Coffee With My Class

My Proficiency class had no syllabus this semester--I made up the curriculum as I went along. A benefit of this set-up was that I could write my own final. I chose to make the combined score of their final presentation and their last essay count as their final grade, thus freeing up our last class session. So instead of meeting the last session, we went to a local cafe to chat in English.

The entire experience was very encouraging for me. After a number of discouraging events and encounters recently, it was great to talk with highly educated, highly motivated Moroccan youth.

One of my students, who speaks English very well and who also, incidentally, wears the head scarf, told me her goal is to eventually become CEO of an important Moroccan company. Another wants to go to France or the US for graduate studies. One student, in her essays and her speeches, has outlined what Morocco needs to do to improve the situation of women. Another has spoken eloquently about the beauty of Morocco and the pride all Moroccans should feel for it...and what that pride should entail in their daily life.

One thing I found a bit strange about our weekend coffee was the meeting place. I asked them where they wanted to meet, and the consensus pick was the local supermarket complex. This surprised me. There are dozens of excellent cafes in Meknes, but my students wanted to go to a cafe above the supermarket, filled with shabby green chairs and dirty tables.

I asked them why they wanted to meet there, and they told me that it was the most comfortable for the girls in the class. All the traditional cafes are filled with older men or couples. The environment created by the Western setup made it more friendly to a group of young individuals, male and female.

It's a similar story with McDonalds. In these places, designed with Western standards, there is a space for non-traditional interactions between the genders. More and more Moroccans grow up with an expectation that these sort of interactions and relationships are possible...but only in certain spaces: Western restaurant chains, supermarkets, and malls.