We met the young man who had offered us the hotel at the bus station last night and he cheerfully greeted us. The town of Midelt is made of flat roofed blocks, with some buildings attached to others and some free standing, and looked to be what it is; a town that was founded by the French and is now home to Moroccan Muslims. A plain white church stood beside the road but was not open. 
The mosque nearby was well cared for and decorated carefully. A small community of Franciscan nuns lives in the area and there are also some monks living in the Kasbah Myriem, which was where we were heading. Lots of people were out and about, and many greeted us in French as we passed by.The road followed a dip with kind of no-man’s land rural area before we reached the older of the two local Kasbahs. A young man joined us and offered to guide us around the two Kasbahs, but we said that we didn’t need a guide, and he wished us a good day and wandered off. Much of the older Kasbah, Atmoni, is in disrepair, with the weather having played havoc with the mud brick and mud rendered walls. We stepped over the piles of building materials that are being used to replace damaged sections and to rebuild others. The entry divided, with each path leading to a tunnel-like entrance. The idea of the Kasbah was to provide a fortified living area for a leader and a whole community, so there are all the buildings that would make up a village within its walls. Towers at the corners and the top level were for watching for enemies and for defence. Perhaps the dark, low entrances also served a defensive purpose, since an enemy who managed to enter would have to decide which way to go and would have to come out into the light where he could easily be attacked. A young man entered before us and went one way, while we went the other. He came out and went the same way as us, but we didn’t continue and went up a level to look out at the view. When we came back down, the man had retraced his steps again. Keith felt that he was perhaps following us and had an uneasy feeling about going into the Kasbah while he was around. In any case we had not left quite as early as we should have so we decided to visit the Kasbah Myriem first and come back here after that. Perhaps we still had our Fes suspicions of everyone, and the poor man was simply lost.
At the entrance to the Kasbah Myriem, we saw a man leaving in a car. We do not know if he was one of the two monks who live there, who survived the kidnapping and murder of a group of seven Jesuit monks in Tibhirine in Algeria by Muslim fundamentalists in 1996. The man on the gate directed us around the other side to an entrance where we could visit the carpet and embroidery group. Started by the Franciscan sisters to provide the local women with education and work so that they could contribute to the family finances, it is now continued under the care of Madame Milouda. When we arrived a group of women were embroidering in the sunshine.
Inside we met Madame Milouda who showed us around. She explained that the women were working in groups according to their experience. Some, clustered around the heater, had five to ten years, and the larger group in the little room with the teacher ranged from beginners to those with experience who were starting new areas of skill. 
The women worked in silence, which was because it took all their concentration to embroider the tiny cross stitches onto fine linen using traditional designs, with no markers or patterns to follow. Only beginners had paper patterns to assist them. There was a loom with a carpet in progress being made by two women, and other rugs and carpets around the room for sale. In the afternoons, many of the younger women stayed on to have classes in nutrition, cooking and health.
The work was exquisite, and we bought a table cloth and a tea cloth. The prices are high, and so we were purchasing to support the program, as much as to own the lovely items. The little church at the monastery was simple and beautiful, with a semi circular stone wall behind the altar and a little nativity scene in front.
We walked on up the road to a village not so far away, with snowy mountains creating a stunning background. A man was ploughing a small area with a horse drawn plough. 
The traffic was a mixture of cars, taxis and donkeys. In the village proper we saw a sign that led to the Association for the Care of Donkeys. As we walked back along the road, a car carrying Madame Milouda and some of the women tooted us and we waved. The workmen digging trenches near the older Kasbah stopped for a few words of greeting. We had no time to visit that Kasbah right now because we were to meet Mohamed at the restaurant, so we thought that at some other stage we might be back.After lunch, Mohamed had organised an excursion for us to see the old mining areas. His friend, Drisse, picked us all up in his taxi and we drove out of town to Mibladen and El Ahouli. The land out of Midelt has the look of an ex-mining area, even in its natural state, with barren mountains and heavily eroded hills of stones and dirt.
The mining areas look even more so, and they still have the houses and infra structure of the lead mining that was a mainstay of this area up until the 1980s. The price of lead plummeted in the 1970s with the introduction of new materials, such as plastics, but now that there is a shortage of lead, the prices are high. An attempt to revive the lead mines here has failed due to no people wanting the hard and dangerous life of a miner for small return. The original mines were run by Pennyroyal, a company which combined French, Belgian, Italian and Moroccan interests and expertise. It was closed temporarily during World War II because the workers were called up to fight, and when Italy entered the war, the Italian experts were considered to be enemy aliens and imprisoned. During the many years of running from the early 1920s, the mines were in the forefront of technological development and research. The mine at El Ahouli is deep in a narrow gorge, where the old houses, cinema, shops, school, workers’ residences, managers’ houses and all the rusting machinery and infrastructure remain as a ghost town. A few people live there, perhaps unofficially, but otherwise it is crumbling away at the whim of the weather.
We climbed up onto the rail bridge over the river, and then entered the tunnel. Without a torch, and aided only by Mohamed’s phone and Keith’s camera light, we walked on a little way in the dark.
The tunnel has no props in it and simply relies on its arched shape cut out of rock. On the other side, we entered a different tunnel, where the smell of oil was quite strong, but Mohamed said that it was the smell of lead, which is stronger in here because it is on the side that the wind does not enter. The miners suffered respiratory illnesses and some became mad from lead poisoning. There are other minerals associated with lead, such as silver, and these were mined for too. Moroccan minerals and fossils are on sale throughout the world.We drove on and stopped at a remote village in the crater of a volcano. The earth buildings there at first looked uninhabited, so low and crumbling were many of them, but as we came nearer we saw that there were sheep in folds, children playing and women washing clothes in the icy water of the river.
A narrow suspension bridge took us over to the other side where the ruins of the original ancient Kasbah stood.
Mohamad had a friend here, but he was not around. Women were sitting in a line with their backs against a building, lapping up the warmth of the sun. One of them was a friend of Mohamed’s and she invited us all into her house. The ceiling was beautifully decorated, although hard to see in the gloom at first, as was a little cupboard on the wall with folk art designs on it. The room had rugs on the floor and cushions around the walls. The ladies were most amused by our presence, and brought a light for us to see the ceiling better. Keith took a photo of me with the ladies, which we will send to Mohamed for them.
On the way back to Midelt, we stopped to look at the headquarters of the Pennyroyal Company with its grand building, swimming pool, tennis courts and houses that are clearly European in style. Mohamed showed us a book by Alan Debray in which he recounted the history of the mines from 1923 – 1975. It was certainly a community within a community, with a festival in the early 1950s being celebrated, with the school children wearing costumes sent from Paris and singing French songs. Contaminated mullock heaps present an ongoing unsolved problem.Back at Mohamed’s place, we set ourselves up for a little relaxation and typing, while he went out to buy a few items on the shopping list so that I could cook the meal. Mohamed went to work, and when he returned, we were ready to eat and to spend an interesting evening talking about life and politics in Morocco.
We were a bit nervous when we came to this bridge, but despite appearances it turned out to be quite sound.
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