The school is located in the middle of a football field on the heights of the village. Dozens of children play between the six large caidal tents, made of white canvas decorated with black patterns, which serve as classrooms. The air is hot, dusty. Below, excavators can be heard clearing rubble from collapsed houses in Moulay Brahim, one of the High Atlas villages devastated by the earthquake that struck Morocco on September 8 and caused the death of nearly 3,000 people, according to the latest assessment of the authorities.
The rescued children returned to school ten days later. First there were drawings, songs, games, talking time to relieve anxiety and try to forget the disaster. Then support sessions, before getting on track with the school program. Under a tent, Mohamed Bouyahiani, French teacher, tries to get his students to participate in an oral expression exercise. “They are still very marked,” he reports. Some people have nightmares and jump when they hear a truck passing. They have difficulty concentrating. It takes great effort to capture their attention and motivate them. »
Synonymous with a return to normal, the education of young people nevertheless remains an immense challenge, both human and logistical, in this disaster-stricken region where hamlets scattered throughout the Atlas mountains number in the thousands. More than 1,000 educational establishments were partially or entirely destroyed, according to the Ministry of National Education, affecting some 60,000 students.
Visiting Monday October 9 to Asni, a small town at the foot of the mountains, 50 km south of Marrakech, the Minister of National Education, Chakib Benmoussa, assured that these establishments would be rebuilt to be “ready during the next Back to School “. In the meantime, temporary installations have been set up here and there. Between now and winter, 600 new “tent classes” and 800 “modular classes” must still be deployed in order to prevent any blank year, according to the ministry.
Lack of transportation
In the surrounding valleys, teaching conditions remain basic. In Marigha, about ten kilometers from Asni, desks and tables were installed under two traditional tents next to the camp where the inhabitants of this battered village took shelter. Space is insufficient. Classes are taught in shifts, so that school days are reduced to three hours, according to parents who have been assured of the arrival of a third tent in the coming days. “How can children study down there?, worries Hussein Ouzdau, father of an 8-year-old student. It’s too hot right now. Soon it will be cold, winter is harsh here. »
There are also all these students who are missing. “Many of them have lost loved ones, their homes, and sometimes even their villages. They do not have the mental capacity to start again, reports, on condition of anonymity, a teacher from another village near Asni. We contact them, we try to encourage them. But how can we talk about schooling to people who no longer have a roof over their heads and whose urgent need is to survive? »
The state of the roads and the lack of school transport are other reasons for absence. In Asni, on the edge of the main street which crosses the town, a line of schoolchildren, schoolbags on their backs, head towards the vacant lot where fifteen tents have been set up as a school. Some traveled two, sometimes five kilometers on foot to come. Next door, the high school tents seem deserted. “Few students have returned,” reports Sanaa, 17, who lives in Moulay Brahim (7 km from Asni) and only goes to high school on rare occasions due to lack of buses. His parents have neither a car nor money to pay for the collective taxi. It’s “on the phone” that the teenager says she’s preparing for the baccalaureate.
As for the ten boarding schools in Asni, which are seriously damaged, they are also closed, preventing their residents from continuing their secondary studies. These homes managed by associations, which provide accommodation for middle and high school students from the most remote villages, are nevertheless the keystone of the education of young people – particularly girls – in these mountainous areas.
Worried parents
To remedy these difficulties, the Ministry of National Education has planned the transfer of 6,000 middle and high school students from disaster areas to boarding schools in the Marrakech region. Among them, middle school students from the commune of Ouirgane, new residents of the Mohammed-V high school in the “ochre city”. “The high school was divided in two: one part for the Marrakchis, another for us,” explains Nourredine Rahmani, a teacher from Ouirgane who followed her students. At first, the students had difficulty adapting. Some had never been to Marrakech before. They are children of the mountain and found themselves in a world totally removed from their own. We organized psychological support, activities, visits to the medina, to help them become familiar with the city. Classes have now resumed normally. »
In Asni, only 800 students have agreed, for the moment, to move to an establishment that can accommodate 1,400 in Chwiter, a new town 20 km from Marrakech, according to the authorities. “This transfer raises a lot of concern,” reports Fatima Akhouy, community activist and head of a girls’ home managed by the En route pour l’école association: “Parents call us to find out if Chwiter is a safe place , if the home educators will accompany them. It is difficult for them to send their daughter to a distant place that they do not know. The mountain mentality means that many people live here as if in a fortress, cut off from the outside world. There is also sometimes, among some, the fear that their daughter, left unsupervised, will make “stories” which would harm the honor of the family. »
In the douars around Asni, rumors are circulating about the town of Chwiter. “People talk about what’s happening there, drug trafficking, prostitution… What if the girls leave school? At the Asni home, they are supervised. But there? “, asks Mohamed Idbila, a resident of the village of Imlil whose 15-year-old daughter, Sofia, seems torn between the desire to “try the experience” and the fear of the unknown. At his side, his two 19-year-old neighbors, Soukaina and Hanane, encourage him to hang on. “I left school six years ago and I regret it. There is nothing for me to do,” confides Soukaina, who says she is “of age to [get] married.”
Fatima Akhouy, who has made the education of girls her “daily struggle”, is worried: “A lot of progress has been made since our first class, in 2016. Girls who did not think of going to college have become high school graduates and have even continued at university. The risk today is that we end up with people dropping out of school and returning to early marriages, like during confinement, when establishments closed. This will be our challenge in the coming months: to collect dropouts. »