All posts filed under: Adventure

Surfing along Morocco’s Western Coast: In Conversation with Local Surf Maroc

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At MZAB, we were fortunate to get in touch with the team at Local Surf Maroc, a locally owned Moroccan surf school and surf camp in Tamraght, along the Western Coast of Morocco in Taghazout Bay. In the interview, we explore the founder Rachid’s story, what it was like growing up an ocean child, and the transformative nature of water. Read on as we learn what to pack for a surfing retreat, the powerful moments water can bring to the word Rachid lives by. Q1 Thank you so much for the interview! At MZAB we love adventure, modern day and adventurers and exploring cultural history, ritual and artefacts. Tell us more about yourselves (Christina and Rashid) and the inspiration behind Local Surf Maroc. Rachid (the founder) grew up with the ocean always within view. His earliest memory of being an ocean child was when his family would go to Killer Point to collect mussels to cook for dinner that same evening. With his father being a fisherman, Rachid was introduced to swimming among waves and local …

Vanguard of Exploration: Farha Bi on the Road

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Close that voice down in your head that’s telling you to prepare for a little bit longer or that maybe it’s not right at the right time and just do it. Farha MZAB magazine caught up with Farha Bi also known as Brown Girl on a Bike. Farha is based in Birmingham with Kashmiri roots documenting her cycling adventures through her Instagram page @browngirlonabike. We interviewed Farha about her culture, upbringing and key moments during her travels. What is your full name and what does it translate to? My name is Farha Bi and it means Joyful Woman. I think its root is Farsi but is found in Arabic and in Urdu as well. Bi is a common surname for women in South Asia, although I recently learned it’s also used a lot in China, with a different meaning.  Tell us more about your upbringing. What were the departure points, which shaped who you are today?  I am a brummie at heart, living in Birmingham until I was 18. I am also Kashmiri with both  …

Blazing a Trail: Amira the Wanderlust

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Amira the Wanderlust is an adventurer in every sense of the word. Hiker, explorer, mountaineer and expedition leader as well as founder of the adventure group ‘The Wanderlust Women’, she is the contemporary Argonaut rekindling a modern take on the 15th-17th C age of exploration. Much like the anthropologist, Amira travels from region to region discovering and documenting – the only catch being that Amira is a cultural force within herself. Donned in a hijab and niqab (face veil) Amira looks starkly different to the collective imagining of a contemporary explorer. In a global society from Macron’s France and his sanctions against the hijab to the female Iranian resistance to forced/ imposed hijab, Amira is emblematic of audacious courage, existing with neither tensions as her point of reference but rather her religion and her desire to explore our home that is earth, being her guiding principles. Captured on Instagram traversing the valleys of the Lake District, the terrain of Ben Nevis or paddle boating in a National Park all while maintaining her religion and her …

An Interview with Sabah and Muneera of ‘Black Muslim Women Bike’

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MZAB magazine caught up with Sabah and Muneera exploring their outdoors initiative ‘Black Muslim Women Bike’. Read on as we explore the minds of these two adventurers and the inspiration behind this initiative. Who is behind Black Muslim Women Bike? Muneera: Black Muslim Women Bike started almost by accident, I started cycling just before lockdown when advised to do so by the doctor due to an on going injury I had from running. I was told I need to build muscle and I may never be able to run again which was devastating because I had been running on and off since about 2014 when my friend Nisa Ali come to visit me in the UK and told me about a triathlon she was training for. I was looking for ways to keep fit, I can’t swim, I didn’t have a bike, so running seemed like the easiest thing, all I needed was myself. So when the doctor told me that, I thought at least I can try cycling. Good thing, in terms of timing, …

Without a thought he walks…

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Almase is a young writer based in North London who enjoys writing stories and micro-fiction Without a thought he walks… His brilliant cloth sways in the rhythm of the wind, his ebony skin complimenting the colour. The yellow sediment encircles his earthy brown sandals effortlessly rising to remove clarity from the man’s view. Helplessly, he clings to his cloth just a little tighter, his almond eyes squinting at the unforeseeable expanse. Just as the wind gathers strength its energy is unleashed and the sand  particles instantly drop to the surface, his independent cloth stills and the wind echos its dwindling howls into the distance until it sleeps to wake again. Burning from the inside out, his legs gradually reach the surface, quietly, he sits. Old age has overcome him, becoming undoubtedly noticeable from the milestones reaching the top of his face to the bottom and his salt and pepper hair; yet he is young- in the hope of getting younger as each day passes.  Minutes pass and as he searches through the backless sky, a gesture …

Hana Mahmoud Mohamed Saey: The Soul of Palestine

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SANCTUARY Two years ago, for the third year of my History and Arabic undergraduate degree, I had to choose from one of four Arab cities for a year of study abroad. I chose Nablus in Palestine. I had an idea of what my trip might be like. From a distance, Palestine somehow still felt very familiar to me. Palestine was frequently in the news for starters, often at the centre of tensions within the Middle East. But also, as a Muslim, and as the daughter of a Christian mother, for me Palestine was very much at the centre of another type of world too.  JERUSALEM It was just after dawn. Daylight was bleeding into the night sky as the moon began its slow descent into the horizon. Crowds of people quietly rushed through the narrow and winding market streets of the Old City, making their way to the Eid Prayer at Masjid al Aqsa (the Furthest Mosque). Worshipers were dressed in their finest attire and the smell of musk filled the air.  My friend took …

Scent As A Sanctuary: Aromatherapy Amongst The Tuareg

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Plants have always played a vital role in the physical emotional and spiritual well being of human kind. The Tuareg of Niger are an example of a people for whom scent plays a major role in everyday life, exchange and kinship. The Taureg are a nomadic people largely scattered across North / Northwest Africa. They can be found in Mauritania, northern Nigeria, Libya, Mali, Burkina Faso, Tunisa, Algeria and Niger. The Tuareg are instantly recognisable as the ‘blue men’ due to the blue cotton turbans/garment (tagelmust) the men wear to protect their faces from the harsh sandy terrain. The Tuareg speak Tamacheq, are largely of Amazigh ethnicity and form a system of clan membership largely practising the religion of Islam. The Tuareg of Niger like many other civilisations before them heavily use the power of aroma, aromatherapy and scent as a part of their sociocultural systems and local sociability. Anthropologist Susan Rasmussen in her 1999 paper ‘Making better scents in Anthropology’ analyses culture from the underexplored standpoint of the circulation of aromas. In her essay, …

Dreams of Rural Senegal: Starting a Bio Farm From Ground Zero

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Assietou Diop is a French agronomist, based in La Rochelle specialising  in the management of rural territories. Read on as we catch up with her about a project close to her heart. “Sanctuary” … I think it’s important for everyone to be able to introspect, question and not be afraid of loneliness. It is in solitude that we learn to really know ourselves, to improve, to evolve and to refocus on what is really essential for us, by distancing from the world around us as well as those who can influence us, sometimes in the wrong way. From my point of view, too many people are afraid of this loneliness which is nonetheless at certain periods of life essential not to lose oneself. “Solitude is the nest of thoughts” as a Kurdish proverb says. I was born in Bordeaux (France) and grew up in La Rochelle. My father is Senegalese and I bear the name of the mother of my paternal grandmother. My name comes from a character from the Qur’an “Assia” who was the wife …