Tanmia, portal for Moroccan associations

I'm often asked for adresses of association that could receive donations or use volunteers.

A portal (in french and arabic) is a huge repertory of Moroccan associations in Morocco : Tanmia, www.tanmia.ma. Many search criteria are available : geographical area, activity, etc... To be saved in your favs !

About salt caravans

In the reportage about Ousmane Dodo, I retraced in my last post, salt caravans are mentionned. They are one of the last ressources of nomads, after being one of their main wealth...

And it reminded me the impressive display of a Swiss artist, Not Vital, who spends a part of his life in Agadez. He built there many works, and developped a school and local artwork.

In an 2006 exhibition in Bielefeld Kunstahlle, I discovered "Salt", where he displayed 21 tons of salt, what a caravan brings back. And just beside, what the worth of these 21 tons in food, just a hundred kilo of spaghetti ! (Spaghetti which were sent to the country after the exhibition)

Photo found on artnet, ©2007 artnet - The art world online. All rights reserved. artnet is a registered trademark of artnet Worldwide Corporation, New York, NY.

Ousmane Dodo, doctor of the desert

Tonight on the international French TV (TV5) a reportage by Claudia and Günther Wallbrecht about a Tuareg doctor.

I was fascinated by the similarities and differences.

Many customers tols us Tazzarine and the desert around the Oasis (specially Serdrar) looks like Mauritania. I've never been there, but tonight I recognized it for true. The colors are very similar, the dark tones of the stones, that give a strange athmosphere to the landscape. Sand in yellow-ochre, but the light is somehow dimmed by the black reflection of all these stones. From place to place, a solitary tree, which is good enough to provide a small shadow shelter in the deep heat of the day.

Ousmane Dodo is a doctor who turns around this desert 10 months a year, spending very rare times with his own family. He can be up to three or four days alone, and needs to use his inherited knowledge of the desert to be able to direct himself. He went with caravans also when he was young, before being trapped in school (which is compulsory there, and nomad children are boarded in cities), and knows the real hardships and condition of life of the nomads, who trust him because he is one of them. A nomad of another kind, not looking for grazing fields for his cattle, looking for people to cure and help.

His patients don't know how to read, so he has to explain the drugs, and be simple. He often receives tablets from european people, and when he doesn't know what they are for, he looks at the latin names of the ingredients to understand the composition. He relies on drugs as well on traditionnal medecine, specially because most of the drugs, even the low priced one are too expensive. The average monthly earning in Agadez is of 30 euros per month...

Life is hard, the drought is important, and families have to move more and more to find places where they can stay a few days, maybe one week or two. Ousmane meets a clan where a young mother has lost her child, born too early, at seven month. No chance to survive for the baby, and the mother is worn out, because the family could not wait. No water anymore, and the day after they had to move again.

One child out of four, born in the desert, will die before reaching his fifth birthday...

But not everything is dark in this life.

Ousmane attends a traditionnal celebration, before the salt caravans leave for a 1200 kms over one month trip through Tenere. This is similar to moussems in Morocco, and I would love to see in Goulmine a camel beauty pageant as in Mauretania. The beasts are splendid, the men honour them, the place is out of time. Some Targui, in their best traditionnal clothes, protect themselves from the sun under modern coloured umbrellas, there is nothing but sand and rugs in the "center", nothing... but also micro, loud-speakers and an electric guitar to play the traditionnal sounds. I'm suddenly thrown back in Morocco, the orchestra of five young women singing traditionnal songs is so similar to Awach and other Berber rythms we here in the Draa valley... the rythm, the way they danse with the music, and even the voice, high and regular !

Words are different, Tamasheq is difficult to understand for a Amazight like Bilal, of a Chleuh (south of Morocco), and personnally I can't grab a word. Nevertheless, it sounds familiar. Names of places are familiar, Agadez, Aguelmane could be in Morocco.

Women are free. Women are not veiled, they can talk with men, Ousmane even explains how he met his wife : "I saw her, and I asked her if whe would accept to marry me, and then we discussed the whole night. And I was coming back and we where discussing tthe entire night, and we were making love, and I married her". Even if Muslim, women and men can have relationship before the wedding, and Targis are usually monogamist.

Two things I would retain, more than anything, because they really show how different our worlds are. Ousmane discusses with one of his friend who went to Europe "Over there, you have to pay for everything, you take the bus, you pay, and even when you park you caar you have to pay."

And his joy, before the celebration, when he can bath in the pool made by the cascade in Aguelmane. Because that happens to him only once a year to find a place with so much water. His few minutes in the water are his yearly treat....

New generation of school teachers - 2

This time, we go to a small village, in High-Atlas moutains, 70 kms away from Ouarzazate (one hour by car), in the small rural council of Tazadoute (a Berber name meaning the female monkey, monkey being Zatout). Berber and Berber speaking village, whose three Arab speaking family are actually bilingual, and therefore well-integrated. (See our page on the Berber language in Morocco)



Tazadout is in the middle of the mountains. By winter’s heart, its 42 families can be blocked a few day, even a week by the snow, making roads impossible to drive. The traditional houses, made of argil and adobe are isolating from cold, but they are more difficult to maintain, and are replaced by concrete constructions.

Brahim El Guabli is primary school teacher in Tazadout for several years. The 42 families have many children (each household counts in average 8 persons), the school is quite full.

After his lessons, Brahim supports a training program for women. He believes that school must be extended out of its wall, to meet the rural population, still highly illiterate. People must learn to read and write, and many other things. The program is large, including importance of education, hygienics, the impact of new family legal code (which is still not fully applied in the remote areas), and several workshops (cooking, embroidery…) Brahim helps the association, trains its members, teaching them their rights and obligations.

This kind of action, of small individual action, is what helps rural Morocco in its evolution. Teaching adults to read and write, as well as their rights makes them less dependant of the administration and helps to fight a corruption unfortunately still widely established.

By now, Brahim tries to have a new room in his school, for the association « Education and Solidarity ». Helped by French associations, in relations with two schools in Frence, he needs more help, to find funds and gather all the energies.



The room will be used as a multimedia library, with computers used by pupils and the families of Tazadoute. It will be also a normal library, with a dedicated space for reading, it will host training sessions (including the sessions dedicated for women), exhibitions, and will help to remedy to the derelict state of two of the three class-rooms.
It will be managed by the teachers, all members of the Association, each of them giving half a day for these activities, after school-time.

And in between, even without a room, things happen !

A few days ago, two French musicians came in Tazadoute, and organized musical workshops for the pupils… whether in the yard or in the class-rooms, everyone enjoyed it !

New generation of school teachers

Like in any school in the world, good pupils are in front, and the more troublesome try to hide behind. Our arrival has troubled the quiet school, all schoolmasters are in front of their classrooms, which are full with the laughs of the children. They saw us, and expect a very welcomed diversion, shortening their 45 minutes lessons. We are in the month of Ramadan, in the end of the morning, and everyone is happy to stop for a while.

In the Aït Ballouk doyar, in Tazzarine, there are five schoolmasters in the primary school. The class are reasonably populated, between 20 and 30 pupils.


Mohammed Khalloufi is one of those young teachers who do everything they can imagine to help their pupils, to push them a little bit further, learn other things than the official program and make them discover the world. He has an incredible IT equipment, a laptop, a DVD burner, a satellite card with which he can record TV shows from the whole world. A beamer, loud-speakers, also, and he regularly organises, in his class-room or at home, slide shows. In his class-room they are serious ones, at one, more fun, like cartoons, but he always uses them to teach something new.

He uses topical events, special days like « World Day of Ozone » or « World Day against Tuberculosis », of the Moroccan Day for safe driving (so much needed). He builds his slide-shows with videos, texts, looks for references on Encarta, to keep it short he acts like did our old schoolmasters, and try to bring his pupils all the knowledge available on Internet.

Tuberculosis for example is a question of health and biology. But also history (who did discover it), and prophylaxis. Each of his slideshows tries to give practical things to do. And he hopes the children will transfer the message to the parents. Because books are very rare here, and there is no other source of information than TV


ADSL, which arrives in the countryside had really changed Mohammed’s life !!

Education is one of the biggest challenges of modern Morocco. With a birth rate over 22%, young children are more and more to knock on schools’ doors, when, with action against illiteracy, women and adults come back to study after school hours.

These two last years saw proud proclamations from the Ministry of Education, with a schooling rate of nearly 99% of the children of age to enter primary school. The main black areas are in the remote mountain villages, specially in Middle and Anti Atlas, and by the nomads, for obvious reasons. Also many children leave school early, and leave at the end of elementary school, to become apprentice.

But, one after the other “colleges” (from 13 to 15) open, offering general or technical cursus. It is easier for a young to pass his baccalaureat (equivalent of A/O levels), and grants are given for poor families to send their children to university.



Everything is not perfect, far from it. There are still a lot of old school masters, hastily trained after the independence, some of them even did not know the topics they taught their pupils just by asking them to learn their books by heart.

Today, Morocco still misses many teachers, and the lessons can start quite late after the official date, even with one month delay.
Young teachers sent in the remote doyars (villages) have a very hard life, even more when they are Arabs (and from the city) in Berber area, their contacts with the population can be limited to nearly nothing, because of the language gap, and a quite old mistrust.

A Moroccan primary school teacher earns at the beginning around 200 euros per months, and up to 600 per month at the end of his career. (Minimal salary is 180 euro per month). He has quite often a high diploma, 3 or 4 years at university, but he had to take this profession, by lack of other opportunities. He wants to help his pupils as much as possible to improve their future.

If you pass by Tazzarine, Mohammed will be very happy to open his classroom to you.

If you want to help a class or a school in Morocco, you can :

• give school stationery, which you purchase in Morocco (it helps the local shops, and, « all inclusive » it is cheaper than bringing it from Europe), like notebooks, pens, chalks, school books, etc… and even aprons and satchels. The school teacher or the caïd (administrative manager of the village) will distribute them to the families needing them
• give material for the class, glob, maps, posters, IT equipment, books and dictionaries. Here also, it is better to buy as much as possible in the village, even if some of it can be found only in the cities. Even in Ouarzazate everything is not available and we sometimes have to go up to Marrakech
• when you’re a teacher yourself, you can organize an exchange with one of your classes. Letters, exchanges, even a long-term sponsorship (and why not a school travel ?) would be a wonderful opportunity for both sides.