Morocco’s Sacred Granaries: An Interview with Nada Hosking

When most people think of Morocco, they imagine the usual suspects. The bustling cacophony of Marrakesh and the mad, mad jumble of Djema el-Fna. The thoroughfares of Tangier and Fez. The rugged, mountainscapes of the High Atlas Mountains. What ties these places together is their location within the imperial trail. For the intrepid traveler, it is the lesser known regions of the south that represents the untrammeled jewels of rural Morocco.

Indeed, the Anti-Atlas Mountains might as well be a world away from that well-traveled corridor. Unnumbered Berber tribes live a lifestyle not far removed from that of their ancestors, eking out a modest existence in this unforgiving desert environment. Their history is written in this sympathetic relationship to the land and in their monumental granaries, or igoudar, that formed the center of each community.

Global Heritage Fund has worked to preserve and promote this unique tradition for the last three years. And our efforts are bearing fruit. GHF’s Director of Programs and Partnerships, Nada Hosking, recently traveled to Morocco to inspect our concluded pilot project, the Amtoudi Sacred Granaries, and review the expansion of that project to multiple new granaries in need of restoration. We caught up with her at our San Francisco office to discuss her trip and outlook on conservation in Morocco. 

1. You are Moroccan yourself. What is it like to come back home?

It’s always fun to go back home. I grew up in Casablanca, and after I arrived, the driver took me on a tour through the town. We drove by my old high school. It was strange to see that what used to be one of the oldest and most prestigious high schools is now a deserted building. To give you a little background, the majority of Casablanca’s large school groups were built in the 1950s to cope with the growth of the population. What used to be “Lycée de jeunes Filles” became “Lycée Chawki,” my high school.

I don’t know what the plan is for the building, but it represents Casablanca’s architectural style, which is very modern.  Unlike the rest of the country’s major cities, which were founded between the seventh and 15th centuries, Casablanca’s history is quite recent – it was planned after the establishment of the French protectorate in 1912. Henri Prost, a French architect and urban planner, presented the first development plan for Casablanca, and his work became a reference for urban planning and development in France post World War I.

The new city became a hub for renowned European architects. Casablanca was an open experimentation field with no restrictions or aesthetic constraints. The city hosts the biggest concentration to date of Neo-Classical, Art Nouveau, Art Deco, Neo-Moorish and modern structures, all juxtaposed together. It is considered a live reference in architecture history. It was fascinating to grow up among such a mix of influences from many different cultures, and I imagine this place had much to do with my adult interests in architecture, preservation, and cultural heritage.

A worker at a granary in the Anti-Atlas Mountains. ©Amar Grover/Global Heritage Fund

2. How have things changed?

Casablanca, as I mentioned, it hasn’t changed all that much. The spirit is much the same – it has always had a serious arts and culture scene, but it has evolved further. I am pleased to see that many of the city’s historic Art Deco villas have been converted to galleries and museums. For example, a 1940s-era Art Deco villa near where I grew up was transformed to showcase the extensive private collection of an art-loving Moroccan businessman. The collection comprises Bohemian glass and vintage jewelry. The city’s old industrial slaughterhouse was reimagined as a hub for of-the-moment street art exhibitions and urban dance and music events. I love going there!

Marrakesh, on the other hand, has changed quite a bit. Marrakesh used to be this place that was just mad. You have carts with donkeys, you have amateur boxing matches… I’ve been going there since I was a kid, we’d always spend a week or so in Marrakesh in the summer – it’s hot, it’s nice, it’s fun. You’d go to Djemma el-Fna [ed: the main public square] maybe once or twice but it’s not the main feature. That was for curious European tourists. It was too crazy for the northern Moroccans, like myself.

The city’s feel and its local attitudes present the most pointed difference between what I remember growing up and how the city is today. During my last trip this April, we walked by a spice shop and the vendor invited us in and said “go ahead, take a photo.” This never used to happen before – if you are not purchasing their product, you could not take photos. So I asked him why, a few years back, that was the attitude and why this is what I noticed. What changed? What happened? He said, ‘most of the time, our parents ran these places – they didn’t understand how to market their business. For me, if you post a picture on social media, and it’s a nice one, your friends might like what they see and would inquire about my shop. There’s a potential that I am actually somebody who attracts people.’ So people are starting to change and things are equalizing a bit.

The infrastructure is well developed, too; the roads are clean and there are plants everywhere. COP7 and COP22 [ed: the global environmental conference], as well as other major tourism investments, are pushing everyone to make an effort. We went to one heritage site, El Badi Palace, which was commissioned by the sultan Ahmad al-Mansur of the Saadian dynasty in the late 1500s. Ten years ago, it was very disorganized there, but now you can hire well-trained guides, they have an interpretation center inside with a digital display, and everything is organized. This is a big change for heritage sites in the country.

The Id Issa Granary. ©David Gouery/Global Heritage Fund

3. Is this new attitude helpful as GHF develops new projects in Morocco?

We’re certainly trying to capitalize on this attitude, sure. With our new project, we have partnerships with the government and development institutions, and we’re building partnerships with the private sector. The community development aspect is going to happen in every single village where we work, it’s going to be run by an organization that understands the needs and purposes of this scheme, and it’s going to reach not just one group but multiple groups, including – and especially – women.

The idea [with this project] is to build a new tourism route and create a new menu of options for people who visit the country. Instead of focusing on the imperial trail or the coastal cities, we are working to extend the usual southern loop further east – think about it like a rubber band. You’re extending to the east and giving people different options that include different types of experiences: nature, different built heritage, different cultures. This type of tourism, if you plan it well from the get-go as something that could be sustainable and you manage it very well, could be very promising to communities.

Morocco has also been at the forefront of investment in solar and sustainability in the face of climate change. It’s something that country’s leadership always thinks about. They’ve been leading the charge and they’ve been trying to take certain measures to deal with desertification, drought, flood, etc…

Our goal, and luckily, also the vision of the government, is not to turn this region into a Dubai. But if you have a little more traffic, that’s more money for communities, tourism infrastructure, and so on. There’s a big economic push in this direction.

Project director Salima Naji chats with two workers during restoration work at the first round of granaries. ©David Goeury/Global Heritage Fund

4. The Sacred Granaries is a new project, but it’s building off GHF’s successful pilot in Amtoudi. Tell me about that project.

Sure, let’s back up a bit. A lot of people understand Morocco in terms of the beautiful handmade tiles – Moorish architecture, but they do not think of Berber heritage. Berbers are the indigenous people, and all Moroccans have some Berber lineage. They were there well before the Arabs conquered, before the Ottomans conquered.

So I wanted to see if there was an opportunity for us to work somewhere different, especially if we could shed some light on the less popular parts of the country. I heard of architect Salima Naji so I contacted her, just to ask some questions because I knew she worked in the Anti-Atlas. She said it was good timing because they just had these major floods that ruined two very old granaries in Amtoudi, and these were granaries that she had restored partly in 2003 with a scholarship she had won for her Ph. D. and partly in 2007 with funding from a Moroccan development agency. That was back in later 2014, early 2015.

Anyway, she did some restoration but now they were ruined by these floods, and the communities were calling her and saying they needed help.  GHF ended up supporting the restoration with co-funding from the Prince Claus Fund.

We restored two granaries, the Id Issa granary and the Aguellouy granary. The project got so much visibility. The Academie Royale in Rabat did drone footage and a 360-degree panorama, and people started realizing that, wait a minute, we have more than Marrakesh and Fez. There’s so much diversity here.

5. So what made GHF want to continue working in this part of Morocco?

There are fantastic community development opportunities with Dr. Naji that probably wouldn’t be available or as available in other parts of the country. Dr. Naji’s work is very interesting because she has a participatory approach. Because these areas are remote, you have to use the skills that are available within the community, so she works closely with the local builders and, essentially, to build their skills and capacity. It’s really important to keep these sorts of projects going because you’re also providing work.

With this project and Dr. Naji’s methodology, we are transferring skills, keeping a certain tradition, and so on. We’re going to be promoting not just the heritage, but also local products. You have argan and acacia trees, and you have other products that could be leveraged to provide economic benefits to the communities. There are a lot of economic products that are exciting, and we’re not going at it alone, we’re going at it with many stakeholders who are as excited as we are.

The Aguelloy Granary from the oasis below. ©Amar Grover/Global Heritage Fund

6. And what is it about her conservation methodology that makes her attractive as a project director for this expanded project?

Her sustainable building practices. Much of the construction nowadays relies on concrete, which is just awful in the desert. It’s hot in the heat and cold in the cold, people need to have AC just to live in it. The problem is it also has a status connotation. People love it because it represents modernity and wealth. What Salima is doing is being really militant when it comes to creating an atmosphere for traditional building practices. It is acceptable to use cement for certain parts of the buildings, but not as a main material. A lot of local governments are now hiring her to build community centers in the traditional way, either with stone or mud-brick. You can still have traditional building practices in that region if you make them nice, if you make them livable, and she’s trying really hard to change the way people are doing things. It’s her legacy.

What’s cool is that you walk into these granaries, it could be 120 degrees outside but it’s very cool inside. In Isserghine, one of the sites we plan to work at, the granary is not functioning but people use it in the afternoons as a gathering place because it’s too hot in their cement homes.

The Aguelloy Granary. ©Amar Grover/Global Heritage Fund

7. Sustainable practices definitely seem like something you’d want to promote, especially in such a harsh environment. How is Dr. Naji pushing back on the use of these unsustainable, non-traditional materials?

You can only tell people what to do if the government is enforcing it, that’s one angle. She’s getting a lot of traction from the government, but she’s also working to persuade the local people to adopt different approaches. If communities want tourism traffic, they have to realize that visitors don’t want to see buildings made of out cement. They want to visit places with character, places built in the traditional way. For instance, when they had the floods in 2014, a lot of her neighbors who opted for cement lost their homes. Now they need to fix them, but you can’t really fix cement. You tear it down and rebuild. The traditional houses, first of all, did not have a lot of damage because of the flooding, and second, it’s possible to patch the homes rather than tearing everything down. The day-to-day upkeep of traditional structures may be higher, but concrete has a lot of hidden costs people are just now beginning to understand.

People are starting to pick up on it, though, they’re getting it. Here’s another example. Salima built this community center right next to a kid’s school. The school is closed most of the year because the kids cannot sit in it, it’s too hot. Her center is open year round because it has a traditional cooling system.

We have to remember, though, that they’re not using cement because it’s cheap. They’re using it because it has that modernity value to it. It has the connotation that we are modern, we are wealthy, and this is how we show that. That’s a lot tougher to fight against.