As my mother reminded me yesterday, it’s been a while since I posted an update on Lalla Takerkouste, the women’s association, and life in Morocco. Summer has come and gone, as has Ramadan. Work at the bakery came to standstill in late July and August because the tiny loft becomes an inferno in high summer. That with the addition of heat emanating from gas stoves and the fact that everyone is fasting all day long killed any remaining motivation to work. During the summer, many Moroccan families living in the hot interior regions move out to vacation with relatives on the coast or up in the mountains. I followed suit.

In June and July, I took a couple trips to Essaouira, probably my favorite city in the country, to help out with an AIDS and health awareness campaign with other Volunteers and to enjoy the cool coastal winds. I took several exhilarating kite surfing lessons and wound up severely bruised from a technical mishap with my kite on the beach, but I don’t regret having done it.

In August I opted to escape Morocco altogether for a large chunk of Ramadan. I joined a small group of fellow Volunteers on a lovely trip around central and southern Spain. We visited, Madrid, Toledo, Cordoba, Granada, Sevilla, and spent a week at a beach resort in Marbella. The trip involved generous amounts of sangria, tapas, wine, and many games of cards. We returned to Morocco via a short ferry ride from Algeciras to Tangier, in time to spend the last 6 days of Ramadan in village.

Naima had been holding down the fort all summer, as she was required to stay for her job at the pharmacy. She and I had gone up to Rabat in July to settle paperwork for the Canadian Embassy grant. She’d received the first chunk of funds and launched the construction of the new Association building (foundation pictured on right). Luckily, her brothers and a couple other allies in the community have been giving her guidance on how to go about directing the labor, since she has no experience in that field. The building needs to be finished by the end of the year, at which time we will hopefully receive the solar-powered fruit dryers promised to the association since 2008 by CDRT (Development NGO in Marrakech). Once the building is finished, the women will finally have an adequate place to work freely, baking goodies and drying fruit.

In the meantime, there is a big international music festival next week in Lalla Takerkouste, called Moonfest (http://www.moonfestworldmusic.com/ ). All the local associations will have stalls to display and sell their products and the women are hoping to make a killing selling their sweets, crepes, and soup like we did last April. The festival will be shorter this time, but there should be many more visitors, including tourists and people from Casablanca and Rabat. Because the loft is too small to operate in, I’ve donated my house for the preparations. Today began the association take-over. We hauled ovens, ingredients, and other materials into my spare room and will spend the next 6 days baking away. Let’s hope it all goes well!