Read Ait Ben Haddou Part#1 - An edible forest part of a sustainable plan for the village’s future

Half an hour later, we are comfortably seating in Loubna and Hicham’s house around a cup of coffee, while the cat and the dog are playing their best tricks to take part in the discussion. We have so many questions to ask that we don’t even know where to start! Let’s keep things simple and pick up from the beginning…

How did this incredible adventure start?

Back to the roots

« I asked my mother, tell me where I’m from. She answered that first, she would need to know where she was from! » Loubna

« Many people have a vision, but very few have the willpower to implement it. Loubna and Hicham are one of those. » Mohamed told us when talking about them for the first time. They’re both airline pilots, a pretty impressive deed in it itself, and have a successful career, but this is far from being the only thing that defines them. For it is actually an opportunity to work on behalf of their vision, to engage their expertise in achieving something good. 

Loubna explains that both of them were always involved in charities, principally with orphanages, but that everything changed three years ago when she felt the need to go back to her roots. That meant finding out about Ait Ben Haddou’s history, the village her family is coming from, and to which she is particularly attached even though she never lived there. 

« I asked my mother, tell me where I’m from. She answered that first, she would need to know where she was from! » Loubna says. Thus started a pilgrimage in Ait Ben Haddou, first with her mother to meet with the elders, witnesses and carriers of an oral tradition as rich as it is fragile. 

So on they went and met with a berber poetess, who recited the traditional poem used to welcome strangers. « It has been an eternity that I was waiting for you, that my salute longed for your salute » recalls Louna. A moment suspended in time, that made her heart sing and her soul shiver… The next day they found themselves immersed in Ait Ben Haddou’s history through the tales of a century-old man, who for an afternoon shared some memories, legends, stories and other anecdotes. An incredibly rich and relatively recent history that neither Loubna nor her mother new anything about. « This is when I realised that there had been a disruption in the oral transmission » explains Loubna. 

« I don’t know how these walls can live again, but they must. » Loubna

A month later, Loubna goes  back with her father, this time to meet with the ksar walls. The ancient berber fortress, though very touristic, is nevertheless neglected and falling apart. During the visit she was assailed with an intense flow of emotions and thought « I don’t know how these walls can live again, but they must. ». « It was a certainty, an obvious fact » she says. 

A place rich in history of which the identity is still threatened by mass tourism

Ait Ben Haddou is a place steeped in a powerful history, of which the ksar reflects the memory. Built during the 11th century, it is a true berber fortress with defensive walls and corner towers, that was home to a 36 jewish and muslim families community. This inheritance offers a precious glimpse of ancestral building technics in southern Morocco, always tending towards the best possible integration in this very specific environnement, and nevertheless replaced little by little with more « modern » materials. 

In 1937, following a severe drought episode, men and women started to leave their fields to find work in the mines, thus provoking the traditional subsistence agriculture’s progressive disappearance. 

But the walls remain, somehow, and from the place radiates an energy that inspired numerous artists, like the painter Majorelle who captured his vision of the village in 1929. Starting from 1960, the cinema comes in and Ait Ben Haddou becomes the set for movies like Lawrence d’Arabie, Babel, Gladiator and even the Game of Thrones TV show more recently.

We Speak Citizen, the birth of a citizen collective

« We come from the city, from another world. We couldn’t just come in and say, here, we will give you a model and it will work. » Hicham

Loubna and Hicham are convinced of it, the development model must be rethought through and it is the villagers themselves that hold the solutions. « We come from the city, from another world. We couldn’t just come in and say, here, we will give you a model and it will work. » Hicham explains. And one question came up. How could they be supported in achieving what they wanted? For what Loubna and Hicham were trying to do was to offer them an opportunity to think about their own future, and that what makes this project so strong and coherent today!

The first step, and almost the biggest according to Hicham, was to lead them to express their yearnings. « We had to take our time, because we rapidly understood that there was a big difference between what they were saying and what they wanted to say » Hicham continues. Education, cultural heritage preservation and promotion, tourism, agriculture… Together, first with the non-profit Ait Aissa’s members and later with the entire village, they elaborated and assembled brick by brick the elements constituting a new basis for their future. « We didn’t bring any vision, we accompanied them to find their own » concludes Loubna. 

« It is, somehow, a translation platform between the rural language and the one from the city. For we all speak the citizen language. » Hicham

And so the idea of We Speak Citizen was born, a citizen collective allowing to appeal to external know-how (urbanism, agroecology, marketing, etc) to rehabilitate Ait Ben Haddou, a rural area, in a vision setting the past and the future in the present. « It is, somehow, a translation platform between the rural language and the one from the city. For we all speak the citizen language. » says Hicham.