Her name is Fatima and She is a Singer...

Her name is Fatima, she is the leader of a Berber women’s music group near Agadir. I invited Fatima and her group to Dar Si Hmad to share their art with American students from Quinnipiac University; the students were participating in our ethnographic field-school this past May. I called Fatima on the phone, introduced myself, our organization and our objective to facilitate cross-cultural exchange between American students and female Berber performers. We wanted to expose the students to local culture, arts and tradition and wanted the performers to be part of a contact zone, where more than one culture meet.

From her voice and manner of talking to me on the phone, Fatima seemed curious, filled with questions as to why an organization would be interested in their music and performance. These hesitant vibes which I sensed, if I can so say, gave birth to an anxiety that these women would never show up for the event. I called continuously for days to confirm our encounter despite the anxiety of her not knowing who I was. I could already visualize Fatima and her group playing their ravishing music at our space.

On the evening of the event, Fatima arrived, accompanied by five women and a male, their driver, who sat patiently in the room as they performed. I did not appreciate his presence and thought of him as an outsider, a distant figure in these women’s world. The women began to apply their make-up and get ready for the show. Fatima asked me to close the door and I asked every male in the room to leave, including the strange man that accompanied the group. Fatima told me, and I could hear the voices of the other women in the background, that he is allowed to stay, that he is “one of us.” What a strange surprise. It was then when I began to change my preconceptions of the man.

The women did not wait for us to sit down for the performance; it did not seem they needed an audience to mark the start of their instruments and voices. Though we, the audience, were scattered throughout the room, the moment the women began to play, their magic-like music charmed us all. Their unique Amazigh (Berber) music filled the air with positive, healing energy. I watched everyone in the room dancing with joy.

The American students danced to these Berber rhythms. The students were interested to learn more about their history as a group and the meanings of their songs. After the performance, Fatima, her group and our students engaged in a cross-cultural encounter where each was curious to learn about the other. The women felt they could not communicate because they could not understand or converse in English and forgot that the American students also could not converse in Berber. They were equal and agreeable on this, so they announced that their communication is best through music.

Since childhood, I have been attending Laabat music performances and I speak honestly when I say that they are pure and genuine stars. They have always charmed me with their pride, special charisma and unending courage. They joke and the presence of males does not bother them, an unusual behavior for females within a male domain: the public space. Female performers in Morocco cross the lines of gendered space. Their speech and laughter trespass the boundary that their patriarchal society has imprisoned them in.

Laabat is a tradition that we must value. This recent performance makes me wonder if there are young women who are still wanting to become Laabat. After deep thinking, I concluded that as long as these women exist, this art will always thrive.

Fatima Matousse,

Project coordinator & Language instructor 

E-learning Project: a pilot initiative in Southwest Morocco

Dar Si Hmad launched a new project in collaboration with the Provincial Delegation of the Ministry of Education in Sidi Ifni, aiming to enhance rural students’ academic performance via Information and Communication Technology and E-learning techniques.

The pilot project targets rural students from Ait-Baamrane region in southwest Morocco and aims to help the students study for national and regional exams. These exams are mandatory for high school seniors and juniors in Morocco, and since they sum up all the lessons that have been taught during the school year, they require effort in preparation. Unfortunately, unlike students in urban areas, rural students do not have the opportunity nor the means to take extra-classes to study for the big tests. 

In this sense, we are coaching the students to manage exam-fright and give them hands-on experience through the passing of many mock exams.

The first tutoring session started on Monday May 19th and the coaching sessions address six subjects including scientific subjects such as Mathematics and philosophy then literature subjects such as Arabic, French and English.

This pilot project is the first of its kind in the region and through this first experience, we plan to generalize the experience and apply it on large scale in other rural areas.

Reflections on Our Pilot Water School

The stormy wind is blowing strong dust, forming a small whirlwind in the middle of the barren, reddish school yard. There are two prefabricated classrooms, both with a rundown feel and a sadness to them when the children who give them life are absent.  Opposite the classrooms are two toilets with no running water.  There is a fence enclosing these buildings and a metal blue door, chipped here and there, revealing a low-grade of rusting iron which makes a high squeaky noise when it is opened.

This is the locale for our summer camp, or water school, that provides remedial classes for some 50 children attending the rural schools of the villages of the Ait Baamrane, a region we service with fog-water.  The school is managed by the Delegation of the Ministry of Education in Sidi Ifni, a partner of ours in this quest.  For these past couple of weeks, the Dar Si Hmad team has been working for some five hours a day with the children, conducting a fully-rounded program on all issues relating and related to water as well as fun and interactive learning games.  We came with the intention of teaching the children and we have found ourselves, all of the Dar Si Hmad team, being their students.  We may have the technical know-how, the toys, the books, the computers, but the children have turned us into better and more attentive teachers.  They are inspirational.

Let me count the ways, ten reasons why we, as the staff, are moved by the Water School:

10. The children are far from being hidebound, they are eager to change even when such change doesn't exactly bring them immediate reward or even if it strips them of what they have grown to know as their privileges (especially boys regarding girls);

9. The children are willing to eat all the different food we have been bringing for their lunch-boxes.  Perhaps to the exception of one child,  they have been eager to try new food, new textures and to discover a different world of smells and tastes;

8. At the onset the children had difficulty playing in organized, rule-bound games.  They felt they had to wait too long or that their turn never came, but now they have fun and follow what their peers are doing even when it is not them who do it.  They have illustrated for us an amazing sense of organic complicity and understanding amongst themselves we did not anticipate in the beginning;

7.  The children walk an average of five kilometers each day to get to school.  They always come early and wait; they are patient and excited to have this opportunity that not even their elder siblings had.  They have fashioned an enduring relationship with the institution they are proud of;

6. One of the children, the youngest in the group at six-years old, has a motricity problem in his right hand and right leg.  He wanted to participate in the program as did his parents, but the teacher and all the other kids treat him as though he cannot accomplish anything.  We established rules of cleaning after oneself and though he remonstrated in the beginning (being used to having everything served), he participated and we all discovered an extremely smart and funny child.  Everyone sees his new identity now and he has taught everyone that one has the ability to adapt to new circumstances;

5. The children have grown in small villages where family and neighbors’ support are essential to survival.  We have witnessed how they help and lend a hand to each other, and was neat to see them turning competitive games into real moments of joined fun;

4.  All children are eager to learn with sparkles in their eyes.  The girls have new role models such as the women engineers, teachers and doctors that come through the region. The girls are now convinced that there are valorizing paths for women in education;

3.  Curious, the children are so curious and ask and ask and never tire of asking when we give answers.  As though a peel of onion, once you peel one layer, there is another and another… until there is none left. This curiosity, the sparkles in the eyes, come from children who participated very little as subjects (at home or at school).  In the traditional understanding of childhood in the region, a child only listens and doesn’t speak their voice. This is not the case here;

2.  The children have won us over with their trust and willingness to be kind and accommodating to some hurdles.  They are inhabited neither by malice nor by bad intentions, they are not  conniving or calculating.  There is simply pure positiveness;

1. The sense of happiness coming out of their eyes and laughters is overwhelming, genuine and true.  How lucky we are to have had this beautiful lesson and learn from this source of happiness!

This is the Water School. We will run this school yet again and will scale it, covering more issues, more science and be sure to learn from our touching experience with the children.

Dar Si Hmad Receives Positive Recognition from the Crowd-Funding Platform "GlobalGiving"

Since last fall, Dar Si Hmad has used the crowd-funding platform "GlobalGiving" as a fundraising tool for our development projects in the countryside. We reached our goal of $5,000 for our first project on GloablGiving, "E-Learning Education for Rural Girls in Morocco," and have recently received positive recognition from the platform for our work. GlobalGiving gave our project report a rating of 4/5-Very Good. This rating enables our project report to appear on giving portals for global companies, allowing Dar Si Hmad and our projects to gain more visibility online.

Our pilot e-learning project in the small town of Mesti is close to completion. The girls are finishing their final exams while also participating in the last e-learning lessons before they return home for summer vacation. We are thankful for all the positive support from GlobalGiving and our friends and partners who have donated to this project. We look forward to making our e-learning platform sustainable for the girls in Mesti as they pursue further education in cities, as well as assisting new groups of students who enter the boarding school in the coming semesters.

Please click this link to view our project report on GlobalGiving!

100 Thousands Poets for Change, Hosted Poetry Event at Dar Si Hmad

Earlier this month Dar Si Hmad hosted an international poetry event at our center in Agadir. The event was made possible in collaboration with 100 Thousand Poets for Change, “100TPC” for short, an initiative established in 2011 by California poets Mr. Michael Rothenberg and Ms. Terri Carrion. Both Mr. Rothenberg and Ms. Carrion, along with their photographer, came to Morocco for their first time to join us for the event.

100TPC is a project that brings together poets, musicians and artists around the United States and across the globe in a poetry demonstration and celebration to promote peace, sustainability and social, environmental and political change. 100TPC helps motivated people from around the world organize a poetry event in their own community; students, both aspiring and established poets, musicians, travelers and community members all joined us at Dar Si Hmad for a day of poetry and expression.

At this event, there were poets from all ages, professions and languages. Well-known poets shared their work and artistry, aspiring writers were heard in public for the first time, and Canadian musicians encouraged the audience to be more conscious of our environment and resources. We listened to poetry and song in several languages--Arabic, French, Spanish and English--with each poem transmitting experiences, emotions, knowledge and passion in their own unique way.

Poetry is sustainable and is a driving force for peace and change in our world. Dar Si Hmad is proud and honored to have shared this moment with 100TPC and  members of our community. We are thankful for the efforts of everyone who made this event memorable and will continue to be inspired by the passionate poets who stood on stage to share with us a part of themselves. Thanks to 100TPC founders, Mr. Rothenberg and Ms. Carrion, for making the journey to Morocco and having Agadir be their very first stop before they made their way to other cities in the country to perform and connect with other poets and artists. Dar Si Hmad hopes that this event is the beginning of a long-standing relationship with 100 Thousand Poets for Change and other poets and artists in our very own community.

Dar Si Hmad was thrilled to host 100 Thousand Poets for Change because we believe in the impact poetry has on spreading peace within the society.

Renda Nazzal

Ethnographic School Liaison and Manager

Visual Arts for Development at Dar Si Hmad

Dar Si Hmad hosted three filmmakers from Morocco and Egypt in the months of March and April to present their documentary films and conduct filmmaking workshops for local students in Agadir.

In March, Dar Si Hmad invited Moroccan filmmaker Karima Zoubir to screen her documentary film Camera/Woman. The film highlights the life of an ordinary woman, burdened by various constraints due to her gender and marital status. The woman, Khadija, is a divorcee and gains an income by working as a camera-woman at weddings in Casablanca. Khadija is subject to gossip and rumors and her family disagrees with her choice of work. This documentary portrays this deep and conflicting tension in her life. 

Following the screening, the audience engaged with Ms. Zoubir in a conversation about gender roles and inequalities in Morocco, the family code and the constraints that the filmmaker faced while making this film.

The the following two days Dar Si Hmad organized a documentary film workshop facilitated by Ms. Zoubir. The workshop focused on three main areas: writing a documentary film proposal, financial planning, and film distribution and promotion. 

Click below for a summary of the workshop if you are interested in learning more:

How to Finance Your Documentary Film w/ Ms. Karima Zoubir

In April, Dar Si Hmad invited Ms. Mirit Mikhail and Mr. Mahmoud Afifi to celebrate cinema for a four-day event in Agadir. On the first day we screened the film 18 Days in the Heart of the Egyptian Revolution directed by Ms. Mikhail and Mr. Farid Ismail, both French-Egyptian filmmakers. The documentary is the only film to look at the revolution from the perspective of the Egyptian diaspora. 

Various university students, professors, expatriates and researchers attended the screening and engaged in a debate with Ms. Mikhail about the Democratic Spring in Egypt. The audience was also curious on how the Egyptian diaspora views the current situation in Egypt and the ways in which they aspire to be part of the making of modern Egyptian history.

For the following three days, Dar Si Hmad hosted a workshop facilitated by both Ms. Mikhail and Mr. Afifi focusing on photography and filmmaking techniques. Ms. Mikhail taught the history of cinema, how to write a scenario and how to make one-minute films. Alternatively, Mr. Afifi focused on photography techniques, types of lenses and the lighting on how to read the characteristics of camera lenses. Both workshops complemented each other and gave basic training to aspiring filmmakers.

 The last day of workshop was dedicated to teaching students how to make a one-minute film. The students spent the whole morning preparing their scenarios and shooting. In the afternoon, both trainers coached the students on the editing of their films. By the end of the day, the students felt a sense of accomplishment after screening their short films thanks to the help of the trainers and the passion of the students.

Click below for Mr. Mahmoud Afifi's workshop presentation: Photography Workshop Presentation w/ Mr. Mahmoud Afifi

Here below is a 15-minute video on the history of cinema:

Here below is an example one-minute film that was presented by Ms. Mikhail during her workshop:

Thank you to the wonderful filmmakers and students who joined us for these events at Dar Si Hmad!

Fatima Matousse
Visual Arts for Development Coordinator

A Dar Si Hmad Reflection on Development

Recently the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation released their annual letter.  This letter has really stirred a lot of emotions and discussion in our office.  It has prompted us to stop, take a moment and think about the work and projects we do with the rural population of the Ait Baamrane.  In their letter, Bill and Melinda Gates highlight the extremely important fact that development work has changed positively the face of the world, that it has, indeed, eradicated diseases, improved standards of livelihoods, created economic opportunities for large, underprivileged, sections of human societies.  These are achievements we quickly dismiss to only highlights shortcomings, problems, challenges and gaps facing the world.  The Gates demonstrate how these positive steps have been achieved and the impact they continue having on the world-populations today. The Gates’ argument is that we are often blind to the achievements, to the positive outcomes and quickly underline the lacks and the missing components.  We surely focus on how half-empty the cup is, but we forget or disregard that the cup is equally half-full, that lives have been saved and standards improved.  

The mission of our organization is the creation of conditions that enable the emergence of more equitable living for the poorer region of Southwest Morocco where we work.  Regions where there is no water, few roads, very limited schooling or health access.  I will pass on the means on how we work to achieve these equitable conditions, but we have always thought of ourselves as a sort of loop, at the service of our communities, connecting them and helping them gain access to and benefit from various scientific discoveries and help adopt and adapt the positive aspects of modernity.  The philosophy of our work is rooted in respect of human dignity and care for our environment.  

This letter from the Gates Foundation made us stop and think in a different way.  We, at Dar Si Hmad, have always dismissed the bigot assumption that scientific progress is too sophisticated for the rural world.  We have always argued that contemporary ICTs are ideal tools for enhancing better living conditions, and for accepting change within conservative environments.  While we are always conscious of our mission, this letter caused us to reconsider what it is that nurtures our work; it gave us the possibility to reflect on who we are and what we do in very positive ways, looking at the cup half-full.

In the work we carry in our office, deadlines are of paramount importance.  Search for funding, proposing daring, innovative (almost radical ideas) occupies our days and our thoughts.  When we wrap-up the conceptional part of a given project after having worked with the potential beneficiaries and learned from them, we go once more to the field with a sense of expectation, we work with partners and are pressured by deadlines, guidelines and outcomes.  There is often a sense of ambient urgency, but we do not bring the distinction of positive-negative impacts to the table, this has remained un-seen so far.  This letter made us think of the necessity of considering this binary as an important cue, or better yet, compass to guide the work.  

The tasks will be accomplished either way, but whether the attitude we work with is steeped in positive, hopeful expectation or if it stems out of a sense of urgency and a logic of lack, make a world of difference in how we do the work and how we evaluate it.  When it is the positive attitude and hopeful seeds are sowed, the results seem to be happier, we seem to be happier having been nurtured by positiveness instead of urgency or panic.  Thank you to the Gates Foundation for helping us shift working out of pressing urgency of lack to celebrating our achievements and adding to those before us.

Jamila Bargach

Link to the 2014 Gates Annual Letter: http://annualletter.gatesfoundation.org/