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Goodbye Morocco
Posted on 13-10-2008
With only two full working days in Morocco we could not possibly ask for a more encouraging start of the tour than the one we got: it is not every day that no less than two members of the government – specifically a minister of employment and vocational training and his counterpart from the department of education, a crucial combination when it comes to dealing with child labour, indeed – receive you at their respective ministries.
What more, Mr. Jamal Aghmani and Mr. Mohammed Akchichan both straightforwardly acknowledged seriousness of the problem and convincingly demonstrated readiness to tackle it, supported by existing blueprint of an action plan (check back at these pages later to learn the details).
Add to this a visit in one of the schools in Fes that continues to generate buzz with its successful program of drop-out prevention plus a heart-warming kick-off ceremony of our tour in the same city during which Venkat single-handedly marshalled the crowd into declaring Fes a child labour free zone (in flawless Arabic!) and you start getting an idea of how hard it is for us to be having to say goodbye to Morocco after such a brief, but overall positive visit.
We have to keep reminding ourselves that complacency is the last thing we need, but there are moments when it is perhaps allowed to let optimism reign and what we are bringing with us from Morocco is a feeling of a genuine can-do spirit, generated by the assertion of political will to eradicate child labour paired with dedication of teachers and NGO workers who make this “miracle”, that should really be a norm, happen on the ground.
As I write this, a train is carrying us towards Casablanca where we are to board a plane to Ethiopia, a country with a host of challenges of its own. Stay tuned to see if the high spirits we are now basking in survive the next stage. We surely hope so.
Pavel and Nadia
What more, Mr. Jamal Aghmani and Mr. Mohammed Akchichan both straightforwardly acknowledged seriousness of the problem and convincingly demonstrated readiness to tackle it, supported by existing blueprint of an action plan (check back at these pages later to learn the details).
Add to this a visit in one of the schools in Fes that continues to generate buzz with its successful program of drop-out prevention plus a heart-warming kick-off ceremony of our tour in the same city during which Venkat single-handedly marshalled the crowd into declaring Fes a child labour free zone (in flawless Arabic!) and you start getting an idea of how hard it is for us to be having to say goodbye to Morocco after such a brief, but overall positive visit.
We have to keep reminding ourselves that complacency is the last thing we need, but there are moments when it is perhaps allowed to let optimism reign and what we are bringing with us from Morocco is a feeling of a genuine can-do spirit, generated by the assertion of political will to eradicate child labour paired with dedication of teachers and NGO workers who make this “miracle”, that should really be a norm, happen on the ground.
As I write this, a train is carrying us towards Casablanca where we are to board a plane to Ethiopia, a country with a host of challenges of its own. Stay tuned to see if the high spirits we are now basking in survive the next stage. We surely hope so.
Pavel and Nadia
