Avuncular American

Go Fund Her: Salma Goes to University

Sometimes "right time, right place" makes all the difference.

https://www.gofundme.com/f/salmas-university-education?utm_campaign=m_pd+share-sheet&utm_content=undefined&utm_medium=copy_link_all&utm_source=customer&utm_term=undefined

Before leaving the American Legation in Tangier Morocco in 2014, we scheduled a screening of Deborah Perkin's documentary "Bastards." The film featured Rabha El Haimer, whose fight to have the courts recognize daughter Salma's birth was inspiring.  We were so impressed with this young woman, giving her all for the sake of her daughter.  It was the beginning of a decade of friendship.

We'd been discussing staffing needs at the Legation, especially someone to clean the museum.  Hence the lightbulb moment: how about Rabha?  So that's how it happened: Rabha jumped at the offer and moved from a windowless room in Casablanca to Tangier and a job in a pleasant environment where she is treasured by her colleagues and supervisors; Salma started school and is now poised to start her first year at university; and Rabha, without any formal education, has enrolled in the Legation's Arabic literacy classes and learned to read and write.  Deborah Perkin's film did indeed lead to life-changing impact, and not only for Rabha and Salma; we now have "family" in Morocco. 

The little girl who appears in the film is now 19 years old and worked hard to pass her secondary school "bac" exams.  We're impressed with her intelligence and maturity - at 14, she helped her mom recover from cancer - and we're happy to participate in this GoFundMe effort. Please consider donating, and - small or large - know that your investment in Salma's education will "pay off" for her and her mother.

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Participer à une cagnotte ? Oui, pour aider notre jeune amie Salma à poursuivre des études universitaires à Tanger.

Qui est Salma ? Le film de l'anglaise Deborah Perkin "Bastards" - sorti en 2014 - raconte le combat de sa mère Rabha pour faire reconnaître officiellement son propre mariage et ainsi établir une identité pour sa fille.

Global Voices, Chicago and Tangier

Tangier Global Voices group, plus ALC Tangier staff: IT wizard Rachid El Mziryahi,
teacher Rabia el Antaki, and Director Mark Holbrook

Their voices came wafting up over the Legation courtyard, a springtime Friday evening.  Intrigued, I paid a visit to our group of high school English students enrolled in the Global Voices Initiative program, thanks to our partnership with the American Language Center (ALC) Tangier.  You can watch the videos on the ALC website.

It was practice for their upcoming presentation of a set of three plays, which they developed, wrote in English, and then performed for their audience of American students in Chicago, via a Google + connection.

Meanwhile, the Chicago students were doing the same thing - in Arabic.  Here's how George Bajalia (he's smiling from the corner of the screen in the photo below), former Fulbright scholar in performance studies in Tangier, described the scene in Chicago:

Global Voices Initiative's Chicago end operates in public schools, with elementary, middle, and high schools all focusing on arts exchanges with partner schools across the world. With Morocco, students in Chicago write plays in Arabic, French, and English. Lindblom Math and Science Academy is a public school flagship Arabic program, drawing in students from across Chicago's south side. Lindblom students have two choices for their language learning: Arabic and Mandarin Chinese. GVI connects these students with partners in Morocco, Jordan, Lebanon, Egypt, and China to practice their languages through playwriting exchanges.

A few of Lindblom's Arabic language students were chosen by the Qatar Foundation to travel to Doha to participate in an international Arabic language debate, and some will be heading back this summer for a language program. Another student in this year's senior class traveled to Morocco last year for a high school study abroad, spending 6 weeks traveling across the country. Though the focus of the program is Modern Standard Arabic, students get exposure to Arabic dialects in the video conferences and many start their university studies with a full four years of Arabic behind them.

 

Another one of GVI's programs in Chicago is at Kelly High School, where students of English as a foreign language practice their English with playwriting and exchange plays with students with a similar level of English at public schools in Casablanca. The Chicago classrooms are full of native Spanish and Mandarin speakers, and the play topics range from stories of forbidden love in Chicago high schools, to border-crossing travels based on the students' own family histories. Photos and videos of the student's performances are on GVI America's Google + account, located here.

GVI - the Global Voices Initiative - is another great idea coming out of the State Department's embrace of social networks and the need to stretch its cultural diplomacy dollars.

Although I didn't get a chance to see the American students in action - with the time difference, they had to go off to another class, while our Tangier students were doing this on Friday evenings - I was impressed with the level of English of our Moroccan students.

 

Not only did they work to get their English as natural as possible, but they chose subjects that hit home with their concerns about growing up: the play I saw, "The Perfect Bride," dealt with the role of a very assertive mother in the choice of potential marriage partners for her son.

 

How often was Mom initially taken in by a seemingly wholesome future daughter-in-law, only to be confronted by a critical young woman with thoughts of her own.  In the end, the son just marries for love, and Mom will just have to make the best of it.

 

Global Voices, as the State Department puts it rather ungraciously, is a "cheap way" to connect young people.  But that economic argument - probably necessary when dealing with Congressional budget cutters - only tells part of the story.  This is an ingenious idea, and one that is applicable wherever internet connections permit.

 

So TALIM was very happy to host this program - all for the price of a few hours of electricity.

 

Gerald Loftus

An American First: Major Musa's Moroccan Degree

Major Jamil Musa (center) and his graduating class

The following is a guest post by US Air Force Major Jamil Musa, a C-17 instructor pilot assigned to Joint Base Lewis-McChord, Washington.  A couple of years ago we wrote about his experience as an Olmsted Scholar and a friend of the Legation.  Major Musa studied at Mohammed V University from 2011-2013 earning a master’s degree in the immediate history of Morocco - the first American to do so.  We congratulate him on his achievement.

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Having spent over two years living in Morocco with my family and studying history at Rabat's Mohammed V University as part of the Olmsted Scholar Program, my recent return to Rabat to defend a master’s thesis spurred an unusual homecoming.

Considering my post-fellowship reintegration as a pilot in a U.S. Air Force flying squadron, there has been adequate passage for the development of perspective.  Many factors including hard work, persistence, and a healthy bit of luck, no doubt contributed to my successful completion of a degree predominantly instructed in Arabic and thus becoming the first American to graduate from the Faculty of Letters and Human Sciences at Mohammed V University.  However, the key-contributing factor is tied to the notion of embrace.

Jamil Musa at his thesis defense

As an American student and non-native Arabic speaker in a Moroccan setting, I experienced many highs and lows throughout my time at university.  Honestly, the fear of failure and a smidgen of cognitive dissonance surrounding the daunting goal of earning a degree led me to often reference Mark Twain: “I’ve never let school interfere with my education.”

Although there is certainly wisdom in Twain’s dictum concerning the peripheral lessons associated with immersion and study in a foreign society, earning a degree is ironically a pleasant physical reminder of such intangibles.

More than a piece of paper, the degree is a material representation of the welcome and patience demonstrated by all of those who provided assistance along the way.  That is, it denotes an embrace… an embrace from my Moroccan classmates, faculty, neighbors, and friends… an embrace by the generous people affiliated with organizations such as TALIM, MACECE, the US Embassy and the Olmsted Foundation.  For this, I am quite thankful.

Of course immersion and study in a foreign country is not something unique to my family or me; it is something multiplied across the globe and experienced by people from a myriad of nationalities and various walks of life.  However, it seems appropriate to perhaps reduce such profound occurrences to the simple concept of embrace.

Fittingly, the venue for such a revelation is itself a symbol of this plain yet powerful gesture: Sultan Moulay Suleiman's 1821 gift of the American Legation not only signifies the 1787 Moroccan-American Treaty of Friendship and Amity (also more than a piece of paper), it epitomizes the very embrace experienced by an Air Force officer and his family in Morocco nearly two centuries later.

Text & photos by Major Jamil Musa, USAF

Big Men & Women On Campus: Tangier's UNE

This week's dedication of the Tangier campus of the University of New England brought a number of dignitaries to Tangier, including Maine Governor Paul LePage and new US Ambassador to Morocco Dwight Bush (both men also visited the Legation).

We had reported back in January on the "soft opening" of UNE Tangier, where the pioneer group of students and faculty started using a facility that was still getting its finishing touches.  Well, the paint has dried, and what a beautiful campus it is.

Much of the credit goes to two people: Dr. Anouar Majid, born in Tangier, whose "crazy idea" was pitched to his boss, Dr. Danielle Ripich, President of UNE.  Getting a small, private university to break new ground and become the first American university to have its own campus in Morocco was no mean feat in normal times.

But Majid managed to convince President Ripich to take the gamble during the uncertainty surrounding the Arab Spring.  No wonder the amusing dedication ceremony video compared Majid to Zorba the Greek - "a man needs a little madness" - getting his boss fired up to bouzouki music.

Now comes a different kind of hard work.  The impressive building was put up in record time, but there's the long haul of populating the program with waves of students, developing courses to take advantage of their unique setting on the Strait of Gibraltar (UNE Maine has a Marine Science program), and building on partnerships with local and regional institutions.

This is where TALIM comes in.  We've already welcomed UNE volunteers to help our in our research center and women's literacy program, and UNE staff and students are regulars at our cultural presentations.  We'd like to see even more of this in future, and are thrilled that this center of American higher education is just up the road.

Not bad for a "crazy idea."  Congratulations to visionaries Dr. Majid and Dr. Ripich.

Gerald Loftus 

UNE Tangier: 1st American University Campus in Morocco

In Morocco, I've come to learn of "soft openings," where, after years of construction or restoration, an institution - hotel, cultural center, university - just quietly opens its doors and starts business.

The University of New England (UNE) softly opened its doors earlier this month on the grounds of the American School of Tangier (AST).  Instead of years of construction, it's been more like months (a bare 18 months since the agreement between the two American institutions), and the place is beautiful.

Here's what the UNE website said:

On a breezy Tangier afternoon, 23 undergraduate students made their way onto the grounds of the first American university in Morocco, which was designed by the architect Anouar Amaoui (here in the blue suit, with Anouar Majid).

As the students walked through the thick iron gate, they looked on in awe of the chalky white exteriors juxtaposed against arabesque cobalt blue balconies. Undeterred by more than 20 hours of travel and the bulkiness of luggage, students clustered around tethered palm trees to snap photos outside of their new home for the semester.

This historic project - it is the first time that an American university has built a campus in Morocco - is the brainchild of Dr. Anouar Majid, the peripatetic professor who has brought UNE to his native Tangier.  Anouar Majid is also a polymath: he teaches, blogs, and is the author of a number of books on quite a wide range of topics touching on the Maghreb and Islam.  He has even written a novel.

We've met the UNE staff on the ground, and they are an impressive bunch with whom we look forward to working on a number of projects - conferences, volunteers from among the students, film showings.

Welcome to UNE Tangier, and may their soft opening set the stage for their big splash inauguration in April.

Gerald Loftus - text; Anouar Majid - photos

Do You Receive Me? Reception Theory

In another of our continuing series of programs with Tangier's King Fahd School of Translation (part of Abdelmalek Essaadi University), TALIM hosted a full house of students in the communications master's program.

The topic was reception theory.

Now, your correspondent may be a practitioner of communication - blogging, public speaking, media interviews - but I had never before come across reception theory.

Perhaps it is best summed up by a couple of cartoons, possibly by students trying to cut their way through dense theory.  First by Doyinsola, then by Vi Paravane.  Be sure to come back to this blog!

For me, since most of the presentations were in Modern Standard Arabic, I enjoyed the capsule summaries provided by Prof. Tayib Boutbouqalt, sitting next to me.  Especially his take on the students in his program, probably a good third of whom would be known in the US as "continuing education," "non-traditional," or "mature" students.  According to Dr. Boutbouqalt, this is a very recent phenomenon in Morocco, which is to be lauded for including professionals in the mix of these graduate classes.

Yesterday's group, for example, included several working journalists and practitioners of corporate communication.  One of the mature students even did a stint as a political prisoner in the days when Morocco had a number of people who paid the price for nonconformity.  Now this person is a civil servant, practicing his journalism in the cause of his country - and taking classes in things like reception theory.

Okay, back to RT.  Reception theory, in case you didn't look at the cartoons, is the study of how messages are understood differently by people with different backgrounds.  You can see a whole bunch of slides on RT by clicking here.

After a wide range of presentations from different schools of thought and linguistic sources, the students engaged in some Q & A.  One question - unanswered - was how reception theory has fared in these days of Facebook, Twitter, etc.  I have a feeling - simply from the average age of much work done on RT, as seen in these JSTOR search results - that the field may have had its heyday in the pre-internet 1980s.

But then, what do I know?  Did you receive me? Over and out.

Gerald Loftus

TALIM's Magical Microfilm Machine

Nothing is easy.  But things that come harder are more appreciated, so we really appreciate all the help we have gotten to make this image available online:

What you see above is the first scanned microfilm image from the Legation's archives of diplomatic documents (it's an 1803 letter to the Secretary of State from James Simpson, US Consul in Tangier 1797 - 1820).  When I first wrote about this in 2011, I hoped that some reader would take pity and get us the means to access our dozens of microfilm boxes labeled "Despatches from U.S. Consuls in Tangier, 1797 - 1906."

Last December, at the American Studies in the Arab World conference in Marrakesh, a Moroccan graduate student asked me if TALIM had documentation on the more than two centuries of Moroccan-American relations.  I told her my sad story of spools of microfilm, with no way of reading them.  Luckily, Dr. Anouar Majid of the University of New England overheard our exchange.  He asked me to send him the specs of what we needed.

A few weeks later, Christmas to be exact, I received a shipping notice of a box coming to us from Colorado.  Dr. Majid and UNE came through.  We had our microfilm reader-printer-scanner.  Thank you, Anouar Majid.  What a Christmas present to researchers present and future!

Now, we needed a computer to host our new microfilm machine.  Serendipitously, Serena Epstein, our graphic artist friend who was ending her job at the American School of Tangier

Serena Epstein

and returning to the US, offered us her brand new Mac Mini.  How many soon-to-be unemployed Twentysomethings are ready to part with a valuable computer?  Thank you, Serena.  Your contribution was timely and made the hardware complete. 

So, on to the matter of software and installation.  Again, the Gods were with us.  Ayla Amon, our museum management intern, had just successfully installed a database to help us manage our museum collection.  She gave a hand to NYU researcher Anna Reidy, in Tangier for her work on soundscapes, who took on a thorny problem of Mac - Windows "virtualization" and got the Windows software to work on our Mac Mini.  Anna, thankfully, enjoys the challenge of getting things to work, and our test image at the top of this post is but the first of what we hope will be a systematized collection of Tangier diplomatic archives, online.

 

NYU's Anna Reidy, with our new microfilm scanner

So there we are.  Nothing is easy.  But thanks to Anouar Majid, Serena Epstein, Ayla Amon, and Anna Reidy, TALIM has a rich new vein of research awaiting scholars of American diplomacy in Morocco, dating back to the earliest days of the republic.  Who's going to sign up to help share the wealth of information?

Gerald Loftus

Arabic Literacy Graduation

Lots of proud students and their families at the TALIM/FTAM (Fondation Tanger al Medina) ceremony to award diplomas to the women of the Arabic literacy program.

FTAM President Adil Alaoui presents diploma with French and Arabic teachers

Capping the end of the academic year, women received recognition for their work learning written Arabic, as well as cooking, sewing, and foreign languages (French and English).  The range in ages is surprising: we've had enrolees as young as 15, and one of our star students is in her 84th year!

 

Teachers Fatima Benguerch (Arabic) & Rahma Bouhali (sewing/cooking) with graduate

Though the Arabic course can last up to a maximum of four years, some of our women never want to leave.  Some stay on through the foreign language, sewing and cooking classes, the latter recently spinning off a budding cooperative which has been providing catering services to TALIM and other customers.  

Recently we reported on the IBM Corporate Volunteers who advised FTAM on its organization and future directions.  It was clear in that exercise that the Arabic literacy program is a core activity, not just of FTAM, but of TALIM as well.

In the past several years, we have encouraged students of the summer CLS Arabic program to spend time with the women of our literacy program, putting American students learning Arabic together with Moroccan women learning how to read and write Arabic.

The mix has always been fulfilling - and fun, as seen by the picture at right (courtesy CLS staffer Saddam Issa).  What better way to learn a bit of darija than through a Moroccan recipe?  And for the women of our literacy program, greater ease in interacting with foreigners can be a boon for those who seek employment opportunities.

Gerald Loftus; photos by TALIM Associate Director Yhtimad Bouziane.

IBM's Cookie Class Road to Development

Photo of IBM Corporate Volunteers and Tangier NGO reps (Misha Santa Barbara)

For the past month, Tangier has been home to an international group of corporate social volunteers.  IBM's Corporate Service Corps has sent 9 volunteers - all from IBM's worldwide operations, from Rio to Tokyo - to Tangier, fanning out into three teams with three different non-profit associations.  Organized by the Morocco office of CDC Development Solutions, the teams have been working with AMED, a university-based group active in sustainable development, the TMSA Foundation, the corporate social responisbility arm of the Tangier-Med port, and FTAM (Fondation Tanger al-Medina), TALIM's partner in the Arabic literacy program for the women of Tangier's medina.

Though TALIM hosted the kickoff event for the entire IBM contingent (photo at top), we've been especially closely involved in the work of the FTAM team: Misha Santa Barbara from the Czech Republic (and IBM's Atlanta office); Lavinia Frota Flach from Brazil, and Ryosuke ("Ryo") Sawazaki from Japan (photo at right, with Mohammed Hammich of the Tangier acrobats, one of the community artistic groups at the FTAM-sponsored cultural center of Borj El Hajoui).

Painstakingly interviewing members of FTAM, the team came to form an accurate picture of the foundation and its challenges.  Through a series of facilitated workshops with the leadership of FTAM, IBM's corporate volunteers used their experience in management to stimulate frank discussion of impediments that have prevented the foundation from reaching its full potential.

FTAM's group has chronicled their work in blog posts, including two (Lavinia's and Misha's) on their work with the women of a spinoff cooperative from our Arabic literacy program. They unearthed a great Moroccan variant on MBWA, management by walking around - "work and you will be strong; sit and you will stink."  The women of the cooperative are certainly hard-working, though concepts like pricing to cover their costs sometimes elude them. The IBM team provided them with another idea to augment their income: offer cookie-baking classes to foreign visitors willing to pay to get hands-on training.  They tested out the concept in a fun cooking class.

Sometimes it takes an interested outside look to help spur a fresh approach, which has helped FTAM focus on its core values, and the strategy necessary over the medium to long term to achieve its objectives.  And we are happy to find an interested partner in IBM, which is looking at the possiblities of adapting its online literacy program for use in our literacy classes.

Gerald Loftus

 

Whispering With Horses, Students, Bosses

Update: The Student Whisperer is on YouTube!

Clarity, calm, self-assurance... traits that will impress that prancing behemoth who could overrun you.  Whether it's a horse, a classroom full of unruly adolescents, or a boss who never got past the playground bully stage of development.

Silvia Cristina Bechet, teacher of English as a foreign language to students at the American Language Center in Fez, knows her horses too.  And she has taken lessons learned from dealing with those beautiful - but potentially lethal, if badly handled - animals and applied them to the classroom.  From our poster announcing her March 22 talk at the Legation:

Classroom management is a major issue for all educators.  Classroom management would determine whether my job would be that of an educator or a babysitter.

Cristina managed to rivet the attention of our audience of teachers and interested citizens through a series of anecdotes and videos from her time dealing with horses.  We saw examples of mastery of the craft of horse handling, and a pretty scary clip of what not to do with a beast who could damage an unsure handler with a swift kick.

 

Photo by ALC-Tangier Rachid EL MZIRYAHI

We know from numerous classroom dramas the pitfalls of dealing with "at risk" students, whether it's in the inner city of Detroit or the innermost parts of the medina.  You have to assess the environment, make a plan, and develop a relationship with your audience.  It can't be rushed, and it has to be genuine.

Be Prepared: A lot of what Cristina Bechet says about the role of a successful teacher sounds like character traits taken from the Scout Merit Badge list: be consistent, fair, connected.  Teacher requirements: leadership, simplicity, clarity, humor.

The turnout on a stormy Friday evening was just right: teachers from our co-host the American Language Center in Tangier, from Spanish, French, and British schools, from community associations working with disadvantaged populations, volunteers from TALIM's women's literacy program, and Tangier's English Language Fellow, a teacher of English teachers at the CPR, Morocco's training institute for future teachers.  An international audience - Moroccan, American, European - typical of Tangier's educational scene.

Cristina Bechet, in her quiet, assured way, showed that she is a master of getting horses to respond to her cues, and provided lessons not only for teachers, but for managers in dealing with motivation, team-building, and just plain people management.  As one audience member, who came up from Rabat for the event, put it, "it's not just horse or student whispering, it's how to interact with people, period."

Gerald Loftus