Inspiration
The Morocco hinterland is shining as education reaches out to Berber girls
Morocco NGO Education For All (EFA) is creating a massive difference in the lives of indigenous Berbers who are sending their girls to school. They have realised that educated women are the key to breaking the vicious poverty cycle.
Just like music and art are universal in nature, so is the hunger for education and the intuitive grasp of illiterates over the benefits it can offer to overall uplift their lives. Consequently, every where people are struggling to gain education or if not possible then to at least make it available to their children. A similar scenario is being played out deep in Morocco’s High Atlas mountains, in the hamlet of Tazalt.
In one of the small reddish-brown stone houses, Malika Boumessoud, 38, is serving sweet mint tea and looking at a photo of herself while shaking her head at how old she looks. In the next room, where 5 of her 6 children all sleep on 2 single mattresses on the floor, even as her eldest daughter Zahra, 19, is participating in a bold new experiment that could transform the lives of the girls and young women in the region. Unlike the vast majority of girls in the mountains, Zahra is being granted the gift of education.
For the past 7 years, Zahra bas been calling the boarding house run by Education For All (EFA) her home. Located in the town of Asni, 56 kilometres away, the house is a mere 5-minute walk from the school she has been attending since the age of 12. In September, she is hoping to go to university in Marrakech. Her mother, who married at 16, is acutely aware of how different her daughter’s life could have been had Zahra followed most other girls in the valley and finished her schooling at 12.
I still wish I had gone to school,” says Malika. “Even after all these years of marriage and having all my children, I still regret not finishing my education. I don’t go out of the village; I just stay in the house day after day. I feel like a bird without any wings.”
Rural Morocco is replete with such stories. Illiteracy rates for rural women and girls are as high as 90%. Girls, especially those in areas such as the High Atlas, are more likely to drop out after primary school. World Bank figures show that only 26% of girls from rural areas enrol for secondary education.
Even within the rural areas, these problems plague the Amazigh disproportionately, commonly known as Berbers, the indigenous people of Morocco. Even though the Berbers were adaptive and embraced Islam and began speaking Arabic after the conquests of the seventh century, the Berber culture and dialects of the Tamazight language have survived, especially in the High Atlas. At school, lessons are in Arabic, which for most Berber children is their second language, if they have been taught at all. Unsurprisingly, they do poorly compared with Arabic children.
But the language problem aside, in rural areas the distance to secondary schools is the biggest barrier, especially for girls. Khalid Chenguiti, education specialist at Unicef Morocco says: “Girls’ education, especially at secondary level, remains a challenge. There are many reasons for this, including the fact that schools are often poorly equipped with washrooms and sanitary facilitation, transportation is often difficult and, in some areas, girls are still required to support domestic tasks and face sociocultural barriers for completion of higher secondary education. These factors often disproportionately affect girls in rural areas.”
Chenguiti explains why it’s a crucial problem to solve: “Providing girls with an education helps break the cycle of poverty: educated women are less likely to marry early and against their will; less likely to die in childbirth; more likely to have healthy babies; and are more likely to send their children to school.”
EFA came up with the solution to bring the girls to the schools, an approach which is beginning to change the lives of Berber girls in a way that could eventually transform the region’s future. EFA boarding houses, which are run solely by Berber women, provide accommodation, healthy food, support with homework and extra French and English lessons. The results are already telling an average pass rate for all academic years is 97%.
Understandably, Zahra is very happy for the chance that has been handed to her: “At primary school, I really enjoyed studying but I knew there was little chance I would get to go to secondary school. When I was selected [by EFA], I was so happy. I was really nervous when I first got to the boarding house but I feel like I have found myself since being there.
“I believe I will now have a good future and will be able to improve things for my family. My parents have been so supportive. They wanted me to have a better life than the one they have had. My first year of university will be very hard,” she says. “I’m sure, as it’s a very different life there, but I think it will be good for me.”
Cut to Marrakech, which looks, sounds and feels like a different planet compared to the mountain villages. Here Khadijah Ahedouami, 21, knows exactly how Zahra is feeling. 3 years ago she was in the same position. She has no regrets for choosing to stay away from her family for education, but it has been far from an easy road.
“I actually failed my first year,” she says. “Coming to Marrakech and studying all these new subjects was a hard thing for me to do, especially because I had only just got used to learning in Arabic, but at university everything is in French. I also had to get used to living in the city which is so different.”
Besides battling the culture shock, she was also coming to terms with her mother’s death. She passed away when Khadijah was still in upper secondary school and soon afterwards she lost her brother-in-law. “I had some family problems and my father had just remarried following the death of my mother.
“Even though it was a year and a half after she died, my first year was the hardest time because I was living away from home. With everything going on, I thought ‘if I push myself with my studies, I’m going to lose my mind’, so I decided it was OK to take things slowly and repeat my first year.”
Khadijah was one of the 10 girls who went to live in Asni with EFA when the first house opened 9 years ago. She was encouraged by her mother who passionately wanted her to have an education because she had grown up in Casablanca, where it’s normal for girls to be in school. But they first had to persuade her father.
She says: “My father agreed we could go to see the house and when we found it, he thought it seemed OK and liked Latifa, the house mother. He asked if I wanted to stay, and of course I said, yes. Studying is my purpose in life.”
9 years later, Khadijah is not only the most educated girl in her village but also the most educated in the whole valley. So respected is she that when she is home villagers come to her house to ask for advice on problems with their businesses or families.
She says: “In my final year of school, I started to prepare my parents for the idea that I might go to university. By then, my parents trusted me but they only did because I earned it. During my years with EFA, I learned how to talk to people, how to spend my money, and how to stay respectable. And because other families look to me as an example when trying to decide whether to send their girls to school, I feel like I have to act very responsibly so they know education doesn’t make you go off the rails.”
Maryk Stroosnijder, one of the founders of EFA, says: “I think it is quite hard for the first girls because others look up to them, but the attitudes are slowly changing. The first parents took a risk and now we have parents begging us to take their girls.”
Nor is Stroosnijder surprised to hear about Zahra’s mother feeling like a bird without wings because, she says, many mothers feel the same. “But,” she adds, “they are giving their daughters wings.”
*This article originally appeared in www.theguardian.com