Project Bani Hayoune Garden

Hello dear people,

We are Said (35) from the Sahara and Linde (32) from the Netherlands. It is our pleasure to meet you!

Said comes from a big Amazigh-Tuareg family. After growing up in the Sahara desert and living many years a nomadic life, his family settled down in a village called Tagounite, below Zagora. Now he lives next to the small village Beni Hayoun, 5 kilometers outside Tagounite.

We are working on recovering a 200-year old mud house. Behind the house there is a large garden which needs a lot of care and work. Our aim is to bring back trees and plants and grow enough food and to be a hopeful example for the local community. Due to a huge lack of water, we are still at the beginning of this big project.

Our wish is to recover and expand this house by (mostly) natural materials and to make this area liveable again. The place carries many memories and the history of our ancestors. As a child, my family and I still moved around as nomads, but we would sometimes visit my grandparents in this area, who had already stopped in the area of Tagounite.

After rebuilding this old house, the goal is to bring back the oasis life - plants, water, birds, insects - in the gardens and help tackle desertification, as it is a severe and growing problem in this area. We will also create a small guest space for travelers, a cultural workshop space for the local children and an empowering space for the women in this area.
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The village Beni Hayoun is one of the oldest jewish villages in Daraa Valley, and it was discovered by Ishak Aquim, around 2500 b.C. This place was used a lot by the people who lived here, for making a lot of traditional hand works and for trading.
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Linde, co-founder of the project, is an artist from the Netherlands/Denmark. Her experience includes working in Waldorf kindergartens, creating workshops with children and families in a refugee center, and caring for people in homes for the disabled.

While living in the project & house for most of the year, Linde helps in and around the project and participates in the organization of the work.

We are doing various work: rebuilding the adobe house, fixing walls, building new rooms, taking care of the animals, taking care of the palm trees, cooking, cleaning, making bricks, giving shape to our garden and finishing/fixing the water reserves. The work is depending on the season.
You can choose the work what you would like to do (the work is also depending each period), and everyone does what he can or wishes to do. Please don't worry about the need of any special skills. We will be happy to show & teach you what to do and we will be thankful for any help you can do! And feel free to relax when needed.

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MEALS:
We prepare 3 healthy meals a day & Moroccan tea, cooked by ourselves and everyone can get a chance to learn how to prepare the real Moroccan dish.

In winter we sometimes make fires in the evening for warming ourselves up, and sometimes we play music or use the fire for cooking.
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GARDENS:
In our gardens we grow date palms, sometimes wheat, grass and alfalfa and a young olive tree & cotton tree at this moment. Our big aim is to setup a forest garden and grow all kinds of trees, organic vegetables, fruits and flowers in the gardens. With the extreme drought here in the south, having access to water is a big difficulty. We are trying our best to find solutions on how to keep the plants growing & project going. All ideas about permaculture, growing organic food & irrigation systems are welcome and can be helpful :) We recycle all the water and have also created some small water recycle systems.

We’re currently trying to grow date palms, fig, aloe vera, cactus and alfalfa. It is each year a big challenge to maintain the garden especially during our very hot summers (it can go up to 60 degrees celcius) and with little water.
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AREA & ACCOMODATION:
The house is based in a calm area, and you will find yourself in an oasis consisting of a couple of date palm trees and gardens. We have a donkey, a dog, sheep and several cats :)

We have two shared rooms where people will sleep. One big, long room and a smaller room next to it. The rooms are inside the house which we will be working on, and the whole house is made of mud bricks. We have mattresses, sheets, blankets and pillows for everyone who will stay here. At this moment we still have no doors in the rooms, but we close the rooms with carpets. The whole building has an entrance of two big doors.

If you come as family/couple and would like a private room, please let us know and we can do our best to arrange this for you - although we cannot promise it as it is depending on how many people we host at the same time. We are planning to build a third room in the near future :)

We have a traditional Moroccan toilet and bucket shower which you will get used to very fast.
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Since a short while we have some electricity and we have created a small plumbing system for water. There is no WiFi in the house (you can get a cheap sim card in town if you need internet) and we sleep in a very old, simple but traditional building made out of mud bricks, which makes the place even more calm. The house is half open because it has no roof in the middle, so that the stars and the moon are largely visible inside the house, giving you the feeling that you are very directly in nature.

The place where we are settled gives you a good experience to get a lot of ideas about the basic ways of a "simple" life. For a moment you can discover and understand how technology can change your life. At the same time, it is a good opportunity to enjoy the peacefulness and quietness and take a distance from the rush of the every day life. The weather here is sunny every day, you can enjoy incredible sunsets almost every evening and at night you can see the millions of stars or the beautifully bright moon in the sky.


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We enjoy meeting people from different backgrounds and all kinds of cultures and are grateful to be able to offer this communal meeting place for so many people. Through this way, we hope to exchange various knowledges, life stories and ideas from many different places. Welcome to our little corner of the earth :)

It will be Saids pleasure to share with you his ancestral knowledge of his family's bedouin life, and to show you parts of where he grew up in the desert. We will be very happy to organise a tour into the Sahara desert if you are interested, and we are super happy host you in our home!
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ABOUT THE WORK:
The tasks could be all kinds of different tasks, varying day by day or week by week, like:

- Harvesting grass for the animals
- Building different traditional rooms in the house. We want to build some new sleeping rooms and a big living room. For the building we will use mud bricks made from 2 types of sand and water
- Mixing mud and making a lot of mud bricks
- Preparing the fields
- Planting palms
- Sieving sand that we will use to cover the walls
- Cooking. We are happy to teach you how to make traditional Moroccan meals & tea, and happy to learn new recipes
- Cleaning the house & dishes etc.
- Building a sink and several other parts for the house
- Moving rocks
- Creating covers for the water reserves
- In some periods we need help with collecting water
- Digging canals for water
- Create irrigation systems
- Watering the plants. We use recycled water for watering the plants
- Gardening. In certain periods we plant new trees and plants and we want to grow organic vegetables and fruits as soon as we have a well
- Daily care of our animals; our dog, the cats, donkey and goats. The plan is to have other different animals in the future
- Fixing and cleaning the old rooms and walls (made with mud)
- Make new door entrances in the rooms
- Building benches inside the house
- Building a wall around the project
- We need help with finding funds
- And with English writing and marketing for our desert tour website

We are always thankful for anything you can help with! Besides the work there is a lot of free time where you can relax, or we will be happy to walk together with you in the palm gardens. If you like to visit the nearby village Tagounite, we can arrange a visit to go there all together by tuk tuk.
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ARRIVAL:
When you arrive to Tagounite, I will come to the bus station to meet you there. After that we will find a transport to go to the project in Beni Hayoun: we try to find a tuk tuk-taxi (70dh) that can carry you and your luggage.

It will be really nice if you can come to help us! We will do our best to make everything as comfortable as possible for everyone so we can all experience a great time.
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PRACTICAL INFORMATION:
- The weather is sunny everyday and the sun is very hot, so bring sunscreen
- Bring with you a comfortable shoes for working and some flipflops
- In summer (April-October): bring mosquito repellant and if possible a mosquito net
- There will be a lot of free time where you can rest or read a book/play games etc.
- Please bring your own towel and if possible natural shower soap (as the water goes into the earth & garden)
- It is good if you bring clothes that cover the legs and shoulders, out of respect for the locals
- Please let us know what kind of transport you will use so that we can be waiting for you in right time
- Let us know if you eat vegetarian or vegan, or if you have any diets/allergies. We are flexible with food and always do our best to accommodate everyone's dietary requirements
- During winter the nights are very cold, so bring warm clothes as well if you are coming in winter
- Due to wild dogs and passed on responsibility, walks outside the property will be enjoyed only together. This does limit your ability to explore the area alone, but opens doors for closer connection to the land and yourself.

Thank you for your understanding and please don’t hesitate to ask any questions you have in mind!

__________________________________________________________________________________________________________ We are happy you are becoming part of our ever growing family :) Shortterm or longterm. For us it is important that you feel at ease and comfortable. Please be yourself, while also respecting local customs and traditions. We treat each other and nature with care and respect. • Days here are flexible and never the same. We make sure everyone eats enough, although mealtimes might sometimes be a little later than you are used to. As hosts, we always care for our volunteers. • We have hosted families and children before. • Sometimes it is possible to give couples a private room, but we cannot promise this. • We appreciate any help in the work that we receive, but your health and feeling alright comes first. • Vegetarian or vegan meals are possible.