The country of Morocco has, thanks to his geographic position, a great environmental diversity and a large variety of different landscapes to protect. The problems about this are different and caused by several issues. First of all, Morocco is a country in economic development that suffer of the huge amount of wastes and litter. They started, in fact, consuming industrial product without the infrastructures needed for their transformation process. The consequence is the pollution of natural areas and cities, hard to clean due to the lack of an effective public trash service, especially a recycle system. For what concern cities, there is not enough public garbage bins, neither in parks or big places, causing the stay of litters on ground for much time. In many urban places rubbish is not collected everyday and in a lot of streets trucks cannot pass. For instance, here in Taroudant trashes of these streets are collected by a man on a donkey. It's funny and efficient, isn't it? There is not enough public garbage bins, neither in parks or big places. The air pollution is the worst here in Morocco and it's usually different from the one that affects the biggest cities of the world. Of course Rabat and Casablanca suffer for CO2 emissions as they're surrounded by industrial areas, but the rest of the country is struggling with other issues. Sand comes from desertic areas in villages and cities with the wind. Lumberjacks e blacksmiths are used to work open on the streets. A lot of smoke is caused by street-food and the lacks of the trash system sometimes causes fires.
On the other hand, Moroccan people seem to be very careful about the re-use and the re-purpose of goods. For example, here in Taroudant, they use re-usable bag to do the shop or they use tires to create pot for plants. Amuddu, the association we do our service in, is especially oriented on environmental thematics. That is why in two occasion we volunteers had the possibility to create workshops about this topic twice. The first one when we painted an elementary school near the city, therefore we had to entertain the children out of the classrooms. The second one during the National Youth Day. Our project was to make youngsters discover the world of recycling. Although it's a difficult activity in itself there are different shades. In any case we decided to carry on and to open this world in its 5 components. The 5 R of recycle, especially because the other four Rs are easily to do in first person. They are:
Refuse;
Reduce;
Re-use;
Re-purpose;
Recycle.
These are steps every customer comes through during his shop. Imagine a smartphone: you can at first refuse to buy every year a new one, or refuse to buy the ones that are thought to last less; you can reduce its use and extend the life of its battery, reducing electrical consumption at the same time; you can re-use it as a smartphone, when it's too slow for you is possible to give it to somebody else or try to fix it if it is broken; you can re-purpose this object to other uses such as paperweight, or better use its working components for other electronic things; in the end, you can recycle for example the coltan and reduce its extraction. Hence, we created different workshops, we will leave one of them here. The first one is an activity on refusing, a table game easy to create and fun. The requirement is that you have to play unconscious of its purpose, that's the way it will show interesting things. In fact, this game is a snakes and ladders game, where you throw the dice to move forward and who arrives at the end in the better way wins. Its rules are the following ones:
Surviving in the suq
The goal is to finish the path throwing the dices, moving forward the player will have to choose the best purchases (it's possible not to buy). Each player has two dices to move forward if he/she has clothes and food to use. He/she will have only a dice if he/she has no clothes or food to use. If the player is missing them both he/she will have to stop for a round, the next time he/she will have a bonus dice. However when the clothes or the food will be used until the end of their duration, they will become trash in the hands of the player.
During his/her path, the player will meet different merchants that will sell different products: Food --> Snack: price 1 dhm, duration 2 rounds (red merchant) Vegetables: price 2 dhm, duration 5 rounds (green merchant) Clothes --> T-shirt: price 1 dhm, duration 2 rounds (blue merchant) Jumper: price 2 dhm, duration 5 rounds (yellow merchant)
In the beginning the player will have ten dhm and every round the suq will give him/her one.
Who's going to survive in the best way...
The most interesting thing about this game is in what can happen in the end, because what's expected will not be respected most of cases. In fact, the last player to arrive will often win. Who's not in need of too many things will win. Who's never in a hurry will win. Who does not feel the pressure of others will win. Who is refusing will win. The key is in the last rule, in fact, the score will be calculated with a simple subtraction: money – trash → score. You have to tell it in the end to every participant. It's an interesting game to spread and to think about less popular values like the slowness, self-sufficiency and independence, to maintain personal freedom about purchases and to reduce wastes and trash production. Morocco is deeply inspiring regarding the environmental carefulness about avoiding wastes and accumulation of goods. Its people have a special eyesight about possession and consumption, in the respect of food and any kind of good, that developed countries too often tend to forget. Besides Morocco is spending efforts to maintain the accords taken in Paris in 2016 and although it is in economic development its politics are one of the most environmental friendly all over the world. Its attitude is remarkable, despite of its difficult situation already mentioned, and we can surely learn a lot from it.
Luca e Tommaso