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Showing posts from May, 2013

50 years of failure to unite Africa & to celebrate the Union

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Las t week, I've been invited to Addis Ababa to participate in the African Union (AU) youth forum with heads of states, as part of the AU 50th anniversary and I had certain expectations. However, what happened was far below my expectations and not even eager to the level of 50 years of establishment of such promising pan-african organization "the African Union" .  Noting that this 21st AU Summit was co-organized by the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa, which in my opinion, was a failure at many levels and will explain in details. Technically speaking, there was a very unprofessional organization of the event, no respect of time, poor logistics -a messed up logistics is a more fair expression-, no smooth or effective communication from booking the flights and the hotel till sitting in the conference room and leaving Ethiopia. This wasn't even exclusive to youth participation but was even the problem for some governors from different countries.Simpl

Where is Tunisia?

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After living in the USA for about 8 months, I met very few people who knew what is Tunisia? (as not a type of food ) and where is Tunisia? Though my country has been on the news for the last two years, still people think it's Indonesia or it might be somewhere in Europe or Asia!! No blame! some people think I'm from Latin America because they have never actually met a Tunisian so they don't know what a Tunisian look like!!well.. For those who have never heard of it that's your chance so that when random people will ask you in the street about it- like I did few days ago in Georgia- you will confidently answer!!! Tunisia is a beautiful small country in North Africa ( smallest country in North Africa) bordered by Algeria to the west, Libya to the southeast and the Mediterranean Sea to the north and east. Tunisia has around 11 million people, predominately Muslim society but has a large Jewish community in the south and other religious minorities. Our official la

My visit to Statesboro First United Methodist Church

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One of the main reasons I applied for the Fulbright Scholarship was the chance to be an ambassador not only of my country but of my whole region. I hold the complex identity of being a Tunisian African Muslim Arab woman, and I wanted to use that to break a lot of stereotypes and represent Tunisia’s revolution, the African unity, the Arab culture and the true Islam. I was hoping to be sent to one of my dream universities, Johns Hopkins or Georgetown University, because Washington D.C. is the state most alive with politics, but also full of false assumptions about the MENA region. When the program sent me instead to the very southern state of Georgia, and the very rural area of Statesboro, I was worried I wouldn’t be able to accomplish my mission with people whose accent, lifestyle and orientations I don’t fully understand. Reading about American history, I expected the south to be very conservative and very Republican, and I doubted I would find opportunities to open c