The human soul on fire

I am ecstatic and more filled with motivation than I can contain in my 5'5'' frame.
Today I had a very successful meeting with the director, technician, interviewer and a staff member from Al Akhawayn to discuss our massive undertakings.
Following our meeting I watched a film called Crossing Borders produced by Morocco Exchange and assistant produced by Lotfi. It truly inspired me and reminded me of what I am doing and why.
To see a trailer visit:
www.crossingbordersfilm.org

We can change and improve the human condition with pure compassion and resilience.

Today discussing our film we rolled out the structure of our project which I will dispense to you now.

We are creating a non-governmental organization (NGO), with the working title Women and a Movement. This organization will be run and implemented by Moroccans. It will be a massive network of individuals and organizations all working towards improving the condition and livelihood of Moroccan women and families. The organization will be arranged into network categories of people we know, will meet during our interviews and afterwards. These categories will include in the broadest sense education, health, enterprise, spirituality, leadership and environment. This will not only be a collaboration of Moroccan partners but we are also looking to reach out and eventually expand internationally with the hopeful collaboration of groups such as Women for Democracy and Friendship Force International.
We are working on having a forum every year for all participants to collaborate together in one space every Spring (god willing).

Our first venture into this project will be a film.

During the spring our team will be traveling throughout Morocco for an intensive 20 days of interviewing and networking. We will be collecting profiles and stories of successful Moroccan women and the communities that support them. This film will be shown to students, rural communities and all who are interested to help spread the message of empowerment, community participation and human potential for a growing movement towards women’s equal participation and contribution to society.

We will end the film with our first activity which will be hosting Friendship Force from Australia in my village for a day to discuss with the women health and wellbeing.

Accompanying the film will be an inclusive resource and action guide that will contain film discussion questions, leadership and gender activities, lists of organizations, individuals and institutions from across the country all working towards the same goal.


We will, I will, not let this project be anything less then what is stated above. We are a motivated, networked and passionate team of individuals and keep growing.

For ways to help support our vision please contact me and visit our blog.

womenandamovement.blogspot.com

Soon we hope to have up an interactive and illustrated website.
Swift speed and godbless

Adjarninu (My Neighbor)

It is easy to be fooled by this young gentleman who comes up to my waist. He may appear innocent but is a wild wild young lad.
He comes to my house almost every day with his runny nose and with excitement stutters as he askes me if he can have something. He knocks on the door, I answer, he enters and starts walking around.
"Karima (my Moroccan name), can, can, can, I have your pen"
Oh yes he is cute but also get into a lot of trouble.
I will let him draw but he draws on everything but the paper.
I give him a candy and he tells all the kids in town I have candy.

I love this neighbor of mine I do in a self torturing way.

New Blog

So as some of you may know I have been working on producing a film.
I started a blog to let people know details of the project.
Here you can post any questions or comments and stay updated.


Thank you all for your love and support.

womenandamovement.blogspot.com

the sun

the sun came out today!

Severe weather is very real

I just returned back to Morocco from a vacation back home in the states which I will discuss in a later post but there are more pressing matters.
As soon as I arrived back to my home I was confonted with reality and dangers of nature. My ceiling in my house has begun to leak and mold.



Aside from what now seems like a minor problem I face in my house, I am faced with something scarier outside. The river, the water, the flooding. Houses are flooding, river is overflowing, walls have been broke, rocks are tumbling under rushes of rapids funneling through our valley. Water is thundering ouside of my house, haunting yet soothing in its grandocity.



We have been experiencing severe rains and the snow that accumulated has now melted and has joined the river to create a powerful force. Not only are homes in danger but so are peoples livelyhoods. Farms, with this seasons crops of carrots, potatoes and the like are destroyed. Plantations, years of hard work are washed away.

Rodent update

So I thought I was clever and put out a metal trap with a cookie inside but he ate it, uncaught and no crumbs left behind! I also stuffed a blanket under the crack of the door but he pushed through it, enough so that I could see it was large, gray and fast. Upon seeing me he retreated fortunately and called for me to reinforce my barricade efforts. After that night, my first sighting and the failure with the trap I put out a few more lures and did an obsessive cleaning of my house, searching high and low for any creature or creature gates. That night I did not have any bites. I think he might have left? How, I do not know.
Maybe he's still here... lurking around, playing it quiet until I give up my paranoia. Clever creatures.

Check him out

Some beautiful pictures of Morocco by a talented Moroccan photographer:

http://www.phototechnique.org/

Rodents at night

I woke up last night with the feeling something was sniffing my hair. My room is so dark and quiet that sometimes I cannot tell if it is a dream or if I am awake. I thought maybe it was a ghost, that surprisingly comforted me but then logic slowly rolled in yet I refused to think more deeply into it. I settled on believing it was a puppy and dreamt of that for a while. Then again, something awoke me, I felt it. Something large was on my pillow by my head and what must have been its nose in my hair. I froze for a minute not knowing what to do. What if it bites?
I ran as fast as I could to the light switch and alas, I found nothing. I believe it to be a large rodent and it is taking up the same space as I am. At 4 am I found it nearly impossible to go back to sleep despite my drowsiness. I left the lights on, put on a movie, adorned my head with a thick wool cap and buried myself under my sheets.
What does one do when they find the rat I wonder? Am I supposed to kill it with my bare hands, or gently ask it if it would not mind living outside or in the barn next door. I am not sure if I can sleep soundly until I find the creature. I left a metal rat trap out with a cookie inside but I feel bad if it goes for the trick. The trap looks terrible and inhuman. And then, when I come home and it is in there, possibly still alive how do I free it from the metal jaws and where shall I put it?
Oh dear creature, I wish that you never stumbled into this house for we cannot be together but I must stay.

The Wall

From the summer until this winter I have witnessed development and change from my own window. Some change good, some not so good. I used to have a view of the brook from my living room window but now I have the view of a tall, white obstructive wall. I am not the only one saddened by this addition but so is most of my village. It was an initiative I hear came from the Common Rural who is in charge of the area. People are upset about not only the aesthetics of the wall but also how it inhibits access to the running water that we occasionally need when the water is turned off for days at a time. The brook is used for washing dishes, clothes and collecting water for cleaning purposes. The wall follows the brook throughout the entirety of the village. It is double the high it was originally so that one standing next to it could not peak over the edge. The Common Rural then decided to paint it white, taking away from the natural look of our environment.
Almost every day for the two months work was being done on the wall there were arguments from the village folk who were protesting the wall. To add to the problem the men who had to camp out in front of the wall, in front of my house, appeared to have no respect for the land. They littered all over the place, and desecrated in what is my front lawn. As they were out of towners they also did not know who I was and would stare into my windows if I had them open and comment to me as I entered and left my house.
Aside from my own issues with the project I am most disappointed that none of the locals appeared to have been asked about this new addition. Two young men were also jailed in Meknes for it because they vocally expressed their disgust with the construction project and lack of respect for their land and environment. The wall has taken away the beauty of the visual element of the running brook and even the pleasant sounds of the running water.
People see this as just another example of the corruption in Morocco on the local government level. Many have told me that it is a project that the Common Rural could do so they can say they spent money on a project when in fact they will pocket the majority of the money for themselves. This is not the first time I have heard of things like this happening. In fact, I have heard this story all too much from so many different communities. When people stand up to these issues they get jailed, or put on a black list of sorts. It is your word against the authorities and the people’s word doesn’t mean much of anything. So the wall stays.
It is disappointing because the money could have been used for more practical issues such as the water pipes that have burst and are creating a lake in front of my house, or to finish the children’s center which was started a year and a half ago and hasn’t been worked on since I have been here, or the transportation problem that we have. It is difficult for me to have to remove myself from this issue as we are not and should not be involved in anything political but I need to at least make people aware of this corruption and clear violation of people’s human right of freedom of expression.

Technology Woes

My computer has been malfunctioning the past week. I even had to restart the whole thing and lost some pictures which is a little unsettling. As the loss of anything will, I have been contemplating about what this loss means to me. I am living in the mountains in Africa where people live off less than a dollar a day and I have wireless internet in my house, my Itunes playing at my whim and entertainment in the evening by watching the newest movie I received from swapping with other volunteers.
The days without my computer I felt unproductive, lonely and frustrated. But when I think about how I feel when I have it I also feel I should be out communicating face to face with people here, I feel bombarded by all of the information available at my fingertips. I think that I have become addicted to being connected and entertained by this machine. When it doesn’t work I read more, visit more people, I draw and cook more labor intensive dishes that pay off. Maybe this is a tool that I would do better without. Yet, how would I communicate with you as I am now? I think I need to set computer usage limits because I fear it may become my escape vehicle, inhibiting me from engaging more physically with my immediate environment.