March - April 2012....Play Time

Well Finn,

Obviously you’ll have worked out the sense within the phrase “All Work and no play, makes jack a dull boy!” We may not be the best examples of this and in retrospect, perhaps many of the issues we have today relate to the sheer intensity and impact of working so relentlessly for four years, with very little break.

But now we are trying to make the most of our time. It’s difficult as TBH even with the end of the chantier, completing the finishing of Dar Finn and learning about and nuancing our marketing strategy, has been pretty consuming. But my god it’s a hell of an improvement on having a building site filled with the madness of multiple mwalem.

Now everyone needs time out, big and small, and this has been the start of your holidays from school. We try to organise things for you and us to do, but actually Fez really isn’t too child friendly and frequently, time off from school is also when people go home, wherever that may be. 

Added to that, invariably there are differences in the times of yours and your other friends holidays. We’ll eventually get better at your holidays and when the weather improves, maybe we’ll be able to go camping.  I hope so.

But of course there are other ways of letting off steam. One of these is sport, which I must admit I’m not excelling in as yet, but I’ve got my eye on my bike and with summer will come the chance of swimming.

However what Fez does do very well is…party. Both our friends and the palatial nature of even the smallest house here, yet alone the larger and more stunning riads, make amazing locations for a party.  

Thus when Dominic called for a fancy dress party around the theme of 1,001 nights, we gladly engaged with the concept. Now parties are like people. Some people enjoy the opportunity to chat with friends and other people like to ……well let’s just say, cut loose. Each to their own, but typically, it was a great event.

Of course another great opportunity is to mix adults and young people in partying and my hand goes up to Vincent and Vanessa for hosting a Easter Egg Hunt for Easter Sunday. 

What a success it was. We all brought dishes, Vincent managed an amazing home made BBQ , built from an old oil drum, (which could be a very useful addition to our house, Dar Finn or even Tours Around Fez) and Vanessa organised the fun and games for kids and adults alike

 

Again, I have to say, what a great event. It’s at times like these, when we all get together and just hangout, making the most of the places that we live in and have access to, by the sheer nature of living in Fez and Morocco, that we all get to relax a bit and appreciate how lucky we are, and how lovely our friends here are. 

  

Thanks guys xxxx

March - April 2012 Fez at Night....A new Product for Tours Around Fez, or a New Dawn for Dar Finn?

Morning Finn,

Actually I’ve no idea when you’ll be reading this and in fact I’m writing this in Dushanbe, Tajikistan, though more about that later…probably in another blog entry.

We had a couple from Barcelona who stayed at Dar Finn and Greg is a photographer. He’d been taking some quite lovely shots around town and I voiced the opportunity for us to take a walk around Fez late at night when the streets are empty and the light transforms the medina with a golden hue.

If I’m honest the more I thought of it, the more I regretted making the offer. Generally I only walk the evening streets after a night out, sometimes a little the worse for wear. It’s always beautiful, I always feel relatively safe and I almost always wonder why I haven’t taken my camera out to capture it. But wondering round the night time streets to or from a friends house on my own and taking a tourist with me are quite different things and suddenly the chance of it all going wrong, us getting lost at best or mugged at worst, seeped in to my anxieties.

 

 Of course I couldn’t have been more wrong. The streets were evocative and everyone we met was amazingly friendly. It gave a real opportunity to simply stop and talk with people whether it was this pigeon keeper, who invited us (yes that’s you and me) to his house for pigeon pastille, or and to see the medina in a way any of us rarely do. It was beautiful, evocative and more or less empty.

  

Of course there were times when it felt a bit risqué, mostly though because it was something of a first, but also because some of the streets I’m less used to, notably in R’Cif, change so dramatically at night when so many shops are closed. What it did show, which Greg emphasised was that it could be a very viable tour. I’ve been thinking of developing something additional for TAF (www.toursaroundfez.com ) and this could be perfect.

 

In fact, on that, whilst here I’ve been thinking about what to develop when I get back. The thing is that to expand the marketing and product design/identity of Dar Finn requires time and attention, which I won’t be able to give it if I return to start up Xaouen immediately this consultancy ends, even if that would be my preference. In addition to that we have a massive opportunity with TAF, given that it is currently a unique product in Fez and we are in the Lonely Planet. It would be a real miss not to build on this.

On top of that, having spent so much time away from you this year already and with some more to come in June, it simply feels too much, moving over to focus on Xaouen, which would demand at least 3 days a week away. 

So I am thinking of focussing on marketing Dar Finn and managing Tours Around Fez and seeing where we are come the winter when, though it will be colder, it will be a good time to landscape the farm as well as giving me the time to really research what, how and with whom I am going to develop the project. Don’t get me wrong Finn, it still excites me more than anything, but the logic is there.

March 2012 Putting the Finishing Touches to Dar Finn, Boutique Riad, Fez Morocco!

Hi again Finn,

It seemed to take an age to get back to Fez and again I’d been away from you, it felt, for too long.  The end of the building has brought another challenge to us. There is of course the “final finishing”, which is especially the case in the “lounge” and garden areas, but also completing soft furnishings, tables, sofas and wall decorations.

It also meant that we had to complete our website and begin a marketing strategy. As you’ll know, we had tried working with Omar without success and finally we asked Sarah to come over and put her professional photographic skills to the test at Dar Finn. Beccie organised the show, I did the narrative and Sarah took and edited the images. A team effort. The result has been impressive, have a look for yourself. (www.DarFinn.com)

In side Dar Finn, with money running out and a time lag in people making bookings,  we’ve been using our resources as efficiently as possible. This means exchanging nights at the hotel for services, with Sarah and Josh (websites) in the development of the website and using windows to make new tables.

We’ve decided to call the names after Babs/Gates in the medina, as a means of publicising and orienting guests. This window came from a room called Rcif (aka Pashas suite).Having cut it out to access the balcony, we talked to a metal mwalem to make it in to a convertible table. The idea is that the leg frame of the table top has two levels of fittings, so that it can either be used as a dining or a lounge table. Here they are, with our glazier putting the final touches in the dining room.

 

Of course we also need to move things like this and bags through the house so we’ve put in a jerara to haul everything up through the garden or through the courtyard, without using the stairs and bashing the plaster/tadlakt on the walls. This isn’t perfect yet, but we’ll get there!

What is nice to see is the slow but steady finishing of the garden. We’ve added, seats,  plants, zuaked iron railings, for climbing plants, and a few pieces of West African art. The pool has now been filed and we’re preparing other seating. This has meant designing chairs, repairing sofas that we bought and drove up from marrakesh and building in traditional seating for the lounge. 

As ever all these things need to be designed, materials locally sourced and made by local artisans. For the lounge sofas, it meant bringing in specialists who use recycled clothes to fill sofa cushions. With all this work, the garden and lounge are showing their potential. They’re lovely places…hopefully other people will think so too.

As we develop our marketing strategy we also need to gain a clearer understanding of our identity…what is Dar Finn? Obviously we want to create an environment that is fun, cool, funky and relaxing. But we also want to engage people in our and their interests. Thus we are focussing on music, food, culture and travel, I’ve said so many times that one of the things I love about Fez and Morocco as a whole, are these things and the food is simply wonderful.

It’s currently strawberry season and we’ve been making the most of this. Mummy is a genius at cake making and we’ve been making pots and pots of jam. We’ve also cured some wild boar and made our own tomato ketchup. You’ve got to love it.

It’s not always so easy to be open about what we want to promote in Dar Finn, local sensitivities have to be considered. Mohammed’s been very generous in sharing his bed space to clandestinely store our wine stock. But I look forward to being more public with and posting our recipes….we’ll be thinking of all sorts of ways to develop our marketing strategy…you’ve obviously got your own opinions and methodologies! Thanks for that Mr Finn of Dar Finn, Boutique Riad in Fez Medina!.

Feb 2012 Around Jerez without Rusty

Hi Finn,

As ever I’m trying to play catch up with events in our lives and I just wanted to make a few notes on the time I spent in Spain with Seb as I waited for Rusty to be fixed. We’d left her in Jerez whilst we went to India and again she was broken in to. It’s something of a surprise, but in comparison things are safer in Moroc and it took ages to get a new window for her.

In the mean time I spent time with Sebastian in and around Jerez, which always great fun. Seb has an  indepth knowledge of all things food, drink, music and culture in Andalucia in particular and Spain generally. As my knowledge grows, the links between Andalucia, Al andaluz of old, and Northern Morocco, notably in fez, Granada, Sevile and Cordoba, but also through the existence of the “White Villages” and Moroccan towns such as Xaouen, through geography, food, culture and language, becomes clearer.

We are talking of developing a tour crossing through Al Andaluz in Spain and Morocco that explores these similarities. It would be very interesting when it happends, hopfully for us, developing markets for our farm in Xaouen and Dar Finn in Fez.

Around Jerez we were able to visit gorgeous mountain areas and follow wonderful cycle routes, developed on disused railway tracks. The idea of similar initiatives promoting walking, cycling and rural tourism around Xaouen is completely possible. Already there is growing infrastructure illustrated by the growing infrastructure in the Talassemtane national Park  and through the work of Xaouen rural ( http://www.chaouenrural.org/ ) I am very confident that when we develop our farm up there, we’ll be able to link to these.

Additional to this I visited Big Louis (above) and took a look at a number of activities around Veja. This bar restaurant below would be an interesting design upon which to model the building on the farm, tho I also though we could learn from the balconied homestays we used in Kerala ( http://www.kannurbeachhouse.com/ ).

Having visited paragliding schools in El Bosque (I think)  near jerez, I am also convinced we could link to this sporting area. The Riff with it’s sea breezes and mountains should be a great spot for paragliding and is close enough to Spain/Europe for flyers to access. The link to a well established tourism centre in xaouen as well as the ideas for eco tourism I want to develop on the farm, should prove very attractive…as ever we’ll see.

With our focus on developing marketing strategies for dar Finn, I believe it wil be essential to start the strategy for xaouen as it develops and not to leave it until it has been completed which inevitably means a time lag before demand for bookings ensure. I think the link to such employment projects as “workaway” and the chance to bring on board work for food/sleep initiatives, should also mean that we could employ people who have a job/role in marketing our project!( http://www.workaway.info/859856979258-en.html )

Back in Veja and I took the time to visit Playa Del Luz with it’s open beaches, beautifully missing the mass developments of many Spanish resorts and for me, also offering the chance to visit a bar and listen to a bit of pub rock…there are some things that are sorely missing here in Moroc. I wonder if we’ll manage some of that…Loubar Bar!!! You heard it here first!

 As luck would have it I was in the area for the fiesta in Cadiz. We’ve been to cadiz before and, as with so much in this part of Andalucia, it feels as if it is off the tourist map. And yet it is ancient, cultured, beautiful and friendly. The area is heavily economically depressed. Youth unemployment is around 50% and in the general population between 25 – 30% and Spain itself faces very significant challenges. The fiesta and it’s revelry frequently mimicked these issues. People were intent of seriously enjoying themselves, but the political issues surrounding the area, were everywhere to be seen.

As I so often say, I am sure that the world you will inherit will be so very different and difficult, in  comparison to ours. This pertains to a change of economic development and power, along with associated political spheres of influence. Europe’s position in the world, and as an entity is changing.

The ongoing debates re the Euro and political/economic/financial integration has everything to do with the position Europe will find itself as it negotiates it’s influence in this changing global political/economic climate. Individual countres wil not be able to compete with the strength of China and India and will not be able to sufficiently react to cope with the impact of climate change and growing scarcity of resources such as food, oil and water.

I wish you luck, but also that you be informed and aware of the world around you. Be able to see the bigger picture in time and place, as I so frequently say now, be involved, play a role and try your best to understand the root causes why the trajectory of events are as they are.

Jan - March 2012 India Blog 5. Thayam

Hi Finn,

Look this is a bit of a self indulgence and I know that I dragged you and mummy off to see this, which meant getting up to bang, bash and rattle down potted tracks well before sunrise, but I simply thought that these Thayam were some of the most spectacular things that we saw whilst in India this time.

One of the things that I love about India is the spirituality. In truth that’s also one of the things I love about Africa. Not the sanitised spirituality of European Christianity, but something more aesthetic, earthy, connected to a spirit world that has it’s roots in a love of Earth, Mother Earth, Gaya.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not any sort of believer and I know that much religion hinders scientific progress, notably in health and sickness. But what id can provide is a close link and respect for our planet and that is something that we in the west have simply forgotten.

As we view our planet, it’s resources and ourselves in monetary terms, we lose sight of what is truly valuable and our increasing movement to urban lifestyles, distanced so much from nature and our own planet, exchanging that instead for “concrete jungles” and “park life”, we lose sight of the wealth we have had for millennia and of our need to connect with it.

This is, I suppose one of the reasons why I have loved working in rural Africa. It helps me breath, feel as if I have a connection with a heritage that feels integral but distant to me. I reach out for that. It is perhaps why I feel more inclined to commit myself to our project in Xaouen, than to the one we have in Fez.

Don’t get me wrong, Fez is amazing but even in Morocco, I know I feel more at ease when in the countryside. I loved that last trip away and every time we/I go camping, it’s simply being out doors that invigorates me. Like I say I can breath.

If there was a plan it was to ensure that what we do here can free us/me to do what I have wanted to originally, that is to say to develop something rural, maybe in Morocco, maybe more south in Africa, or in Asia. I feel at home now in Morocco, even in Fez, though as I write it’s wet and cold. But I feel that I live here, which I haven’t been able to say for ages, not since first leaving Savernake and going to Somalia.

Somehow just before I left on the beginning of the road I had worked so hard to access, I felt that I had everything I wanted; a good home, great friends, a job I enjoyed and inner peace. Doing this work here has challenged, if not fractured many of those components, but I now hope that what we have will again provide that.

I can’t help thinking that I knew all along that this wasn’t quite what I wanted to do, and that in fact a return to the “field” was really it. But I wanted to be independent and the burdens we have had to bear are the price of tat. We’ll see.

So what am I trying to say here? I don’t know, only that there is a need to understand ones self, ones inner self and to connect seriously with it. If there is a freedom in the world, it is to be able to live at one with that, that is to be happy in oneself. I hope we will get there, I think we might, but this has been a difficult road we’ve taken to find it.

I look forward to spending more time back in the bush, more time thinking with a spiritual head...does that sound silly? But it's me, somewhere it's where I belong. Perhaps that's why I've never settled in Uk, it lacks that "spirituality" that I feel in Africa, in the developing world. I was touched by it when I traveled to India back in 1984 and it changed my life. I'm grateful for it and all that I've experienced, but it's had a terrible cost.

Would I have been happier if I'd not left in 84 or gone to Somalia and stayed in Savernake? I don't know and it's irrelevant. I've had a great life, if recently it's more difficult. But it's a great life and there is so much to be happy for.

I'm off to Tajikistan in a couple of days and already I miss you. I look forward to going and being in a whole new part of the world and I love that I question going, because it shows that I feel good being here. But I also look forward doing a job that I do well...or at least I used to. But putting my mind back in action, as in Haiti, will be a wonderful challenge...it will also be great to see Yurts in action.

But you see, I think that's it, I long to start a project that is mine and that I "feel" for and whilst Xaouen isn't what I thought that would be, it's as close as I've come so far, so bring it on. Shoot for the dream, but make sure it is the dream that you want...that is you.

Anyway, these are some images of the Thayam that I went to. Have a look at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theyyam to get some sort of explanation. But equally go out and explore. See, feel and question. Your world will be very different from mine. The challenges you will face will be greater I am sure. But we live in a wonderful, beautiful, diverse and multi layered world that has much more to it than what seems to be our over riding paradigm of happiness from the west. Look, and look some more.

XXX