Problem Solving

            At our most recent CLIMB meeting we posed the students problems in group problem solving, one of the most valuable skills to have when stranded at the top of a really tall mountain.  And, of course, in life.  Unsurprisingly, they approached the challenges with their usual gusto, though I thought that for once the results were not as stunning as they’ve been in the past.  Again, this isn’t surprising.  Moroccan schools do critically little to prepare their students to critically think, and that’s not being overly critical.

            Their first challenge was to hold a broomstick on their fingers and slowly lower it to the ground without any team member ever losing contact with the stick.  In groups of 3, 4, and 5 they nailed it on the first or second try each time, but when we tried to get the whole group in together at once it was the first time we gave them an activity that they could not do.  Invariably one person would go too fast, or another too slow and the group would fall apart.  A few students did try and step up to take a leadership role, but it never really worked out.  Next we made a serpentine path of cardboard boxes which they had to use as stepping stones to cross an area, but if any group member ever touched the ground they all had to start over, and if any of the stones was ever untouched we would remove it.  Again, they had a lot of trouble with the communication necessary to do this, though they did eventually pull it off.  Lastly we did an egg drop, and that did go very well.  It was surprising how much they enjoyed the egg drop, its something they never do in school here so it was totally fresh for them!  I’m not too concerned, despite the troubles in the lesson.  This weekend we have another hike coming up, but the next lesson after that is all about effective leadership, which, hopefully, will help them develop some of the skills they lacked in this last lesson.

            Frequent readers may remember that I used to work with a small group of young women studying at the Artisanal Cooperative in my town, and may even remember that I’ve been going a little bit stir crazy in the mornings since those classes had to end for them to take their examinations in traditional arts.  Well, unfortunately now that the examination period is over I still won’t be able to work with them, one is married (this happens really quickly here!) and moved, one went back to her outlying village, and one moved to a big city.  However, this week the older women of the cooperative asked if they could start having English lessons, so I’m back on to regularly scheduled morning classes.  It’s an interesting change of pace, teaching older adults.  These women actually got a higher than average level of schooling for women in their day.  Although I don’t think any of them completed high school they do all know both Arabic and Latin letters, which is not the norm for their generation.  That being said, I’m glad I’ve been studying my Arabic script.  Some of them only have a loose grasp of the Latin letters, and its helpful that I can write Arabic transcription to help them learn good pronunciation.  O.k, full disclosure, that last sentence was just to brag that I can transcribe English into Arabic letters, but hey, I’m pretty proud of that!

            One thing I’ve noticed, teaching them, is that while they all had some schooling the school system must have been even scarier then than it is now.  It certainly was all about repetition.  Just like with younger students, I’m trying to teach by making students think and figure things out for themselves, but some of these women have a much harder time with that.  I know these women really well, they were some of the first people I met in town, and its really surprising to see how shut down and nervous some of them get in class, because none of them are at all shy in outside life.  This is not universal though, and some others leap into the class with great enthusiasm.  My host mother in particular is extremely bight and active, in fact so far in every lesson she’s been the first to figure it out and then spends the rest of the lesson helping me teach the others.

            The reason we’ve started these lessons is in response to a former Peace Corps Volunteer’s solution to the problem of middlemen in Morocco.  Moroccan artisans often make very little many for their crafts because usually the artisan lives very far from the tourist cities, and so is forced to sell at a low price to a middleman who then fleeces tourists in Marrakech.  This former PCV decided that he would help the cooperative in his town by teaching them how to sell products through ETSY.  However, while this worked it was a huge challenge because the men in the woodcarving cooperative he worked with had little to no prior English and no Internet experience.  Also, ETSY doesn’t guarantee fair trade, and nothing stops middlemen from using it too.  Since finishing his service this volunteer has been working on a better solution, and he seems to have found it.  His new website, just launched, is called the Anou (Tamizight for water well), and it functions similarly to ETSY, but with Moroccan artisans in mind in its design.  Therefore, it requires no English from the sellers, who can navigate menus and even receive feedback from customers entirely through simple symbols, while also allowing them to present a variety of projects.  The women at my local cooperative are hoping to get on the site, and though we’ve explained they don’t need any English they know it can’t hurt, so they asked for some lessons—the plan is to quickly get them words for colors, materials, and the items they make so they have the vocabulary they need upfront, and then go back and catch up with some more grammar.

            O.k, just one last story to tell from this past week, but its quite the story.  On Wednesday night my class did not materialize (I discovered the next day that they had a huge math exam), so I was just killing time in the Dar Chabab with the few youth who were hanging out.  At one point after a few rounds of chess I walked into another room and found two students in a heated argument.  One of them turned to me and said, “hey, this guy,” indicating the other student, “doesn’t believe in God!”  The other immediately corrected him, saying he hadn’t said that.  Rather, he’d said that while he does believe he does this despite the fact that there is no objective proof one way or the other.  He went so far as to say that all religions’ claims to know God exclusively are equally valid, which is to say, not.  He then added, comically, that he swears by God all the time, so he must believe.  The other pointed out that people swear in God’s name all the time, and asked where he’d heard these ideas.  The agnostic responded that he’d read them, and before the other could jump down his throat he added that he’d read them in books by Moroccan and other Arabic writers, not foreigners.  His opponent preemptively apologized to me, and then said that these writers must be in the pay of the Americans or the French!  This is where I jumped in and said that I thought people could have different ideas from their countrymen without being agents of a foreign government, but he wasn’t convinced.  The argument petered out soon afterwards, but it was one of the most crazy moments I’ve had in my Dar Chabab.

            As always when my own stories end on too heavy a subject I’ll end with a Joha joke:

            Joha bought a large sack of potatoes at the market.  He put the sack over his shoulder, got on his donkey, and started riding home.  On the way, he met a friend who said, “Joha, isn’t it difficult to hold the sack with one hand, and guide your donkey with the other?  Why don’t you just tie the sack to the donkey?”

            “Oh friend,” said Joha, “my poor donkey has a heavy load just carrying me, so I am happy to carry the sack myself.”

Let It Shine

            In some ways the two weeks since my last post have raced by, in others the time pretty much stood still.  In some ways I had some really rewarding work, in others I felt like I wasn’t doing anything all that important and was missing my main purpose.  In other words, it was a normal two weeks.

            You may recall that as of the last post the English Language Spring Camp in my site had been cancelled so I was heading down to work at another in a city far to the south named Taroudant.  Taroudant is located in the Souss valley, a prosperous region famous for Argan trees and the oil which comes from them.  People use argan oil both for consumption and cosmetically and worldwide it only grows in a small part of Morocco, making it an extremely valuable export for that region.  While the argan crop, along with extensive citrus farming, has brought a lot of wealth to the region it has also brought a lot of problems.  Most female Peace Corps Volunteers find that the very worst harassment they experience is in the Souss.  This is largely because of the large migrant population of young men that comes to work on the farms.  These men, disconnected from the communities they live in and with no fear that word of their misdeeds will get back to their families, behave atrociously around young women, both Moroccan and foreign.  Despite this there is a preponderance of female volunteers in the region because in most of the region parents are so conservative that they won’t let their daughters attend the Dar Chebab if there is an American man working there.

            Taroudant, as a large city popular with both tourists and more permanent expatriates—including former French President Jacques Chirac—is itself immune to some of these problems, though by the standards of larger, touristy cities Taroudant and Agadir, the other large city in the region, are notable for harassment.  Nestled in a beautiful part of the valley just south of the High Atlas, the city’s stunning red walls have stood for almost a millennium, though apparently the surprisingly organized “old” city owes this organization to an 18^th century sultan who razed the city when it rose in rebellion against him.  The camp took place on the campus of one of the city’s large high schools, which conveniently had a dormitory attached for the students.

            Taroudant is about twelve hours south of me, and travelling down I stopped to spend the night in a friend’s site.  We were both invited to a party at the local high school for students in the ACCESS program, which she works with.  This was my first interaction with ACCESS, which does not have a branch in my town.  ACCESS is a program run by the American Embassy in association with the Moroccan Association of Teacher’s of English (MATE).  It allows promising young students extra opportunities to learn and practice English and to learn about American culture.  The students’ English abilities really shocked me; although my friend’s site is not much larger or wealthier than my own even the least advanced ACCESS students were miles ahead of the advanced students in my town.  Admittedly this is a special group singled out for their ability, but it was still shocking to see how valuable even a little extra emphasis on actually using English was for the students.

            The next day my friend and I travelled down to Taroudant, and in the course of travel we both get some very interesting phone calls.  Mine came first, actually just after we’d gotten back from the ACCESS party.  My mudir informed me that, by official order of the ministry, at the last minute our camp was back on.  I, of course, could not go back, as it was I was already half the way there, and while with me the Taroudant camp had a ratio of about 30 students to every one American the camp in my site only had 12 students total, something my counterpart could (and did) easily handle on his own.  My mudir, to his credit, was very understanding and did nothing to try and guilt me into coming back, though I still did feel a little guilty all through the camp.  My friend’s call came the next day, when we were literally minutes away from the city and her mudir informed her that there would be a camp in their site!  Now this was far more ridiculous than mine, because while my mudir and I had planned and then had to cancel a camp for lack of students, her mudir and she had never talked about having a camp in their site.  When I’d been in his office the day before I was introduced as “the other volunteer I’m travelling to Taroudant with.”  She even had her schedule hung up on his wall, saying she’d be gone for two weeks for the Taroudant camp.  Despite all this he expected her to drop everything and come back to work a camp starting the next day for which they had done zero preparation.  Needless to say she refused, and he then tried to get her in trouble with Peace Corps, who very nicely phoned her to inform her that they had informed her mudir he had no right to expect this last minute camp.

            These last minute, “let’s have a camp” decisions plagued Peace Corps Morocco this break.  Most times the interaction between the mudir and the volunteer fell somewhere in between my mudir’s, “ok, I messed up, see you in two weeks” response and my friend’s mudir’s angry response.  Regardless, I think it demonstrated a major problem in Moroccan planning.  A great number of mudirs—mine thankfully not among them—seemed to think it was possible to design an entire camp the day before it started and they hadn’t even bothered to inform their volunteers there would be a camp, even when the volunteers asked so that they’d know if they should stay in their sites or work at another camp.  The Peace Corps did a great job standing by volunteers in our efforts not to cave to ridiculous expectations, though of course in most cases we would have made a problem either way, had my friend and I returned to our sites the ministry’s darling Taroudant camp couldn’t have functioned.  Hopefully next year the ministry will remember this fiasco and try to work things out ahead of time.

            Once actually in Taroudant the camp went very well.  We had six Peace Corps Volunteers, one coordinating the camp and five to work at it along with a large and helpful Moroccan staff.  We volunteers were expected to run an English class everyday, run a “club,” and help the Moroccan staff with their activities, which ran around ours.  I taught the advanced class, which was far and away the most advanced group of students I’ve worked with in Morocco.  Many of them were part of the Taroudant ACCESS program, and one has even received a YES scholarship to study for a year in an American high school.  While she was easily the student with the best English I’ve worked with in country my most impressive student was actually a little boy, just 13 years old, who had much better English than pretty much any student I’ve worked with outside of this camp.  Students don’t usually start English until they’re 14 here, sometimes later.  His English was so good I suspected he must have lived abroad for a while, but when I asked him he told me no, it wasn’t that, he just watched a lot of American and English movies!  Another girl, just 15, said most of them had learned that way.  Our class was a discussion-based class focusing on good citizenship.  It was one of the most fun things I’ve had a chance to teach here.  They were a great group of students and it was a real pleasure working with them, though by the end of the camp they were all exhausted since I’m pretty sure not much sleeping took place in the student dorms.

            My club was less successful.  For the clubs we worked with a different group of students every day.  Mine was on environmental education, specifically repeating the first lesson of the CLIMB program using a game to teach environmental codependency and resource management.  Some days the group of students I got was really interested and we had a great session, but other days the students couldn’t have cared less about the environment.  In the Moroccan led activity time I usually helped out with the music club.  Three of the Moroccan counselors were professional musicians.  They taught the kids the basics of reading music, notes and rhythm and taught them a few songs including, oddly, “This Little Light of Mine” (hence my title).  These Moroccan activity times were my favorite part of the camp.  The Moroccan staff was extremely professional, friendly, and talented there, making a nice counterpoint from the ridiculous ministry battle we’d had in the days leading up to the camp.

            After the camp ended getting home was a challenge in itself.  We spent the day after camp in Agadir relaxing on the beach, but when we tried to leave the next day we discovered that the buses only leave from there very early in the morning or very late at night.  The next day we backtracked to Taroudant and left from there, but somehow the three hour trip to Marrakech ended up taking ten, so it was too late to get home then.  On the third day of travel I finally made it home, but even then there was a little bit of Peace Corps work.  After one stop the bus was overcrowded and I saw a woman with a young child standing, so I did what I thought was the only decent thing and gave her my seat.  She and the assistant driver had a quick discussion, wherein she argued I was very nice and he argued I was very crazy.  After awhile another seat opened up, but since this bus was constantly a little too full I found myself standing to give a seat to some woman or kid throughout most of the ride.  The assistant driver and I became good friends, after awhile he started calling me the assistant’s assistant and joked that I was doing pretty well, but it would take at least twenty days training to master the art of being an assistant driver.  The great success came later in the ride, when the bus was very crowded and two mothers with young children were standing.  I gave one my seat, and then a young Moroccan man a few seats up gave the other his seat.  I guess that makes me a chivalry development volunteer!

Differences, Digressions, and Dilemmas

           I’ve got a lot to report on from the last couple of weeks, unfortunately not sharing too much of a theme, other than that I can alliterate the topic headings.  My first interesting point comes from my intermediate class a couple of weeks ago.  I’d given them a class on good citizenship which had been alright but like all my attempts at discussion based classes in site never quite took off.  Students would talk back and forth with me, but I could not get them discussing with each other.  A local friend had sat in on the class, and while we were talking about it afterwards he suggested that I do a similar class based on how to be a good student; maybe that would inspire greater participation.

            To start the class I had the students work together to create a list of attributes of a good student.  They came up with 11, not counting a couple that were essentially repeats.  Most of them were what you’d expect from American students, “participatory, respectful, studious, etc.” though there were a couple of odd ones (humility?), so I decided to have them individually list them in order of importance.  Meanwhile I did the same thing.  Then we discussed what order they’d come up with vs. what I had, and it was extremely revealing.  Unanimously they picked “respectful to the teacher” as the number one attribute of a good student and they were unanimously shocked when I revealed it had come up as my 6^th.  They were equally shocked when their almost universally last placed “participate,” was my number one.  No wonder it seems like we’ve been working at cross-purposes for so long, we have been!

            After that we discussed the attributes of a good teacher, and again found a shocking difference.  They feel (maybe “felt” now) that a teacher’s job is to present information to the students, and were surprised and intrigued when I told them that in my view I’ll have failed my job if they don’t learn.  Questions, I had to emphasize, are not a sign of disrespect, implying that I haven’t presented information well, but rather allow me to make sure I do my job well and that they understand.  We’ll see if this actually ends up increasing participation, but it can’t hurt.

            Lastly I had them write down what they want to do with the class for the rest of the school year, and I was shocked to see all but one of them requested that we do more poetry.  I thought they hadn’t liked English poetry and that they thought it was too difficult, so I’d let the class drift away from it; it turns out its their favorite thing we’ve done!  Only a couple requested specific grammar points (which I will address), so the class acted as a nice confirmation that students really do appreciate this break from their normal schooling, even if they do find it challenging.

            Last week a couple of friends from home visited me so I got to play tour guide in Marrakech and Essaouira a little bit.  It was a great trip, and very relaxing, though as it turns out I wish they’d come a week later because, in normal Morocco fashion, my schedule has been terribly upended.  I was supposed to have an English Language Camp in my site over the students’ Spring Break, which starts next week, but once I came back from Marrakech I discovered that the camp had been cancelled.  Although I could justifiably stay and teach my normal classes I’ve noticed that over the breaks students rarely come to the Youth Center (many travel), and so I thought I would serve better working at another camp, which means I’ll have to travel again, coincidentally to a city south of Marrakech.  If I’d known I’d have to travel for camp I’d have tied my friend’s visit to the trip down and avoided back tracking, but such is the way of Peace Corps.  In the same period I also found out that I will be working at an AIDS awareness program in Essaouira during the annual Gnouwa music festival (something I really wanted to do), will be travelling to Rabat for a middle of service check-up, and will possibly have to travel for a meeting with Ministry of Youth and Sport officials in May, so suddenly I went from “not planning to leave site much until July” to “crisscrossing the country,” though I think I’ve worked it out such that in all this I will only miss two meetings of my C.L.I.M.B. project, and I am more than confident in my counterparts ability to run those two sessions without me.

            Speaking of C.L.I.M.B, we had our second hike this past weekend (clunky transition, but what can you do).  Frequent readers may recall the ruins of Zaouia which I visited in December.  This time we took the campers out there, but then continued on to a small village further in the valley, and then returned the long way by circling a mountain.  Somewhat amusingly two other student groups had decided to take hikes out to Zaouia as well, so when we got there the ruins were overloaded with Moroccan students playing drums and soccer.  They all seemed a little confused that we’d want to go further.

            The hike went very well, though unfortunately it was a little less strenuous then I’d thought it would be so it didn’t allow for the same opportunities of group work that the first had.  My counterparts assure me the next will challenge us more.  It was fun to see how much my students have gelled, and, since some brought their hand drums, to see them dance and sing together during our rests.

            So, I’ve discussed differences and digressions, now on to the dilemma, and that is, as always, the limits of shared language I have with students.  There is a group of boys in town with weak English and radical ideas, and I want to talk with them so that they may channel their thoughts into useful ways.  The other night these boys talked with me about their interest and respect for Marx and Mao, whose ideas they largely conflate one with the other.  The conversation ranged and the boys namedropped other famous names, but I don’t think their understanding of these others really improved on their understanding of Marx and Mao.  I understand where they’re coming from, these same ideas enticed millions of disaffected young men in Europe and China over the last century, but I don’t think they really understand the disastrous consequences that followed Marxist and Maoist thinking.  Here, of course, we come full circle to the problem of the different conceptions of a teacher’s role.  They’ve had information presented to them, but haven’t received training in critical thinking to analyze the information.  Left in the ether for them to pick up they, like millions before them, focus only on the pretty ideals of Marxism and Maoism and not on what actually happened, and pretty much is guaranteed to happen, in countries which adopt these ideals.  I’d like to teach them about more positive thinkers and world shakers, but I worry about how I could possibly bend our seven-years olds’ understanding of each other’s language into such heady topics in such a way that I’m not guilty of the same problem of leaving information out in the ether without a context to really analyze it in.  Suggestions are, as always, welcome.

            I think I must leave you all with a Joha joke after all that, if I keep ending on downers like I have for the last few posts no one will want to read anymore!

            One day Joha was riding through the village backward on his donkey.  One of the amused villagers came up to Joha, “You know, Joha, you are facing the wrong way.”

            “No, my friend,” said Joha.  “The donkey is going the wrong way.”