When it rains….

It’s always great to see some rain in Morocco. With virtually every day being sunny and hot, a few days of rain transforms the place and provides the much needed water to refill the lakes and reservoirs.

Each year, you get rain around October or November. Generally a few days of build up, some good heavy rain and then that’s it for the year. You may get a few odd days but generally the weather turns back to normal.

This year however has been very unusual with sustained periods of cold, snow in places that never see snow and torrential persistent rain. Coming from the UK, we are pretty used to cold and rain but the thing is we are prepared for it.

No house in Morocco has central heating, is insulated for cold or has the facilities for sustained and long term cold or wet conditions. If fact quite the opposite, we are all geared up for making our houses cool against the oppressive temperatures in the summer months.

For us this has been a challenge, but for many it has been impossible to deal with. Pretty much every house is a concrete box, so when its cold, boy it’s cold! Everything is damp and you have no way of drying anything out, so when you get wet and cold, that’s how it stays. We are fortunate as we have some cold and wet weather clothing but many do not.

The other problem with all the rain is that floods are everywhere. In the mountains, houses and roads are simply washed away, then lower in the valleys the roads become rivers and the rivers become raging torrents. On the coast, we have had huge tides which have washed everything away – waves of over 4 meters have been pounding the coastline for over a week.

The big clear up has begun on the beaches, with many locals gathering firewood for cooking and heating. Some guys are risking life and limb to gather the wood, standing on the floating masses of flotsam with huge waves crashing on them, but they seem to just ignore this and carry on making the most of the bounty.

The big issue is also the huge amounts of rubbish and plastic that has been washed into the ocean and on the beach – you name it and it’s here. Our once cleanish beach now looks like a disaster zone and it will take weeks to clear it all up again.

The other thing that has happened is all the sand on the beach is now gone – the sea has taken the sand and replaced it with rocks. This is such a shame as we had a great beach here, but maybe the next storm will bring it back – who knows!

Here are a few pictures of Banana Beach in Aourir – other villages have had worse. Let’s hope the sun will soon come out and we can get back to normal – our thoughts and hearts go out to those who have lost everything.