What happens when you put Spanish, Moroccan, and American students all in one room?
Day Next,
The Intercultural University Forum
This was a huge deal to happen in Meknes. Since all of the Americans have arrived here, we have been working on getting together a forum with Moroccans, Spaniards, and, of course, us. It was built off the legacy that one Moroccan student and one American student had come up with a couple sessions ago. They just wanted to have a place where students could all get together and talk about their differences. That worked well for the first two times. Our director, Danial, decided to take it one step further this time around.
BIG!
Instead of a one day discussion, it was going to be three days. He also decided to invite Spanish universities to participate. We were supposed to come up with all sorts of topic ideas, funding ideas, publicity, food, art, music, a play……
Money, money, money, money……
That was probably the largest worry. We didn’t have one dirham (Moroccan money) until about a week before the event took place!
Frustration Ahhhhhhhhh!
All the disorganization made me a little crazy and I had very little hope that it would be a success.
Result!
Yay! I won’t say that it went off without a hitch, but it was a pretty amazing experience. The first night we had two bands that performed and when the band from the Sahara (the same people we met in the desert) performed the whole group of people Spanish, Moroccan, American, 170 students in total, all started dancing!
It was so cool and I think that it will probably be the thing I remember most. All the meetings, debates, language barriers, and differences disappeared during those moments and we were just a bunch of students enjoying life and each other.
And, though we tried to reconstruct those moments with all the discussions and learned a lot about each other that we had never known before, we couldn’t capture that atmosphere again.
Many things came to light that I had never thought of before. One of the most important issues that came up was how difficult it is for Moroccan students to study abroad or travel at all for that matter. Just to get a visa one has to;
1. Have a certain amount of money in a bank account,
2. Pay a huge fine
3. Fill out a large application
4. Deal with Moroccan bureaucracy
5. Deal with American bureaucracy
6. Get Denied because if your name is Mohommed, you lose
It’s a good thing I didn’t have to deal with that!
It does make me more than a little put out with our society.
It also gave me an inside look to how there is a huge “identity crises” in Moroccan society when it comes to their form of government. Moroccans want democracy, you will hear that said by every student you meet and adults as well. They also want a government that has very strong ties with religion. (After all when there are 5 prayer calls every day stating before the sunrise there is little opportunity to forget it!) This apparently makes it difficult to have a democracy because the religious leaders don’t want other ideas being bought to the front. To them, new ideas are bad ideas even if they are ones that coincide with Islamic values. (Not every religious leader, of course, but the ones that get the most press) But who are we kidding? The United States is probably one of the most religious countries in the world! America is by no means a secular country. Politics and religion are very close in our society. So if it can somehow work for us it most certainly work for the Moroccan people. They just need to accept the fact that nothing is going to change unless they decide to change it. POWER TO THE PEOPLE!
The Intercultural University Forum
This was a huge deal to happen in Meknes. Since all of the Americans have arrived here, we have been working on getting together a forum with Moroccans, Spaniards, and, of course, us. It was built off the legacy that one Moroccan student and one American student had come up with a couple sessions ago. They just wanted to have a place where students could all get together and talk about their differences. That worked well for the first two times. Our director, Danial, decided to take it one step further this time around.
BIG!
Instead of a one day discussion, it was going to be three days. He also decided to invite Spanish universities to participate. We were supposed to come up with all sorts of topic ideas, funding ideas, publicity, food, art, music, a play……
Money, money, money, money……
That was probably the largest worry. We didn’t have one dirham (Moroccan money) until about a week before the event took place!
Frustration Ahhhhhhhhh!
All the disorganization made me a little crazy and I had very little hope that it would be a success.
Result!
Yay! I won’t say that it went off without a hitch, but it was a pretty amazing experience. The first night we had two bands that performed and when the band from the Sahara (the same people we met in the desert) performed the whole group of people Spanish, Moroccan, American, 170 students in total, all started dancing!
It was so cool and I think that it will probably be the thing I remember most. All the meetings, debates, language barriers, and differences disappeared during those moments and we were just a bunch of students enjoying life and each other.
And, though we tried to reconstruct those moments with all the discussions and learned a lot about each other that we had never known before, we couldn’t capture that atmosphere again.
Many things came to light that I had never thought of before. One of the most important issues that came up was how difficult it is for Moroccan students to study abroad or travel at all for that matter. Just to get a visa one has to;
1. Have a certain amount of money in a bank account,
2. Pay a huge fine
3. Fill out a large application
4. Deal with Moroccan bureaucracy
5. Deal with American bureaucracy
6. Get Denied because if your name is Mohommed, you lose
It’s a good thing I didn’t have to deal with that!
It does make me more than a little put out with our society.
It also gave me an inside look to how there is a huge “identity crises” in Moroccan society when it comes to their form of government. Moroccans want democracy, you will hear that said by every student you meet and adults as well. They also want a government that has very strong ties with religion. (After all when there are 5 prayer calls every day stating before the sunrise there is little opportunity to forget it!) This apparently makes it difficult to have a democracy because the religious leaders don’t want other ideas being bought to the front. To them, new ideas are bad ideas even if they are ones that coincide with Islamic values. (Not every religious leader, of course, but the ones that get the most press) But who are we kidding? The United States is probably one of the most religious countries in the world! America is by no means a secular country. Politics and religion are very close in our society. So if it can somehow work for us it most certainly work for the Moroccan people. They just need to accept the fact that nothing is going to change unless they decide to change it. POWER TO THE PEOPLE!