"Where to Get School Supplies in Rabat" by Colleen Daley
Many students who come to Amideast try to pack light on their way to Morocco, and so they don’t always bring their favorite notebooks, pens, and other school supplies with them. Others want to try out new kinds of school supplies, and staff are always asked about where students can buy certain things.
There are three main bookstores around Amideast that sell both books and school supplies, the two pictured in this blog, and one more down the street near the tram line on Avenue de France. Although they are called “librairie” in French (and many anglophone Moroccans call them “library” by mistake) they are not libraries, but book, school-supply, and sometimes game stores.
The Papeterie Journaux Basta is a favorite of Amideast students. There you can purchase books in French and English (sadly, their Arabic section is almost non-existant), notebooks of all kinds, and many different colored pens. Notebooks in Morocco tend to have lines closer together than Americans might be used to and are not always spiral bound. Pencils are available but not common (mechanical pencils even less so) and mostly used for sketching and drawing.
The biggest difference that students notice is that, especially during the back-to-school times, you cannot just enter a store and browse the school supplies. You must ask specifically for what you want, and the staff goes to the back and gets your supplies for you. Even in stories where normally browsing is permitted, during the beginning of the school year, there are so many families requesting so many different types of school supplies that most stores will block off their sections from customers.
Another different aspect of these bookstores is that most books for leisure reading are comparatively more expensive than books in the US. Many students – Moroccan and Amideast – cannot afford to buy piles and piles of books to occupy their time, so they invest in a favorite book or two. French books are usually more affordable than English, since they are more commonly printed in Morocco. A casual English-language novel, for example might cost anywhere from 100-200 Moroccan dirhams, which is enough money to feed a family of 4-6 people for a whole day. Arabic language books are similarly expensive as well, and often only available in specialty stores.
One piece of advice that former students always want to share with future students is that in these bookstores, it is VERY RARE to find index cards, which many students choose to use for making Arabic or French flash cards, so it is recommended for students to bring a pack or two of their own.
Colleen Daley is the Education Abroad Program Manager at Amideast in Morocco.
