Who decides who you are?
Is it the things you’ve done? The titles people give you? Or is it the choices you made when nobody was watching? Maybe it’s neither. Maybe it’s something you only understand years later, when you look back and realise, *ah… so that’s who I was becoming*.
Mountains → City
I started in a place where the loudest thing was the wind. My first playground was dirt, rocks, and an endless sky. Then, the city, suddenly everything was loud, fast, and coded in slang I didn’t speak well. Some kids liked the “different” in me, others… let’s just say schoolyard creativity isn’t always nice.
My dad said no to weightlifting (“you’ll stop growing”), so I found Kung Fu. Which — fun fact — is not great for winning fights, but fantastic for balance, focus, and looking cool in a mirror. It also made me fast enough for my true jackpot: handball. I was always the smallest on the court, playing with kids older and bigger, but I played like I had something to prove. Spoiler: I did.
When the court couldn’t hold me
I thought I’d stay in that world forever — trophies, national team call-ups, the rush of the game. Then I looked at the older players. The “best” were juggling jobs just to survive. My heart wanted handball; my head wanted a life. Choosing between them felt like breaking up with my own dream.
So I pivoted. University in Agadir wasn’t my dream school it was what my budget could handle. Then COVID hit. I filled my nights with C language, fighting with pointers like they owed me money, drawing algorithm diagrams until my pens gave up. No crowd. No cheering. Just me, my desk, and the hope that all this would mean something.
The first spark
Then I stumbled into the Google Developer Student Club. First event? A workshop on HTML/CSS. I prepared like my life depended on it days of slides, nights of tweaking code examples, constant whispers in my head: *Who do you think you are to teach this?* But people came. They asked questions. They left with new skills. That was the night something clicked.
After that: a national hackathon (imagine a room buzzing with caffeine and ambition), a group of classmates who became brothers, and a professor whose belief in us made up for the days we couldn’t believe in ourselves. We tackled the brutal admition exams together — travelling cheap, sleeping little, studying in noisy cafés. It was hard, yes. But it was also… good. The kind of “good” you don’t realise until years later.
Walking into admin with a plan
New school. New city. First day: I walked into the administration office with a full set of papers to start a tech club. They looked at me like I’d just suggested we host the Olympics on campus. I wasn’t interested in doing things the “traditional” way. I cut roles that made no sense, put the right people in the right spots, and told students to think for themselves instead of just nodding at professors.
Not everyone liked it. But the club grew. A year later, I merged it with a rival group, and suddenly the campus had a united tech community. We ran two hackathons — one international. Weeks of work. Nights of no sleep. Admin promised big prizes. We got… let’s just say, not that. I actually cried. Not out of weakness, but because I knew how much everyone had given, and how little the system gave back.
Letting go, watching them fly
Year three, I stepped back. Watched the new generation take the stage and run faster than we ever did. That’s when I realised: maybe my role was never to hold the spotlight, but to build it, aim it, and make sure it worked before stepping away.
Meanwhile, I was hunting for my end-of-studies internship. It was stressful, broke-season life, but when I finally landed it, it felt like crossing a finish line I’d been sprinting toward for years.
So, who is Bachir? Someone still figuring it out...