Ramadan in Ifrane

July 12, 2014

The last two days have consisted of time mostly spent at Al-Akhawayn University in Ifrane (AUI).  An beautiful university up in the mountains, whose name means two brothers, after the previous king of Morocco King Hassan II and King Fahd of Saudi Arabia who founded the university, and because of this despite being the campus is despite being a public university AUI experiences the benefits of funding by the royal family.  

Here is a shot of the main quad and as you can see we are sharing the grounds with many other groups including these kids who are attending a soccer camp.  These guys and gals are running towards the cafeteria for lunch so they must be very hungry.  However, the majority of the population here in Morocco is actually fasting, because according to the Islamic Calendar we are in the middle of Ramadan, the Islamic holy month, where most Muslims refrain from eating, drinking from sunrise to sunset.

Society here revolves around the religion.  Because most people are fasting stores and restaurants are closed during the day and most people are at home resting. Some of the group went to the Marche, or market a little bit before Iftar (Ftour in Moroccan Arabic) which is the traditional breaking of the fast and it looked like a ghost town.  I imagine the country loses a lot of money during Ramadan, but no one seems to care.
 

I had some of the traditional Iftar foods for dinner in the Marche including Harira, a traditional Moroccan soup made with tomatoes, lentils, chickpeas, noodles, and spices.  Which I am now obsessed with.  My group mates tried the tangine at the restaurant which was also quite delicious.

Another awesome experience that I've had over the last few days was a visit to Al-Akhawayn School in Ifrane (ASI) the K-12 school that is associated with the university.  Here we meet two teachers Hassan, a science teacher who has helped us tremendously in the last few weeks, and a social studies teacher who gave a us a mini lesson on the geography of this region.  I learned that the region we call Western Sahara is actually part of Morocco but its currently the center of a nearly forty year dispute.  Moroccan maps actually depict this region as part of Morocco, and its not allowed to for Moroccan maps to say otherwise.  

This is a picture of the work center in the back of Hassan's science class.  He only has about 8 students per class! Don't all us teachers wish we could have a class like that!