Episode Transcript
Homininity is powerful in all its forms, exceptional women, rare girls must be appreciated in every
way for their perspectives, actions, thoughts, and their unique ways of being.
Such rare girls are inspiring.
And this is what this podcast is all about.
Hello, my name is Aziz and my guest today is Aya Edimbairi.
Aya is from Tiznit city in Morocco.
She is in her final school year of studying physics sciences.
In her free time, Aya loves baking and cooking, reading, listening to podcasts and creating
her own podcast episodes with the title Midnight Thoughts.
And she loves trying new things and having new experiences.
Aya participated in DigiGirls mentorship program, as well as succeeded in being in the national
competition in Morocco, and later on representing her home country of Morocco in the Arab girls
summit in Jordan.
Aya, how are you today?
Hello, I'm good, what about you?
I'm feeling great, I'm feeling positive, happy to be alive, filled with the energy
of life and curious about you, so I'll begin with this.
If your friends could describe your personality, what would they say about you?
Well, I never thought about this before.
I want to say something that I am so pleased to be here today, to be part of this podcast,
since I always loved listening and making ones, and now I am, I guess, in such an interesting
one like this.
So I'm so honored to be a part of it.
And now I will come back to the question.
Actually they will say that, talkative, I talk a lot, they will mention that I'm sarcastic,
I make fun a lot, but to be honest, I don't know when did this started, but I think it
started when I was in middle school.
I started to make fun of things, to laugh, to laugh a lot.
So they also will mention that I love to have discussions, to talk about things, to ask
questions.
So I think this is what they will say if you ask them this question.
That's very interesting.
And you mentioned that you love to laugh a lot, you're talkative.
So I'll begin with this one.
There are people who feel shy, who maybe are introverted.
They think, oh my God, I don't know what to say, there is no topic.
Maybe if I say something, it's bad or wrong or whatever.
What beliefs give you the confidence to be talkative without worrying that whatever you
say might not be funny or it might not be interesting?
Well, it's maybe because when I talk in front of people that I already know, like people
I'm already comfortable to talk to, I know that they are interested in what I'm saying.
So then I know that it's not going to be funny or they're not going to be interested.
But when I talk to someone who's new, I already, I love to think before, because I think that
the first impressions are important.
I don't want to be talkative around everyone, but people who think that maybe people are
going to make fun of them when they talk or when they express their opinions, when you
imagine yourself that you are the other person, then you know that it doesn't really matter.
Because if the other person talked to you and said something, you're not going to laugh
at them, right?
You're going to think maybe it's interesting or maybe it's not interesting enough to you,
but you will not laugh because someone said something that doesn't seem right to you.
So this is exactly how the other person thinks about you, because no one actually cares too
much.
Like if I say something funny in front of 100 people, maybe they will laugh, yes, but
then they will go to their houses, they won't think about it, or maybe you will have an
impression because if there were 100 people and 100 people talked and expressed some opinions
and I did as well, and mine was funny, they will remember mine and not denying others.
So sometimes it's okay to say something funny because you will leave an impression, at least
you made someone laugh, you made someone's day and maybe they were thinking about some
problems, they were not feeling okay and you made them laugh.
So when you make things, when you don't think, when you don't overthink things too much,
life becomes easier and you feel comfortable to talk, to express, and the confidence is
not something that we got when we were born, we developed it.
So when you work on it, you will have it.
I love this topic.
It's very, very important and essential.
And I will ask you about teenage girls in Morocco.
Do you feel they have developed that confidence?
Do you feel they are more shy and reserved?
What do you think is causing this?
Is it social media and how they compare themselves to girls who seem to live perfect lives full
of Photoshop and like things that are not real or is the culture a little bit encouraging
the girls to not talk about their opinions too much and you're trying to change it?
Or tell me your opinion and perspective about this.
Okay, so this is leading me to talk about one of the biggest topics we discussed in
Arab Girls Summit.
It's violence in social media.
When you ask it what are the things that make this confidence flow, I can definitely mention
the violence on social media and also the environment and I'll explain.
First of all, the environment is when those teenage girls at their homes, maybe their
parents don't understand enough how much it's important to give them the chance to express
and to not judge them because when we are teenagers, we may be a little bit too sensitive
in some topics like if I talk to my mother and she didn't seem interested, I will feel
that I'm seeing random stuff that I won't, how can I explain, so what I would say it's
really important how my mom will react to what I'm saying because if she seems interested,
she starts asking questions, giving like positive reactions, I will continue on talking but
if she maybe was on her phone or she judged me or she went to some point and she kept
talking about it negatively, I will stop and it won't be open to her maybe or to other
people because I will assume that when she didn't seem interested than everybody else
and my environment won't also be interested, this is how the confidence can be broken or
low because I also want to mention, I can't be talking about my confidence without mentioning
how my dad's role was really big in this, he always listened to me, he always supported
me and always told me that it's not really important what people will think about you
when you talk, so when I heard this since I was younger, I was hearing it, hearing it,
I developed my confidence without feeling it, like I used to have some questions when
I was making YouTube videos when I was 12 years old, people were asking me about confidence,
I didn't know what to say because I didn't know myself where they get it but then when
I stopped and I thought about it, I found the answer, it was because of the environment,
so I want to mention this, secondly the violence on social media, we talked about how girls
out of girls summit, how the beauty standards and all of those comments affect really negatively
to all teenage girls and women in general because when these girls go and scroll to
their phones and they see that maybe some girl, she has a lot of compliments because
she has a specific type of nose, of course she will be insecure and she won't have the
confidence enough and she will think that since she's not beautiful like her, she doesn't
have the right to talk, it's not true because beauty is a really big topic and I think that
beauty is what you think about yourself and what energy you give and how you see things,
so this should be actually analyzed on social media because it will fix half of the problems
women face every day on this type of violence.
Thank you, yes, that's a very important topic and I love also that you're trying to be part
of the solution rather than part of the problem in social media, so can you explain and tell
me a bit more about your own podcast, what is the vision for it, how is the story of
you starting it and what do you want to express and change in the world with Midnight Thoughts?
Okay, that's a good question actually because I love to talk about things that I do and
the things that interest me, Midnight Thoughts, it all started when I was me and my best friend
making some YouTube videos together and we used also to watch some podcasts and we were
like, this is actually interesting, we want to do that but it was only an idea for years
but we kept saying, okay, we'll start tomorrow, we'll start next week, we have exams now,
we have this plan, we have this, we have this, but then we decided to start today and we
recorded so far only two episodes actually, it's been maybe five months.
The idea in what we want to change in the world using this podcast is we want to raise
the voice of those teenagers who can't be heard.
We know that there are so many people in our ages, younger and a little bit older who want
to talk, want to express, want to raise their voices but they can't because of all the issues
I mentioned before, they're not confident enough, they think they're not good enough,
why don't they actually can, so we want to be an example since we are also like, we're
still teenagers and we still learn, we're making mistakes because something that I really
want to talk about is young people, sometimes when they make mistakes or they say something
and it turns out that it's not right, they feel like it's a big thing but actually it's
not because we're learning, we're still here to do mistakes and to correct them.
So when you're young and you do something that's not correct and you correct it, it
won't actually matter in a few years.
So this is actually something that we want to, a message that we want to send by midnight
thoughts and we want to discuss the topics that we have in our society and the topics
that are not talked about enough in our society, we want to give those people a chance to give
their comments, to interact, to give comments and to help if we can.
I'm still working on that one day we're going to post an episode and we're going to talk
about some topic that's in our society and there's like maybe a teenager who's going
to realize and who's going to say that he has that problem and we can help or solve
that problem if we can because even talking helps, like when you have no one to talk about
and you feel like you're going through that alone, it makes it even harder.
So we want midnight thoughts to be like the comfort that comes to all those teenagers.
I love that noble vision, it's very useful, it's life-changing and you can use social
media and the leverage and the ability to reach many people in order to change lives
positively rather than like you mentioned doing things that might affect the confidence
negatively and as a Moroccan girl, maybe other people don't understand the culture or what
does it mean.
If you could describe how is the personality, on average I know every girl is unique, of
a Moroccan girl in 2022, is it like traditionally Moroccan type, is it a mix between American
culture because of Hollywood, French culture because of the history, Korean culture because
of K-pop, Japanese culture because of the anime and all kinds of things or how would
you describe the uniqueness, the difference, the attitude of a teenage girl in Morocco
in your city in 2022?
This is actually a good question because I've been thinking about this recently when I came
back to school and I saw how are so many girls that I knew in middle school and even last
year changed a lot this year because I can describe the personality of a combination
of all what you mentioned because when I say that there are some girls that change, I mean
when you mentioned like the K-pop because of the Korean culture, anime because of the
Japanese culture, I saw and I knew so many girls that were like obsessed with a Korean
culture one year ago but now they hate it, like it's all because of social media and
all because of when you're still like growing and finding yourself, anything can affect
you so but I'm not saying it's a bad thing, it is a good thing but there are limits okay
so there are limits because when you try stuff and you discover cultures, you discover your
interests, it's good to like maybe to love a different culture or to be interested in
an anime or on K-pop or anything because you saw that people are maybe in social media
live in it or it's half of their personalities but when I'm saying there should be limits,
you can't like go to everything because then you will lose yourself.
Like if I saw today that there is a new, I don't know, K-pop brand and I loved it and
I became obsessed and I have pictures of them on my room and stuff like that, it's gonna
be like all my personality about this K-pop brand so the day this K-pop brand will stop,
I will not exist, I will not know who I am, what I am and then if I found that there's
a great anime and I became obsessed with it, when this anime will finish or if it, I don't
know, if it stops, then I will not know who I am so what I'm gonna say is it's not bad
to have a combination of all that in your personality to have different interests but
to not be obsessed, you should know who you are as a person, do not let anything defines
you and defines your personality, you should you define you, define when I ask you about
yourself, I want to hear, well there's that K-pop brand, it helps me to fix my problems
and stuff like that, no because when this K-pop brand will disappear then what are you,
I want to know you, your emotions, your experiences maybe even though we're not experienced enough,
I mean 17, 16, 18 years old, we're still learning, we're still discovering, we're experiencing
but it doesn't matter like even if you told me that maybe you try to make something at
home it will be better than if you told me that maybe you went and watched all the pictures
of some K-pop brand, I mean it won't add something to you as a person but if you try to maybe
bake something or to play a sport or to watch a documentary about a specific topic it will
add something to your personality, so that's what I mean, so basically the answer because
I feel like I talked a lot but the personality of the teenager girl in my city, in my environment
is mixed like a combination of all what you said but they are changing okay, they are
changing like she will love something today, tomorrow she will hate it because she's still
discovering herself, discovering her interests and finding herself.
I love that, it's a perfect segue for my next question because I want to know you as a person
as well, so how are you aiming to understand yourself, to discover yourself even more and
you mentioned baking, I know it's one of the things you love and cooking, what is really
fascinating to you about such activities because some people might think oh baking is boring,
you put things in the oven and you wait and blah blah blah, so two things, one what do
you do to discover yourself and secondly what is fascinating, why do you love baking and
cooking?
Okay, those actually are good questions, first of all I want to answer to what is fascinating
about cooking because it's only a two words answer, it's maybe the process like watching
the process of making a meal, like how it's going to turn from small ingredients and putting
that with that with that and maybe I'm going to find a problem and I will fix it so I won't
waste all that time and all that effort for nothing, I want to have that meal, I want
to be first place, so when I watch that process and then I see the final results that meal
I wanted, it's actually the same thing when we, in life in general, we have a goal and
we work for it and then the feeling we get in the end when we reach our goal is the same
in cooking and baking, like first of all we have the small ingredients and we work on
them and then we get the meal we wanted, so I think this is the most fascinating thing
about cooking because you can just go and buy something but I choose to like, not much
to talk actually but I'd love to choose baking and cooking and secondly what do I do to discover
myself?
I can tell that the best way to discover ourselves in general, all of us humans, is to be aware,
first of all awareness of that we have weaknesses, we're not perfect and we make mistakes but
with all that we're trying to become the best we can be of ourselves and we can, we do better,
we try to do better even though we're not perfect because there are so many successful
people even though they all have weaknesses and they all make mistakes and then they all
know that there are limits of maybe the things they can reach, I don't know, but like when
you are aware of all of that then everything else is going to be a little bit okay because
when I know that maybe I'm not good at something I will try to be good at it, I will do efforts
but if I thought that I'm good at it I'm not going to do anything, I'm not even going to
try because I'm like oh I'm good at it, why should I go to it and try to do something?
So basically I think that this is the first thing is to be aware of all those stuff, secondly
it's to try to experience as much as we can like experiences because when I experience
something maybe I will find that this is good, I love this, I want to keep doing this or
maybe it won't seem interested to me and I will stop, then this is how I will know what
I love and what I don't and also there is something important as well to know that we
have a lot of time, like if I feel today that I'm not okay, I'm not good, I feel lost maybe,
I will know that I don't only have this day, I will try to learn something from this day
but I know that there will come better days where I will feel better and I will feel like
I know myself, so I think that awareness is the most important thing.
Thank you and I love your desire and fascination and interest in trying everything, having
all the experiences and using them to understand yourself, to grow, to discover how you are
in different situations and circumstances and to ask you even further, have you decided
what will you study at university, do you desire to study in Morocco or do you have
dreams to spend a couple of years abroad whether France or Canada or any other place where
you can complete your studies and discover the differences in culture or what are your
next goals and dreams when it comes to your professional life?
Okay, so I used to think about this a lot, like since I was a child I always wanted to
study like medicine but then I changed my mind because I decided that I don't want
to spend like seven years studying, I just want to study for a few years and then to
go on with my life to maybe work and do something else to experience more stuff but I don't
want to like spend so many years in that frame of school, of going to university, I want
to like maybe spend three or four years and then I'll do something else but I am interested
in other majors like business, computer science and other stuff but I don't know what am
I going to choose and I stopped overthinking it because since I was interested in medicine
for like maybe five, six years and then suddenly I changed my mind then I know that maybe I
will stop being interested in those majors so it's just like a waste of my energy to
overthink all of those stuff because it's whatever is going to happen, it will happen
so now I only want to focus like on these studies I have now and then we will see later
what am I going to do and also it doesn't really matter to me so far that if I'm going
to study in Morocco or abroad I just want to finish my studies and I want to discover
other cultures but maybe not in the frame of school, maybe I would choose to travel
and to be free while discovering those cultures and not to have like assignments and studies
and stuff but I think I would prefer to maybe rest a little bit.
I started to think about this these last two days, I think there's another choice is to
rest for a year and since we were studying for like 11 years ago now non-stop I think
we need to rest and to know what we want to do and to try other stuff outside the frame
of studying so this is actually an option but we will see.
Thank you so much Aya, this was my privilege, my honor, such a wonderful conversation to
understand you, to share your thoughts, I wish you impact on all the teenagers, I wish
you to grow your podcast and create all those episodes that you have in mind and in your
ideas and if people want to watch or listen to your podcast to discover more about it
where should they go, what should they search for and where can they find more?
So Midnight Taz episodes are available on Spotify and YouTube so far, only those two
and we also have an Instagram page if anyone wants to question or to propose anything,
it's also called Midnight Taz like just like that and yeah I will be happy if anyone came
from this podcast to Midnight Taz, it's just such an honor to me.
Thank you so much and I wish you a wonderful day and all the success.
