The Oriental Express 2.0

mural near the Moulay Slimane Foundation centre for sustaining traditional arts

Friday, October 12th, I got to experience my first trip on the night train to Oujda, where the satellite office of MEDA Maroc is located. It is a 10 hour overnight trip from Casablanca to Oujda by train, which travels via Rabat, Fes and a few smaller stops before reaching the end of the line in Oujda, a mere 15 kms from the Algerian border, and 60 kms from the Mediterranean. Because it is the easternmost part of Morocco, this region is referred to as the Oriental region - hence the Oriental Express 2.0 title. Not the original, but not inaccurate!

I set off on my adventure in good company, one of the other interns from our office was heading up to Oujda along with her YEN supervisor who played a role in starting the impact assessment of the "100 hours to success" program MEDA Maroc has successfully been running since 2009. Other staff had already arrived in Oujda earlier in the week, while we were at the YEN clinic my co-intern co-organized, and the pilot of the impact assessment study was starting the following morning. 

We boarded the train in the dark - E. and I were lucky to be booked together into a compartment with a small couch to sit on between the beds, rather than the very tight bunk bed set-up in the adjacent compartments. Not to say there was a lot of room to stretch.  I tried to get a decent night's sleep but I found the noise and the motion and the foreign-ness of the whole experience too distracting. I think I mostly cat-napped. 

Do my eyes deceive me? 

Oh, hello there hills of sand.

When we roused ourselves the next morning and opened the window blinds I was stunned. The train was speeding along past dunes, mountains and desert-scapes of red-brown sand. The strong early morning sunlight illuminated everything in a surreal way. I think I snapped about 75 photos as we travelled along - the train was about an hour late, so if we had been on schedule I would have missed seeing such beautiful scenery. The photos posted here don't do the land justice. 

I "think" those are olive trees, we went past several groves of olives and citrus.

Impact  Assessment Pilot

Saturday I snapped photos and tried to be as useful as possible as the pilot of the impact assessment was done. This is the first time MEDA is using tablets in Morocco to do surveying so some issues arose with the survey, others with how the enumerators used the tablets - but overall this should help by reducing the number of times information needs to be transcribed before it can be analyzed (as it would have on paper). Another challenge was that the original survey was drafted in English, then translated to French for the tablets, but the enumerators are asking the questions and recording answers in Darija - the Moroccan Arabic dialect, that is spoken only. The I.A. team worked the rest of the weekend tidying things up and the actual baseline survey started Monday morning. A total of 1800 youth will be surveyed, from this number only 600 will be given the "100 hours to success" training, the others will be the control group. Oujda is the only remaining location where the program is being offered (it used to be offered through partner associations across Morocco), since the strategy shift for the YouthInvest project occurred in the spring. Our focus will switch to Microfinance institutions (MFIs) and improving their services and products for youth, instead of directly training youth (although by the end of the trainings in Oujda in Feb. 2013, over 50,000 youth will have benefitted from MEDA programs). 

   

Success Stories

As I mentioned earlier in this blog, my trips to Oujda are for the purpose of collecting success stories (ideally 3 per month) from youth who have completed our trainings and now see changes in their financial situation (i.e. have learned to save money, started their own business, or made other significant changes to their lives because of what they learned from us). Between Monday and Tuesday I interviewed over 10 people from a shortlist of suggested past participants. I was extremely optimistic at first that I would be able to use all the stories, but while some youth said they had seen huge changes to their lifestyle and attitude from the life skills section of the "100 hours to success" training, not everyone could demonstrate financial changes.

I know there will be more stories out there, and I'll be going back pretty soon to get some more, but I think I have a better idea now of what criteria potential candidates must meet before I waste their time asking them to come to the MEDA Maroc office in Oujda. The extension officers and office staff in Oujda are all very helpful and welcoming, so I look forward to my next visit. One thing I can be especially proud of from my visit to Oujda is that some portraits I took for the success stories (which will go on the new meda.org website when it goes live) are being used in brochures and banners which will be used across the Middle East North Africa (MENA) region and in Canada! Not too shabby!

Miscellaneous 

cactus growing in a roof- no big deal...

Just a few odd thoughts and facts I wanted to share as I try to wrap up this (overly) long post - an interesting feature of the Oujda train station is its closed international travel section. This is because the only country you could travel to from Oujda is neighbouring Algeria, but the land border has been closed between the two countries for effectively 20 years (goes back to the debate over the territory of Western Sahara). A lot of black market trade occurs between the two countries - people sell stuff out of their trunks on the streets and much more obviously in other areas, but it is an interesting dilemma. Fun fact: the president of Algeria is a native of Oujda: Abdelaziz Bouteflika. 

While in Oujda we ate at a lot of local restaurants - some of the more Moroccan variety (paper instead of placemats or napkins), no utensils, something greasy but tasty, and others of the more French style, including a fabulous restaurant that is seemingly always empty but serves delicious food - Comme Chez Soi. A real hidden gem if you ever find yourself in, of all places, Oujda (don't ask about touristy things to do, there are none, as your Lonely Planet or EyeWitness guide book will tell you). 

We'll stop there for now, next post you can learn everything there is to know about Eid-al-adha, the Feast of the Sacrifice, and pretty much the biggest festival in the country, which starts tomorrow!  

In the Field: Meeting Clients, Practising my German

The past two weeks have been a flurry of activities throughout MEDA Maroc's offices, which was marked by visits from MEDA staff from Europe and Canada, a Monitoring & Evaluation Clinic organized by the two YEN interns in Morocco (Elena and Rémi, my fellow Canadians), a field trip to Tiflet and Rabat to meet with beneficiaries and partners, and a trip to our Oujda office for interviews and to observe the start of our impact assessment baseline survey. I'll start with the trip to Tiflet and Rabat, and write about the Oujda trip will be my next blog post.

Tiflet and Rabat with MEDA Europe

Germans having lunch at Sqala, a Moroccan restaurant

To start off, two weeks ago, I spend Friday and Saturday assisting a small group of Germans engaged in MEDA activities in Europe tour Casablanca, Rabat and Tiflet. The group was led by the main MEDA Europe staffperson, my Communications supervisor, and a tour guide to translate from Arabic to German. We hired a bus to take us around, and late on Friday afternoon, after stopping to ask a dozen people for directions, we arrived at the Tiflet ARDI (one of our partner organizations) office, where the group was introduced to over a dozen beneficiaries of one of our financial services training programs.

We then visited the bakery of one of the beneficiaries, which he learned to better manage and thus make it more profitable, before heading back to Rabat for supper and a good night's rest. 

The magician (see his poster behind)

Saturday saw us heading back to Tiflet (about 1 hour from Rabat, further inland) to visit the "kindergarten" and after-school program another client created after his training. The have approximately 50 kids benefiting from the program, from pre-school aged to high school aged children. We also got a magic show from a beneficiary who animates events and birthday parties - check out the flying table!

Our next stop was a carpet store, where a brother and sister who took the training do some interesting business. The brother creates contemporary carpet designs, and sends them to women weavers in the area, who produce the carpets. The sister designs and makes clothing as well as household bamboo furniture. The two also source traditional Berber carpets, and sell them. I was very tempted to buy something, but I was too indecisive!

It was great to see what young people, my contemporaries, are able to do, and how they have created innovative ways to support themselves and their families. They're not rich - but they're not unemployed (unlike 30% of Moroccan youth aged 15-29 according to World Bank estimates) and they're doing something that they enjoy and is productive - that sounds like success!

Beneficiaries at the Tiflet ARDI office

Some of the carpet designs the young man created

The Germans were very interested in the youths' businesses, and asked tons of questions. Unfortunately (and I must say for the first time really since coming here), I was the person who went around but understood very little - the kids and partners would speak Arabic, then the interpreter would directly translate into German. Since I only know a handful of Arabic, and I seem to have forgotten all the important words I once-upon-a-time knew from two semesters in Herr Schmidt's class, I mostly just followed along and asked for explanations from my co-worker when she was nearby. Since I talk to everyone here in French, I kept trying to ask the Germans questions in French - but mostly they spoke English as a second language, not French, which again was confusing. It felt very odd to be "that person," but the trip was very interesting and gave me a chance to meet youth who benefited from our trainings. 

What I found really intriguing was the fact that, of the group of 11 Germans, several of the men had brought their teenaged children along. In fact 4 of the 11 were under the age of 20. One of the dads explained to be on the first day that they had brought them along because they thought it would a good chance for their kids to learn about the lives of youth in another country. To make them aware of the differences in daily life, work, education, life style, everything. For their part, the German teens were great: interested and engaged. They even swapped Facebook contact info with a number of the youth we met. 

How many parents take their kids on trips like that? Where they see the end results of MEDA's work firsthand? Very few. Kudos to them for expanding their children's knowledge, while also being engaged enough to care how and where funding is spent (Some visitors were already MEDA donors). 

The group of German visitors, and local clients and staff

Finally, late Saturday evening, my co-worker and I said "Auf wiedersehen" and hopped on the train from Rabat to Casablanca, getting in around 8:30 p.m. or so. 

More on trains and travels very shortly!

 

A Moroccan Thanksgiving

 I know it's not very original, but I thought my weekly post should focus on being thankful. This is my second Thanksgiving away from home (both were supplemented by stovetop stuffing mix from Canada but I'll get to that later on), and it is important to pause and think about what I can be thankful for, especially in a developing country, where you realize how much we take for granted in Canada, or the rest of the developed world. 

Things I am thankful for:

- Family that loves me (and who send me outrageous amounts of homemade fudge via business class mail [thank you Gramma Marnie], or send all the little things I forgot at home in a care package [thank you mom], or send me photos each week of my now month-old niece [thank you Gill] and everyone else who keeps in touch via skype, facebook or emails)

- Friends who care about me (shout out here to everyone who is interested enough in my life to find out how I'm doing, and want to know what it's like here, whether they're in Canada, the UK, temporarily living in Poland, travelling Europe, or here in Casablanca, and especially those I've met since coming here, who have helped me settle in)

- Always being able to fulfill my needs (I might complain about the slow internet, or how arduous it can be to do laundry by hand, but I have a big apartment, access to plentiful food, a job (temporarily -haha), and money to buy anything else I need. This is in direct contrast to the poor people and beggars I see on a daily basis. They don't need a IPod, or a Galaxy Tab 2, or even a laptop for their personal entertainment; kids here don't need multiple screens to have fun. It makes you identify your needs from your wants, and be thankful that you have more than necessary)

- Being safe, healthy and having my rights (whether here or at home, I am never truly worried about not being able to say what I think, go where I want, vote, or otherwise express my human rights. I don't live in a war-torn country, or under an oppressive regime, or live on less than $2 a day. It's definitely worth something)

Thanksgiving Dinner

Thanksgiving dinner!

Yesterday I organized a Thanksgiving dinner for myself and the other 3 Canadians I know, here in my flat. I would have liked to prepare more of it from scratch, but the lack of a microwave or oven to cook with and also keep things warm, and lack of time, meant it was a bit improvised - I bought a rotisserie chicken (which comes with the following fixings: round loaves of bread, white beans in sauce, rice, french fries, and a sauce for the chicken), and I made mashed potatoes and stovetop stuffing (a necessity for all holiday meals!), we topped it off with Moroccan red wine, and maple fudge, mille feuilles and tea for dessert. YUM! I was glad there was a bit of leftovers for lunch today! It was a great dinner, and was really nice to share the holiday with other Canadians. Even if there was no homemade apple pie!