CASABLANCA, Morocco – Casablanca, Morocco’s largest city, conjures images of Rick’s Bar, couscous and the third largest mosque in the world, built at fabulous cost on land reclaimed from the sea. Only those in Mecca and Medina are bigger.

Critics complain that the close to billion spent in the 1990s on the Hassan II Great Mosque, which has a thousand ton sliding roof and the world’s tallest minaret, could have been better spent on helping people more directly, like cleaning out Casablanca’s legendary slums.

The mosque is indeed spectacular, with praying room for more than a 100,000 people. But the problems of the slums are spectacular too – places of mindless violence, desperate poverty and hopelessness.

All 12 suicide bombers who blew themselves up in Casablanca in 2003, killing at least 33 people, were Jihadist products from the local slums. So were the bombers in 2007 who killed a dozen more. 

The government is working hard to move the country’s slum-dwellers to better homes. But to see the lives of the people still left behind, about half a million people nationwide, is truly shocking – yet in a few cases, humbling and inspiring.

That’s because of Boubker Mazoz.

White-haired, mustached, bronzed, slim and charismatic, the 58-year-old voluntary community organizer is a dead ringer for Omar Sharif, the famous actor. Seven years ago, while continuing with his day job at the public affairs office of the American Embassy, he founded an organization with the goal of bringing hope into the lives of the hopeless.

“Education is everything,” he said, as we strolled in one of his classrooms among 10-year-old boys and girls being taught English, French and Arabic by high school seniors, all volunteers, many of them slum-dwellers themselves. “They must stay in school, become independent and especially, not be dragged down by all these stereotypes people have of them that they are failures, criminals, the bottom of society.”

Mazoz grew up outside Casablanca in a poor Moroccan village and through his education he made a better life for himself. He’s worked at the embassy for the last 30 years – while most of his extended family is still back in the villages. When Mazoz came to Casablanca, he wanted to help people make the best of themselves – especially through education.

At the community center I watched as one young girl, her hair covered in Islamic traditional style, enthusiastically pointed at letters. She mouthed them, and two boys and a girl, leaning across the table, one half-sitting on it, stroked the letters with their fingers and imitated her. A drone of English and French and Arabic vowels rolled across the room.

“They’re all from the neighborhoods,” Mazoz said proudly. “They are such good kids, they just need a chance.”

“Who is the girl teaching them?” I asked. And therein lies a tale.
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DONGGUAN, China – “It’s been a rough year,” Ben Schwall shouted above the rumbling furnaces of a giant Chinese glass factory. He watched as workers, blowing down long tubes, transformed blobs of molten glass into juicers, bowls and lights.

“Orders are picking up. Things are getting better,” he said. “The telephone is starting to ring again. Everybody feels there is something coming back.”

We were in Dongguan, in the manufacturing heartland of southern China. Frequently called the “workshop of the world,” the region was battered last year when the world stopped buying and exports collapsed.

Schwall supplies Chinese lighting equipment to the United States, linking American buyers with Chinese factories. Before the economic crisis, he was shipping 70 containers a month, but then his business fell by nearly two-thirds.

Thousands of factories across China closed last year, and some 20 million migrant workers lost their jobs.

Suddenly, though, this region is buzzing again. Factories are being renovated and are hiring. Vast public works and infrastructure projects have transformed parts of the area into sprawling building sites. Shops are full, with electronic goods flying off shelves; car sales have almost doubled over last year.
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BUKIT LAWANG, North Sumatra, Indonesia – It’s said one should not take work along on vacation. “Leave the BlackBerry at home!” my supervisor insisted. But, no way was I going to leave behind the camera with the opportunity to spend a week on an eco-tour in Indonesia.

In the forests of North Sumatra, Indonesia, there’s a delicate balancing act going on, witnessed by a few eco-friendly tourists every year. It’s not easy to see, but well worth the trip. And you might even see a little piece of yourself looking back at you from high in the trees.

The location was new for me and the trip was special, hardly work, particularly when I can share the experience (through the video links here) with others.

VIDEO: Saving Sumatra’s orangutans

I set out to find a critically endangered species, the orangutan, in their native habitat before they become extinct. Its estimated just 6,600 Sumatran orangutans remain.

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