Local Artisans

Aminaville is known for its handmade, delicate jelaba-d-bizouia. Thin, homespun thread from local sheep and shiny silk thread are woven together on a “loom.” Sheep skin is washed, cleaned, and separated at the local gorge, called the Temda. [In the summertime, boys swim here and people picnic.] The artisans pull the sheep hair apart and spin it into yarn, or hire someone else in the community to do it.


Tree branches, wooden planks, and cords are somehow assembled together in a weaver’s house, where the weaving takes place. After the time-intensive process of setting up the loom, women sit on the floor and pass the thread back and forth through the loom by hand. One woman, Eric’s host mom, took three weeks to weave one fabric, called a jellaba. Jellaba is also the name for the hooded robes worn by local men and women. This particular fabric from Aminaville is of very high quality and worn only by the king and other affluent people who can afford it. Usually, men wear white and gold jellabas; women, colorful ones.

Every Friday, the vegetable vendors in town move aside for the outdoor Jelaba Auction. Women from all over the “city” will come here to sell their homespun yarn and put their jellabas up in the auction. This is a change from the past, where the market was dominated only by men. The auctioneers and buyers (middlemen who will travel to the big cities to sell the fabric) are still men; women look on (there was one middle-woman though). Three men run back and forth to the buyers, sweating over the delicate fabric and shouting prices.
Although the final customers seem to pay a very large sum for the fabric, the profits don’t trickle down to the artisans (Eric’s mom received 1200D for her fabric and she is not living lavishly). At the auction yesterday, the highest-priced fabric I heard went for 1600D. The women--who must pay a registration fee for each jellaba in the auction and a tax on each jellaba sold there--aren’t paid completely upfront for the sold jellabas. They wait, sometimes a month or more, for the middleman to sell the jellaba to the end customer. Cash flow and marketing definitely have room for improvement. This town and its gossip are the life of the weavers, mostly older, illiterate women. Although some artisans have some private clients who order directly from them, the whole jelaba-d-bizouia industry makes an interesting case study/working environment for a Moroccan PCV…and yes, there is one here.