Our blog at Dar Si Hmad has been silent for few months now… we have been caught in the midst of adjusting to administrative changes and taking time to constructively reflect on the work we so passionately do with and for our communities.
Safe drinking water has been flowing to all the communities in Ait Baamrane, we have now 8 more villages not to have suffered through the scorching summer-heat to go fetch meager water-amounts from distant wells. They have celebrated the holy month of Ramadan with even more happiness, celebrating water available within the households.
This past summer we have hosted high-school pupils from under-represented groups in the US and we are extremely proud to say that this first experience was an astounding success. The EFS manager Maisie Breit and the DSH team committed all their energy and know-how to delivering a successful program. Gender, race, and indigenous culture were presented, discussed, and scrutinized in different social contexts, thus unveiling how structures of power function in our multiple worlds today.
This summer we have also hosted two very promising researchers from the US, all working on Agadir as their research-site. Their work on ecological issues facing this touristic city is not only timely, but ask key questions as water scarcity and water-waste. Some of these questions were subsequently taken up by the Climate Chance meetings to have just taken place here in Agadir from the 11th-to 13th of September. All NGO actors coming together to continue and/or initiate the work for a better stewardship and care of our planet. DSH was an active actor during these meetings.
This summer we have hired a new office manager, Abbes Benaissa who comes with a rich experience working in NGOs in Morocco and overseas. We are learning and benefiting from his “past life” and discovering all the enriching new paths in front of us. New ways of collaborating with other environmentally minded NGOs, with European based volunteers, and with a host of bohemians, free-spirits, folks in love with life and with all the beauty we learn from observing it.
This spring, we also hired a new RISE program officer, Soufian Aaraichi. Another cool breeze of calm and serenity. With Soufian, just like Abbes, other types of free-spirits are joining the organization and taking the environmental work to a new level of connections. All are welcoming and carry the promise of a better today.
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| From left to right: Soufian, Abbès from their excursion in Wim-Timdouine |
This summer we were blessed by a very special visit. All fog-projects in the world place the Chilean case on a pedestal of sorts, it was the first, large-scale and most successful initiative to have endowed fog with the title of a noteworthy source of water. The Fundación un Alto en el Desierto came to visit our fog-project and see how the new CloudFishers function. The blessing of these prophets of fog from Chile to Morocco was a true inspiration to nurture our continuing determination.
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| From left to right: Mounir Abbar, Natalia Robert and Nicolas Schneider (director and president of Un Alto En El Desierto), Aïssa Derhem |
This summer, Soufian Aaraichi, Khadija Changa and Jamila Bargach, we all travelled to the Northern part of Morocco and worked in the mountains close to the Fnideq. This region is known by water-scarcity during the summer and by the presence of thick fog. Our field-work concerned some 3 villages in order to evaluate the fog-potential and have the 192 households have access to water even during the dry-season.
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| Jamila, Khadija and Soufian enjoying the view on the stone quarry. |
And finally this summer, we were offered some naked land in the mountains of Ait Baamrane in order to create a fog-fed farm employing the principles of permaculture. Greening the desert, and why not? This small experiment in which the goal is to mitigate the encroaching Sahara in the region where we work. We are in the process of studying the project and looking into this future of possibilities.
So yes, our summer was quite busy and we are just so happy about it!
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