Mud houses in the Bougmez valley

The traditional building material here is mud. The walls are constructed from massive mud bales stacked up high with tiny windows and roofs of wicker, covered over with rubble. The towns are rambling collections of these adjoining constructions of different ages and levels of dissolution back into the ground from which they grew.

Newer constructions involve a crude concrete pad and a poured concrete reinforced box ground floor. The uprights are left to first floor level and then the building seems to be finished off as a sort-of 'longer term project'.