Morocco earthquake: Rebuilding lives but trauma remains

For the last two months, my neighbour Hajj Brahim, has been rebuilding his house. The Morocco earthquake shot great cracks through it. It is necessary work and none of us begrudge it but the disruption is also driving us all wild. At 5pm – tea-time in the family compound where I live – all we women get together and have a good moan about the noise, the dust and the mess of living in a building site.

There are some added inconveniences for the women too. The first is that they have to wear their veils all the time as there are non-family men walking around, and the second is that they have to feed the builders.

"I am up at 6.30 every morning,"Fadma tells me. "I have to start kneading the dough for the bread. They need six loaves for breakfast and another six for lunch. I’m exhausted."

We are the lucky ones. The earthquake, which hit Morocco in early September with a force of 6.8, left 3,000 dead and tens of thousands homeless. The citizens, the government and the international community mobilised within hours and aid poured in.

Read more: Moroccan earthquake: I felt sheer terror. I thought I was going to die

Now, we are four months on and winter is here. The Atlas Mountains, where the epicentre of the earthquake was, have sub-zero night-time temperatures, rain and snow from December through to March. Tens of thousands of people are still in tents and will remain so until at least summer of next year.

Devastation caused to historic Medina. (Image: PA)

The Moroccan government has allocated support for everyone affected.  This is around £11,600 to rebuild a house, £6.6k to repair a damaged home and £200 per month assistance for each affected household. To put this in context, the minimum wage for an agricultural worker is £174 a month. Most people in this region are subsistence farmers or work in tourism.

Initially, there were problems with the monthly money getting through to the people who needed it. There were demonstrations about the delays in one of the badly-hit towns, Amizmiz, but now, the system appears to be working.

Education was an immediate government priority. In our area, the primary school was badly damaged and the secondary school was completely destroyed. Tents were set up as an interim measure. At first, the little ones in my compound loved it, but the novelty soon wore off. "It is so cold and windy, Alice," Khadija, 6, told me. "I don’t like it."

Portacabins soon replaced the tents for the secondary school but there was not enough capacity and many students were relocated to Chweitr, a new town on the edge of Marrakech. Hafsa and Aicha from our compound were amongst them and I took their Mum and Auntie down to visit and take supplies and treats. It is a four-hour drive there and back and there is no transport so the girls are boarding and only coming home for the holidays. The dormitories are new and very clean with comfortable beds and blankets. The girls miss home, though, and we miss them.

People comfort one another after losing homes in earthquake (Image: PA)

Another priority was to ensure that tourism continued so that Moroccans didn’t suffer the double catastrophe of losing a vital part of their economy after the catastrophe of the earthquake. Within a week, mountain guides were out clearing the paths for hikers in the mountains. In Marrakech, damage was quickly cleared and buildings made safe.  "If you want to help us," Rachid Imerhane, the head of the Bureau des Guides in Imlil says: "come and visit – have a holiday here. You will be so welcome. We want to work."

To see how reconstruction is progressing, I went down to the small town of Ouirgane, which I had visited the Sunday after the earthquake. The devastation then was terrible. I met men digging through the ruins of their houses trying to salvage what belongings they could. They had laid out a pitiful collection in front of a row of flattened homes: a bucket, some bent pots, and a mattress. They had already dug out and buried their dead.

Mostafa was in Marrakech on the night of the earthquake. He is originally from Ait Ourir (about 100km away) but is married to Zineb who is from Ouirgane and whose mother and brother (14) were at home. When the earthquake they immediately set off but arrived to find both dead and the house collapsed.

Homes destroyed lie under rubble and debris (Image: PA)

Today, he and Zineb, two young female family members and Zineb’s father are all living in a tent beside the pile of earth that was their home. I show him the pictures and videos I took from the earthquake, "Yes, yes, my neighbours," he says, "There were five houses here. Look at them now. Nothing. All gone."

I ask him whether aid is coming through. "The money from the government every month is good," he tells me. "You have a code on your phone and the mobile bank comes every month and you get your 2,500 dirhams (£200). Thanks be to God. It is easy."

The problem, he tells me, is with the rebuilding process. First, they have to wait for the rubble to be cleared from the land and the land to be declared safe. Work has started on this in the town but it is slow. "Only one or two lorries come by in a day," says Mostafa, "This means only one house or maybe two get cleared every day. They started at the top and we are at the bottom and there are many houses."

Once the rubble has been cleared, then government engineers can declare the land ready to be rebuilt on if it is safe. They will then release the money for the rebuilding.

It isn’t just about the money, though. Some areas of land will not be safe to rebuild on and families will have to be moved. In this traditional agricultural area, people do not want to live far from their ancestral home. I ask Mostafa whether he has thought about going permanently to a city like Marrakech. "No, what work would I do there?"

Many houses are built against the mountains, with the back wall actually being the mountain side. The houses based on rock have survived better than those on clay, however there is another hazard. The force of the earthquake dislodged many rocks which pounded down onto villages causing havoc. Many more rocks have been rendered unstable. Heavy winter rainfall and snow always cause landslides but with the mountain structures cracked and weakened these could be catastrophic when the rains come this year.  So, many villagers are waiting to see what happens before they start rebuilding.

In the meantime, the surviving villagers have reformed their community in tents. "What we really need is moving houses (portacabins)," says Mostafa, "Like the schools. This is what we need for winter." However, with the sheer scale of the homeless, it will only be the lucky ones who get them.

The trauma of the earthquake is still very real but the Amazigh spirit is strong and resilient and the people here are looking forward to the future. "Sabr, patience," they say, "Things will get better."

Tomorrow, we look at how families are organising themselves in their new tent homes and the challenges this poses particularly for women and girls.