Rajaa Acherhri was famous in her village for being very smart at math. When she was just six years old, she enjoyed solving difficult problems that were meant for older students. Her sister Sanaa also had large aspirations. She wanted to be a doctor, her mother, Fatema, told CNN.
On Friday night after eating dinner, the girls were relaxing and sitting close together in their house. Rajaa is sleeping after a tiring day at school. Sanaa, who is 12 years old, is using her phone to play.
All of a sudden, the Earth began to shake really hard. Fatema was cleaning in the kitchen when her house suddenly started falling apart. She said she jumped towards her daughters, but was heartbroken when she saw them being crushed by a falling piece of the ceiling. Both disappeared immediately.
The day after, she laid them to rest with 19 others who also died in Tinzert, a small village high up in the mountains of Morocco.
2M, a news channel, reported that according to the Moroccan government, over 2,900 people died in the disaster.
According to UNICEF, initial reports suggest that about 100,000 children were affected by the earthquake.
The earthquake has destroyed Tinzert and turned it into a huge heap of broken buildings and debris. The destruction is so severe that it is hard to see where one house begins and another ends. The houses in this place were old and made in the traditional manner, using mud and straw. They were not built to resist an earthquake, and they didn’t have to be. This place doesn’t usually experience earthquakes, and there hasn’t been a severe one in over 120 years.
“The entire village vanished in just 10 seconds,” said Hakim Idlhousein to CNN.
The earthquake split his house in two, making it look like a broken toy house. The front of the thing is all gone, and some parts of the back are still there, like a kitchen cabinet with stuff in it that’s still standing while everything else is destroyed.
On Monday afternoon, Idlhousein and his family had a basic meal together. They put bread, oil, and coffee with sugar on a tray outside. They have been staying in a flat area since the earthquake. Their home is completely ruined and they are scared that there might be more earthquakes.
A bunch of people who live near each other came over, they all gave each other hugs and kisses, talked to make each other feel better, and drank coffee. Tinzert is a very small place with only 300 people, so everyone here knows each other’s names. Everyone here has experienced the death of a loved one.
The path to Tinzert is very thin and goes up at a steep angle. It is now difficult to drive to many parts of the village.
The villagers are moving through the wreckage by climbing over it. The children are also helping by carrying things and jumping from one large piece of debris to another.
After three days of living like this, everyone learns the paths through the ruins. The streets are no longer there. They have been replaced by dangerous paths on the pile of debris.
Assistance has been delayed in reaching the mountains, and for now, it mostly involves volunteers from all over Morocco driving their private cars with supplies of food and water.
A lot of people are getting more and more mad and annoyed because the government isn’t giving them enough assistance. Several people living in the area told CNN that they no longer believe the thing they were hoping for will happen.
Tinzert is located in a hilly area called Al Haouz province. In this province, there are small villages spread out in the hills. Around 1,500 people have lost their lives in the earthquake just in this area, as reported by Moroccan authorities.
A government official from Morocco told CNN on Monday that the damaged roads in mountainous areas like Tinzert are causing difficulties in delivering assistance to the regions that have been most severely affected.
The people over there don’t have any option except to wait.
For AbdelHaq Edabdelah, who is 17 years old, waiting became very hard. The pain in his shoulder was very strong, and it made it difficult for him to think clearly.
The young construction worker got hurt when his house in a faraway village called Ifghan fell down. Abdeltif Ait Bensoli, his neighbor, told CNN that Edabdelah was trapped under a lot of rubble and only his head was visible.
The people living nearby were able to help him out, but his shoulder was twisted and had bruises. He was hurting very badly and no one in the town knew how to make him feel better. There are no medicines to relieve pain and no tools to provide immediate medical assistance.
He stayed outside with the rest of the village and slept there for two days, hoping someone would come to help. When nobody arrived, his neighbors decided to try and take him to see a doctor.
The way is closed with big stones. Ait Bensoli said it is impossible to go through in a car.
Edabdelah lives with his grandparents who are old. They couldn’t go with him, so Ait Bensoli had to take Edabdelah to the hospital.
One of their neighbors gave them a ride to the part of the road that was blocked. They got out and had to walk for about 20 minutes over the big rocks and debris that were blocking the way.
After passing through that area, they were able to get a ride to Asni, a town located about two hours southwest of Marrakech. On Monday morning, a field hospital was set up there.
Edabdelah had a hard time talking when they arrived. The long and exhausting trip made him feel very painful and uncomfortable. He couldn’t use his arm and his face looked twisted every time he tried to move it.
The doctors in Asni put a brace on Edabdelah’s shoulder to keep it still and gave him very strong medicine to help with the pain. They told him he would start to feel better in about two weeks, then let him go, focusing on the next person in line to be treated.
Fatema Acherhri and her husband were both born in Tinzert. They both grew up with each other, got married and became parents to Rajaa and Sanaa. Acherhri said that her second time giving birth was very hard and she didn’t think she could have any more children.
Acherhri said that she and her husband do not know what will happen in the future. Their daughters’ graves are the only reminder of their life in the village. The graves are located only a short distance from where their home used to be.
Winter is coming soon and, in these mountains, it can be very cold and difficult.
Acherhri gets emotional when she talks about her daughters and how happy they were with their new school supplies when school started last week. They enjoyed playing outside with their dad, while she was preparing couscous for them.
Sanaa, the young child, really wanted to go to the hammam, a special bath in Morocco, on Friday. Her dad is a builder in Marrakech and he only comes back home on weekends.
Acherhri, with tears in her eyes, told CNN that she just wanted to look clean and beautiful when he came.
She said that she felt something odd when Sanaa asked her to apply henna on her feet last week.
“I told her she was too young to get henna, but she insisted that she wanted to look beautiful and visit Ourika,” she said.
Ourika is a pretty place in the Atlas Mountains, with lots of plants, waterfalls and big trees. People who live there think the place is absolutely amazing.
“She believed something bad was going to happen, and she believed she was going to a better place,” she said.