Donkey poop, dirt and lots of digging! By Ava

Ahmed runs the community garden as one of his many roles in the community and for the Atlas cultural Foundation.

Community garden work crew.

Post wash sock collection.

Prepairing a bed in the community garden.

Walking back after digging out a soccer field.

Gardening in the Atlas Mountains.

Ms Jim planting garlic in the community garden.

Waking up every morning at around 7:00 am to a wonderfully prepared breakfast has helped us to adjust well to the time change. Our second language lesson was a fun way to start our activities for the day, learning different words and phrases to help us better communicate with the local people.

We have been spending some time up at the local school working with the Atlas

Cultural Foundation to help them create a sports field for the kids. We spend the time breaking the ground using pick axes so that they will be able to plant grass, and taking tea breaks to keep our energy up. Using the pick axes has been tiring but we have had a lot of fun, joking about it being almost therapeutic, and about how we will be the strongest people at school when we get home.

We have also spent a few hours working in the community garden. We continued to use pick axes to turn the dirt and plant all kinds of different seeds for the community. They use donkey poop as fertilization which comes from all the local donkeys, the rural Moroccan equivalent to the car. We also got a chance to help with the irrigating the garden. They redirect the flow of water from the river and have it run into the garden, much like our local awai system. The water ran very fast into the garden beds and we had lots of fun trying to get the water to run from bed to bed. The community garden is open to the community to go and collect food that has been grown using donated time as a way to keep everyone well fed. We’ve had some shoes, and people, get stuck in the mud, but overall it has been an amazing experience.

One of the inspirational people we have worked with on this trip is a man named Ahmed. He works with the Atlas Cultural Foundation, as well as being the main preparer of the meat for the village butchers. He has helped us with everything from creating the sports field, to working in the garden, to our hike up one of the mountains.

Coming back to dinner, showers, and time with our host family has been fun and a great way to end our days. Dinner is always something new and delicious and playing games such as Uno, and soccer have kept us entertained as well as helping us interact and continue to learn more about the people here. Even though I am sad to be leaving the village soon, I am learning so many new things about the culture and people that I can’t wait to share with everyone back at home.

See you all soon!

(P.s. Sadya says hi)