The Language of Democracy in Morocco

Something I realized is that I haven't talked too much about on this blog is my work, interning for NDI. Part of the reason might be the "well I could tell you, but....then I'd have to kill you" point, that is that a lot of NDI (National Democratic Institute)'s work in Morocco is done discreetly. As an American NGO in a nation where it isn't particularly beneficial to your political future to be considered 'pro American' or be seen as receiving help or worse from the American government. But, what I'm talking about in this blog is pretty harmless, so sorry for the lack of juicy info but I don't want to get fired from my unpaid internship!

NDI uses a lot of different tools to help support democracy in Morocco. The tactics range from trainings of Ministers of Parliament, party officials and activists and candidates on the nuts and bolts of running effective campaigns, voter outreach and communication to supporting emerging political leaders to conferences centered on promoting women's participants to attempts to increase politician accountability and citizen participation such as a website (www.moroccodemocracy.com) aiming to bring more information to Morocco's citizens. Their work here really is exciting and, seeing as it is about 6 weeks until the next elections (mark your calendar for September 7, 2007!! You know CNN is going to give it 24 hour coverage, that is, assuming there isn't an attractive white child missing), NDI has many activities and trainings going on.

Among their activities have been a number of trainings and conferences for political parties that I have had the opportunity to help out with. I've been a part of three conferences, one with women from one of the poltical parties which provided them specifically with training on how to promote their party's message and convince voters. Another was with a variety of parties and focused on get out the vote efforts and how these can best be done. The third was on the role media plays in elections both from a theoretical/ethical point of view and from a practical, maximizing positive coverage standpoint.

These have been great experiences on three levels. First, being part of and helping put on these trainigs to help advance the capacities or politicians and those aspiring to be part of this process has made me feel - selfishly- like I am playing a role - albeit a tiny one - in helping these passionate actors in the Moroccan democracy create a more democratic, more social just nation

Second, actually meeting these - for the most part - very friendly people who have ranged from those working for their party to current MPs in office to members of the press and other NGOs, has been really fascinating. Something few Moroccans will deny is that they love talking and very few topics are off the table (especially their opinions on the US! :)) Another nice part is that, as I experienced in South Africa, the MPs and party leaders do not perceive or treat you as if there too much of a barrier between them and some lowly intern.

The third interesting part has actually been the content. The training n how to organize a campaign, how to effectively communicate you message has been a really exciting (for me at least...) how to on conducting a campaign. I've run into a lot of tactics that I've only seen in practice, to ideas I haven't really encountered in looking at actualy campaigns. One good example is the concept of repeating an idea in communications to get it to stick. One good example is the concept of repeating an idea in communications to get it to stick.

For these conferences, I've been heavily involved in preparatory work, such as finding suitable materials for the participant packets, heling the presenters with their presentation etc. before hand. During I've been mainly doing the note-taking for the goings-on. With these notes, I've then proceeded to write the final reports that need to be submitted to national NDI in DC and eventually the donors.

Contrary to what the movie Office Space says about writing reports, those I've been writing here have actualy been pretty interesting. They have forced me to gain a grasp of NDI's mission and motivations for each of the activities and learn how to put the Moroccan context and its worldwide important into words.

The notetaking itself has also been more compelling than it is made out to be. First is because of my dorky desire to learn and retain the information at hand. Second has been my, again dorky, desire to practice my french since the conferences are usually in French with a translation into Arabic for those who aren't as fluent in French. This leads to the third reason, the language particularity.

In spite of the fact that NDI is an American NGO, it makes a considerable effort to tailor its programs to each country. A large part of this effort is the langauge of its programs, materials and publications. Thus, in Morocco there are in Moroccan Arabic and French. The conferences themselves too are in theses languages, usually with a simultaneous translation but sometimes consecutive (simultaneous is UN style, that is the presenter carries on in French and there is a translator who translating at the same time - shockingly called simultaneously - with participants having nifty head phones, consecutive means the presenter pauses and lets the translator do the translation then.)

All this is well and good, I could happily take the French part and copy it down in note form. However, the final reports I had to write have to be in English. As note-taker, I was faced with the dilemma of note-taking in English while the conference was in French. Luckily I had spent the last 4 months before Morocco in Dijon, France learning French or I wouldn't be able to keep up, let alone talk to the participants. That is not to say that I didn't have a few frantic translation search on my computer... hey, personne n'est parfait.

Yet, where this starts to get really interesting (for those of you keeping track, this is the 4th level of interesting) is when you take into account how many Moroccans speak in a hybrid of French and Arabic (as those of you who have read the previous blog would know). Most of the presenters would keep to one lanuage pretty well. However, once the floor was open to the often copious amounts of comments and questions (remember, loquacious people) the poor translators (one from Arabic to French and one from French to Arabic) often need to switch as participants go from one language to another. This is equally difficult for the participants that only speak one of the languages and, namely, me. Having the headphones in, I would have to take them out to hear the presenter when she spoke in French but put them right back in when she switched to Arabic.

It certainly can get confusing; I remember one time where the translator ended up translating the Arabic into...Arabic, not noticing he wasn't being particularly helpful. Talk about getting lost in translation...But, but, this difficulty is well worth the pain. Yes, for the practical point of best being able to train the participant. Yet, for me the most critical point is to highlight that NDI's work isn't about imposing a specific type of pre-packed democracy to all the nation's it works in. Yes America's model work's fairly well in America, but its clear that for democracy to work, it must be suited the the different nuances of each society. Instead, my understanding of NDI's work (disclaimer: these words are the thoughts of Alex Snider and Alex Snider alone and cannot be linked to the parent organization of which he is an unpaid intern) is that it is about using its expertise and experience to provide tools, support and help to those working to realize their own version of democracy. It's not about creating America's democracy in Morocco or anywhere else and its not anything NDI can do without the dedicate political actors in each of the countries it works in. Above all, NDI is about about helping to facilitate democratie à la Marocaine, designed according to Morocco's social circumstances and priorities, political realities, and, yes, naturally, its language(s).