By: Daliah Moungui
I made it my personal goal since I was 5 that I would go to college, and also study abroad. I chose Morocco because I wanted an environment that challenged my thinking and was completely different than my life in North Carolina. Morocco offered an opportunity for me to get a fresh start and I thought I would be a brand new person. When I got to Morocco everything was so fresh & new. It felt like every day I was in Morocco, I found something new to adapt to, whether it be the best time to order a dish, how to impress Moroccan professors, adjusting to the Moroccan school system etc.
During my break, I had the opportunity to see Western Europe essentially for free, everyone kept telling me that I was so blessed.The craziest thing during is despite every goal of mine that I accomplished I still felt very empty inside. I thought studying abroad and achieving these things would bring about some major “aha” moment. It didn’t. I thought I would magically heal from every terrible experience I had at my university in Greensboro by accomplishing the goals that my inner child made; by studying abroad, excelling in school, getting an internship in Tokyo. I began to see things very differently. I remember crying in my sleep in Paris. Crying in Brussels. Crying in Amsterdam. Crying on the plane to Toronto. I was thinking to myself, what do I do now? What’s wrong with me? If I wasn’t doing anything like travelling, schoolwork, or hanging with my friends, I found myself feeling down.
After learning that I would be going home because of COVID I was upset, but optimistic to have another fresh start. I kept telling myself, when I get home, everything will be good. I was again very mistaken. I still felt just as hurt, and insecure as I did before. I had lost my study abroad program and my 1st internship in Japan was postponed until 2021. I began to realize how much I relied on the circumstances in my life for happiness rather than creating it for myself. Nothing changed because I never took action. I placed so much hope on this second chance to accomplish my childhood goal which in a sense made me happy but it didn't heal me. My life abroad was not the fairytale story I thought it would be; graceful, full of beauty and enlightenment, and all smiles. It was also adjusting to being the only black person in a room and adjusting to different societal norms. These differences brought deep reflections on what led me to this goal of mine, who I was as a person, and what I was actually doing in this life.
Daliah Moungui. The Medina in Fes, Morocco. August 30th, 2019