Morocco+Travel+Blog

=MOROCCO TRAVEL BLOG= This blog is not an U.S. Department of State website. The views and information presented are the grantee's own and do not represent the Teachers for Global Classrooms Program, IREX, or the U.S. Department of State. It does represent the experiences of Ms. Gillette on her international travel exchange to Morocco, March 17-March 31, 2012.

March 18, 2012 Successful arrival!
After being redirected from arrival in Rabat, Morocco due to high winds, we arrived in Casablanca and waited for bus transportation to our Rabat hotel, pictured here. Today we have gathered to receive background on Moroccan history, languages, education, and culture. The food has been amazing - plates of French pastries remind us of the French colonial influence while tagines (long-cooking succulent stews of meat and vegetables) and plates of couscous with compotes of dates and honey are delicious Moroccan specialties. Below is the view out of the lobby window.

March 19, 2012
We walked throughout the //medina// (walled city, the oldest part of urban Rabat) today, home to many traditional homes as well as the //souk// (marketplace) pictured below. This vendor was selling heaps of the nuts, spices, and dried fruit that make up a large portion of the Moroccan diet. Along the way we passed many elaborate doorways to //riats// (traditional homes with walled courtyards) that make up the medina neighborhood.

March 19, 2012
Check out the Moroccan hip hop band Fnaire at the link below. The visuals also show a rich variety of sights from all around Morocco and the lyrics speak about the desire to work together in unity rather than being divided by religious and ethnic tensions. They blend musical styles from around Morocco and are very popular here. media type="youtube" key="TkobUqrUniU" height="315" width="420"

March 21, 2012
We had an exciting day touring both a public and private school in Casablanca as well as meeting with administrative officials associated with the Ministry of Education and the teachers' representatives. We saw two demonstration classes showcasing some tremendous lessons proving the depth and breadth of Moroccan students' English vocabulary and reading comprehension, despite English being their fourth language (behind spoken Moroccan English, formal written Arabic, and French).

Visiting the schools was particularly interesting because the teachers were on a two-day strike to protest the government not giving them promised pay raises and other working conditions. Some teachers are referring to it as the "Teacher Spring." But the very enthusiastic public school teacher had no problem having her students report anyway to do their skit about Moroccan culture and customs and practice writing a pen pal letter using some canned English phrases, and teachers at the elite private school "doesn't" strike. The teacher there was a master at the interactive whiteboard, pulling up dictionary entries for unfamiliar words and magnifying pages of the state-adopted textbook (the only one teachers are allowed to use across the country) on his screen and engaging students in a lively discussion about the rights and duties of citizenship. Lots of raised hands and enthusiastic "Teacher! Teacher!" to answer the many questions in both classrooms. The students greeted us warmly and some shared clips of their Metallica and hip hop music stored on their phones as they chatted with some of the teachers in the courtyard while others had mint tea with the officials brought in from around Casablanca to meet with us. (We hear mostly late 80s soft rock on the radio in the van we travel with - George Michael "Careless Whisper" is particularly haunting me.) Later we met with a supervisory official who wanted our impressions of the classrooms we had witnessed as a way for him to gain an outsiders' perspective on Moroccan education.

The graffiti pictured below near a school may be misspelled but demonstrates our universal struggle as students and people throughout the world - "just be yourself". Tonight our group began to split up, with Mr. Gray leaving on an overnight bus to one town to work for a week in a school with his cooperative teacher. I leave tomorrow morning to go to my town (Agadir - on the coast) to work with my cooperative teacher, co-teaching lessons about social expectations and sustainability with him as well as having a chance to visit a different area of Morocco. It will mean a total of 9 hours in travel, during which I'll pass through Marrakech and the low Atlas Mountains.

March 22, 2012
Casablanca is busy and noisy - think honking horns and NYC in rush hour traffic. Pedestrians and men pushing carts of oranges and chipped rock from a major tram building project fight their way across streets buzzing with scooters, trucks, petit taxis (shared cabs crowded with fare payers) and bicycles. The Art Deco influence is everywhere - building boom during the French colonial period from 1916 onward - but crumbling now. We were dropped off here at 9 am along with Kristin (our IREX leader) and two teachers headed to one location; our bus isn't until 1:30 pm so in the absence of luggage-checking facilities, Carrie (the teacher I'm paired with during this assignment) and I took turns tending the bags and walking about the city. I found the central market - a walled block open-air courtyard lined with merchants (raffia-type baskets, more fossils, ceramics, leather slippers, lots of fresh vegetables and fruits, dried fruits, lots and lots of argan oil which is harvested from nuts of a tree that grows only in southern Morocco near where I'll be going) with an interior building with huge displays of fish and seafood - sea urchins, spiny lobsters, prawns, oysters, turtles (here to be purchased as food - they're in these cardboard boxes with limp leaves of lettuce to nibble upon), all varieties of fish - plus meat being bandsawed into cuts as I walk by.

March 23, 2012
I've been placed in Agadir, a seaside resort town. My room has a view of the beach, but unlike anything in Midcoast - more on the line of Old Orchard or even Miami Beach with the amount of development and the zooming motorbikes. We observed two of my cooperative teacher Abdullah's classes, who teaches in a smaller town twenty minutes inland. Then we talked to students for a while, answering their questions and asking our own. They mostly seem flummoxed that we can't speak any other languages (as am I) and want reassurance that we like Morocco and Moroccan food. In the second class, Abdullah had locked the door of the classroom when we were whisked away in between classes to meet the principal, other teachers, custodian...and when we got back, the lock malfunctioned and we couldn't get into the room. After Carrie and I started introducing ourselves to the students in the interim, they made the choice to let us meet in the teacher's breakroom, which allowed students to get more comfortable sitting in a circle which probably ended up in a more productive discussion. You can see from the range of dress that the teenagers run the full range of traditional to modern Western dress. The girls ask more questions than the boys and seem more confident in their English skills. Whisking away was the order of the day - next to the nearby primary (elementary school) where we went from room to room for a brief introduction and smiles and a few questions ("What do you like most about Morocco? Is this your first visit to Morocco? Do you have any Moroccan students?"). Seriously, we visited EVERY room. Even the one where parents of physically disabled students were receiving training from doctors and speech therapists and physical therapists about why their children with disabilities are suffering from disease, not the curse of demons as had been previously believed. Then whisking to Abdullah's home, where he and his two sons cleansed themselves and went to the mosque across the street for prayer (Friday is the big day that everyone [by that I mean men of course] attend the mosque at mid-day) leaving us to chat with his wife and watch //Arab Idol// (it's the big day, down to two competitors, one from Morocco, one from Egypt). When they returned, his sons (ages 7 and 10) showed me their magazines - written in Arabic, which I didn't realize was written and read right to left like Japanese.

We had a beautiful meal of couscous - steamed underneath a separate compartment with vegetables - potatoes, carrots, zucchini, squash - and meat so it absorbs the flavors and served in a communal plate that everyone spoons off. Then whisking again to meet with the local 'delegate' who oversees education in the district, carrying out the directives of the Ministry of Education. We've met many officials, all of whom are interested in furthering friendly ties between the countries.

March 24, 2012
Today was our second one in Abdullah's school, this time assisting a lesson on social problems which is part of the national curriculum that all students are tested on in their 12th year. I showed a video one group of sophomores had created last year interviewing people from different generations about social expectations, which allowed the students to get a glimpse of other teachers (thank you Mike Grey and Harry Read!) talking about their lives along with some footage of the school facilities. The group we met has also been working during their lunchtimes to write and perform a short play about violence against women for a local competition; when Abdullah realized that I had recently directed the winter play, he was very excited about me bringing a videotape of //The Odyssey// performance to share with his students. I was proud to share an abbreviated version of the play, enhanced with Marti Stone's photos of the performance plus backstage images of construction, hair and makeup, and candids. The students were really impressed and fascinated that the facilities existed at a public school to allow such a production to take place. So //The Odyssey// has had an unexpected reprisal very far from home! In the afternoon we visited a middle school. Usually students attend classes M-F plus Saturday 8-12, but these students had returned to school at 3 pm of their own volition so they would be able to meet and talk with us. These two fourteen-year-old boys have just started studying English this year but practice by watching English movies and were able to hold a long conversation with me about their ambitions (Hassan on the left wants to be a pilot) and places in Morocco they have visited and even answered my daughter's question about whether there are any lions in Morocco (they've been hunted out of existence).

March 25, 2012
March 22 was World Water Day and was celebrated in the schools by members of the non-profit Surfriders coming to the schools to speak about water conservation and the need to clean up beaches to protect wildlife. I met with Elsa from France who works with the main office here in Agadir with her Moroccan colleague Ali and we arranged to meet today to get information about her organization (started in 1984 by surfers in California to protect the surfing beaches but now all over the world by people of many different backgrounds, all working together to protect coastal environments). They had organized a beach clean up on the beach by my hotel for this afternoon, so I spent a few hours picking up trash and trying to convince local Moroccans why picking up the cigarette butts, plastic water bottles and caps, and food wrappers littering the beach might be worth their time. Many were more interested in their soccer games in the sand, but by the time I left, we'd picked up three big bags of trash with the help of many, including members of the local yachting club.

March 26, 2012
Today was our last day at Abdullah's school in Inezgane, and we had a particularly fruitful conversation with the last group we met with answering questions about the United States and our views of it and Morocco. Unfortunately we've only been able to meet with each of our cooperating teacher's classes once, so we haven't had much chance to get beyond introductions except with the group of drama students, many of whom we chatted with again today during a tree planting that Abdullah arranged at the last minute to commemorate our visit (he says he is immortalizing us here!). Students here are so anxious to be part of a world community and would love to have continuing contact with Americans, both to practice their English skills as well as to learn about worldviews beyond their own.

March 27, 2012
Abdullah had to travel 8+ hours to Rabat yesterday night to meet with the Canadian embassy this morning about a travel visa, so we had to make our own plans today. I chose to make a half-day excursion to nearby Soussa Massa National Park. Souss Masa is the name of this region, and this is Morocco's most important National Park, a huge breeding area for the bald ibis, flamingo, and other local endangered birds, where we saw glossy ibis feeding. We also stopped at caves carved out in cliffs where local sardine fishermen have set up crude abodes.

I saw men carting goods by camel, women riding donkeys piled high with mimosa for the floral market, nomadic herders with huge flocks of sheep and goats, and waves of plastic trash on otherwise beautiful beaches. For me it was a relief to get out of the city and see something of the arid Morocco I had imagined before I came. It's been a dry year - very little rain and severe worries for the crops this year. It seems like everyone's been having odd weather of late...

March 30, 2012
On the last evening, within twenty minutes of having to meet the group back at the van to go back to the hotel and pack our belongings for an early morning departure out of Rabat, who do I find calling my name from behind me in a narrow fabric shop in Rabat's medina but Zoe Jones, a 2009 CHRHS graduate and former student. Currently a junior at Mt. Holyoke College and on a study abroad program in Morocco, I learned she was living with a host family just steps away and had been studying the effects of migration with her program. That sums up this whole experience in a nutshell - it's a small world after all. Farewell Morocco.