Saturday, July 19, 2014

Tarmilat village and school

Ifrane is a resort town.  It has an imperial residence for the royal family and is a vacation destination for the Moroccan people.  Just like many parts of Morocco it also has pockets of poverty.  The village of Tarmilat is constructed on top of a landfill.  The residents of the "town" are squatters. The homes are constructed out of garbage.  The people who live rent livestock.  The women in the village make rugs and bags to sell at the souk.  The village has no paved roads. The government built a one room school in the village. It is the only permanent structure.  There is no electricity in the village or running water.

Although the school is closed for the summer volunteers from America work with the children in the village.    The volunteers are college students from America.  The students work for an NGO called America's Unofficial Ambassadors. The students are assigned to run a summer camp at the school for five weeks. The volunteers work with students in the one room school from 10 to 3 pm. There are about 20 students in the school each day, aged 4 to 17.  The students speak Moroccan Arabic, though the volunteers teach the students to read and write in French.  The public schools in Morocco teach in French and also in Arabic. It is unclear from what I saw if the students could read and write in Arabic well. Let alone read and write in French.  The school did not have a lot of resources.  There was one cabinet in the front of the room that held books and crayons.

Impressions, having met with Moroccan educators I feel that the Moroccan schools have a lot of inequalities. The city schools have technology and many resources. While rural schools are in need.

The Traveling Educator

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