Hay Riad (Prosperous Outlying Suburb)

Today I visited Malika Benmahi at a center for the Association Marocaine pour la Promotion de la femme rurale in the nearby village of Temara just outside Hay Riad, where the main headquarters for the association is located. Her husband picked me up in a Hyundi 4 x 4 complete with compass and temperature monitor on the dashboard. The electricity was out at the center when we arrived. Hay Riad is a suburb of villas and upscale living. Large areas of forest line the highways on the way. It has one of the two Marjane supermarket's in Rabat, which supplies almost everything anyone could need from household goods to school supplies. Marjane has a long row of cashiers for checkout and a parking lot of its own able to park over 300 vehicles. The Hay Riad Marjane contains a petrol station, two restaurants, Pizza Hut, and over twenty other stores. Madame Malika is a dynamic and progressive leader, has been to New York five times and to European countries to explain the status of women in Morocco. She is primarily concerned with rural women in the areas of literacy and economic development. She has the full support of her husband, who in a short-sleeve shirt and jeans would appear as an articulate, "middle-aged" man in most Western countries. Proud to show off his 4 x 4, he gave me a lift to my next appointment. He maintains that while Moroccan women traditionally wore the jellaba and a face veil, the headscarf is a more recent innovation. Women wear it now, he says, because they can't afford to go to the coiffeur once or twice a week. Malika is working to bridge the gap between women who live in areas like Hay Riad and Agdal and those in poor, rural areas. Up to 85% of Moroccan women in general are illiterate. In late afternoon, I visited the Organisation Marocaine des droits humains in Agdal. Their office was donated by a former militant who had received compensation from the government. Composed of an elite, the organization didn't have any recent publications. Funding is a problem for all of the ngos I have contacted thus far.