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.”