The Bakery

I’ve finally made some time to conjure an update of my work in Lalla Takerkouste. The last couple weeks have been a whirlwind of activities at the Association, which has been a welcome change in routine for me as a Peace Corps Volunteer. In early February, I received a Peace Corps Small Project Assistance (SPA) grant to set up a bakery at the Women’s Association in the village. This wonderful news came just before I went home for a brief vacation in Ohio. With the immense help of my family and friend Caitlin, I took the opportunity to host a Moroccan dinner to share my experiences and talk about my upcoming bakery project. Just before going to Ohio, my Moroccan friends Naima and Batoul spent a day teaching me how to make couscous and tagine, so that I could replicate the feast in the States. We served traditional Moroccan salads and bread, Couscous with vegetables and caramelized onions, beef tagine with prunes and almonds, and an assortment of Moroccan baked goods, some of which were made by the Women’s Association members. All of the guests who attended the dinner, plus other family friends wanting to lend a hand, graciously donated funds to supplement the SPA grant. I returned to Morocco quite excited to get to work!

On February 28^th, two Association members and I began purchasing bakery equipment in Marrakech. We spent hours in various house-ware shops and covered market stalls in the old city hunting for all the items on our list and negotiating with store owners before transporting it to the village in an ancient little covered pick-up. On March 4^th, we set up shop and started operating from the newly rented locale. It’s an old house on the edge of the village, near the river, and right next to the olive and fruit orchards. For the past 10 days, a group of 5-6 women have been spending a minimum of 6 hours in the afternoons and evenings baking Qrishlat (little tea cookies we served with the dates and nuts at the dinner) and Ghriba (sesame cookies). Two women have also started working from 6-9AM to make traditional pan bread. They deliver it to the tagine café owners each morning, who’ve been selling them like hot cakes. We are currently the only source of this type of bread in town, and the demand is quite high!

The funds collected at our Moroccan Dinner in Ohio has been extremely helpful and will continue to be so in the early stages of the bakery. We’ve been able to purchase start-up ingredients and some extra equipment that hadn’t made it on the SPA budget. I’ve been monitoring all the expenses with the Association Treasurer and we’re aiming to get the bakery on its feet as soon as possible, so that we can save the funds for other projects. For example, we would like to do a computer literacy class for the women and students in the village and purchase internet modem sticks. This would permit students to do online researching for school, and allow the women to look up new baking recipes.

Yesterday, March 13^th, we had an opening ceremony, along with a visit from Peace Corps staff from Rabat. We gave the staff a tour of the locale with our newly purchased equipment on display, along with samples of tea and cookies. The Association boomed with dancing, laughing, singing women all afternoon.

There’s much work left to be done, but we’re advancing, little by little!