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Confessions of a Permaculture Aid Worker, Episode 9: Andy in Morocco

‘Confessions of a Permaculture Aid Worker’ is a weekly podcast show from PRI Australia aimed at documenting the experiences of people out in the field and making more information available about what’s happening in the Permaculture world.

This week I’m speaking with Andy of Tribal Networks about his project in Morocco and the Irish NGO he’s set up which supports and networks connections to remote areas of the world.

Click play to hear the interview (and read further below for more details):

Confessions of a Permaculture Aid Worker, Episode 9: Andy in Morocco

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Site Details

Tribal Networks has purchased a block of land and recently started working on a Permaculture Design for the site with David Spicer incorporating the set-up of a school. This is in a remote Berber Village between Casablanca and Marrakech.

This project came about when Andy realised that building a school and installing internet into this area was pointless until one of the main problems of the area was addressed – an extreme lack of water. During the dry summer months, when the wells go dry, the women must walk up to 10 kilometres to bring water from other sites.

I asked Geoff Lawton about how PRI got involved and his experience at the site:

Andy realised that the site might make a good demonstration site for the PRI Master Plan and invited Nadia and I in to have a look. We were fortunately traveling in the region for a consultancy in Iran. We agreed to travel from Iran to Morocco to review the site and also to document a 2000 year old food forest for the Food Forest DVD.

In Casablanca we were met by one of the villagers who took us to Marrakech and then on to a small town on the road toward Casablanca. In the dry season the next leg of the trip could be made in a 4 wheel drive, but we hired a donkey to carry Nadia, who was quite ill, and made the trek though pouring rain up into the mountains and the remote Berber village.

We were hosted in a traditional farm house.

The site is quite exciting. It sits on a high plateau and the traditional land area includes the water catchment which feeds the most famous and often visited waterfall in Morocco. With some modern machinery and hand labor we will be able to set up water harvesting earthworks that could potentially recharge the wells in the area and revitalise the traditional farming and grazing culture that has been damaged by lack of water and the exodus of its people to the city.

So it’s an interesting remote site. There is a lot of traditional cropping and traditional fruit trees. The people are still very much in their traditional mode of operation, but their population has increased and depleted to the city. The farms are mainly grazing stocks of sheep and some almond trees. That could be greatly diversified. They have some cropping systems that could also be greatly diversified, more intense permaculture production, home gardens, main crops and fruit trees. The main initiative is water harvesting.

I think this is a really exciting project.

If you would like to donate to the Morocco project, head here. Please specify ‘Morocco’ to ensure correct routing. PRI will pass 100% of such donations to the Morocco project.

Further Reading:

3 Comments

  1. Got to say Pat. Great interview mate. Andy was a really interesting guy. I loved his dynamic attitude and some who not just talking about it, putting his money where his mouth is and doing it well. Let’s clone him.

  2. Thanks Nick, you’re right it’s a great interview – but that’s Andy’s work! He is so interesting and what he’s talking about is a huge change in the way the first world helps the third world.

  3. Thank you so much for your work and your thoughts, Andy. Im currently thinking about starting a permaculture project in morocco. Ive done some research on figuig. Ive watched dozens of videos about the sahara yesterday. of course i know greening the desert. at the moment im obsessed with the idea. im thinking about traveling to figuig soon this year. i should visit your project then. you giving me courage! Im gonna buy some peace of desert. :)

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