berbersinmoroccomet said...

Myriel, You had a great presentation, I liked that brought in different things such as the carpet, which led us to a different topic to speak about in class>

Do the Berber Women do the pottery in their homes and then send it to the "Terre de Femmes" or do they live there?

Answer: Terres de Femmes is an organization and it is also like a store. So the Berber women make the pottery in their own villages then a worker from Terres de Femmes comes by when it is time and they collect the pottery. They bring it back and sell it and give some of the money to the women who made it.

BerbersinMoroccoHBH said...

Hadi, Your keynote and your information are very good. I liked the carpet and jewelry you brought.

Q: Does Terre des Femmes only support Berber women or even Moroccan women?

Answer: Terres de Femmes helps women that are in distress or that are far away from a city or place like that. These women are usually Berber so yes Terres de Femmes supports only Berber women. If it was not Berber I would not have used it for research.

berbersinmoroccocem said...

I liked how you told us what makes a expenive carpt and why. I also agree with you that it is one of the few things man made.

Question: If the Berber carpets were not man made how will this impact the Berbers?

Answer: I think it will impact the Berbers because if it became mass produced then many Berbers would lose their jobs. They would lose their jobs because companies would only need one machine to make thousands of carpets. Also I think it would affect them because they would lose their culture. The carpets would no longer be original Berber carpets and if the carpet tradition get lost then the others will get lost too.

berbersinmoroccoapaj said...

Your presentation was very good. Learning the ways to tell the different carpets from the different regions was very interesting.
Question: Why do you think Berbers shouldn't change to chemical dyes, wouldn't it be easier?

Answer: I agree with you that it would be easier but that is not the point. If they started using chemical dyes then they would lose their culture because they would realize that chemical dyes are easier and then soon after they would start using machines and in the end there would be no such thing as an original Berber carpet. So they should not use dyes so they can preserve their culture.

Berber Arts and Crafts Summary
Ellias El Hamzaoui
Hi everybody my name is Ellias El Hamzaoui and today I will be talking about Berber arts and crafts.
First I will talk to you about pottery then jewelry and finally I will talk to you about carpets.

When I say pottery I don’t mean the literal art I mean an association that helps women through pottery. This association is called Terres de Femmes.
The main income or money of Berber families is made by the father. Some women are widowed in distress and can not provide for their family so Terres de Femmes helps with that. They allow Berber women from different regions of Morocco to export pottery to them and in return Terres de Femmes pays them for it.
The next art that I will talk about is jewelry. It is usually Berber women that wear jewelry but as times are getting more modern boys are starting wear jewelry such as necklaces with the Berber flag on it. Berber jewelry is very chunky and big. During celebrations such as marriages Berber women will wear their best and biggest jewelry.
Jewelry is the art that allows you to see some ones wealth the easiest. To tell some ones wealth through jewelry you don’t look at the material but the quantity. Almost all Berber jewelry is made of silver so the material will not help you identify wealth. To tell if a Berber woman is rich you look at how much jewelry they have on. If they have a lot of jewelry then they are rich and if they have a small amount of jewelry they are poor.
The next art that I will talk about is carpets. Berber carpets are known for their intricate patterns and colors. The finest Berber carpets can contain over 200,000 knots in just 10 feet of carpeting. These carpets are made on simple looms. Berber carpet colors are made from natural dyes” Red: Pomegranate Blue: Indigo Yellow: Saffron. The natural dye tradition is starting to fade away because Berber women are starting to use commercial dyes because they are easier to use and they appeal to tourists. One way to tell different tribes apart is by their carpet colors. Tribes in the middle and north use colors like red, white, and green in some places. Carpets in the south use the colors brown, red, white, and small amounts of green. Already carpet traditions are starting to fade away because instead of making the clothes and carpets the women are going to the sook to buy them. In the village of the person I interviewed all the women used to have looms to make carpets and now since traditions are fading only two women in his village still have looms.

In conclusion I think that we should preserve Berber arts and crafts because for some families it is a big source of income and without they could not afford living necessities. Also I think that we should preserve it because already there are very few things that are still unique because everything is being mass produced. For example the fountain in the school is not unique because it is mass produced and things are starting to get mass produced because it allows the company to make more money. I think that if we lose Berber arts and crafts and they start being mass produced the world loses one more piece of originality and things continue to disappear like that then there will be nothing unique in the world.

Berber Culture

When we went on Week Without Walls the goal was to experience Berber culture and we all were able to that very well.

Every kid in our class had something that they enjoyed most of all about the Week Without Walls trip and my favorite cultural and agricultural part was Berber harvesting. Berber harvesting was my favorite part of Berber culture because of how interesting it was. In the Berber culture there is a harvest season for most harvestable foods like cherrys and walnuts. As I said before there is a season for each harvest like cherrys and walnuts. Other places don't really make a big deal out of harvests they just harvest and then they are done but that is not the case for the Berbers. At the end of each harvest the Berbers have a big celebration because each harvest is very important to the Berbers because the harvests can for some families be more then half of their yearly income. For me the most fascinating harvest is the walnut harvest.

The walnut harvest is the most fascinating for me because it is the most important harvest. At the end of the walnut harvest the biggest celebration out of all of the harvests happens. The reason for the walnut harvest being so large is because the walnuts are almost the same as money in the Berber culture. The walnuts are so important that they can be used as currency and can also be traded for other goods such as robes. Walnuts are so valuable that during the walnut harvest families fill up their roofs with thousands of walnuts which will eventully be sold or traded.

Another thing about walnuts that I found interesting was that even if a family plants a walnut tree, the walnuts on that tree don't belong to that family. Anyone can take walnuts from any tree as long as it is during the walnut season.

Walnut harvest is a very important part of Berber culture and I found it to be the most interesting part of Berber culture as well.

My name is Ellias and I am an athlete. I am two different nationalities, part American and part Moroccan and I have lived all over the world. I like all the traditional foods of the all the countries that I have lived in. I have lived in Colombia, South America, Virginia, U.S.A and Morocco, Africa so I am a real globetrotter. I enjoy sports of all kinds but the sports that I enjoy most are American football, basketball, soccer, and swimming. I can speak fairly good French, fluent Spanish, English, and a little bit of Arabic. I have enjoyed living in all the places that I have lived in but Colombia and Morocco have been my favorite of all of them although the life style of living is very different in each place.

I have lived in places from North America to Bogota Colombia in South America, but Morocco is the farthest place have lived in my life.

The only place that I have lived in that is worth comparing to Morocco is Colombia in South America. I have enjoyed living in both Morocco and Colombia even though they have almost nothing in common. In Bogota we lived in apartments because it is such a big city the only way to live in a house was to be out in the country. We didn’t only live in apartments because we were in a big city but also because they were safer than houses because Bogota was not always the safest place, the crime ratings were actually pretty high. My favorite part about colombia is the food, they have food for almost every holiday like small fried dough balls for christmas and the they had so many different kinds of fruit that you couldn’t believe it. In Colombia I went to a school called Colegio Nueva Granada and it was huge. It had 4 basketball courts, 1 track field, 4 soccer fields, 2 bookstores a giant cafeteria that could seat about 200 kids and and area for middle school, high school and an area for elementary. My class had about 25 kids and 3 classes. It was a nice school and I had a lot of friends so it was hard to leave but i knew that I would enjoy my next school just as much. I had lived in Bogota for most of my life so when we had to move to Morocco it was pretty emotional but i knew that every place I moved I would meet new friends and have new and great experiences and that is what allowed me emotionally, to move to Morocco.

When I first came to Morocco I was so excited because I had been told that we would be living in a house instead of an apartment so I would have space to run around and everything. I was happy that I would finally have a back yard, but since I had lived in Bogota for so long I was accustomed to always having to stay inside because it was not safe, so when i was told that I would be allowed to bike around town I was thrilled that I was living somewhere where I could finally get out of the house. When I first arrived here I didn’t have many friends but that all changed after the first 2 weeks here when I met almost everyone that I hang out with today in that one day. But one of my favorite things about Morocco like In Colombia is the traditional food on the holidays. I also like the school in Morocco because it is more friendly and it is smaller. I like smaller schools because it is easier to fit in unlike the school in colombia where you had to push your way into a group of kids. Morocco and Colombia are very different places, from the food to the schools but I like the both the same but in different ways and I ‘am sure that I will like my next school.