Friday, September 17, 2021

village

The Sun Messenger

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By Lauren Kopchik

Photos by Rachel Woolf

Ahmed Lazar wears a suit to work, but he has no desk job.

Without even rolling up the sleeves of his dark brown jacket, he grabs a rusted shovel and forces it into the ground with wrinkled and hard-worked, yet startlingly clean hands.

“Bssla,” he says softly, pointing to the light green shoots sprouting about two inches from the soil, using the Darija term for chives. He smiles when he speaks directly to you, as if the warmth of the sun he works under each day uses him as a personal messenger.

Village Stay: Inside the Singing Walls

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BY: ELISE CAMPBELL

BIRTA, MOROCCO – Dunia Chamoun sat in the warmth of the sun that cast a hazy glow through the dirty window. Her notebooks, worn by her fingers tracing the corners and words, sat on her lap. Since she dropped out of school seven years ago, at age 11, she’s spent the majority of her days inside the family’s small, clay-walled house.

After Chamoun’s father passed away, her older brothers decided to keep her at home in order to preserve her body, her beauty, and ultimately her reputation as a “good girl.” Despite her domestic isolation, she finds ways to express herself through writing. 

The Generations of Lazar

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By Rachel Woolf

A pair of wrinkled hands snapped open lima beans. One empty pod quickly joined a small mountain of peels, tossed next to a bright purple bag of lima beans.

Khayra Lafkire, rested her hands on top of the small white fur carpet before playfully hitting her great grandson, Mouad Lazar, with a pod.

Lafkire was sitting cross-legged in the center of a colorful chaos. Dim light spilt into the room from the kitchen, painting the orange and purple rugs with a yellow tint. As Lafkire continued her work, Mouad ran in circles, his feet slapping the rugs with each step.

Village Life in Morocco

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[soliloquy id=”1611″]

 

 

 

By MARK MINTON

SIT journalism students in Morocco have returned safely from their week-long village stay, in which students are immersed in the culture of a rural Moroccan village where they live and work with a local family, participating in the rituals of rustic Moroccan life.

Students lived for one week in Birta Village, part of Sbaa Rouadi Commune in the Boulmane region near Fez. While there, students participated in group activities, visited local NGOs, and navigated the lifestyles of their individual host families, intimating themselves with the routines, joys and travails of village life in Morocco.

Empowering women locally: Sabah Lazaar

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By SADIA KHATRI

Photographs by MARK MINTON

Sabah Lazaar watches women pile into the white building of Annajan Cooperative: 16 and 17-year-olds trek from distances of several kilometers away, for a morning spent with sewing machines and computers. The vocational center wasn’t a sight in Lazaar’svillage while growing up—which is exactly why she founded it.

“I never wanted to work in a place where everything had already been provided,” she insists, “That would be an easy way out.”

In Sbaa Rouadi—Lazaar’s dry, humid village—sunset marks the end of activity. Men head home from farming, and women wrap up the day’s cooking.

Fatna Aya Bakes Bread

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Break of dawn in the Sbaa Rouadi Commune—less than fifteen minutes away from the bustling city life of Fes, Morocco. It is cold, dark outside, and

Fatna Aya is in her barren cement-walled kitchen, kneading dough for bread. This is Fatna at dawn every day; it is the rhythm and repetition of her rural life.

Prayer; dough; washing dishes from the previous day. Milking the cow; baking the bread; serving breakfast—mint tea and warm hobz.

Lunch is served with hobz.

Dinner is served with hobz.

Hobz is often used as a utensil when there are none; you can dip it in lubia and scoop the beans with ease.

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