Breaking the Silence

            Despite a disappointment at the end of the week, last week is easily a contender for “Best Week of My Service.” Starting last Sunday, everything just seemed to be going right, I had a great time at a student’s family’s farm, I had some good and productive meetings with counterparts, another great lunch at the Khenifra volunteers’ host family, two great classes with my sophomores, where they wrote their own English plays, a great discussion with my juniors, all the other classes running very smoothly, and weather finally getting warm and sunny enough to spend a lot of time playing Frisbee with various age groups in the park. The capstone to the week was going to be two events on Friday and Saturday, one for boys and one for girls, where we would show the film Breaking the Silence: Moroccans Speak Out about Sexual Harassment.

            I hinted that we were planning this activity a couple of posts ago, but now I’ll go more in depth. Breaking the Silence is a documentary produced by Girls Global Media (an NGO you can read about here). In it a group of young and older women, young men, the former Minister of Women, and various others talk about their experiences with sexual harassment and an exploration of the issue in Morocco. You can watch it with English subtitles here. To prepare for the activity I found four counterparts (my mudir, one of my former CLIMB counterparts, a popular local teacher, and one of the workers at the Girls’ Dormitory), who all watched the documentary, and then we prepared some activities and discussions to follow up the showing. To me this was an extremely interesting part. The two male counterparts hadn’t heard these kinds of stories before because it is often very hard for women and men to talk about these topics together here. The two women, both of whom I’ve known for a long time, talked a little about their own experiences with harassment. We decided to divide the two events because we worried that the girls wouldn’t want to discuss things as openly with boys around, even the male counterparts and I wouldn’t be present for their event (and vice versa for the boys).

            On Friday, the day of the girls’ event, we had a major setback, when both my female counterparts became indisposed. We had around 70 girls show up, and it was really disheartening for me to have to tell them we needed to reschedule. However, we’d already planned an extra day for girls who couldn’t make Friday on the following Tuesday, and most of the girls said they would come to that instead. On Saturday we had the boys’ event, which faced its own problems when the ministry closed down the Dar Chabab for repairs over the objections of my mudir and me (why they couldn’t wait three days is still beyond me, especially since they’ve been talking about these repairs for the last year). Despite the inconvenience we were able to move the event at the last minute, and about 15 boys and young men showed up.

            Watching the discussion was fascinating. My counterparts conducted it entirely in Arabic, and at times it got very heated, so I wasn’t able to follow everything. Many of the boys came in at first on the defensive; there was a troubling amount of talk about how girls should watch what they wear. However, a few of the boys disagreed, and after an impassioned speech by my mudir (who has one teenaged daughter, one almost teenaged daughter, and a third much younger daughter) many of the boys changed their tune. One even made the important point that they (the boys) would probably find it incredibly frustrating if they couldn’t wear tight shirts or shorts without comment. Empathy is a wonderful thing. The boys were also very interested in finding where the line is between flirting and sexual harassment. One tried out the theory that many things are harassment if directed towards people you don’t know, but are fine with friends. While that is true to a point, the boys saw its weakness when my counterpart said, “Ted is my friend,” and then grabbed at my knee. “He didn’t want me to do that. Harassment.” Funny, and they got the important point. Some complained that we hadn’t done the events together, it is important that the sexes talk together about this. While we all agreed, we explained to them that we’d separated the events to make sure the girls felt comfortable the first time broaching this topic, and most of them seemed to understand that. We talked about the causes of sexual harassment, how many boys do it more out of boredom than anything else, and ways to confront that. They also talked for a while about differing moral and cultural norms regarding sexual freedom in the West and Islamic countries, which of course led to talk about differing interpretations of Islam and someone can still be Muslim by their own definition even if they are not in someone else’s. In the end, I think the boys found this a very important discussion. Many thanked us for showing the video afterwards, and want us to do follow up work, and say they’ll encourage their friends to come to future showings of the video.

            So, this was a very good week where I got to feel like I was doing some important work. Looking forward to the girls’ activity this week, and to working with these counterparts to talk more with the kids about gender issues in our town!

Students on the March

            Last week, a series of student protests across the country nudged Morocco. The impetus for these protests was a new online grading system from the Ministry of Education. In this system, as I understood it, teachers will enter test grades directly into the program, which will then compile student grades. Many students (and, indeed, many teachers) were bothered that this leaves no place for intangibles like student participation and behavior. Additionally, since this service was online and accessed by password many students were worried that their parents would have access to their grades.

            You’ll notice there were two extremely dissimilar elements to the protest against this online system. On the one hand, there were students arguing that their grade should be based on more than just a flawed testing system, on the other, there were students arguing that parents shouldn’t have access to their students’ grades. This, of course, widened the popularity of the protest, as both slackers and high achievers had something to complain about. Actually, having talked with some other volunteers about the protests in their towns, I found that different protests emphasized different things. I didn’t hear too much complaining about parental access (admittedly the kids I talked to are my regular students, all of whom are obviously taking extra English hours with me, so they are high achievers who probably don’t have too much to hide), but heard a lot about the terrible new grading system, but other groups apparently had different emphases. One volunteer said so far as her town was concerned it was a protest of slackers. They actually didn’t want to see participation and behavior added back in! In my town I did see a number of the slackers participating, but I also saw many of the hardest working kids.

            Many places also added additional complaints to the general protest. This is where I thought my kids made their strongest appeals. My kids wanted to see the leaky roofs to their classrooms fixed. They wanted to see the bathroom at their school repaired. They wanted more and better trained teachers hired. They wanted attendance to be made mandatory so that richer students couldn’t just study with private tutors then come in and ace tests (I didn’t know that was a thing until they told me about it). They also waxed a little into conspiracy theory territory; one group said they feared that hackers would break into the website and change grades.

            Although they didn’t attend school for most of the week, from what I saw students kept peaceful and organized. My regulars still kept coming to my classes, so they didn’t make it a holiday. One of the days they tried to march to the provincial capitol, but were escorted back by the gendarmerie a few miles out of town. A different day (the first) I was in the Khenifra on a failed attempt to visit the local offices of the Education Ministry. Although there was a huge crowd of protesters outside the office they left room for pedestrians to get by about their business. It was the gendarmes guarding the door, rather than the students, who prevented my meeting.

            From what I’ve heard the protests didn’t change much. Our regional deputy of the minister did come to town to talk with my students, but it seems the protests died across the country without much change. As a mass the protests didn’t have much effect probably because of their diffuse (and sometimes contrary) messages and the fact that many of the students have much more invested in getting back to class than their administrators do. However, I thought it showed great gumption and national level awareness from so many high school students to organize this series of protests, and evidences an interest in taking control of and reforming their education to suit their needs. As one of the protesting students said to me, Morocco’s youth have many great abilities and talents, and they’re just aching for the opportunity to use them.

Attempts at Redemption

            This is a hard post to write. Morocco has a serious issue with the behavior of its men and boys. While I’ve written before about sexual harassment and gender inequality and their effects on the country’s young men and women, in this post I want to explore this issue from another angle, the standard cultural response to people who cause problems.

            Before I start I need to say two things. Firstly, while this is a major issue I don’t want to leave the impression that this applies to all, or even a majority, of the country’s men and boys. It is a hugely prevalent issue, and one all us volunteers face, but we have allies among the men here. Secondly, just to be clear, I’m not using “culture” as a euphemism for “Islam.” While I’ve heard plenty of “Islamic” justifications for the separation of the sexes (and that ever awful response to sexual harassment, blaming the girl since she was dressed “immodestly, i.e. without a headscarf, i.e. without something that is never specifically encouraged in the Quran), those same people turn right around and make “Islamic” arguments about why boys shouldn’t harass women or be brats. I’ve also heard Islamic arguments saying the exact opposite. An American Muslim friend of mine recently posted a reminder on Facebook, that the prophet Mohammed cooked, cleaned, and took out the trash, so using Islam as a justification for treating women as household slaves is just wrong. The issue is cultural, and while it is a problem across the Islamic world, Islam is not the problem. What preachers need to do is make it part of the solution.

Moving to the issue at hand, I’ve time and time again heard people who act badly described as crazy, or as a brat, or a bully. The crux of it is that they don’t try to deal with the behavioral problem, they explain it away, and they don’t confront the person. I might be over analyzing, but I think this is a direct result of my hobbyhorse pet peeve, corporal punishment of children. Since beating is the most common form of discipline, boys never get used to feeling shame as a punishment. As such, they never learn how to cope with being shamed, and get very upset, sometimes even violent, if you shame them as an adult. When adult men behave badly then you can either try to shame them, which might end in a shouting match or even a fight, or you can go to the old standby and just hit them, which ends in a fight. No one wants to end up in a fight over something stupid, so men and boys who misbehave get away with acting terribly, and get used to it. As such a large group of “men” never really become adults; they’re just larger boys.

I have friends and counterparts who recommend that I buy into this element of the culture, and try to work sideways around intransigent and awful people, the way they do. The good Moroccan men have a knack for getting what they need from the bad ones, without ever calling them out or shaming them in any way. I haven’t learned this tactful skill. I think that not calling people out for their misbehavior creates a culture where they feel comfortable to misbehave. Acting like everything’s fine when it isn’t is a piece of Moroccan theatrics I won’t hold to. As a PCV I’m expected to adopt my host country’s culture as much as possible, but this is a place, as with child beating, that I draw my line.

In site, I’ve tried to deal with misbehaving boys in any number of ways that don’t involve beating. Some I’ve reformed by dangling something ahead of them (you can’t join class today, but if you behave you can come tomorrow). Some I’ve dealt with by giving them trust (you weren’t behaving well, but I’ll trust you’ll do better now). With those boys it can be wonders to give them responsibility (alright, I’m going to teach these girls how to throw the Frisbee, can you work with the younger boys?). Some I just have to punish (you’re not welcome in the Dar Chabab this week). A couple I’ve gone to their parents’ house with them, and then at the last moment seemed to give in to their pleas not to report on them (of course I’m never actually going to tell on them, child beating parents are the problem, but this bit of psychological warfare works occasionally). Some, despite all my methods, just will not improve, and they’ve frustrated me a lot lately.

The impetus for this post was my class the other day where that group of boys kept throwing rocks and dirt clods at the window and through the door of the classroom (again showing how awesome the girls are as they stuck at it despite the problems). The impetus for this post was the other week when walking the girls to my classroom those boys started hooting and hollering at them. I wasn’t paying attention to what they were saying, but one girl responded with a loud and clear “go **** yourselves” in Arabic. The impetus for this post was when they learned “**** you” in English and chanted it after me everywhere I go.

The only way Morocco is going to deal with the problem that is its men is if it confronts the problem head on. Letting bad behavior slide by and maintaining the status quo are easy, but it means almost half of Morocco’s work force will be disempowered while a huge chunk of the other half is incompetent with a superiority complex. I’m approaching the last few months of my service, and to wrap it up I think I can do no better thing than working in this troubling and difficult area. I’m confident enough in my integration that my mudir and I are planning an event to get people talking about the problem of sexual harassment in our town (with a cool resource that I’ll write about when we use it, stay tuned!). At the next school break I’ll be helping another volunteer with his plan to run a camp where boys think about the gender divide in a serious way, while also learning the skills to be functional adults. Lastly, I’m going to keep plugging away with those worst boys, because as this last week proved they aren’t irredeemable, and maybe in these last few months I can reach one or two more of them. Wouldn’t that be something?

Addendum: I can’t even comprehend how much better this last week has been. Additionally, my classes are have gotten back up to their usual numbers, so all kinds of positive motion in the latter part of this week. So I’ll end with a Joha story. This one I actually learned last summer when an older kid presented it as an English play (written by his teacher) at the Khenifra summer camp. Some of my students had just studied food and ordering at a restaurant, so I rewrote a simpler version of the play for them to put on in class. Apparently it’s a classic, because they all recognized it early on. Here is a non-dramatized version of the story:

One day, Joha went to a restaurant. He ordered himself a big meal, with roasted chicken, and rice, and all sorts of treats. At the last moment he asked for some soup. After bringing Joha the food the host went to relax, when suddenly Joha started to shout. “Ugh, what is this?!? This is disgusting!”

The host approached and asked what was wrong.

“There is a bug in my soup!” cried Joha. The host apologized and gave him the meal for free. Joha smiled and thanked the host, but while the host wasn’t looking Joha took the bug out of the soup.

Later, Joha ran into a friend. Joha asked him, “Do you want to eat a large, delicious meal for free?”

“Yes,” said the friend, so Joha brought him close and told him what to do. The friend went to the restaurant, but when he ordered his meal he was told there was no soup.

“Where can I put this bug then?” asked the friend, taking out the insect Joha had given him.

“So it was you!” cried the host, who chased Joha’s friend from the restaurant.

A Summary

            As I’m sure most of my readership knows, I spent the last three weeks (ish) in America visiting family and friends for the holidays. As such, there isn’t too much to write about it terms of my experiences in Morocco. However, I do want to share a couple of anecdotes from before I left and talk about a couple of interesting Morocco and Peace Corps related observations I made while at home.

            Firstly, the week before I left I went to nearby town at a history teacher’s invitation to talk with his students about Moroccan-American relations in terms of the Peace Corps. It was a fun, and I think the students (and the teacher) liked the approach I took, asking students to think of why America might have started the Peace Corps in the 60s, why we continue it now, ect... At the end of the day, though, the students wondered why there isn’t a volunteer in their town, something I couldn’t answer until I discovered that although they had a Dar Chabab built two years ago it has never been opened because there is no mudir. Waste and inertia strike again.

            A few days later I left town, but on my way to Casablanca I stopped at a friend’s site since she and I had discovered we’d accidentally booked the same flight to America and wanted to travel together. Another American development organization (whose name eludes me) had just built toilets at an elementary school in one of the villages outside her town. She had done the same last year, so they asked her to help run a health fair for the students to inaugurate the new toilets. A few other nearby volunteers, she, and I each developed lesson plans for the health fair, but in a neat twist we each partnered with some of her high school students who helped teach the lesson. I was very impressed with the volunteer I worked with, whose English was very strong, and who quickly understood how I liked to teach and actually had taken over the entire delivery of the lesson by the time the last group of students reached us. All of my friend’s students seemed to have similar levels of drive.

            The next day we journeyed out to the coast, visiting the much-storied Casablanca. Even just typing the name gives a sense of romance and mystique, which the city does not deliver on. Not to say I dislike Casablanca, I very much enjoyed the burger joint we went to, just that burger joint would have fit in perfectly in the Lower East Side, which isn’t quite the romantic French colonial capitol in the Muslim world one pictures. That being said, we made our usual hit as Arabic speaking Americans—except in the burger joint, where even all the Moroccans spoke French. Also of note, tons of taxi drivers tried to cheat us, but when we finally found one who would run the meter he turned out to be from the town I’d given the history lesson in earlier in the week. Small world!

            Back in America I talked with a lot of people about life in Morocco in the Peace Corps. Conversations ranged from people who wanted to know more about the hardship of living in a semi-developed country to those who wanted to learn about culture, to those who just wanted details on what exactly I do (besides blog and drink tea). I found it was sometimes hard to explain things about Morocco to people who haven’t lived there for a long time. To be honest, now that I’m writing it, I’m having a hard time explaining what was hard to explain. I hear this is a common problem for returned Peace Corps Volunteers. We see the issues our host country faces, and we want to be honest about them, but at the same time we love the country and don’t want to sell it short when giving a quick talk about it. Maybe I shouldn’t generalize that feeling to all PCVs, but therein lies the problem, knowing when to generalize and when to talk about the nuance that does pervade our host countries. I guess most people would have just as much trouble summarizing the last two years of their lives, they’re just not asked to as often.

            I’m going to wear off that confusing headwind for now and end by saying that I’m safely back in site and was excited to find my students were excited to start back up again. In the past I found it always took awhile to get started again after I’d been away, but this time we jumped right into it. Looking forward to an exciting and fulfilling four months!

A Touristic Interlude

            Last Sunday I went to Meknes for the first time. Meknes was a capitol of the country in the days of the powerful Moulay Ismail, a contemporary of Louis XIV, who tried, unsuccessfully, to become the Sun King’s son-in-law. Now Meknes is one of the least visited of Morocco’s popular destinations, but somehow even though it is only three hours by bus from my town I’d never visited it. Faced with a free Sunday and some Christmas shopping to do I thought I would spend a day exploring.

            Upon arriving it became apparent why tourists skip Meknes in favor of Marrakech and Fes. The old medina, while antedating America’s Founding Fathers, is a young cousin to Fes and does not hold the same medieval charm. Marrakech has easy access to the High Atlas, the desert, and Essaouira, while northern charms like Rabat, the Middle Atlas, Chefchouen and Volubilis are just as easily accessed from Fes. All this means that the Meknes medina hasn’t become overrun with shops and restaurants catering to tourists, which is exactly what I loved about it, though it made the Christmas shopping harder than I thought it would be. More than a major city, Meknes’s old city reminded me of a larger version of nearby Khenifra, a historic center still frequented by locals.

            Since people trying to make their living off tourists weren’t trying to overwhelm me I had much more of an opportunity to talk with people then I normally get in tourist centers. After making my compulsory stops at an excellent artisanal crafts museum, Moulay Ismail’s triumphal gate (Bab Al Mansour, the Door of the Victorious), his tomb, and his cistern I took the long walk out to his granaries (makhzen). These makhzen are interesting because Ismail’s closest retainers became so closely associated with them that the term Makhzen is still used to talk about the powerful and influential in Moroccan society. They are intermittently lit, and while inside them a tour guide addressed me in French. When I asked what he’d said in Arabic he replied, “Oh, you’re a Moroccan. The water wheel is over there.” Then he walked off. Later when I left he was surprised to see I’m not Moroccan, but answered a quick Arabic question for me, since I’d somehow gotten it into my head that makhzen translated to “stables.” It turns out I was confused because Ismail also kept horses in his granary.

            On the walk back into town I wished peace upon a group of soldiers loitering by the edge of the king’s palace—I guess guarding might be a more accurate word. In the sunlight they were even more confused than the guide had been in the Makhzen. “You’re not Moroccan, are you?” Basically Meknes was a huge ego boost for my accent and me. We chatted for a little while, and I went on my way.

            Shopping in the not-particularly-twisted streets I asked the price of a symbol I’ve always heard called the Hand of Fatima. The lady I asked was confused, saying it was called Khmsa (the five) and that it represents the five pillars of Islam. I’ve heard the symbol called Khmsa before, but I’d never heard anyone favor it over the Hand of Fatima name. Her Khmsa wasn’t what I was looking for, but later I stumbled into an artisan’s shop in a quieter corner and after he took some time to show me how he makes his silver on iron etch work—patiently and beautifully—I asked him about the Hand of Fatima-Khmsa confusion. He said that Khmsa is the proper name and that “Hand of Fatima” was a name used to help sell it to tourists. I don’t know if this is the real origin of the alternate name, but it seems as plausible as anything else. I thanked him for his time and his tutorial and ran to catch the last bus back to Khenifra.

            So all in all it was a symbolically and lexicologically informative interlude, though I still have a couple people I need to finish Christmas shopping for!