Villagers are still huddled in their flimsy tents, waiting for assistance payments to rebuild their lives.
Atlas Mountains, Morocco – Abdelatif Haddad works on his truck against the backdrop of a cluster of tents where his entire village of Tagadirt is now forced to live, in the shadow of Morocco’s High Atlas Mountains as a winter sun lowers over the valley.
They have been living like this since a magnitude 6.8 earthquake struck the region six months ago in September and levelled their village which lay right there, deep in the hollow of the Ourika Valley.
Abdelatif is shadowed by his smiling five-year-old son, Amir, who dances around his feet, offering as much hindrance as help, as his 56-year-old father struggles with the truck’s ancient motor.
His family was lucky. Of the 3,000 that died that day, 76 were from Ourika, whose steep walls shadow Tagadirt.
Many are now buried in the jagged cemetery that overlooks the village, linked only to the nearest mountain road by a long and snaking sand track, vulnerable to the wind and rain that rack the region during winter.
Abdelatif, like everyone who lost their home that autumn evening, expects to remain homeless for at least a year and a half. Likely more, they say.
Tagadirt is hardly unique. Across the sprawling mountain range, villages, several only navigable by moped and donkey, continue to eke out their daily lives under the protection of nothing but timber and plastic, while their homes sit in ruins, rubble or empty and at risk.
“I get angry, but not just angry, sick. Everyone here,” Abdelatif says, his calm voice at odds with the translated words. He gestures around the settlement of some 160 people, “Everyone here has been made sick by the stress. It can’t go on.”
At the start of the year, with a bitter winter ahead, Abdelatif and some 500 others attempted to march the two days from the mountain to the regional capital of Marrakech to call for the regional government’s intercession.
But they found their path blocked by authorities. Names were taken, villages noted and assurances of help given.
Abdelatif is still waiting.
Under a commission established by the king in the wake of the earthquake, monthly payments of 2,500 dirhams ($250) were promised to every family impacted by the quake. For every family who had their home damaged or destroyed, up to 140,000 dirhams ($14,000) would be available for rebuilding.
Moroccan government figures from the end of January indicate that about 57,600 families had received the monthly payments, with over 44,000 households accessing the reconstruction aid.
Angry and sick
media was unable to speak to any family in receipt of the latter reconstruction payment.
It is not just about the direct compensation, Abdelatif explains. He points to the shadows of distant homes, clinging to a vertiginous hillside. “If there is another earthquake, the whole hill will come down on those houses. What are they going to do?”
The narrow, single-track roads that served as lifelines for the region were buried under tonnes of dirt and rock, making access for rescuers impossible.
Even after they were cleared, traffic jams snaked back for miles as the entire mountain range descended into a sprawling traffic jam.
Many in the mountains survived the quake, only to die waiting for help.
Any confidence in the future, or the land that had supported families and villages for generations, was abruptly halted.
“Many people have left for Marrakech,” 36-year-old Fadma Ait Yahya from Tagadirt says. “They’re scared there’ll be another earthquake.”
Offers of international aid were quick to come as news of the disaster spread. Among those who rallied to Morocco’s cause were the EU, which pledged 1 million euros, and the IMF, which greenlit a loan of $1.3bn loan shortly after the tremors subsided. In addition, in Morocco, a bank account established for disaster relief announced that its total had exceeded $1bn by the end of September.
Little evidence of that money is evident in the small market town of Asni.
Fifty-year-old Yamna Lamini had been living in a tent along with five others since September until last week when high winds destroyed even that makeshift home.
Now, family members must make room for them within the small square of tents they assembled around a dirt and grass courtyard.
Yamna leads the way from the camp, past the hastily assembled mosque on its outskirts, continuing to the ruins of what was her house, which the family of seven was renovating when the earthquake struck, reducing its walls and freshly laid plaster to rubble.
“I never imagined we would be living as we are now,” she says. “We were happy. We’d been building a future. Now we’re scared all the time,” she explains through a translator.
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