May 2011....Is this really happening? Are we making progress...Please don't wake me up!

Evening Finn,

It's way past your bed time and you're fast asleep. As usual your mum and I are shattered, we've just had some friends to stay, Heather and Luke, with their kids Raffi and Talia, and, after a few days posting up old blogs, I've decided to try to catch up with this.

Why?

Well the thing is that we seem to be making such progress, that there is the chance, a small chance, but a chance nontheless, that things could get ahead of us and we'd......shhhhhh...finish...shhhh, before I could update the story!

Of course in reality there's no chance of that happening... finishing that is, but we need to catch up!

The difficulty is, Finn, that whilst we do do many things whilst we are here, what consumes us, what frustrates us, what keeps us up at night and down in the day, is "The Chantier"...I've got so much to show you of you running around away from that, and I will, I will write that up, but tonight, just tonight, I want to try to get to where we are on this bloody build, that I hope one day, will bear a fruit worth the labour and commitment it has demanded! We'll see....so what's news?

The frustrations of April finally saw us feed a progress that I hadn't thought possible, through the winter. I really had only expected this build to take a few months, but it dragged on and with all the new elements of building with new materials and a new team, felt incredibly out of control.

However a number of factors saw winter turn to spring and possibly now full summer bloom. The first was employing Mustapher our Mwalem Hdid. Driss and Rachid had brought a guy with them, but they were too much by themselves, let alone employing new team members through them. I found Mustapha literally by trawling through ongoing building sites in the ville and offering more money that others were paying. he proved his weight in iron and quickly had us constructing chainage and potos all over the place.

Next was finally getting another mason to work, which meant that eventually we were building below and above ground. As I've said previously he left under very mysterious circumstances and I was left very down hearted.

However clouds sometimes have silver linings and a chance meeting with Steven at Riad 9 put us on to M'hd Everything By The M/2 and his team. What a shock. This guy was suddenly pouring out the work, with teams of masons, so quick I couldn't keep up. Ok it wasn't pretty, but it got done and I'd recommend him again...tho only for certain work...new brick build...25d/m/2, old brick 200d/m/2, but hirsching, excellent value at 20d/m/2..and he's also a pretty nice bloke...tho don't quote me on that!

Thus May saw balconies built, walls hirsched and even parts of the kitchen built...it seemed remarkable after the painful sloathfulness of rachid and Driss. Now even rachid was pootling along...well almost! But at least we were moving and were finally seeing balconies moving up.

One of the more difficult things was Abdelillah, who'd been with us since the begining of 813 and who now had a major heart problem. He also has three kids and a brother in law, Said, who'd also worked here, but who'd recently died leaving 3 kids. We tried to help Abdelillah, re employing him as best as he could work. Then where there was work I gave it to his brothers, who were more sloaths. I said to Abdelillah that we'd help his medical costs if his family paid half...he felt they wouldn't and only a week or so later one of them stole money from us. I was amazed. Abdelillah was last seen having taken another advance and his brothers haven't been seen again.

But back at the grime face we ended the month with walls covered and balconies built up to the Pasha's suite...I even smiled!