Blog #3: My takeway from this experience:

Blog #2 Perspective and Life

Morocco. What to say about this unique place! Every day I love to wake up and teach all these beautiful kids. Some of them are even helping me understand the Arabic writing. A girl Named Hiba Ella taught me how to wright my full name which I would love to share on here but I’m typing this on an English keyboard. The kids are all so adorable and even if I’m not the best teacher, they love hearing what I have to say. Even if they come out of this experience only learning their ABC’s and how to structure a basic sentence, I will make sure they remember those things for the rest of their lives. We are halfway through this trip and in a sense, I feel like I have lived here my whole life. This week alone has felt like a whole other lifetime time that I have only just discovered. I’m trying to imagine myself growing up in Rabat and I can’t even begin to imagine how different of a person I would be. What would my mindset be like? What would I be fascinated by? Would I view the world differently? Probably. I guess I will never know for sure but while I’m thinking about it, why not write a story about it?

A short story from the perspective of a kid in Rabat:

                Dreams are a silly thing. Sometimes they are realistic and sometimes they are pure fantasy. I love the dreams that are not even comparable to real life. Sometimes I’m flying over the sun but other times like right now, it’s a mix of fantasy and reality. I’m riding on the back of a tiger jumping from rooftop to rooftop in the Medina. We reach the very last roof and only the ocean lies ahead of us. I snap back into reality from the sound of my little brothers little feet running up and down the stairs. I check my clock which shows 8:45 am in big bright red numbers. Shoot. I jump out of bed and rush to put on a cute blue dress and my favorite hijab with a floral design. “Hamza!” I yell as I walk down the tiled stairs, “Time for school!” I have to take my little brother to school on Thursdays while mama is at work helping papa. Hamza flies down the stairs with the same amount of energy that gets really exhausting for whoever has to take care of him. As he walks past I notice his notebook sticking out of an open pocket. “Close your bag right now!” I yell at him, “You know we can’t afford to buy you another one if you lose it.” Hamza stops dead in his tracks and quickly zips up the open pocket while giving a quick apology. I sigh and close the door behind me and begin the long walk to school. After a few winding corridors and alleyways, we reach the market streets and Hamza rushes ahead. Luckily I can keep an eye on him as his green backpack sticks out in the crowd. I look up at the sheets draped between the rooftops and my mind wanders back to my dream, the image of the ocean burning in my mind because I know that on the other side of that ocean lies a whole other continent with people I have never met living lives I didn’t even know existed. I hope to travel there some day to work with them and start a new life. Mama always shakes her head when I say this because she knows it will be hard to achieve. She says it’s harder than I think. The average local in Rabat works as hard as they can in a labor intensive job only to make around 40 Dirham a day. ($4)  If you excel at school and learn English, you can get a master’s degree. I heard in the United States this would nearly guarantee success but in Rabat, most with a master’s degree only earn about 100 Dirham per day. ($10)  To truly be successful, your family has to have connections that will help you obtain a higher paying job to the point of affording a plane ticket out of Morocco. Not a single member of my family has even been able to afford to leave Morocco and Mama warns me not get my hopes up. But a girl can only dream. I sigh as my mind wanders back to the market. It’s always the same. The same walk to school, my father is never around because he is working, and my mother struggles every day to be able provide for me and my brother. I don’t want my life to become the same as everyone here. I don’t want to work hard only to make the bare minimum. So for now I will keep walking into new opportunities and keep walking until I step off of that plane and can finally begin my life as successful as I want to become.