By Allan Siao Ming Witherick
Some of the other participants are planning to provide text when we have time, but it’s fairly packed with limited access to the internet, so I’ve tried to capture some of the other things briefly in this section!
More than lunch
Even at our meals we are learning and engaging!
Our lunch time speaker was a young person who gave a very inspirational speech giving us an idea of some of the changes in the country. In particular the increasing pride in the creative and cultural industries which for example are now expanding out of the traditional areas of painting in to photography.
Our speaker, Leila Ghandi, also recognised that she was not representative of the general Moroccan population and had benefited from privileges not open to most. An interesting comment she made was that she had had people say to her ‘You inspire me.’, something she had not considered before, but it is something easy to forget. As a diverse group with rich and varied backgrounds the same can be said about us, often we are too busy to see that actually we do inspire others and have a duty to encourage others.
Protest is alive and well
During the parliamentary visit hosted by Mbarka Bouaida (Article to follow!) we were able to witness the free and open protests outside. Held peacefully and energetically by young people, they were chanting and demanding jobs.
As a country the majority of students are women (60% of university population) and indeed the women tended to have more reasons to be vociferous as they wanted more freedom and more opportunities in what is still a male dominated society.
There have been positive steps though with a number of women elected in the opposition parties, and indeed some of them are lead by women. The country is also interesting in that a separate election for seats held by youth (under 40) and women were also held.