Fatima Ezzahra

Here is a picture of the girls with Fatima Ezzahra, the woman that comes two times a week to play and speak Arabic with them. She has a very sweet spirit and we all really love her. The other day, Kendra looked up into her face and said "Fatima Ezzahra" over and over again - cute! Fatima speaks no English, so we communicate in the little Arabic and French I know, and in "signs and wonders" as my mom calls it - you sign and I wonder!

Fatima is 25 years old. When she was 13, her older brother was in a running club and she tagged along - much to his dismay. They had a long, hard run and she beat all the boys - not even wearing tennis shoes! After that, trainers started asking her to run and she became a professional athlete for Morocco doing mostly marathons. She went all over Morocco for races and finished 7th in an international event. Her story was featured in a French magazine here along with the Moroccan athlete from the Olympics a few years ago.

Often she was promised prize money but either it never came, or they gave her a stuffed envelope which was actually just small change. Later she got an ankle injury and there was no medical help or follow-up physical therapy to help her continue running. In addition, it was quite taboo for her to be running at all - she either had to run alone or with men - neither an appropriate option here. Her parents wanted her to stop running, saying that they could never find a suitable husband for her if she had such a questionable job. Because of all of this and the fact that she had not finished high school, she quit when she was 17 to finish school. She has also done some professional training and she still runs as often as she can.

Fatima Ezzahra is now engaged to be married to a Moroccan in Germany and hopes to enter college there and pursue her running dreams. As she said in the article, "Running is in my blood." When I asked her if she hopes to go the Olympics some day, she said, "Enshahallah" - "God willing."