Loless Summer

If you are familiar with the blog, then you most probably know Lol,  my son and treasure Ali.  If you are not a frequent visitor here, let me tell you something about him.  Ali is not an ordinary 19th-year-old son; he is the apple of my eyes and the one person I trust with my life and feel totally comfortable depending on.  For his twin Nora and I, a day without Lol is an ugly one, let alone a whole summer without him. 

This summer, Ali decided to pursue an adventure in Africa. Despite my feverish attempts to make him change his mind, he won all the arguments.  He packed his bag and his twin Nora and went off to the farthest part of the dark continent, South Africa.  He could have travelled to Europe, like any young man would love to do, but he insisted. He had his mind settled on an educational  volunteer program in Eastern Cape.  For the first ten days or so, they had to stay in a camp where there was no electricity or running water and the weather was freezing. They had to ride daily to the school to get it ready for students. They painted the walls, fixed the roof and built a bicycle parking.  Nora, got bitten by a nasty insect and felt sick all the time, decided to come back. She could not take the harsh living conditions and I hoped Ali would do the same, but he did not.

On his own, it was time for Lol to rise and shine.  He taught math, physics, and English to students who were his age or older. Some of them were thirty and married with children. He made a wonderful impression on the students and staff and on other volunteers and made friends with some of them. He cooked them traditional Egyptian food and helped them bake bread, things he had never done at home.  When he completed the program, he decided to tour the country and visited some of the most spectacular places in Cape Town and Johannesburg.

Finlay, Lol is back home. He had the most wonderful summer and I had a terrible summer without him but he made me a very proud mother as he always did. It looks like I will have to spend many Loless summers since he is already planning his next summer trip.

Prayer by Abdalla Mohamed Ali

This is the first guest blog by Engineer Abdalla Mohamed Ali, my wonderful son, and I hope it won't be the last.  I actually sort of "stole" it from a Facebook post of his.  Welcome aboard Bodz.  

Prayer

 It is a time when you do not have to think about anything, you don't have to plan, stress, worry, regret, or sorrow. You are standing in front of the one and only creator and controller. It is a period of time when you can fantasy or ask for all you desire, or be grateful for all what you have. It is when you can simply step out of all physical or mental status, to reach a state of inner peace that reminds you that you can only control what you can, and the rest is already determined to be the best that could ever happen to you; because it is written by the One who gave you life. This is the  One who gave you the five senses you use to roam a vast and endless, sustainable, artistic, balanced, diverse, and perfectly constructed universe that you had no hand whatsoever in creating! The One who gave you a great tool, your mind,  a tool that enables you to be master of this universe, to survive with your fragile body the challenges of daily life varying from a simple one- celled virus capable of destroying you, to a great grizzly bear able to tear you apart with one strike of it's claws. The One who enabled you to handle all sorts of weather from a vast hot isolated desert, to the subzero temperatures of the north and south. He created you to conquer his universe and be superior to any other living being. Believing in a creator gives you the privilege of praying, rather than meditating. There's a thin line between both behaviors; when you meditate, you clear your head of all unnecessary thoughts, you really relax and enjoy the peace, surrender, and relaxation. In prayer you get the added value of relief; as you realize that you are in the driver's seat of your life, controlling your every move, but you also realize that the seat belt you have on, the life you are driving, and the route you are taking, are all designed by the only perfect engineer out there, the same engineer who provided us with this perfect endless universe to conquer.