Dear Readers

It has been almost 2 years that I started writing this blog and this is my 1st post in a long time. My friends, my brothers, my sisters, my mums, my dads and my enemies, I finally know and I accept my identity, my dreams, my ambitions, my fears, my strengthens, my weaknesses, my happiness and my moments of sadness. Allow me to introduce myself for those of you who don’t know me: my name is Zainal-Ambidina Ibrahim, I am 33 years old Black and Muslim woman, I am a feminist, I have a French passport but I am proud to say out loud ( actually write crystal clearly) that I am a Citizen of the World.

Today we are faced with possibly the worst enemies of our humanity embodied in the rise of nationalism, xenophobia and fascism. It breaks my heart to see how much human beings don’t ever seem to learn from our past mistakes. We have multiple examples in the past that when those phenomena appeared or encouraged, horrible things happened such as the 100 year war between France and England, 2 horrible world wars that killed millions of innocent people, the use of nuclear weapons on human beings etc… So why do « we » repeat the same mistakes. In my opinion, it is because « we »allow other people known as politicians and other institutions governing our lives like banks make important decisions for us. Because we elect them or we consider them as legitimate institutions or we believe that they have our best interests at heart. Au contraire mes amis, they are there to protect their own interests and to ensure they remain in power at all cost hence why they urge us to hate and to blame each other to protect themselves. They tell us what our values should be, how our societies should be run and governed and most of all they encourage us to reject anything or anyone who falls out of what they define as our values, our priorities, our ambitions, our objectives and our aspirations. To name a few examples: the Brexit, the election of Trump, God forbid the possible election of Marine Le Pen, the Syrian crisis or the migration crisis.

The reason why I began this blog was to awaken the minds of the people of my island Mayotte, I know crazy right? I feel that we are taking the wrong path and « we »Citizens of the World need to do everything we can to stop that beautiful part of the planet from turning into a war zone and  I thought our best chance was the awakening of the minds followed by actions. You see after 14 years in Europe, I can see the good and bad of modern life, globalization and individualism and I am convinced that we can do our utmost best to learn from the mistakes the West has done to ensure we develop the Lagoon Island durably.  A blog was a good start but I think I need to take actions before it is too late because I don’t already recognise the place I grew up.

2 days ago, one of my childhood friends reminded me of our amazing and fun teenage years when we had the freedom to  explore the island without adult supervision.For instance, we went camping several times by the beach without our parents, god that was fun!!!  It is such a shame that today’s teenagers are not allowed to do that. Only  parents thought to be careless would  allow their children out when it gets dark at 5 pm. I still remember my dad lecturing me to lock the doors, not to have anything valuables on us such as watches, bracelets, necklaces, ear rings and to ensure our rented car was parked somewhere we could see during my holidays in 2014 with my partner and my mother in law. I was understandably terrified and I asked myself : where did l land »? Luckily for us, we left Mayotte with all our valuables and  filled with memorable events.One of the best things that happened is that my mother in law with some necessary adaption time fell in love with the island and its people. Bearing in mind that she lived 28 years in Australia and has been living  in England for 32 years, I was so happy to see her appreciate every moment and every place we visited, to see her take time to get to know people and the « coup de grace »was when she said that she wouldn’t mind leaving there.

This gave me hope that the magic was still there and I needed to do what I can to protect it. Don’t take my words for it, go and see for yourselves and you will fall in love and you will hopefully want to join me in this fight. Which fight, I hear you say? Mayotte has recently been featured on main stream media because of violent actions often committed by young people ( cars being burned, houses being broken into, pick pocketing). This has a massive impact on the economy, on the education and the day to day security. With that in mind, there are often « Mayotte » style strikes when all government workers stop working and prevent others from working, which paralyses the whole island. The education system that relies entirely on French Metropolitan teachers is suffering as fewer and fewer teachers are brave enough to live there because they don’t feel safe.

A concrete example of how bad our education system is the experience lived by one of my best friend’s daughter. Take Idyll, a bright 10 year old girl who her parents decided to pay a private education until now because she reached college « upper secondary school » in the French system. There aren’t any private upper secondary or high schools in France so she is condemned to go to state schools that are poorly financed and are suffering from a shortage of qualified and experienced teachers. Her classmates who were not lucky enough to go to private schools don’t have her level and can barely read or write therefore their teachers are struggling to balance the right learning environment for those 2 extremes. The purpose of the exercise is completely pointless as teachers can’t teach and the children can’t learn! Understandably, Idyl’s mum is extremely frustrated, angry and sad at the same time and almost begged me to become a politician to fight the system. I love her and I love her daughter for having looked after her for 3 weeks last summer, I care about her future but the thought of being corrupt by politics terrifies me so it is a « no »for now.

What frustrates and angers all of us is the fact that the people working for the governing body  in charge of education called « Conseil Departemantal » are sending their children to better schools in Europe to guarantee them a brighter future. One of them contacted me recently asking me to welcome his 12 and 14 year old teenagers in London for 2 months to widen their minds and to enrich their linguistic and cultural experiences. Although I applauded the father for his action to ensure his kids get the best chances in life to be successful and I am now shaming this unscrupulous politician who is contributing to this bad educational system and is ensuring his legacy is saved by sending his kids abroad.That way the system will carry on and the ordinary citizens will continue to suffer and to be ruled blindly.

From my experience, education is the back bone of any society and the tool to change a traditionalist and corrupt system like Mayotte. This is why I am a fervent supporter of Tafara Housseni, the head of DAESA ( a training centre in Mayotte) and I am helping him to set up the very first Erasmus program between Mayotte and the UK – fingers crossed the project gets approved by the end of April. We are also planning to organise a festival the 1st week of August to encourage mobility, to celebrate successes, to promote entrepreneurship, to encourage young people to learn discipline, drive and ambition through Sport, to  celebrate our culture and our creativity. Tafara has successfully organised this event before with his own money and the financial support of other cultural associations,as we say: a picture  is worth a thousand words.

 

This year, we will endeavour to organise this event entirely financed by Citizens of the World like Tafara and I but we need more Citizens of the World to send a loud and clear message to the corrupt politicians, the corrupt bankers, the corrupt police officers,the corrupt judges,the corrupt government workers that our future will be bright.