Monday 8th October - Mint tea and grass seed

Here we are having a quick breather and a pot of mint tea!

We're staying in a hotel in Marrakesh at present and have just got back from the first day on our project which is a refuge for the homeless.

As part of our project we have provided them with some money which has been used to buy garden equipment and seed. We've been working in the gardens preparing areas to be grassed over which sounds easy but was really tough as the ground was baked hard, so we had to break it up with picks then level it out. We have all come back with blisters but feeling like we've made a difference, as it has the potential to be a beautiful outdoor space for the residents.

The project itself was incredibly humbling, as it houses about 700 people at a time, in total between 2000 and 3000 a year, but they only receive 1% of their funding from the government.

They sleep in big dormitories with beds crammed in, but they were immaculately clean and tidy. The whole ethos there is very similar to the ethos at Isabel Hospice in that it is all about quality of life. There are volunteers who help to provide care, but the residents help each other out, and those who are able to work are employed by the charity to try to get them back out into the community.

The people we worked with were lovely. When we first arrived they stood and watched us, but once they saw that we were prepared to graft, they started to work alongside us. Whilst we couldn't really communicate, it very much felt like a team effort.

Tomorrow we go back to sow some grass seed and then work on a children's project next door before setting off for the first part of our journey into the desert.

Everyone is in good spirits and we are looking forward to the challenge ahead.