Forgive me friends...it has been 9 days since my last post. Mea Culpa. I will try and condense these crazy days into as few words as I can. If I am able, I will also try and post some pictures.
The days with the girls:
Went to the hamamm with the older girls on Friday and they were wonderful about walking me through the paces and they even gave me back rubs since I managed to do something to my back. Got my hair hennaed. My facebook page has pictures.
This continues to be an amazing experience. The week flies by and I crawl into bed each night feeling exhausted but so fulfilled. My day begins at about 9 and I now see girls for English and French (we have dropped the computer stuff) throughout the day. In addition, in the evening from 8-10 I stay around and help the girls with homework. They all gather in the little salon around 4 tables and do their homework. It gets very loud and animated as you would imagine. We also have been practicing We are the World each night from 6-7 as a way to wind down at the end of the day. Tomorrow I will post stuff on the singing stuff.
Their schoolwork: Very strange. Their French work is easy reading and have questions that bear no resemblance to the reading. Also, they all have workbooks that have been written in so it is hard not to use the answers in the book even though they are usually wrong. They have NO conversation in class and never get to hear French except from the teacher, so I have been trying to get them to speak to each other and have downloaded some French audiobooks for them to listen to. However, they HATE French so much it is hard to keep them motivated. For some of the girls, they are so far behind on their French, they cannot even answer basic questions let along read the texts.Their English books are full of grammatical mistakes and vocabulary that is needlessly complicated. They also mix British and American spellings and word usage. But they plug along and most of the girls are doing pretty well. We even have one or two that have gotten the highest marks in the school!
The girls:
It is impossible to describe all of them so I will just start to give you a flavor. Two of the girls, Khadija (there are 6 with this name here) and Chaima have invited me to visit their families for a weekend and i will be going in the next two weeks. It should be an amazing experience and I am honored to have been invited. Several other girls have also indicated that they want me to come too so we see.
Chaima: This girl is an amazing French and beginning English student and is in her third year of college (middle school) here. Aside from being beautiful and wonderfully outgoing and affectionate, she is one of the best students in the school. Unlike many of the parents of these girls, Chaima's parents are very supportive of her education and she may even be able to fulfill her dream of becoming a French teacher instead of being married off to some old guy. It is really difficult to teach her in the French class because she is always on top of my grammar!
Khadija Ait Hmad: 2nd year lycee student, Khadija has been with EFA since it opened in 2007 and she is amazingly good in English and bad in French. She lives in a little town up the mountains so I guess that I am going to see real Amazigh life when I go there. Her mother died last year and her father has remarried and she and her step mother don't get along so we will see.
Asmaa: 12 and a budding movie star....she loves anything that will bring her attention and she is cute as a button. She won't begin English in school for another two years but she is already speaking it in franglais. She has received the highest marks in the house and the highest marks in her grade.
The greatest hope is that these girls, all of whom say that they want to go to University, will do so. If not, then at least they will be able to go home, get married and educate the next generation. It seems so hard to believe looking at them that some of them will be married in a few years. A girl who was here last year didn't come back (she was 15) because when she went home for the summer she was told that she was getting married and moving to Casablanca. She calls the house often and talks to the girls about her exciting life with her 48 year old husband. He apparently has enough money to help the family and so they are very grateful and by all accounts, he seems to be a loving husband. Legal marriage age in Morocco is 18 but in the rural villages where child brides have a long history, it is hard to break the tradition. And so the parents just lie about their child's age on their birth certificate in anticipation of an early marriage.
The days with the girls:
Went to the hamamm with the older girls on Friday and they were wonderful about walking me through the paces and they even gave me back rubs since I managed to do something to my back. Got my hair hennaed. My facebook page has pictures.
This continues to be an amazing experience. The week flies by and I crawl into bed each night feeling exhausted but so fulfilled. My day begins at about 9 and I now see girls for English and French (we have dropped the computer stuff) throughout the day. In addition, in the evening from 8-10 I stay around and help the girls with homework. They all gather in the little salon around 4 tables and do their homework. It gets very loud and animated as you would imagine. We also have been practicing We are the World each night from 6-7 as a way to wind down at the end of the day. Tomorrow I will post stuff on the singing stuff.
 |
| Asmaa,Khadija and Souad |
 |
| Mouna and Sabira |
The girls:
It is impossible to describe all of them so I will just start to give you a flavor. Two of the girls, Khadija (there are 6 with this name here) and Chaima have invited me to visit their families for a weekend and i will be going in the next two weeks. It should be an amazing experience and I am honored to have been invited. Several other girls have also indicated that they want me to come too so we see.
Chaima: This girl is an amazing French and beginning English student and is in her third year of college (middle school) here. Aside from being beautiful and wonderfully outgoing and affectionate, she is one of the best students in the school. Unlike many of the parents of these girls, Chaima's parents are very supportive of her education and she may even be able to fulfill her dream of becoming a French teacher instead of being married off to some old guy. It is really difficult to teach her in the French class because she is always on top of my grammar!
Khadija Ait Hmad: 2nd year lycee student, Khadija has been with EFA since it opened in 2007 and she is amazingly good in English and bad in French. She lives in a little town up the mountains so I guess that I am going to see real Amazigh life when I go there. Her mother died last year and her father has remarried and she and her step mother don't get along so we will see.
Asmaa: 12 and a budding movie star....she loves anything that will bring her attention and she is cute as a button. She won't begin English in school for another two years but she is already speaking it in franglais. She has received the highest marks in the house and the highest marks in her grade.
The greatest hope is that these girls, all of whom say that they want to go to University, will do so. If not, then at least they will be able to go home, get married and educate the next generation. It seems so hard to believe looking at them that some of them will be married in a few years. A girl who was here last year didn't come back (she was 15) because when she went home for the summer she was told that she was getting married and moving to Casablanca. She calls the house often and talks to the girls about her exciting life with her 48 year old husband. He apparently has enough money to help the family and so they are very grateful and by all accounts, he seems to be a loving husband. Legal marriage age in Morocco is 18 but in the rural villages where child brides have a long history, it is hard to break the tradition. And so the parents just lie about their child's age on their birth certificate in anticipation of an early marriage.
They hate French and gave up on computers . . .my kind of country . . .
ReplyDelete