless and had to be shown the door early! Back to the twins!
More of the basement.
I simply can’t believe that this has taken so long in the prepping. As I said earlier we found a river running through it and had to check the foundations. Would others have done the same? I doubt it, but with our ridiculous engineering plans, oueds and need for depth, we seem to be forced in to a huge amount of excavation.
Rachid closes ancient sewage systems.
Fortunately it would seem that we are now close to finishing the prep and moving on to the building. I’ve just come from a chantier where they had 20 pottos, instead of our 13, and they completed that in 20 – 30 days…this should mean that we’ll have the main part of the building completed by the end of March…remember you heard it here first!
Ferroniers.
Of course one of the other problems we face is that we are now needing to employ a worker/skill that is new to us, that is a ferronier, he’s the guy who ties all the metal skeletons together. We had one recommended to us by The Brothers and he seemed expensive and slow…like The Brothers…so we’re out searching for another. I’m hoping that Michelle will come up trumps on tis and thus we can limit ourselves from too great an employment through The Brothers.
Do I sound paranoid, lacking in trust? You see it’s like that exactly! These guys on the roof are also ferroniers but instead work on metal doors. what a racket they make, but again, we hope they're part of the Great Thrust.
Hamid....another Carpenter..what'll be his story?
Apart from the masons we’ve also managed to get in Hamid a carpenter who’s from Absalam and is great…if ever so slightly slow..you get where I’m coming from! He arrived and soon brought his “mate”. Now of course a mason needs his mate and logically so might a carpenter. However on his first day I came across this “mate” doing nothing but watching the carpenter, a few times. And so asked what he was doing. Obviously he was passing the carpenter nails and tools..all of which were piled in reach of the carpenter..sorry? I said, can’t he do that himself.
And so a storm erupted and they explained the role of the mate, which made sense for big work..but not for every day. And thus not too long after, he again stormed off and was gone.
That’s also something, I hate the amount of conflict or potential conflict on a chantier. All mualem are primadonnas, if you ask, question, let alone criticise, that’s it, trigger pulled and they’re off. So you massage egos, tread lightly and pray for the whole bloody thing to end!
So who else is here. Well finaly we’ve got Rachid and Bushta to come in and complete the electrics and we’ve got Mustapha and his team (see above) to do all the metal work on the terrace, seating, bar doors, parasols and the like. This again feels great and makes me at least feel as if we are taking this “push” seriously.
On top of that Ali is doing the plumbing and Absalam should be in to complete the carpentry for our Mezanine in the RDC room. But that’s looking forward.
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