Saturday, May 15, 2010

My Morocco--Are You Still Mine??

It just occured to me that my nostalgia is dying slowly either consciously or unconsciously. I could have made some efforts to go for a visit for a week but I chose not to for some reasons because nothing is the same, and everything is foreign to me in my native country. Somehow, I don't feel safe internally being there all alone...I feel something is missing in me. I am sure I won't survive too long on my own and I will end up booking myself a ticket to come back next day. I don't know if I changed over time or maybe Morocco has changed so much that I lost track of time from where I remember it and I just need to condition myself to get used to it. I know for sure it's an amazing feeling to smell the fresh air of Rabat. It just feels right to be there. It feels home. It brings back a lot of awesome memories. But unfortunately I can't link anything of those memories to my present...NADA...which is normal I guess because that's the course of life.

I just realized that my family is falsly attached to a culture they hardly live. So what is this lie about preserving our culture if we hardly go on visits to Morocco and 90 % of time we speak English instead of Darija excluding my cousins generation who speak it 100 % at all times (some pretend to not know it, others pretend to have hard time twisting their tongue, while other the most blunt one think of themselves as quite not cool to speak a foreign language of country where they were not born.)
How can we be lying to ourselves?! How how we stress out the necessity of having a Moroccan living room area in the house with all the Moroccan traditional decorations, and show off about our ethnic food to the Non-Moroccans, and brag about the beauty of the country, the hospitality of its people, etc., yet we hardly live the Moroccan life.

So what does it take to be a Moroccan? parents' origin? birth place? language speaker? Moroccan salon? collection of tagines in the house? authentic food with the nice aroma of safron and olive oil?

I don't know...I do know; however, something is missing. Just like I know it's a lie to say we are holding tight on our culture or traditions since we hardly speak the language and we pretty much don't have any Moroccan traditions we live by...oh yeah except for the couscous tradition. But wait a second! that's food!!! forgot to mention we cook other ethnic food more than Moroccan one!!! and we still consider ourselves Moroccans!

Where is The Right Person???

yep...right person...looking for the right person with the perfect match list.

He has to be Educated, rich, handsome, well-built, cute accent, caring, not stingy, good family background....

She has to be educated, gorgeous, nice body, nice accent, family orientated, good cook, ready to give up the world for me....

and of course the list never ends for both parts. How can you find him and how can you find her???? Well for those of you who have been looking so hard...those of you who are so stressed out that they will die single...and those of you who are literally desperate for just a glimce of light...an ounce of hope and love, I say don't lose faith.

and for those of you who lost hope, I say don't give up and never say never.

Live day by day, and trust me it will happen when you least expect it to happen.


I'm always picked on to talk about my personal life either at school or with friends, and I quite hate it sometimes. I have no magic in my hands to spare and no golden advices to give. I just happened to be a normal person, whose heart got broken, and instead of getting bandaided it went through a major reconstruction to freshen up and be ready to embrace a new life and beat again...so I am a survivor on so many levels. I thank God for everything.

I find it quite pathetic that people become so desperate to have someone in their lives. Just like I find it so foolish to have an annoying list to stick in front of your nose to guide through the crowd to find the right person. What happened to faith in God? What happended to mystery? What if you were to live your life normally and enjoy every tiny bit of it, and switch the negative energy to a more positive one...smile to life so it can smile back at you. Give yourself a chance to beathe!!!! and stop stressing about marriage! Stop stressing about deadlines to find her or find him, and give a chance to people you meet in your life. You never know where the wind will take. You might land where you never expected yourself to land.


I am quite overwhelmed with the negativity of some people around me and I am sick and tired of listening to their dull boring whinening about finding him and finding her..It's really getting out of control!! The most annoying part is when people literally allow themselves to express jealousy right on my face, or even criticize my life with my husband to make a point about how they want to have their lives to be as if I give a damn...

Cut the crap and live your life!

Monday, May 10, 2010

Leishmaniasis in Rachidya, Morocco




I was really stunned when I came across a video featuring the epidemic of Leishmaniasis in a small city called Rachidya in Morocco, and inability of affected people to get the right medications for it because there is no doctor in the area. It's quite shocking that the so called Health Ministry is not moving a finger to send appropriate health care providers to start treatment before it gets complicated. Mind you that Leishmaniasis is treatable in most cases except in HIV infected patients.

What really caught my attention about this video is how desperately those patients are using all sort of topical creams or natural ones hoping and praying that something will work somehow some day. How could we be living in 21st century and still be faced with this poor health service to society. This is outraging!

Friday, May 7, 2010

When The Dream is Over

So you grow up your entire life believing in a dream, and you get so closer to it, then all of the sudden it shatters right in front of your eyes. It gets stolen from you, and you can't do anything about it but leaving it away and turning your back to it. I saw her crying like a baby from the bottom of her heart for the first time, and it was weird to me because I am used to her big smile from ear to ear. She was broken to small pieces, devastated to an unimaginable point and wanted to vanish from the surface of earth. I spared her few advices and I continuously questioned myself whether I was a hypocrite trying to make her feel good about herself and give her a lift up to erase some of her sadness or maybe I should have just criticized her and blamed her for her misery. Unfortunately there is no light by the end of her tunnel. It's quite sad to see people getting filtered out every term from the program. It became like a race, at the beginning of every new term you become eager to see who made it through and who was whipped out.

I will definitely write a detailed blog entry about my friend's story.