“These women did not need much to defy the obstacles that existed between
them and learning.”
It all started with the dream of making drinking water out of fog and by
the same token, empowering women in rural Morocco. Day after day, the dream is
becoming a reality. The last time I checked, the fog nets were up at the top of
Boutmezguida Mountain and the fog water was flowing with profusion. With that
dream coming true, women would gain the time and energy that they would normally
spend on their three hours daily walks in extreme weather conditions to collect
water from distant wells. Water will now flow from the taps inside their
houses. However, with the advent of the fog water technology, our wish is to
conserve and respect the inherent and positive norms of the community and
protect women’s ancestral role as water guardians in the region. In the context
of our community engagement program, a team from Dar Si Hmad was working with
the women in the villages on establishing a model that would conserve their
ancestral role as water guardians in their villages’ new water landscape.
In the context of Dar Si Hmad’s pre-inauguration community engagement
programs, a team of five people have designed a system with and for the women that
ensures their involvement in the management of their water resources in order
to protect their ancestral role as water guardians in the region. That system
required these women to be trained in how to communicate and solve
water-related problems. For her doctoral dissertation entitled “Equitable
Information Flow for a Fog Water System in Southwest Morocco”*, Dr. Leslie
Dodson developed an Information and Communication Technology (ICT) based
solution that helps women communicate water-related problems to Dar Si Hmad
through mobile messages and phone calls. This ICT technology accommodates the
cultural gender roles that limit women’s interactions with men they do not
know. By directly reporting water-related issues to Dar Si Hmad through text
messages or phone calls instead of dealing directly with male water managers,
women will be able to safeguard their role of water guardians safely and
comfortably. Due to high illiteracy and innumeracy rates, Dar Si Hmad
simplified the ICT system into a visual chart that matches water-related issues
with a picture and a Latin alphabet (see below). In addition to this ICT
training, we have trained the women in how to fix common indoor plumbing
problems.
Figure 1 : SMS visual chart given to the women
that simplifies the ICT water-reporting system
The ICT and plumbing trainings took place in nine villages in Southwest
Morocco; Id Aachour, Agadir Id Lghachi, Id Saoussen, Aguejgal, Agni N
Zkri, Agni N Ihiya, Id Satour, Tamrout and Timtda and were led by a team of
five people. In line with Dar Si Hmad’s participatory approach to development,
a young woman from the villages joined our team to work side by side with the
rest of the community engagement team in delivering the training to the rest of
the women. We visited fifty-one families and sat with every single woman either
in their houses or the school village or under an Argan tree for eight days.
Since the large majority of the women in these villages are low literate and
monolingual, we had all of our trainings in Berber and ran pre-training classes
on Latin alphabets and numbers. We then proceeded with our ICT and plumbing
trainings. We trained the women in how to use a phone, send a text message to
report on different water problems to Dar Si Hmad and fix the common indoor
plumbing problems. It was magical to see the skilful and cracked hands of these
women adjust their glasses (for the few women who owned a pair), hold a phone
with one hand and a paper or a wrench in another.
The work revealed itself more pleasing than exhausting as I shared
privileged moments with some of the greatest and most inspiring women I have
ever met. These women did not need much to defy the obstacles that existed
between them and learning; they only needed someone who could believe in them and
a few opportunities. At the beginning of the training, I felt an element of
doubt in the large majority of the women I interacted with because they
believed they were too old and illiterate to learn Latin alphabet, use a phone
or send an SMS. Facing such self-doubt and lack of confidence, our first
impulse was to motivate them, show our genuine belief in them and stretch their
learning assumptions. Not much later, I clearly saw a new sparkle in their look
and a twist in their smiles as they felt more comfortable with the material. To
me, that something in their eyes and lips looked like empowerment in its
essence. But there is still a lot to be done to achieve women’s empowerment in
Southwest Morocco. For instance, during the community engagement trainings, we
encountered obstacles as a result of the poor phone network in all the
villages, the serious low-literacy of women, the limited number of women who
own a phone in a good condition and women’s poor eyesight. Women’s empowerment
in rural Morocco will not be attained until we solve the problems of basic
literacy, health, infrastructure and technology in the rural world.
Until then, the women of Ait Baamrane can at least enjoy the three more
hours generated by the fog water project and spend it on income-generating
activities. During our training programs, we have been asking women what they
wanted to do with their newly available free time. I was surprised that the
income-generating projects ideas would be that popular within the female
community. Before my conversations with these incredible women, I had not yet
grasped how much they were eager to become financially independent and pull
their families out of poverty. So I initiated informal brainstorming sessions
on their desired income-generating activities. Income-generating project ideas
were suggested primarily by women and girls in the villages. These ideas ranged
from sewing to baking to Argan and prickly pear cooperatives. Our
income-generating projects conversations have triggered thoughtful reflections
on the problematic and tense relationships between the people of the villages
and the importance of integrating men in the conversation of women empowerment
in the region. All in all, this passionate discussion of female
entrepreneurship has not ended and I hope that one day, we will be witnessing a
resurgence of female entrepreneurs in the villages of Ait Baamrane.
This community engagement program transcended the realm of mere educational
training and became about empathy, trust, community spirit, entrepreneurship
and women’s empowerment. After having walked many miles carrying gifts and the
training’s heavy material for the families under the burning sun and the rain,
I have cultivated empathy towards the hardships that these women experience every
day to collect water from wells. I have also experienced genuine moments of
sharing and generosity with these wonderful women who trusted us with their
most personal stories and vulnerabilities. But most importantly, this community
engagement experience and the women I met challenged my preconceptions about
development projects, women’s empowerment, entrepreneurship and rural Morocco.
Mariam Bahmane
Volunteer at Dar Si Hmad
*Dodson, Leslie. "A Foggy Desert: Equitable Information Flow for a Fogwater System in Southwest Morocco." UNIVERSITY OF COLORADO AT BOULDER, 2014. A Foggy Desert: Equitable Information Flow for a Fogwater System in Southwest Morocco. ProQuest LLC. Web.
