Update on Work with a little Moroccan History!

May 15, 2015

Work has been to a slow start since my Dar Shebab has been closed for five months, but I have been able to meet with English teachers and associations to find ways to help out the community here. Every volunteer is different and I know many who have said they are looking to make a very different impact than English teaching and others who truly have a passion for the subject and wish to really emphasize that activity. As for me, there are some ambitious project ideas floating around in my head, but I have found that I enjoy English teaching much more than I expected given the fact that I now have context as to why so many Moroccans wish to learn it.

In Peace Corps, we receive news updates in English about Moroccan society and many have centered around the debate of whether or not English should replace French as the primary foreign language taught here. From what I can tell, the people seem to be excited to move away from a colonial language and towards what is now the world’s dominant language. English truly can help build bridges between people here and things such as the world economy, diplomacy, human rights, medicine, international development, science, technology and so much else. It seems to really be the key to connect more and more Moroccans with the various global conversations people are having outside of their country. It also would provide an avenue for the people here to educate the outside world about their culture in order to foster a more meaningful understanding of life here. For example, the CIA World Factbook lists 99% of the Moroccan population as Arab-Berber. I am not sure what the source of this statistic is (it could very well be the Census here), but I have honestly never met a single person who identified as “Arab-Berber”. I have met people who have both ancestries, but they have always identified as one or the other when asked. Before arriving in Morocco, this country profile gave me the impression that the country was much more culturally homogeneous than it actually is. I do not think such misperceptions would occur if Moroccans could share substantive information about their culture in English. There really does seem to be an incredible capacity to increase understanding between cultures if there were more fluent English speakers in this country.

I have many friends here in my site and spend most evenings out in the city center enjoying their company and conversing in some combination of Moroccan Arabic and English. After a little over a month, it is nice to see the friendships I have made becoming more personal because this has allowed for some of the most meaningful conversations that I have had in Morocco since I have been here. All of the moving we have been doing as volunteers has resulted in me parting ways with people once I started to feel close with them up until I arrived here. Although my city is rather small in size, I find a pretty hip boutique every evening I go outside and discover that more things are available here than first meets the eye. For example, there is a lady in center who bakes millwi (Berber pizza) for three dirhams and a man nearby who sells Herrera (spicy soup with beans) for three dirhams and so last night I was able to have a pretty awesome fast-food experience for a very cheap price! So “project integration” is off to a good start I would say!

 

Here, we have all four Peace Corps volunteers in our town. Together, our duration of service here is from 2013-2017! Sanjay is the volunteer I am replacing and he certainly left an amazing example of service (especially in terms of cultural integration and language ability). It is imperative to note that we intentionally tried to make the picture look silly.

I am still fascinated about the culture and history of my community and this country. In fact, there is information in my last blog post that I have learned is untrue. Sources on the Moroccan slave-trade are very difficult to find and I have not yet found substantive history about my region in English. Just yesterday I learned from someone I trust as a knowledgeable source on this issue that there was indeed slavery all the way up to the early twentieth century in our site. As I mentioned previously, a good deal of the population here has sub-Saharan African heritage, but I had mentioned believing this was due to gradual migration over time. However, I have learned now that slaves were treated as prizes of war and that the migration of sub-Saharan Africans to our region was due to forced “transactions” of these populations over the course of several generations. Although I did mention this before, I will repeat that this population is now “Berberized,” identifies with Amazigh culture and speaks Tamazight as a first language here. More experienced volunteers than myself who are in sites with black populations have told me about how racism has manifested itself in their communities, but I have not been here long enough to witness it firsthand.

Also interesting is the history of Judaism in my region. I had heard things about a mellah or Jewish Quarter in my site, but was unable to find it on previous attempts because the types of markers used to identify Jewish communities in the west (book store, cemetery, community center, synagogue, kosher deli, etc.) are not recognizable to me in my site since there is no longer a Jewish community here. So just last week, my site mate and Nadia were exploring the historic portion of our city and happened to bump into a small tour group led by a local hotel owner who is also the curator of a museum here. Amazingly, this was exactly where our new friend was taking our visitors. Essentially, within our city’s historic quarter, there is a relatively large archway that leads one into a very small neighborhood that was once the home of our city’s Jewish community. Furthermore, within the neighborhood, there is actually a museum dedicated to the history of our site. Most of the pieces actually relate to the community of the mellah, which seems to be the specialty of the curator seeing as he can read Hebrew. For example, there are many stone tablets with Hebrew inscriptions on them, photographs of Jewish Moroccans who once resided in the community and a book with the names of local Jewish families. Our friend told us that every member of this community has either converted to Islam or immigrated to Israel (I know that some families also migrated up north to Casablanca). I find this rather sad seeing as Judaism is the oldest continuously practiced religion in Morocco (with only about 3,000 practitioners left) and I think these types of communities provide powerful examples of peaceful coexistence between different religions.[1] In a way, I feel that their departure is a victory for the forces in the world that try and make us believe that this is not possible.

Here is a tablet written in Hebrew from my town's Jewish community.

As I reflect on what I have just written, I realized that my site probably seems eccentric and exotic to many Americans back home. Indeed I am learning day by day that the ways we are taught to categorize people do not always give us a full picture of their identity. There are indeed not too many places in the world where the African and Jewish diasporas intersect in such an interesting way, but that is one of the things that makes Morocco such a fascinating place to live for those who love history.

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[1] See photos of Volubilis for ruins from Synagogue (in Greek and Hebrew).