Brussels: Europe and the Arabs
All the finalists of the Miss Belgium contest traveled to Egypt on the last trip for the candidates before the final preparations for the ceremony to choose who will win the title during a ceremony that will be held on February 11th. Local media accompanied the female candidates for the title during the Sharm El-Sheikh trip last week and interviewed them about several issues, including the other side of life, whether educational, professional, and tragic, as well as the tattoos on the body of some of them, and the extent to which they keep up with current events, including the World Cup matches. Of knowledge about the world of football, while some of them only laughed in response to questions
Local newspapers published the other side of the life of some of the candidates, such as Emily, who is 21 years old and has experience as a model and has reached more than half a million followers on TikTok. Among the tragic aspects of her life, she said, "My mom died of cancer this year, but she didn't want me to sit around and grieve."
And she owns an account on TikTok in her name and the name of her friend, and the views reached 26 million views. Her friend is in her final year in medicine, and she herself studies occupational therapy and is also an observer for children and adults with disabilities.
The other candidate, Cheney van der Gugt, (24 years old), was candid about her heart problems and enlarged breasts. She talked about her outward appearance, which makes her look like a boxer, but she got used to this shape and began to accept her body in this way. And about her suffering, she says, she started with vague complaints about the heart area, a year and a half ago. A long path of uncertainty followed, she said. “I bought an Apple Watch to monitor my heart rate and saw that it made crazy jumps, sometimes from 80 beats per minute suddenly, at the touch of a finger, to 170. After the examination, the doctors decided to install a monitor, to be able to collect all the data for at least two years, even when I sleep Then a plan of action is determined - at worst it will be a pacemaker.
And there is the Somali candidate, Haifa Salem Ali, 20 years old, and she arrived in Belgium as a refugee with her family when she was 15 years old. She moved between asylum centers until things settled five years ago. She is currently studying tourism and won the title of Miss Limburg region last September, which made her among the candidates for the competition at the level Belgium as a whole, but before traveling to Egypt last November 26, it faced a problem, which is that it has not yet obtained the Belgian nationality, and it had to obtain a prior visa, and it is waiting for the approval of the Belgian authorities to obtain the Belgian passport, which is expected to arrive within a month..