Morocco Diary #7

Been without well water for about 7 days now.  Guess I shouldn't have mentioned my well was working in the last Morocco Diary.  The well here was one of the better ones in the area. But its been a hot dry summer with little rain, and its been at least 5 months since the heavy rains of last winter.  I don't expect much rain here until maybe October or later. Winters here along the Med. tend to be wet and windy.

Night time Ramadan well digging

My landlord hired some local well diggers to dig the well deeper by 3 meters (9 feet) through hard shale.   Since its Ramadan, and the locals fast during the day, all work is done at night.  They start the evening about 8 pm, with a meal with the workers, and down the hole they go.  My well was about 35 feet deep as it was, and about 4 feet across.  Some wells are machine dug but most here are hand dug, perhaps because its easier to deepen the hand dug wells when the water table drops.  The well is now producing water but there's a pressure guage that I am waiting on to be fixed. I really need to do some laundry, I am running out of clean clothes!  ( 6:20 PM Late update...got so frustrated with this, my landlord had the pressure gauge all day, didn't install it, but apparently his tagine restaurant on the beach is more important than having water in this apartment complex...arrggh! When I can smell myself...its time for a shower!  I got the pressure switch from him and and I will install it myself!!!!  Maybe its time to look for a new place?)

Water is a big issue in this valley. Other valleys have streams running through them,  and this place once did.  According to some accounts there was once a stream that ran from near the mountain peak to the sea, but someone decided they wanted to install a mineral water plant and somewhere in that process ended up collapsing the hillside that was the source of the spring and putting an end to the surface flow of water. I am not sure what date that was but it seems to be prior to the year 2000.  I don't know how much of that story is accurate, but you can see the collapsed hillside about 2/3 up the mountain where the spring source collapsed.   There is a true need for some heavy equipment to go in there and clean that spring out and install some precast concrete retaining walls.


Some wells have 7 or 8 pumps feeding local homes in them. A veritable snakes den of tubing comes out of the one by the cafe, and another well is being dug the other side of the road from the cafe.   A hike up the valley toward the mountain peak is criss-crossed with CPVC pipes feeding local Berber homes on the hillsides. Some have no running water at all and have to hand carry water from wells.  Its not uncommon to see children or women carry large plastic jugs of water up the hills.  Same goes for propane tanks which most everyone cooks here.   Moroccan propane tanks are not like the thin walled ones used in American barbecues, these are heavy steel tanks that hold about 50% gas than the American ones do.  I go through about a tank every two weeks just for heating hot water, but I think there's an issue with my on-demand water heater and its using more than it should.

I have lost a good deal of weight since last November by the end of May I had lost 4 inches off my waistline. I think I have lost another inch in the last month.  I took some clothes in a few weeks ago to have the waists reduced by 4 inches. Labor rates in Morocco are not high, so getting something like pants taken in by a truly professional tailor only costs about 30 dirham (US$ 3.75). I have not been able to do laundry for about a week, because of the water situation, so having the extra clothing that fit on hand was a true blessing.  Not that I expected to be without water, but it had been a problem at Heather's house and other properties in the area.

The first few months here have been a real education, while not much has been done in terms of creating a community with actual land, we are still scouting for suitable land for various projects.

We did learn much about dealing with rental and property issues and some of the local scams that some try to play, especially with rental contracts written in Arabic.     We had a "fixer" who was a very friendly chap, but he had arranged a vast network of "deals" that were often not in our best interest, including jacked up taxi cab fares, and taking huge chunks cash from local landlords in finders feeds, beyond the usual 20% that is custom in Morocco, which made them reluctant to fix housing issues because of the price gouging on the finders fees.

Brokering deals in the lifeblood of most male Moroccans.  The cafe's are full of fixers who can get you anything you can imagine, like one vast human internet search engine.  But there's always a fee, and seldom is it up front and known to you.   We didn't have very many Arabic speakers within our group when we first started, although we have Spanish, Italian, French, Norwegian, German, Estonian, Chinese, Korean, and others that we can draw on from within or through trusted contacts, but lately that has changed as we have at least 3 Arabic speakers now.   Having the Arabic and Moroccan language (Moroccan is only about 20% classical Arabic, the rest is words from Berber and other tribes) has made a world of difference.

Some people had rental contracts with ridiculous terms, which if they had been disclosed in French or even English nobody would have agreed to them.  But fortunately because the greedy parties involved didn't live up to the usual landlord expectations of fixing water, plumbing and electrical issues those contracts could be ended because the landlord had breached the contracts.  They have an expression in Morocco "They wanted to milk the cow but not feed the cow". I was lucky, because although the "fixer" had been quite friendly with me, we are of similar age and generation and he was with me when my rental contract was signed (in Arabic), he did not like my landlord (he tried to discourage me from renting the apartment), so there was no opportunity for collusion between the two and my contract was a very clean lease agreement much like I would have in the USA.  In fact the hostility between the two men (the source of which at the time I was ignorant) kept both of them honest.

My rental situation started out a little odd in that my landlord removed the mattress from the master bedroom, removed the washing machine and the propane tank for my water heater shortly before leaving for his home in Ibiza.   So when I moved in I had much to replace (and I mistakenly didn't specify in the contract what should stay in the apartment).   Thanks to help from many of you I was able to replace those items and also had money to fix several plumbing and electrical issues and have a very nice place to live in.  Some suggested I make a lot of drama over what was not there, but I chose to just fix the situation and move forward with what I had.   The interesting thing was the effect it had on my landlord energetically, because when he came back he was so surprised by what I improved on the place, simple things like having a local stone counter top place cut a granite curb so the shower water doesn't go across the entire bathroom floor (which was surprisingly cheap). He actually gave me extra furniture for my deck and has been extremely helpful towards me because I am taking care of his property not tearing it up and trying to get something for nothing. We've actually become good friends. And he's been pretty good about getting the well fixed.

Learning how business is conducted here, and how the contract process works here with various agencies has been a time consuming thing, but its valuable knowledge that we have collected.  We have found the government agencies largely helpful, the police are much more courteous than they are in the USA, although there have been a couple of passport checks initiated when we first arrived as some of the locals had never been around this many English speakers before.   We've been here long enough now that we are fairly known quantity.  

Epilogue

We had curious encounters with individuals when the QEG build was going here that really stirred the pot in long established friendships, buttons were pushed in most everyone, but we kind of expected that given the potential it has to put a crack in the dam of the energy cartels.  We know we had oil country operatives here, as well as others.  Some thought I was a good target given my isolation at the time.

During the past 6 months I was going through some difficult situations. Some of my own making by and some not any fault of my own. I wasn't sure all the reasons for what I was experiencing over the last 6 months, especially some of the emotions I was dealing with, what others were dealing with in terms of separation consciousness and fracturing friendships. I knew eventually it would sort itself out. What they all had in common was one individual.  I had deeply doubted my own intuitive information about it all even though huge energetic warning bells went off within me from right from the beginning - which were ignored by most everyone but Caleb (his reactions were even stronger than mine).  It was one of the toughest things I have ever gone through, and I have been in some very difficult moments in my life.

We truly do love each other, especially those of us who have worked so long together and we compared notes and realized what was transpiring, and what was before us.  We restored relationships to what they were prior to January, forgiveness does wonders, and decided to go dark on our blogs to see who showed up next when no information came out of this valley.  What happened is not what I expected.  I had a deju vu experience of earlier in the year, and I did not consent to that!

Some humans have surprising abilities. They don't call it charm for nothing but those who can charm to gain favor, can also really really muck with your emotions on an energetic level in another way if their purposes are to divide and conquer. And it doesn't feel magical and delicious - at least what I went through didn't.

I didn't fully appreciate how it was possible for an esoteric energy master to energetically manipulate emotions in others - I didn't really think that was even possible - they don't exactly teach that in engineering school. But I did learn the hard way how to distinguish emotions that well up from within my self, from those that come from an external source. But it requires some reflection as to whether it is internal.  I don't know how it was done, but it apparently had to be done from close quarters. I identified the source 3 weeks ago through the process of elimination. I avoided that person,and any situation they required to do that work.  That really annoyed them. From my perspective it was pretty funny to watch the frustration unfold. When you feel something only when that person is present in certain situation, and you don't when they are not there and a similar situation presents itself, its pretty clear where it comes from.  And while I may be an energetic idiot, I am trained in logic.  When the mission failed, they unraveled quite spectacularly in front of those who needed to see in complete transparency.  "We didn't think it [the systems of control] would end this way".  No... it ends peacefully and in the best way for all humanity.... we've said that many times.  Eternal Essence is driving this train, not us, and it is doing the enforcing.

Whether the individual knew what consortium ultimately contracted their esoteric services (they always work through proxies and surrogates) I don't know, but we know.  I don't care to experience that all that again.  It was clever. Ingenious actually. It worked for a time.  But love between members of the squad has more power than magic.  It has always been that way. Love is what created everything, it came before energy and matter and what energetic illusion can stand for long against love? There is more than loyalty here, there is love between people.  Loyalty can be bought, love is priceless.

We live and learn as they say.  For all I know in time - and a lot more personal transparency than shown to present, that person could be an ally in this work.  Ultimately everyone wakes up, as Eternal Essence is working in and through all. Nobody gets left behind.  All is ONE.

Being human is not about being perfect, its about remembering the choice to experience being human, the power of the Creator is the loving choice to experience through the many.  The Creator knows what everyone feels, and in the Creator Source nothing is hidden, it knows the beginning from the end, truth from the illusion, the person from the ego.

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