Delving Deeper, or Battles with the Beast of Byzantine Bureaucracy

            Let’s be honest, show of hands if anyone is really surprised that I eventually used both the verb “delving” and comic amounts of alliteration in a post title.  Keep your hands up if the bigger surprise is that it took this long.  One thing I notice while talking to my American friends in the Peace Corps, we all feel the need to use extremely precise, multisyllabic words and complex constructions to express even more precise and complex ideas whenever we get a chance.  It’s a break from our daily lives, when the best we can express is “Yes, that thing is very good,” or “No, I disagree, it is bad.”  The other night a group of older men and I were sitting around a couple of pots of tea and they asked me to give a brief history of race relations in America.  While I think I did a passably good job considering the Arabic of it all it’s still hard knowing that I have to leave so much unsaid because I simply can’t say it.

            That conversation was one of the widest ranging I’ve ever had, in any language, which makes it a great model for how conversations here range from topic to topic so quickly.  We talked about everything from the weather, to race relations in America, to the genesis of the atom bomb, to Hitler’s rise to power, to eugenics and the Holocaust, to Moroccan traditions around changing names (you’re supposed to slaughter an animal when you change your name, we decided that all the cockroaches I’ve had to kill since moving here count so that I can be called Younis), to immigration, to pranks they pulled in middle school.  It was a difficult, though rewarding, conversation.  The number of half-truths and mistakes Moroccan’s learn in school and from the media is truly terrifying.  They’d never heard of Oppenheimer and thought Einstein himself had single-handedly built the bomb (instead of campaigning for it never to be built and regretting the use of his research to create weapons of mass destruction), they thought Hitler’s success came solely from his oratory and were unaware of the Great Depression, war reparations, and everything else that left the German public desperate for an economic cure-all, one was a Holocaust denier and the rest had no idea of it’s extent.  They even told me not to be so hard on America’s racist past, because while racism is bad “it is also natural.”

These kinds of misconceptions are not limited to the older generation; later that same night I had to explain to a young man that, despite what he has heard otherwise, the creation of the state of Israel was not the direct result of a centuries old Zionist plot and that the West is not secretly run by an international Jewish cabal.  He eventually accepted my version of events, but only because in my story no one group looked all good or all bad.  That, he thought, sounded more real.  To be fair, we hear these kinds of crackpot ideas in America too.  The difference is that there they are not the only story we hear, so we can recognize them as crazy, and not majority opinion.  Of course, that is part of the reason I’m here, to help promote active citizenship and teach how to sift good information from bad and create an informed decision.  The challenge sometimes is finding the good information to show them, because telling them to take it at face value from me doesn’t teach them anything.  I want my students to question authority, not replace one for another.

Speaking of students (note my attempt to make this less than a complete non sequitur), I’ve started the process of gathering student interests and schedules so that I can make a schedule for myself.  The process has taught me a lot about Moroccan conceptions of professionalism, planning, and how to work with children.  It has also reaffirmed for me why I’m here (having a lot of that these days), in part to show alternate conceptions and ways of working.  The process started with making an interest survey to bring to the school and see what students want and when they are available.  My mudir (director) was a little confused at first (“We have no students at Dar Chebab yet, after L-eid (a holiday coming up) they will start coming, wait until then to make your survey.”), but quickly got onboard (“Oh, I see, this isn’t for students already at the Dar Chebab, this will attract more here.  It is a good plan.”).  I wrote the survey, had it translated into Arabic (a long process because some things, like, say, “Movie Night,” don’t translate sensibly), and had a fierce battle with my tutor to keep him from turning it into a work of text art.  Moroccans and Americans have different opinions on what a professional document looks like. 

I took it to the school and met the assistant mudir.  Thankfully my tutor was with me.  The man refused to believe that I speak Moroccan Arabic rather than standard, and I could only understand every few words he said.  When we finally understood one another he thought it was a brilliant way to actually get the students to go to the Dar Chebab.  Unfortunately he could not take me to the classes, only the mudir could do that, and he wouldn’t be back until the next day (don’t worry, there will be much more red tape).  We set up a time I’d return later that day to meet the English teachers when they were all out of class. 

Leaving, I ran into the mudir of the Dar Taliba (a boarding house for female students who come in from the small villages (duwar) around town to go to school), and we scheduled a meeting for later so we could talk about working with his students.  At first he was completely opposed to them going to the Dar Chebab, and I would have to give classes at his institution too.  He is charged with the girl’s safety, and even though the Dar Chebab is literally a thirty second walk away when it’s reputations you’re protecting any time alone outside at night is a danger.  We eventually reached a compromise where I will teach some beginner classes at the Dar Taliba at times when the Dar Chebab is closed, but intermediate and advanced students, who will participate in discussion based classes, and students who want to participate in clubs have to come to the Dar Chebab.  They will get there safely because I will walk them to and from classes and clubs.  This led me to decide that I will also offer to walk any students who want me to home after the Dar Chebab closes every day, thereby removing a possible parental objection.  Red tape cut.

Later that day the assistant mudir at the school had left without telling anyone about our plan, but it was wakha (alright) because the mudir was back.  He took me to meet one of the English teachers, interrupting her class (of course I didn’t have my surveys on me because I’d been told she would be out of class).  I got a chance to meet some students, most of whom recognized me as either that American who taught in the Dar Chebab over the summer or that American who played guitar in the park over Ramadan.  We planned that I’d come again the next day, once in the morning to meet another teacher and his class, again in the afternoon to visit another of this teacher’s classes.

The next day the mudir wasn’t in in the morning because, it turns out, he is out every morning for a meeting in the regional capital.  Needless to say he hadn’t told anyone I’d be coming, so I had to leave empty handed again.  For our afternoon meeting he again wasn’t there, but, wisely, the teacher the day before had told me she’d be in another room.  I asked a loitering student where room 15 was, snuck around campus security, and got a classroom full of information and excited students.  I snuck back again an hour later for another class.  By then the mudir had finally shown up, so we planned that I’d come back early the next morning (before his daily meeting) to give the surveys to some younger students.

That night (Wednesday) I had the conversations I talked about above and got a text from the Peace Corps telling me we were having a practice consolidation (for if there’s an emergency) the next day and to make my way there early before continuing on to my regional meeting in Fes (I’ll talk more about this below).  Because of a nationwide bus strike last week I would have to do all this travelling by grand taxi, so I went to the mudir early, apologized, and we agreed I’d come back on Monday early to finish my surveys.  Of course, the mudir never checked the schedule, showing up early on Monday I discovered that there was no younger students’ class, I would have to come back Tuesday.

Luckily I ran into the younger students’ teacher that night, so he was forewarned, and when the mudir once again wasn’t there I was able to convince the assistant mudir (who I hadn’t seen since that first day) that I’d talked about it with all relevant parties and he walked me to my last class for collecting data.  Let the translation and scheduling process begin.

I tell you all of this in excruciating detail because I think it illustrates a lot of important points about the Moroccan school system.  First of all, the haphazard nature of everything, most of my successful visits to the school came out of complete luck.  Meeting the mudir of the Dar Taliba was a matter of complete chance.  Apparently he’d wanted to talk to me about this for over a month, but since he never talked to my supervisor at the Dar Chebab, or my host mother, who introduced us and works with him because some of his charges go to her artisana, I never knew.  He just waited until we bumped into one another.  Meetings never started on time, people only rarely mentioned prior obligations, they didn’t even consult the schedules that they have written down to see when and if teachers would be in at particular times.  I also learned why no one could ever tell me a consistent schedule for when students are and aren’t in class.  It was because there isn’t one.  Individual students’ schedules, and their teachers, change dramatically every day and they only meet for two or three hours in each subject a week, rarely on consecutive days.  This increases to just four hours for Bacc students focusing on a particular topic, and then only in that topic.  Between classes students go back and fourth to their homes, which is why there always seem to be so many kids around even in the middle of the day.  With so many holes in their schedule students need a six-day school week, and are often in class when the Dar Chebab is open since school stays in so much later.  I think this is both a symptom and the root cause of the same problem of lack of organization.  Students in the America learn about organization and scheduling through the strict regimen of their school schedules.  Without those early lessons it is impossible to expect people to suddenly become organized adults, able to keep to a timetable.  I’ve decided after all this that I’m going to be a stickler for showing up on time to my activities at the Dar Chebab.  It may appear harsh and culturally insensative at first, but I think in many ways teaching the need to respect other people’s time will be more valuable than any lessons I can teach in the classes themselves.

I wish I could say that this light comedy was the only battle I had with Moroccan bureaucracy this week, but my regional meeting in Fes was a much darker encounter.  The wizarat dyal chebab u riada (ministry of youth and sport) planned this meeting so that volunteers and their supervisors could better understand each other’s roles and the role that the ministry plays.  The ministry official came almost an hour and a half late.  Once he arrived, we were informed each Dar Chebab gets three thousand dirham a year to cover costs.  While this is not very much it goes a long way in Morocco.  However, most Dar Chebab’s in rural areas never see it.  Various corrupt officials take it along the way.  My mudir, along with many others, only ends up able to use about forty of our mystical three thousand dirham.  That’s a little bit less than five dollars.  Even here it doesn’t go that far.  This corruption is not some secret.  At an institutional level it’s just not a priority to weed it out.  Good, hard-working officials, like my mudir, who has to work two jobs to make ends meet, have to work twice as hard at any job because more people ask them for help while they have less resources available.   After getting a first hand view into ministry's lack of interest in its own internal problem, small scheduling issues at the school didn’t seem so bad.

Alright, sorry I had to subject you guys to all that, but to understand both this country and my work in it it’s very important that you see all facets of it.  To make up for it I’ll leave you with one funny, but sad, story from my town, two awesome stories of fantastic Moroccans I met in Fes this trip, a terrifying, but interesting, story, and a Joha joke.

In my town, I’ve taken to going to a café some mornings, sitting down, and very publically reading or lesson planning.  This serves the dual purpose of getting me away from the screaming toddlers outside my window and showing people in my town what a public intellectual life looks like.  Basically, I’m trying to turn myself into a live-action “It’s Cool to Read” poster for kids walking by.  One day one of my students from the summer, a young woman, saw me, came up, and asked me when classes were starting up again.  We chatted for a minute or two and then she left.  I thought nothing of it until a few minutes later the waiter sat next to me, winked, and asked why it had taken me so long to get a Moroccan girlfriend (she’s 21, so it wasn’t such a creepy question).  I explained that she was just my student and wanted to know when we’d have class again, but he kept giving me these sly looks, as if we were sharing a deeper secret.  Ironically, at the time I was reading Fatima Mernissi’s Women’s Rebellion and Islamic Memory, a book by a Moroccan feminist in part about how women in Muslim countries are often conceived of as no more than sexual objects and how that leads to stagnation.  Theory and practice both stared me down at once.

As a side note, I highly recommend Mernissi to anyone even remotely interested in women’s issues in the Arab world.  Women’s Rebellion is a little out of date since it was written right after the first gulf war, but still incredibly informative.  In it she explores how women in Islam were portrayed in the time of the Prophet, under the Abbasid Caliphate, and in the modern day and how these changing conceptions are tied with how the ruling class treated all its people.  Her masterwork is called Beyond the Veil, which I haven’t read yet but intend to as soon as a copy gets back to the Peace Corps library.

After we were done with the meeting in Fes, a few of us went to explore a bit around the old medina.  While stumbling around marginally lost we passed by a store with fantastic looking rugs and blankets inside.  The shopkeeper invited us in, reminding us that there was nothing to lose just looking around.  We came in, speaking with him in Darija despite his fantastic English, so he offered us tea.  While it was brewing he showed us the loom in the back of the shop, and the ways in which it was set to make various different weaves of carpets.  When the tea was ready we sat around drinking and chatting in a Darija-English patois, and he started showing us some of the nicest rugs in the shop and telling us where in Morocco each came from.  As he saw our interest perk from the surprisingly low prices he slowly started to show us more and more affordable rugs and camel wool blankets made right there in his shop.  As we started to comment on how nice and reasonably priced his goods were he casually mentioned that if we bought a bunch together he could give a package deal.  Hook.  Line.  Sinker. 

Between five of the group we ended up buying seven rugs and blankets, though I didn’t get any since I had very little cash on hand (I intend on going back next week with my parents though, he even gave me his number if I have trouble finding him again).  He was very touched that we helped fold up all the extra rugs he’d shown us, and gave the best deals I’ve heard of here.  Then when one of us mentioned she wanted to buy some leather goods he handed the shop over to one of his friends and walked us over to a wholesaler that other leather shops buy from, so we could get better deals.  After closing his shop he came back to the wholesaler and helped us bargain the prices even lower.  Then, since it was getting dark and we had to get to dinner, he showed us the way out and helped us catch some cabs.  Another one of those experiences where we met a genuinely friendly shopkeeper who he seemed to legitimately want nothing more than to sit and chat over tea.  We joked with him as we were leaving that he’d lied, it turned out we did have dirhams to lose.  He smiled and said we had carpets, and stories, and a new friend instead.

The next morning some of us went out to breakfast before heading back to our sites.  While looking for a place to eat we heard chanting outside of a government building (for the ministry of urbanization) and two of us, displaying more curiosity than good sense, went to investigate.  Since we had no idea what was going on we kept our distance from the small crowd and looked for someone who seemed uninvolved to ask about it.  All of a sudden the chanting changed to screaming and the whole crowd started to charge in all directions, looking terrified.  As the other volunteer and I strolled away (we were far enough not to need to run) I looked back and saw the police beating one of the protesters.  The other volunteers had walked away from the running crowd too, so we walked back into the place Peace Corps was putting us up and then out a door on another street.  We never found out what the protest was about, but when we had to walk by that area again to leave a few hours later we saw tons of policemen milling around.

Waiting for the taxi to go home I struck up a conversation with some of the taxi drivers.  It started with the standard questions about me and why I’m here, but soon the conversation turned towards the works of God in the world and the people of the Book (Jews and Christians, followers of the other religions that share a god with Islam).  One of the taxi drivers argued that in terms of what’s most important they agree, that people should love and worship the one God, details of what made the religions different were unimportant to him, they all come from God through Abraham.  It was an interesting discussion, though he soon found himself in an argument with a Koranic literalist who took offense with him.  Eventually the literalist left, though his parting shot (which didn’t help his argument at all) was that the Torah and the Koran start the same way, “In the Name of God, the Merciful, the Compassionate…” I decided not to correct him.  The Universalist taxi driver talked long and eloquently about how the world and the word came from God, though he would stop on occasion to remind me that he was a taxi driver, not a teacher, and this was not his area of expertise.  At this point I’m used to God making His way into casual conversation so easily, but even still it was quite the experience.  I spent the ride home confused but happy to have heard the compassionate taxi driver theology.

Joha had lost his donkey.  While he was looking for it he kept repeating, "Thank you, God."

"Joha, why are you thanking God all the time?” people asked.

"I am grateful that I was not on the donkey.  Otherwise I would be lost too," he answered.

Oh, and by the way, look how professional I am, in French and Arabic!  And yes, for those of you able to read Arabic, transcribed my first name does indeed read as "The Fred."