on We toured the Moroccan Parliament building today and they were decorated in many flags for nations that belong to the OIC – Organization of Islamic Cooperation- which was just finishing a meeting here in Rabat.
See how many countries you can name!
on An interesting timing of events. One of the things planned for today was to go to for a school visit at an IB high school here in Rabat. BUT, starting yesterday, all the teachers in the country went on a short strike to protest the move toward privatization and loss of job security.
Truly one of great things about travel is it gives you the chance to see just what other folks have to deal with. You learn to appreciate your own situation more.
Our Fulbright/IREX folks were quickly able to adjust our schedule so we still had a full day. This morning we met with MACECE – there are soo many acronyms this week I have given up trying to keep them straight. We also met with US Embassy officials and had both a program and security briefing. As the security fellow said, he was the doom and gloom guy to make us consider the worst case scenarios, so that we don’t have to worry about them.
One of the presenters was an American female who has lived in Morocco for about 10 years. It was interesting to hear her take on being female in Morocco as compared to the other views we have heard about this from: a Moroccan female and an American male.
This afternoon we continued our training sessions on Morocco. Yesterday it was on Moroccan History and Culture. Today it was the Moroccan education system: Reality and Challenges.
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Kasbah, Rabat, Morocco
outside the Kasbah walls
on As a western female I was a bit apprehensive when it came to appropriate dress for this working trip.
Words like “modest” and “conservative” were frequently mentioned.
But those words are pretty culturally dependent.
I basically got the idea that though western women were not expected to wear head coverings for the most part, they should cover their legs and arms.
And that for the most part seems true.
A very rough unscientific survey (aka me people watching in Rabat over the past few days) would say that:
1) maybe about of 2/3 of the women do cover their head/ hair in some fashion
2) almost all of the females cover pretty much all of their skin
BUT
3) a significant percentage of them cover their skin in pretty form revealing ways, thru tight pants, leggings, etc and form fitting tshirts – and a significant percentage of these women are also covering their heads/hair.
I find this to be an interesting juxtaposition of modest skin covering and proud shape revealing.
on Our wonderful TGC on site coordinator, Meriem, arranged the most marvelous traditional Moroccan meal for us at Dar Naji today.. See if you can match the captions to the photos!
Two different Chicken tagines
Beef with Prunes and Apricots
More salads that can be named in a single blog
tasty tasty cookies, some sprinkled with rose water!
traditional washing of hands before the meal
Pastilla – traditional meat pie (this made with chicken but sometimes made with pigeon!)
on Well I have many more questions now after meeting with the folks at Amideast who work all over north Africa in education.
I didn’t realize how complicated a multilingual culture could be. I just thought how wonderful it was to grow up learning so many languages with different alphabets! But Moroccan higher education and, perhaps as a result, their society is heavily dependent on one’s french language skills. So even if a student is very gifted in a subject and has excellent grades if they don’t also have excellent French language skills they have little chance at higher education.
Yet job economics is moving heavily towards English. One Moroccan teacher says this is resulting in students having some language skills in several languages but not being higher proficient in any (Jack off all trades master of none).
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on Airplane travel is about two parts hurry up and wait and one part RUN.
I’m in my 3rd airport in about 12 hours and the formula holds. Waited at gate to leave Birmingham late. Ran thru Atlanta airport to make it just in time to board flight to Paris. Now all our Morocco TGC are together and waiting for our delayed flight to Rabat.
on My school surprised me on my last day before my big trip! Tomorrow I head to Morocco for my Fulbright/IREX Teachers for Global Classrooms experience.
