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News Roundup: Court Orders Man to Return to Wife; Algerian President Accuses Moroccan-French Lobby; Morocco Rejects Claims of Human Rights Abuse

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Photo Credit: Moroccan World News.

February 20, 2020.

Three stories you need to read today. Compiled and broken down for you by Reporting Morocco student journalists — every day. Brought to you from the School for International Training’s journalism program, Rabat.

Moroccan Court Orders Man to Return to His Wife

Source: Morocco World News

Lede: In an unprecedented decision, the Marrakech court of first instance ordered a Moroccan man to return to his wife. 

Key Background: A Moroccan mother of three took legal action against her husband after he left their marital home.

News Roundup: Closure of Ceuta & Melilla Borders; Maternal Deaths Declining; Middle Class Initiative

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Photo credit: AFP

February 18, 2020

Three stories you need to read today. Compiled and broken down for you by Reporting Morocco student journalists–every day. Brought to you from the School for International Training’s journalism program, Rabat.

Closure of Borders Exposes Ceuta, Melilla Dependence on Morocco

Source: Morocco World News

Lede: Essaouira – The autonomous government of Ceuta has called a meeting on Monday, January 17, with the government of Melilla to come up with an action plan to “respond energetically” to the “pressure” Morocco is putting on the two enclaves to “suffocate their economies,” according to a statement from the spokesperson for the government of Ceuta, Alberto Gaitan.

Marrakesh Mother’s Nonprofit Empowers Women

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by Rachel Berets

MARRAKESH, MOROCCO—While her own newborn baby slept soundly inside, Nora Fitzgerald found a baby girl, wrapped only in a blanket, abandoned on her doorstep. She brought the baby inside and called the authorities, who took the child away a few hours later. But the next day, Fitzgerald wondered if she had made the right decision. “What if I was supposed to take her?” she asked herself.

“I spent the next day looking in all the orphanages and I couldn’t find her,” Fitzgerald said. “I don’t know what happened to her, I just prayed that she was OK.”

This innate sense of personal responsibility would ultimately lead Fitzgerald to found Amal, a nonprofit restaurant that teaches single mothers and other disadvantaged women practical skills so they can find jobs and provide for themselves, their children and their families. 

Life on borrowed land

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SBA ROUADI, MOROCCO – “My hair used to be beautiful,” Fatima Fathane laments, her wrinkled hands stroking long, wispy strawberry red locks tinged with grey as she sits on the sdader, Moroccan couch, of the one-bedroom concrete home. It’s just one more part of her life that is out of her control, one more thing taken away by years of stress and labor.

The house does not belong to Fathane, though it was built with her own money. That’s because, under Moroccan law, a house is the property of the husband.

Reporter’s Notebook: Cracking shells, breaking barriers

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ESSAOUIRA, Morocco – We pushed into the red-plastered room 10 at a time, pens poised on paper and cameras clicking. We chattered and gawked, because what else can a group of almost forty people do but chatter and gawk?

“Come this way,” called the tour guide from somewhere in the crowd. I hung back, embarrassed by the commotion we were causing. This pattern of point-and-stare felt like window-shopping, and I craved real human interaction. I searched the faces below for forgiveness.

Forgiveness came in the form of a sky-blue glass eye.

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. 

MOJ student doc in Film Fest

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Willing to Break, the powerful story of a veiled Moroccan break dancer, will be featured in the Minneapolis St Paul International Film Festival on April 14. American students Sutton Raphael and JP Keenan produced this doc with their Moroccan partner Loubna Fouzar. I will be present after the film to talk about our program and answer questions from the audience. With an annual attendance that exceeds 40,000, the MSP International Film Festival is known as the largest film event in the Upper Midwest. Very proud of our students!

A Kasala’s Warmth

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By FATIMA SUGAPONG

RABAT, Morocco- Fatima Bamu sits down very slowly, exhausted after an eleven hour workday. Her wrinkled, leathery brown hands, worn from 40 years of working in a public bath house known to the Rabat citizens as the hammam, rested on her lap. She closed her eyes as she kept her prayers close to the ring of her lips.

Everyone in the room respected her privacy. She rocked in a small back-and-forth motion in her tan djelleba, a piece of traditional Moroccan clothing, and her scarf.

“I do my job because I don’t have any other way to live,” Bamu said.

RasLma- An Unlikely Paradise

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By MICHELLE DUTRO

(Ambient sounds of water sloshing, clothes being raked over washboards and women chatting)

The public laundry is bustling.

This isn’t at all like your local, fluorescent-lit Laundromat where you pop in a few quarters and wait while the suds get to work. RasLma rests across a small river in Chefchaouen, Morocco. Complete with waterfalls, sparkling clarity and lush green vegetation, this place is a paradise.

The river is flanked by two open-air structures, each containing a handful of washing tubs. The water from the river flows into a channel that runs between 12 tubs, feeding into each one.

Moroccan Women Fight for Property Rights

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By MICHELLE DUTRO

Letting her thin, metal door clatter closed behind her, Turia Darif left her home alone for the first time in 18 years. She cried the whole way to the courthouse, crushed with an overwhelming feeling of hopelessness.

When her husband died, Darif was left with five children and no way to feed them. The family’s main source of income came from a coffee shop and two small convenience stores. The three shops had been rented by a man for many years, but after her Mr. Darif’s death, the tenant refused to pay rent.

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