The old year drags on

Feeling under the weather with a cold bug picked up in Morocco. This is the third time it has turned into a cold. Bring on the sunshine!

Next holiday ..Christmas

Perhaps not so much a holiday as a hurdle. Long dark nights, too much booze and cold temperatures last for a week or two at the end of December.

It's time to go away again soon......

Hooray

The bridge has been crossed by a car and now we can take the direct road to Tiznit instead of the mountain road. We are off to Agadir when the taxi driver arrives.

We ordered a taxi for six people and here we are in spacious comfort on our way Agadir for two days!

Lunch in agadir

Meeting the Pro Consul who had helped us earlier. This is her office!

The pro consul with Helen and Norma

Monday - things are getting better

The bridge has been built up enough for pedestrians to cross. Notice how low the wadi is now. 

We drove the other direction to see the bridge devastation near Mirleft. Two bridges down in this photo.

We are off to agadir tomorrow via a mountain road and flying to London on Thursday. 

Sunday evening

Today we have been watching the local attempts at making contact with the rest of the world on the damaged bridge. We now have three diggers bringing soil and stones to breach the gap. The wadi (oued) is still in spate so it's difficult to join it up as some of the stones are still being washed away. 

By the afternoon there were about sixty or so people plus cars and motorbikes lined up on both sides of the bridge. People standing around watching the machines at work. Not much health and safety as we were right beside the diggers. 

They managed to put up a ladder from our side to the other. Several men clambered carefully across with a safety rope attached and wearing a life jacket. 

I managed to speak to the Foreign Office Global Response  in London. I alerted them that we were stranded and just to be aware. Also requested additional medicine supply for Ann, who is running out. 

Helen had been given some bread by a young man who had received a large bag of bread. 

We met him again and he invited us to visit his house near the river in a village (Aglou).  We followed his motorbike and stopped at his house where he invited us inside. His parents are in France where his father works for Peugeot.  We assume that the father sent home money to build this large house. Triple garage, a large entertaining salon downstairs and an outside courtyard with a well, a crouch toilet, a place to cook the local bread and hang out the washing.  Upstairs we came into a large hall off which led 2 further salons,  a bathroom, three bedrooms and a kitchen. Past this is an upstairs verandah and a second kitchen. 

Sai-id and his aunt and nieces invited us to eat bread and drink tea. We dipped the bread into a choice of olive oil, orange flower honey or flower honey. the 9 year old niece was fascinated with the iPads. They have computers in their school - 3 in her classroom. 

Sai-id took us through the village to look at the effect of the flood. The same wadi goes through the village and it ravaged through Aglou  the water must have risen 10 metres. Normally the wadi is completely dry. About thirty cob houses were washed away along with cows, horses, goats and sheep. Luckily no one was killed because they had been alerted due to heavy rain further south the previous week when 32 were drowned.  

Aglou village on Saturday. maximum flood

The water supply and the electricity was cut due to the storm, we heard that anything from 62mm to 200mm fell over the two days so we aren't quite sure how much rain fell.  What we are certain of is that nothing like this has happened within living memory.  

Post script 

With having no electricity in their village we offered to charge Sai-ids dead phone in our villa. He came with us so that he could fetch the phone later. The guardian absolutely refused to let us charge the phone or let Sai-id onto the premises. We were quite shocked at the lack of generosity in a serious emergency when his family had been so kind to us. 

 Pps

We are hoping that we can find a mountain route back to Tiznit that avoids the bridge. 

Monday update. We are trying to get out on Thursday via Easyjet. Bridge still broken people wading across river.