Hassan and His Classmates

Written by: Ayoub – CorpsAfrica/Maroc Volunteer
Date: February 22, 2015

Perhaps, my little cousin has just eaten cornflakes, or drank milk with a chocolate, or maybe he is playing now a Subway Station game on his Tablet, or he is watching Tom and Jerry on his a large screen TV and wait to hear the horn of the bus to go to the school. Possibly the entire children almost share the some common in my city. I have thought of others who are less fortunate than my cousin, but I have never thought of living with them a year. Thank CorpsAfrica for giving me this chance to see the other children shoes.

Hassan, the picture you see above is completely different from my cousin: his life is full of difficulties and circumstances, but he grins and bears it. His age is seven years old and he does man jobs, such as farming, shepherding, and sometimes gathering the wood from the forest. When he wakes up early, he goes directly to his school, he does not have a breakfast, and he changes his clothes, or washes his face. He everyday has to climb up the mountain for studying. He does not have a school bag; he puts his classroom stuff in a black plastic bag. Most of his classmates have the some condition, but they are so zealous to study.
One day, when I was taking him in his school, I accidently met his teacher, at that moment, we have become friends, we share many things in common, he graduated from an English department too and he is also unsatisfied about the hard conditions students face in the High Atlas Mountains. One day the teacher and I decided to motivate the children. It was an unforgettable day for the Hassan and his classmates. They forget a little bit their sorrow and their hard conditions, they face. We put a large white paper in the ground, with providing pencils and colors and asking the children to draw what ever they want on it. Everyone drew, including me and the teacher. Then, we have done some energizers at the end.