About ten minutes from Ifrane, Tarmilat is a tiny coop community where about twenty families live communally. They don’t own the land, and as such cannot build permanent structures, and instead had to make buildings out of quarried stones and flattened tin cans they get from the dump.
In recent years, a non-governmental organisation has partnered with them to help them to sell rugs, blankets, and similar products that they produce using a loom. We had lunch there and went for rides on their donkeys and horses. (Mum, be proud of me; I brought my inhaler with me in case I got allergic! And of course, because I had it, I didn’t get at all allergic…
I bought my little sister a bag (since I’ve been trying since September to come up with something useful and interesting to get her) and was surprised by the tag attached to it with the biography of the woman who had crafted it–her two daughters live in Ifrane with a relative so as to attend school, and as such she can only visit them once a year because she can’t afford the 25 dirham/2.50USD taxi ride.
It was so fascinating to see how these people lived. The children running around were all happy and excitable, and though they had a very simple quality of life, they were proud of their homes and their products.