Association TawayaThe NGO our founder built in the High Atlas
In the Aït Bouguemez valley, in the heart of the Central High Atlas, a spring comes out of the mountain for about two months a year, when the snow melts on the peaks above. The villagers hold it sacred. A holm oak several centuries old stands over it. It is called Tawaya, and it gave its name to the association Mohamed Moujane founded in 2006.
What Tawaya Means
Tawaya is the name of one of the two springs at the village of R’Bat. It does not run all year: it opens with the snowmelt and dries up a few weeks later. It is a meeting place, a place to walk, and a place the people here have treated with respect for far longer than the association has existed.
Giving that name to a development association was not an accident. A spring that runs for two months a year teaches one plain thing: what keeps you alive is finite, and it has to be handled with care. That is the same idea that guides how we travel.
The Association
Association Tawaya was created in 2006 for the development of the village of R’Bat, in the Aït Bouguemez valley, Azilal province. Mohamed Moujane, founder and lead guide of Afsou Travels Morocco, founded it. He was born and raised in these mountains.
Its purpose is simple to state and slow to deliver: create new sources of income for the families of the village and improve their living conditions, applying the principles of sustainable development rather than importing solutions from somewhere else. In a high mountain valley that means water, the school, shared buildings, and work that lets young people stay.
The Valley It Works In
| The village of R’Bat | |
|---|---|
| Valley | Aït Bouguemez, Central High Atlas |
| Province | Azilal |
| Altitude | 1,935 metres |
| Inhabitants | more than 1,000 |
| From Marrakech | 250 km |
| From Azilal | 80 km |
Aït Bouguemez is known as the happy valley: a flat green floor, terraced fields, mud brick villages at the foot of the slopes, and the Mgoun peaks above. The valley stayed off the roads for a long time. That is what kept it as it is, and it is also what makes everything harder: school, healthcare, transport, work.
Tourism arrives in valleys like this one with money and with damage, usually at the same time. The question is not whether travellers should come, but who earns from it and what is left behind once the group has gone.
What Has Been Built
The association’s first project was water. It dug a well in the village and brought the water from it into the houses, so that every home in R’Bat has drinking water at the tap.
The work of a small village association is measured in buildings and in years, not in announcements. Three projects give the measure of it: drinking water to the houses, the renovation of the village school, and the building of a multipurpose kasbah to host shared activities and visitors.
In 2018 a scout team from Lille funded and worked on part of this: 2,175 euros raised from 22 donors, then a summer spent on site working alongside the villagers. That is the scale at which things move here, and it is a scale that works.
What This Has to Do With Travel
We do not sell charity travel and we do not ask our travellers to fund the association. The link is simpler and more honest than that: the man who designs your itineraries has spent twenty years working on the development of his own village, and it shows in how we build a trip.
Local people, properly paid
Our guides and drivers come from the mountain villages we work in. The money stays in the valley instead of going back to Marrakech the same evening.
Village houses where we can
In the valleys we sleep in family houses and locally run gîtes, not in places owned by outside groups.
Small, private, one at a time
A village of 800 people cannot absorb a coach. Our trips are private, and that is as much about the place as about comfort.
Staying rather than passing through
Two nights in a valley leaves something behind. Two hours leaves photographs and dust.
If You Want to Help
The most useful help is not a transfer. It is coming to the valley, staying longer than a day, sleeping and eating there, and leaving your money in the hands of the people who live in it. We arrange that all year.
If you want to support the association’s work directly, write to us and we will put you in touch with Mohamed. The association’s old website is no longer online, so contact goes through us.
Travel in the Valley
Tell us when you can travel and we will build you a journey through the Aït Bouguemez and the High Atlas, staying in the villages rather than passing through them.
