POLITICAL CORRUPTION FEEDS POVERTY CYCLE IN MOROCCO.

Byline: Heidi Morrison

TO be aware of your poverty is harder than being the poorest man in the world. For if you are aware of your poverty, you will want to change it, yet you will find that your poverty is exactly what binds you from doing so.

Such is the case for the Alami family living in the underdeveloped country of Morocco. However, in their case it is not them who are poor, rather their country. I lived this summer with them on an exchange program.

As a family they are aware of and want to change their country's poverty, yet as a family, they are bound by their country's poverty. It is not a poverty in which people are starving and homeless, instead it is poverty in which people are uneducated, the social injustices extreme, and the opportunities limited.

For Faisal Alami, my host brother, it is a poverty which often steals him of his pride in Morocco. Faisal is proud to be Muslim and Arab, yet he finds little honor in living in a country which he claims offers ``No future

No innovation

'' for those under the age of 25, 60 percent of the country's population.

The Alami family is frustrated to be living in what they see as a country without a conscious. Joking that the lack of consciousness stems from the people's origin (the donkey), my host brothers quickly clarify the source: a corrupt political system. After long conversations with my host brothers I see their frustration with this North African country that they love - a country that embodies their culture, religion and traditions - yet a country where 37 percent of urban residents (ages 15-24) are unemployed, and the illiteracy rate is 36.9 percent in the cities and 75.4 percent in the countryside.

Perhaps the Alami family's frustration has been intensified by the recent municipal elections, in which Faisal's father ran but lost due to suspected cheating by his opponents. When I asked Halid, an uncle of the family, about the father's likelihood of success, he responded, ``We cannot tell because we just do not know how many people will accept money outside the polls.''

When the results of the elections were announced on television, a sense of loss swept the house. The family's feelings of loss were not for the father's second-place finish, rather for the country's unending cycle of injustice.

The conditions which the elder Alami had wanted to change in office were exactly what hindered him from doing it. But just as the corrupt man exists everywhere, so does the good man committed to improvement. Alami is now taking the election results to court, with voters that claim to have accepted money from the first-place finisher. Alami's efforts as a citizen to develop the conscious of Morocco are, according to Faisal, the key to the country's future.

Upset with the lack of effort by the king to create a true democracy in the country, Faisal says, ``There are three points to being Moroccan: the nation, God, and the king. But for me it is: the nation, God, and the people.''

I can't help but make a comparison between the Alami family and that of my own in America. The reason I went to Morocco was because of my parents' ability to see beyond the boundaries set on a typical working-class American family.

My parents are aware of the world beyond such bounds and despite their lack of finances, higher education, and cross-cultural travels, they have made that extra step out of poverty in sending me abroad. A step which landed me with a Moroccan family making similar strides for their country.