Hi, I'm Linsey and you're at Assilah Eco Village in Morocco.
I love this country. I've been coming to Morocco for 20 years and I always came back to this
area. I really like Asilah. I was a Community Development Manager in the
city area of Sheffield and my job was to initiate community development ideas
so people were actually neighborly and looked after each other. In Morocco
communities are still fairly intact. I learnt to manage, I learnt to manage
people, I learnt to manage budgets, I learnt to project manage. I met a man in
Asilah who was a friend of a friend and he said, "you must come to see my land."
I stood on the land and I, I knew straightaway this is where I want to
live. A week later I sent him the money. I didn't send the whole money, but I
secured the land not just with him, but also with me. I didn't want to go back
when those doubts come in. I just decided that I'd build a village and I'm not
sure where it's going, but I know I need an infrastructure. That people can
stay, where I can do group things, but I'm not sure how that's going to go. I don't
know how it's going to evolve.
Welcome to Assilah Eco Village. I'll give you a small tour of what we've done so
far. This is what we call the English House or the Boathouse. This was actually
built mainly by a volunteer, Jack, who came to stay with me for 11 months. We
finished it in this style, but it's like traditional English A-Frame house. Roof
is made with bulrush, thatched with bulrush, which is harvested 2 kilometers
just down the road and picked by local people and we paid to do it.
It's adobe brick. Adobe is mud bricks, but we couldn't use it everywhere. Both ends
are done with a wattle and daub with bamboo as the structure and then in
fills and plastered with the mud so it's several styles. It's a really cozy house.
I had this idea because I wanted to have, I've seen old films like medieval films
when they batten down the gate so because it's made mainly of two boats we
were gifted in Asilah. This is the oar of the boat.
So welcome to the Boathouse. it's really small. This is the keel of the
boat, I think. See the shape here. That's the middle part of the boat and then all
the wood is the recycled boat wood so everything's natural or recycled. I make
all the cushions and do the seat coverings myself. I've got a background in
textiles. The plaster is particularly fine and this is mud mixed with the
fluff of the bulrush to make a really really fine finish and then it's painted
with lime. The outside's also rendered with lime. All the construction is
A-framed with no nails or screws in this. It's just wood very like medieval. So
this is the outside bathroom with traditional Moroccan toilet and we were
growing vines up here so we'll have grapes in the bathroom, why not? Help
yourself to a grape while you're going to the loo. This is my house, the main house. The
first house I designed and when I designed the house I was sort of
influenced by Muslim and Christian cathedrals.
Also adobe bricks with a tile roof. All the woods is eucalyptus, these big trees in
here, locally sourced eucalyptus trees. And the mud that we use is from beneath
our feet. I wanted the idea of stained glass when
the Sun comes in in the Cathedral and how beautiful that is and the back has
sort of like next to something that looks like it could be an old mosque, the
shape of it with the dome. The electricity is luckily municipal along
with the water. It, in time, we will think about being self-sufficient, but I really
believe in supporting the local community so I want to be part of the
society. I don't want be self-sufficient and apart from it. I
want to contribute to it and I want them to contribute to this. It's a really
important principle of mine so I'm not looking for self-sufficiency. So the
bathroom which is a bit like a hammam. The idea is to sit on the edge and bathe
and not just plunge into a deep bath. I rarely use it like that. I go to the
local hammam. This is a cold shower. Our water's heated by a solar spiral water
heater, which means you can only get a hot shower when it's sunny, but that's a
lot of the time in Morocco. I have volunteers help me all the way and also
Bashir, who's my ex, who is a master builder. He didn't work on this
house, but he's been working with me for the last 18 months.
This is a cob oven. I built this like three years ago and we're still using it
almost everyday. The base is made up of two tractor tires, which I actually
got for free, and then it's built with six months worth of plastic garbage. A
layer of beer bottles and that insulates the heat from going down, just made with mud.
This year we've built this new house. This is the volunteer accommodation with
a zinc roof and this sleeps four volunteers. Again it's made with adobe
but the bottom of the found we ran out of adobe bricks so this is
rammed earth at the front and wattle and daub at the top. Sometimes you have to
use everything. Guys, I'm coming in. And welcome to the volunteer house. This
house only took me 13 weeks to build. This is a bit of fun. I just built this
because I had an idea one morning. I kept seeing these cable wheels and I thought
maybe you could make a house of these. At the moment it's not being used. It leaks a
little. We need to improve it. This again is made from everything recycled.
This is the new exciting build. This whole area is going to be the new community hub.
At the center of the hub there's going to be a hammam. A hammam is a Moroccan
bathhouse. It's going to be a 4 meter tower with a glass dome on the top. The bottom
2 meters is going to be a small room. The entrance is going to be here
and a changing room here. Over here there's going to be the fire.
This is going to be a cob oven. It's gonna heat the water for the hammam, but
it's also going to put in hot air so there's going to be, this is seating. On
the outside there's going to be a communal kitchen and then it's going to
be ten meters across. These are the adobe bricks that we made in the summer. You
can't make adobe bricks in November. This particular brick mold has made
every brick for every house that I've built. Ten thousand mud bricks have made
to be made two by two with that. This is my favorite house. It's taken two years
to build, but the idea of the house is that it's based on yin-yang and you move
through the house from the light to the dark and the view here it's particularly
amazing at sunset. So we're going to have a look at the interior and this is the
grand entrance.
Welcome to the yin-yang hobbit house. The design it's circular built into
the outside. It feels to me like a very feminine space. There's no right angles.
It's all in the round.
I'm really happy with it. I sort of designed this as a female space but also
with the idea that it'd be perfect for a honeymoon. This is the perfect place for
your honeymoon. It's all organic. It's locally sourced and a perfect retreat.
Here's the bathroom.
And here is the book nook. I designed this not only for guests but also for my
family to visit and I have one grandchildren, I'm sure I'm gonna have
more. The romantic dream is to sit here with my grandchildren and we do stories in
the sunset. It's got a very special light that a volunteer designed for me. Not only
is it magical in that way. So this is just a little sweet corner. In the evening this
is a space to sit, the salon, sort of designed for families and also for
honeymooners, hopefully. I just think it's a really great party space and my
granddaughter really loved it because it's also a play space. This bed, it's
designed for a three to six year old and then under here, just for three year
olds, there's a hiding space. And then at the end of the day you retreat to the bed cave.
And I just wanted to build a really romantic space and I painted it red just
to increase that romantic vibe. I had this crazy idea that from the outside it
would look like a spaceship. It doesn't really look like a spaceship but it just gives
it a little bit of an ethereal look from the outside.
Next year we're planning on running a program with holidays and courses on
natural building, but in the meantime we're renting out both the boathouse and
the yin-yang house through my Facebook page Assilah Eco Village. If a 61
year old English woman in a fairly regular job can come to Morocco and do it
you know, you've got nothing to lose really. You can revert to mainstream life.
You can go back to that, just give it a go, and trust yourself. Trust your
instincts, trust your instincts to build. We've all got it in us, we can just do
it. You can actually do whatever you like. You create your own barriers, but you can
do what you want. This is an important message really. Don't let bastards get you down.
Is that alright? *laughter* Can I say that? You can say whatever you'd like.