Learning Across Continents: Let Me Tell You about the Mountains in Morocco!

Written by our former intern, Ms. Ambar Khawaja

Ambar during her stay in Morocco

Let me tell you about the mountains in Morocco. As you begin to climb them, you look up to see the sun shining through the clouds and the peaks peeking out above them. As you continue forward, you begin to find yourself in the fog. This fog can be bothersome, because you want to be able to see the top and the climb is no longer as scenic as it started out. It clouds your vision. It seems like forever until you are out of the fog, but as you keep walking you start to brim with joy and thankfulness because you can once again see clearly. You are high above everything, watching the world move along at what seems like such a slow pace in the grand scheme of things. Perspective.

I once was the girl who thought she had her life figured out:

1.    Graduate high school accomplished;

2.    Go to a good college and major in neuroscience;

3.    Get my PhD and do research on the brain;

4.    Get tenure at a university so that I can be a professor and have my own lab;

5.    Amongst all of this, travel the world

Truthfully, this was not entirely my dream. It was a mixture of the dreams of the people I’ve looked up to and it was sculpted by how society views success. I was equipped for this specific version of life and did not expect to deviate from it. I had such certainty chasing after these goals. Everyone was in awe of my drive and determination to reach the end; but it seemed like even if I did reach the end, I would never reach satisfaction. I felt empty without praise because my worth was based off of my achievements. It was no wonder that when I reached a new goal, I would either become stalled or feel like there was still something lacking. The thought that there is always someone better than me out there constantly seeped into my mind. This led to a cycle of chasing prestige, recognition, and anything else that I could use to make myself feel better about my worth. I never knew that success and despair could happen simultaneously, and that the former could cause the latter. I didn’t know how to just be.

Taken by Ambar

What do people do in the in-between of life? The in-between is what I refer to as the space that occupies the emptiness between my failures and my successes. It’s my worst mental enemy, but if handled correctly it can be my best mental friend. I would like to point out that this space that baffled me is actually just called life by most people, and that the accomplishment-hungry-me just didn’t know what living actually was yet.

While my goals and accomplishments were a large part of my life, they weren’t the only part, and I was neglecting the rest of myself. I was becoming unaware of the many other layers I contained as a person, leading me to be hollow.

At times like this, far away from home on another continent, where people speak another language and I know virtually nothing, I am sitting in my room reflecting and writing about the changes I have noticed in the month and a half I’ve spent here. Worries are less, small mistakes are forgiven easier, and I am not basing my value on achievement. Here, people do not care about what you have done as much as they care about the kind of person you are; whether you are kind and how willing you are to try and learn. Finally, in a place where I know nothing, I can learn everything without self-judgement. I do not have the pressure to always be doing something in a society that puts emphasis on busyness. What a privilege. Finally, I am learning to act in the in-between. I am emptying the pot that everyone poured their hearts and souls into and putting it in storage so that I can begin to fill my own. Each is important. One is what I came from and what I am made of, and the other is what I will become.

My community pumped me with love and purpose, so even though I didn’t expect to deviate from my original life plans, I was prepared for it. My family, mentors, teachers, and friends are only some of the people who helped inflate me so that I could learn to fill up my skin. Creating a community for myself was a conscious choice. Yes, I am uncertain about my future place in the world. My plans are changing, and I don’t know what I am meant to do. Purpose is such a heavy word that calls my name. At a time like this, I have found that my immense skill of worrying is truly no help to me, but the simple human action of breathing serves to be the best mechanism to assist me. Life has taken me this far, and the universe has created a path and given me all the signs I need to follow it along to my destination.

Every day I may find myself in the foggy place, I remember the top of the mountain I’ve always reached, regardless of my worries, confusion, and uncertainty. Faith is showing me my way, step by step. I need to take the time to pause and remember the grand scheme of the universe. Every small mistake I have made will not crush me, and every person who doesn’t like me doesn’t diminish my value.

Where do I go from here? Besides wherever life is taking me, I have learned that I need to place more effort into self-validation rather than external validation. I need to remember to learn from everyone, because everyone has something to teach me, whether good or bad. It’s silly to think that any given life has nothing of substance. I should not be so quick to judge others and instead I should grow my patience by realizing that I too have made mistakes. However, I need to continue to become better at discerning those who are toxic and become wiser with how I invest my energy and who I invest in. Above all, I want to become a person that jumps into the unknown quicker because it is always an opportunity to grow, and I must always make time to reflect on how far I have come and where I want to go next.

Learning Across Continents: America sharing knowledge with Africa

Written by DSH Fellow Katie Tyler

Katie is a recent graduate from Princeton and a fellow of Labouisse Fellowship. She is working with Dar Si Hmad on the capacity building project for NGO's .

Dar Si Hmad Intern Katie Tyler

A little more than five years ago, I found out that I had received the opportunity of a lifetime. Thanks to the National Security Language Initiative for Youth (NSLI-Y), I had been awarded a scholarship to study Arabic in Marrakech. I had never lived outside of the U.S. before, and I was excited for the chance to be immersed in studying a foreign language. At the end of my six-week experience, I was able to speak Modern Standard Arabic a little better, but I wanted to continue improving my language skills.

When I entered college the following year, I knew that I wanted to continue studying Arabic and different cultures of the Middle East and North Africa. Becoming a Near Eastern Studies (more commonly known as Middle Eastern Studies) major at Princeton University was an obvious choice for my course of study.

During my third year of college, I spent a year writing an independent research paper the reconstruction of Agadir after the 1960 earthquake. Reading books about Moroccan history and newspaper archives from Agadir reminded me of how much I missed living in Morocco. Based on my experiences interning at a youth homeless shelter in Newark, New Jersey, I also knew that I wanted to gain more experience in working with nonprofit organizations that fight poverty. 

A mosque in Agadir (Taken by Katie)

I was lucky enough to attend a university that is able to support my career aspirations to work in sustainable development abroad. I am able to work in Agadir with Dar Si Hmad thanks to the Labouisse Fellowship, named after Princeton alum Henry R. Labouisse, who was most notably awarded a Nobel Peace Prize for his work as the president of UNICEF. The Labouisse Fellowship provides graduating Princeton seniors with the funding to pursue a yearlong project in international development in partnership with a local nonprofit organization.

Henry R. Labouisse

I reached out to the former NSLI-Y program coordinator for advice on finding a partnership with a Moroccan organization, and she enthusiastically recommended Dar Si Hmad. When I researched Dar Si Hmad’s work to provide water to rural communities and empower young people, I did not hesitate to get in touch. I worked with Jamila Bargarch, Dar Si Hmad’s Executive Director, and Maisie Breit, the former EFS Manager, to devise a plan for how I would use the Labouisse Fellowship to support some of the organization’s new projects during my time in Morocco.  After spending so many hours reading and writing about Agadir it felt surreal to be moving to the city for an entire year in late June.

One of the main projects that I am working on here at Dar Si Hmad is the new capacity building project. I am working closely with Jamila and Hafida Mazoud, DSH’s Communications Officer, to design and implement an eight-month-long training series for a group of small associations in Agadir, Tiznit and Sidi Ifni regions. Our beneficiaries are working with a diverse range of issues, such as literacy in refugee communities, women’s empowerment through income-generating initiatives, the preservation of cultural manuscripts, and the use of solar energy in villages. In the training, we will cover topics such as administration, financial management, and program management.

Our Intern Katie and
Communication officer Hafida

The goal of this project is to equip local leaders with stronger management skills so that they can expand their organizations’ reach and social impact more effectively. Each participant will develop and implement a new project or campaign by the program’s conclusion in June. We intend to equip participants with the tools to materialize their visions to change their communities. We are also committed to incorporating principles of environmental sustainability and gender inclusion throughout the project. I am especially hopeful that this capacity building workshop will continue to benefit communities in southern Morocco long after my fellowship concludes.      

In addition to my work on the capacity building project, I am assisting Jamila with research on Dar Si Hmad’s ongoing fog project. Outside of the office, I enjoy trying delicious new pastries from the bakeries around Agadir and going to BodyPump classes. I am improving my Darija, and I have recently started learning Tachelhit with Lahcen, a teacher who partners with Dar Si Hmad. I wrote my undergraduate thesis about how Tuareg communities attained mass literacy in the Tifinagh script, so I always try to read the Tachelhit signs written in the Tifinagh script around the city. 

If you see me in the DSH office, I am always excited to hear new recommendations on books about Morocco, as I am trying to learn as much as I can during my stay here! 

 Katie at the office

Learning Across Continents: My first travel abroad experience

Written by DSH intern Ambar Khawaja:

Ambar Khawaja is an American intern on a gap year of service through UNC’s Global Gap Year Fellowship. She is working with us on an upcoming project that we will reveal more information about in the future on our blog. 

Traveling means a different thing to each person who experiences it. When I was preparing to come to Morocco, I had no idea what it would mean to me. I listened to stories of other people’s travels overseas with wide eyes, peppering them with questions with the intent to satisfy what I believed I had not yet experienced. 

I spent hours scrolling through my social media, seeing beautiful, vibrant images of adventures and locations in different countries. These images fed into the preconceived notion I had of traveling and living abroad, which I have now learned is highly misrepresentative of one’s true experience. Life here is not constantly the “picture perfect” snapshot you imagine when moving to a foreign country; Instead, it resembles life in general, with its ups and downs, but with tremendous space to grow.

There are many facets of my identity that have helped me blend into Agadir. As an 18-year-old, Muslim, Pakistani-American woman, I physically do not stand out in the crowd. Basic words, like “salam”, “shukrun”, and “inshallah” come easily to me because of my second language: Urdu. At a glance, I am just like everyone else around me, but ask me a question in Darija and you will be met with a blank stare. 

The first thing I learned how to say when I arrived was “ana Pakistaniya” so that I could communicate to the confused Moroccans around me that I myself was not Moroccan. This physical similarity with those surrounding me has given me some privileges, like not being overcharged by a taxi or not being stared at like a tourist while walking down the street. Conversely, it has made my experience traveling as an American much more complex than I expected. Because of this situation, however, I have learned an absurd amount about myself and my skills, or lack thereof in some cases.

On the surface, I fit in, but the nagging knowledge that I don’t speak the language or know the culture as well lends itself to a lot of cognitive dissonance. I definitely feel embarrassed when the person I am out with has to explain that I speak English, however, I wonder if this sense of self-consciousness is because my looks don’t match up with my language. I ask myself “how different would I feel if I matched the stereotypical image of a white American”, and “how would the privilege of looking like what my nationality is ‘supposed’ to look like change my interactions with people”. 

This photo was taken by Ambar

I have observed that it is more likely for local people to change the way they approach a conversation with this stereotypical image of an American because they feel the need to adapt to them, rather than the foreigner to adapt to the culture they are in. This is the privilege of speaking English. However, I appreciate my physical appearance making it more difficult for Moroccans to pinpoint where I am from, because I am then placed into more situations where I must adapt to this new language environment. Sometimes I must resort to speaking in English, but this is because I understand the limits I have when trying to communicate in French or Darija.

The language barrier has been the single most difficult experience for me thus far. When I first arrived, I found myself speaking a mix of English, Urdu, and Spanish, since these languages lead to conversations in my world. Pointing, hand gestures, and shaking my head “no” have proved to be an effective way of communication for me when my interlocutor doesn’t understand English. While humorous on many levels, it has also provided me with the opportunity to learn non-verbal communication skills and living with a host family has given me the chance to sharpen them. 

My host mom, in particular, speaks very little English, yet we have formed a beautiful bond in the short amount of time I have spent here. Helping out in the kitchen, watching the sunset together in awe and admiration, having the same faith, and sharing photos of each others’ lives has created a relationship between us that couldn’t have been created by words, since words sometimes get in the way of moments. This is not to say that language is not beneficial since our relationship is finding new joys in language exchange, with me starting to learn Darija and teaching my host mom words in English. Learning the language of the place I am living in will also remove the barriers I have in trying to interact with locals and will prevent my overarching privilege of speaking English from interfering in conversations. Lucky for me though, I do not face these problems in my workplace.

  I have found a lot of purpose in my work here as an intern. Being the youngest person in the office has helped me fine-tune some of my skills since I am constantly surrounded with more experienced coworkers offering me constructive criticism to help improve and add to what I already know. It’s an interesting experience to learn more about my capabilities by doing things I have not done before, like tutoring English and planning programs for high schoolers. 

Being in the presence of these amazing people has helped me adjust much faster to living here than I would have if I had to figure out everything alone. Because I have people to show me their favorite places in the city and teach me how to order food or buy something at the “hanout”, the transition has been much smoother. I have been given a solid foundation on which to venture out alone on.

A picture of the souk "taken by Ambar"

Traveling solo for the first time has enforced the concept that I am accountable for myself. There is no external reason that I can’t go out and try something new, face a fear, or take a risk. All of my choices are in my own hands, and that is a very liberating feeling to have because it opens up my life to a lot of personal growth. Now is the perfect time for me absorb everything around me.