Morrocco details...

Roads: Beware of potholes. I've never driven under more stressful situations. The roads have potholes and sometimes speed bumps that are both intentional and unintentional. Either way, beware of both. On the right side of the road are people walking, bicycles, motorcycles with the entire family on them (it's amazing how many people you can fit on a motorcycle, mom, dad and a toddler), carts being drawn by horses or donkeys filled with people and produce, taxis pulling over to pick up or drop off people, cars pulling over for not sure what reason? Sometimes cars and motorcycles drive on the shoulder along the road against traffic (slightly nerve racking). There is also the issue of lanes. In most countries two lanes on the road means two cars side by side. In Casablanca, that could mean as much as four. People drive all over the place. I almost got squished today between a bus and a truck. I decided to brake, just in case there wasn't enough room and it was a good idea. I'm thinking most collisions happen here not front end, but rather side by side.

Driving: Driving into Casablanca this afternoon to get the kids, I saw a dog eating the carcass of a dead dog lying on the side of the road.

Things that annoy me: people can't pick a lane. They wander into my lane even though their lane is clear of cars, they just wander over so I can't get by them. I feel like pulling up next to them, honk, roll down my window, and yell "stay in your own lane!"

Honking: On the same road as the cannibal dog, there was a large bus behind, next to and sometimes in front of me. He is what I call a "happy honker". Traffic isn't moving, yet he continues to honk his horn, beep, beep, beep. Look, a parked cart on the side of the road; beep, beep, beep. Uh oh, I merged in front of him; beep, beep, beep (this time at me I presume.) Oh look, now he's crossed the two lane road and is partially driving into oncoming traffic all the while; beep, beep, beep at the caravan of cars in front of him to drive faster and forcing all of the on coming traffic to squeeze 2 rows of cars into 1 1/2 lanes. Still beep, beep, beep. I think he honked his horn all the way to his destination (wherever that is??)

I find that most often trucks are "happy honkers." Someone told me, well, welcome to Casa.

Lanes: What are those white stripes on the road supposed to mean?? Today as I was driving my husband to work since my new job has become the family chauffeur before the child drop off at school, I had to merge. There are two lanes presumebly drawn on the road. I counted the number of lanes that were created to merge onto the 2 lane overpass; 5. I was in lane 4, naughty me. I intentionally stayed in the left lane with the idea of cutting ahead of everyone else. Lane 5 had the same idea, but more brazen. Lane 5 was blocking everyone who wanted to stay on the main road and NOT merge onto the overpass. Mentally I had to give them kudos for their ballsiness (though I still didn't let any of them cut in front of me.) I figured they should wait until the very last moment before they could merge. No one merges early.

Turning: Sometimes there is no break in the traffic in order to make a left hand turn, therefore you have to get a little nuts and a little creative. Besides if you don't, the people behind you will start honking their horns. You have to pull out into fiercly oncoming traffic, say a little prayer that they will slow down and not cream you, then once you've fully cut everyone else off, hope for an open space and then jump right in.

At the kids school, I have to make a left hand turn to get to the light. Unfortunately both two lanes of the treet were already backed up to the next block. The car in front of me was both creative and brazen and just created a third lane by driving on the wrong side of the road and cutting everyone else off who was in line and got right up to the front. So, like any nice, kind, road polite person; I followed. I felt a little guilty, but made it out by the first light. Surprisingly, no one honked at me.

Crossing the road in Casa on foot: SUICIDE. Yep, made that mistake today. No, I didn't get hit by a car, but was very scared. I just wanted to check out the tennis club near the kids school to see if I can sign them up. There are no pedestrian cross walk lights in Casa and there are NO breaks between traffic. I crossed not when the traffic was coming, but when people were turning. I had to run and dodge four cars and two mopeds all of whom didn't seem keen on slowing down. I got honked at. At the other half of the road, I waited for the red light, but just because the light turns red, doesn't necessarily mean drivers are going to stop. Often, people burn red lights.

Morroccan mint tea: delicious

Avacado Juice: that's right, freshly squeezed avacado juice. Didn't know one could juice an avocado. It is delicious! It's like a liquid meal in itself.

Yesterday at the last minute X. invited a new arrival family to the house. I asked N. if she could prepare a meal for 4 adults and 6 kids. She went all out and prepared some hors d'oeurves. She then created a beautifully layered salad on a giant plate she borrowed from a friend (since we have a skeleton kitchen here). Then she made a French tajine of mutton and mushrooms and crème fraîche with a side of rice. Mmmm...delicious. I was very proud.

Pet Shelters: As far as I know, do not exist here. All animals roam free together. Then, if there is a rabies outbreak, the army comes and shoots all the wild dogs. Afterwards, the dogs slowly repopulate. If you want a puppy? Just go out and grab one. They're all over the place. If you think about it, it's not a bad life. At least here, dogs are free to be dogs. They run, find a mate, have some puppies. All in all, I think they are able to live a full life. In the US, we murder animals on a regular basis to keep the population down. It's just done in a clean, systematic way in the shelters, not necessarily better. Most animals are spayed and neutered so they never have a chance to live a full animal life, of course then they don't have to die young or experience other terrible things.

Horsebackriding: X and I decided to go for a tour of the Sahara in March for 1 week on horseback through the local horseback riding club. Of course I've never had 1 class before and have limited horse riding experience to nose to tail trail walking in a large group. This would be interesting. So I've had 3 lessons so far.

Lesson 1: we had to learn to post, ,that is bounce up and down in the saddle while the horse trots. The instructor yelled at me to lift my bum off the saddle, but I swear for the life of me I couldn't. He said, "stand up!" I'm thinking if I do that, I'm going straight off the front of the horse. Still after lots of painful bouncing and a very sore bum, I was finally able to sort of post by the end of the hour.

Lesson 2: The trainer and I went out on the trail. It was great! More trotting, more posting and he said now we're going to gallop. I said we're going to whatop? He said, "do you have confidence in me?" I said, "Yes, I have confidence in you, but the question is do I have confidence in myself?" I'm looking down at the rocks and boulders lining the trail and thinking if I fall off, I'm going to break something. So, he promised we'd do a slow gallop. He said you do not post in gallop, you remain in the saddle. I said, how? He said you squeeze your legs together very tightly. I'm thinking, I have no inner thigh muscles, this is going to be interesting. So, I galloped. I got partly bounced all over the place, then for a brief moment I was able to ride with the horse and remain in the saddle. It was pretty cool, really hard, but cool. Everyone said horseback riding is a sport. I always thought you just kind of sit there, I mean how hard can it be? Well, I assure you, from always too overconfident me, it IS hard.

Lesson 3: more trotting and galloping. Good time. I'm still sore. Legs are quite sore, but hopefully that will go away with some time.

Morrocco News...Finally

Where do I start?

Architecture: a bunker from WWII crossed with downtown Nice

Trash: everywhere outside, in fields, on sidewalks, on the sides of the road, in the middle of the road, in yards, piles and piles of rubbish, on the beach, in the ocean, etc.

Roads: some are cement, many are dirt, hard packed dirt. Not sure what happens when it rains, the center of Dar Bouazza where people walk is a dirt road filled with dirt, rocks, rubbish, poverty and cats

Animals: packs of wild dogs roam free, cats everywhere. Animals graze everywhere, empty lots, beach, the sides of the road, and they graze in the trash littered fields. Roads are shared with chickens, sheep, and cows, and carts being drawn by either horses or donkeys.

Once I was driving and I had to stop because a sheep had wandered into the middle of the road. Another time I was driving, I had to stop because I farmer was walking a train of cows right in the center of the street.

Language: a little French, mostly Morroccan Arabic, communication is hard. I ask people if they speak French. A lot of people don't understand me. Many people are illiterate. We interviewed a young woman who couldn't speak French real well to write her name for us in French and she couldn't. A lot of signs and foods are written only in arabic. I've learned just a few words in arabic. I have a hard time learning to count because the words are so long. There are phonemes that don't exist in English which makes some sounds very hard to pronounce. I have a hard time pronouncing the sound R in just about any language (French and Arabic).

People: are very nice, lots of good service, lots of people working in restaurants or on the side of the road to help you park or wash your car. Lots of cops (not sure that's a good thing). I have the feeling they would be out to exploit expats and expect to be bribed. I haven't been pulled over by the police yet, but it is inevitable. It would help if I could speak a little arabic, just to show respect.

Housekeeper: The best thing that's happened to us so far. I figured out pretty quickly that things work through word of mouth here. (bouche à l'oreille). We moved into a house in a large closed in housing development where most rich Morroccans keep their second vacation homes. Therefore it is quite dead in the winter, but very beautiful and quiet. We did very well choosing our house and where we live. I went to the park with my kids and met all the nannies. Everyone has a nanny and a housekeeper who cleans and cooks for the family. I was looking for someone to replace myself (ie nanny, cook, housekeeper, shopper, etc) and asked everyone in the park if they knew anyone. Everyone has a sister or a friend who could come and work for us. I collected a few phone numbers. My only stipulation is that she has to speak French so I can communicate with her. I then had a knock on my door from a lovely woman named Zora. She said the guard told her that we're looking for someone. She herself is already engaged by a family, but her sister is working and looking for a full-time job. I said, well bring her over. I met her the next day and she spoke French. I told her what I wanted and she said that's no problem. She asked for a fair amount of money, but I thought, what the hek. If I pay a nanny and a housekeeper separately, it would probably cost me more. So, I had Xavier meet her, I liked her and he agreed to hire her. Her name is Najat and she is the greatest thing that has happened to our family since we arrived in Morrocco. She explains the prices to me, tells me where to shop, where not to shop, how things work. I had to take a taxi here and asked if she would come with me so I can learn how to do it. Silly, I know but not obvious. She said it should cost 7 drm (70 cents) to go to Casa and 10 drm (1€) to come back per person. This is the white taxi. Once in Casa, you take the red taxi which runs by a clock like in the states so you can't get ripped off. She said never ask for the price up front because I will get ripped off because I'm not local. She said there are 2 prices, 1 for local, 1 for French. I obviously fall into the French category. So far though, I don't feel like I've been ripped off much. Most people I've delt with have been honest.

Schools: NIGHTMARE

There are 2 « American » schools here in Casa. One I heard is very, very, very bad. I've only heard negative things about it. The other is the lesser of 2 evils (called GWA). We based everything on GWA. We moved near GWA hoping we'd find lots of expats in the area (we heard there are lots of expats in Dar Bouazza). I had been in contact with GWA since Oct letting them know we were coming. I got all the papers together and we arrived during the winter break. They were closed so I had to wait until school started to begin the « enrollment process .» I called over the holiday and left numerous voicemails. Never got a response. I then called monday and they told me to come in maybe that day, maybe tues. I can't remember. The attitude of their admissions staff was not interested and not motivated. They just didn't care that my kids were not in school. There is one French woman who is in charge of admissions, she's nice, but totally slow. She wouldn't move her ass to do anything. I called everyday and said what do we need to do to get the kids into school? I figured it would take 2 days at best. All they needed from me was money to pay the admissions and some photos and the kids to get tested. They said that the teachers are sick so there is no one to test my kids. I said why don't they just start school and you can test them during the week when the teachers come back. She said GWA doesn't work like that. I waited until the following Tues to get Anais tested. Austin was supposed to get tested the same day but we all got sick so he couldn't. Wed was a holiday so no one reveiwed the test. Austin got tested Friday, still no response regarding Anais' test. Now 2 weeks have gone by, while admissions twiddles their thumbs and no one tells me anything, except they kept using words like « IF your child gets in. » There is one other Morroccan woman in admissions who helps the French woman. She is nice, but a total waste of human space. I have NEVER whitnessed a more useless human being in my life, and incompetent. She stupidly said to me once, « well you know, the 2^nd semester doesn't start until Feb 6, so your kids might not be able to start until then. We don't like kids starting in the middle of the semester. » I said « if this is the case, you need to tell people BEFORE they move to Morrocco. I would have stayed in France. » I was so pissed that night, I couldn't sleep.

At this point I realised there is a problem. I was so pissed with the admissions staff and their overwhelming incompetency, that I called the elementary education and told them their admissions staff is totally incompetent and that I am no longer going to deal with them. Is there anyone in this school who is competent? Do you have any idea what it takes for me to tell someone they are incompetent? I am not a person prone to emotions or exaggeration. If I say someone is incompetent, it's because they are. Not a good foot to start off on.

Monday comes, I received an e-mail. The American school after great deliberation has decided to reject my children. They are not welcome to the school. GWA has a native English population of 20%. They said my kids scored way too low academically to be accepted into the school. My son did poorly on reading and maths and they think Anais has a learning disorder, dyslexia, whatever. They said her reading is high 1^st grade, low 2^nd grade level and her maths is poor. They said they do not have the ressources to take care of her. I said, who does? Where am I going to go? I was so pissed!! I understand my daughter has a problem. I understand I need to find a professional in English who can solve this problem. I need to go to either England or US to have my daughter properly tested and get her on track.

GWA to be clear is NOT an American school. It is a school that caters to those who pay for its existence, Rich Morroccans. They say they follow an American cursus, but that is only a sales pitch for the Morroccans who pay money to get into the school. Xavier thinks they were expecting to be bribed. I don't know. I don't care. My kids aren't going there. The school in Manosque has kindly agreed to take my kids back. We have one last option here. There is a brand new school called International School of Morrocco run by an American and her husband. She used to work at CAS and something happened where she got fed up, left and started her own school. Currently they only have a kindergarten so our kids would be the only ones at this school for their age. Not sure how that will work. The kids are getting tested right now as I write this and then the owner will give us a proposal. We came here Monday and they said they couldn't help us because they are only a kindergarten for now, but hope to grow. We said in that case, we have to keep looking for other options. We are also looking into the Lycée Français, but I think Anais will get reemed in that system.

EVERY SINGLE other expat had the same horrific nightmares regarding schools. There was another expat who waited 1,5 months with his kids NOT going to school, only for the school to deny his children entry at the end. He was so pissed, he took his family, left his job and the country. I have now learned how to take control. I have an appt today at CAS anyway and told them up front the negative things I've heard about CAS and what happened to us at GWA. I told them I am completely enraged at what happened and that I'm coming back to France. I said you have one week to test my kids. She said that's impossible. I said then they will not be tested. I'm NOT keeping them out of school any longer for these kinds of things. She said she understands. I said I will go back to France, put the kids back in school. I will do all the necessary bull shit paper work in France and then have everyone line up the testing at the same time and come back for that. I am so pissed about the nonchalant lazy points of view regarding children's education in this country. I told GWA, you are an American school run by Americans. I expect you to be able to ACTUALLY run things the way Americans do. They said the problem is Morrocco. The country resists them. I've heard about that. It's the same problem for Xavier at work. Nothing works, nothing functions. It is very bizarre. From what I've seen locally, things have run very, very well here for me with the locals. Especially since I have Najat who knows everyone and who watches out for us. She is absolutely wonderful! We are so blessed to have her on our side!

All Expats told us they went though the same things with the schools. They waited forever to get into the school. The schools jerked them around. Their kids were poorly treated in the schools. They themselves were poorly treated. The schools cater to the local Morroccan population, which is normal since there aren't enough expats to keep the school afloat. Therefore schools are Morroccan run. It feels like a collossal joke. I don't think the education is even that good. Najat told me I was too nice, that I should have been a real bitch and yelled at people. She said when people are nice they get treated like shit in Morrocco. This is new to me. I did get angry and was about the level of rude that I get. But yelling straight up is not my style. I don't like yelling at people. In my culture, yelling at someone is showing that I have no intelligence and or emotional control. It looks pretty bad, at least that's how I see things. I just have to take control now and run the show. I was in a weak position at GWA, I've learned now. That is never going to happen again. A lot of people are leaving after 6 months because they are fed up with the situation in Morrocco and fed up with the school situation. We are worried about our kids. We want to keep the family together and are not sure what to do. However, when I signed onto this project, I didn't sign on to teach my kids home schooling and that seems to be where I'm headed. I'd rather come back to France. Socially, homeschooling isn't healthy for anyone.

It is hard because I never had any problems in school. I went to a great public school. Teachers were good, kids were bright. School for me was never an issue. I wasn't the brightest, which always annoyed me, but I wasn't the dumbest either. Everyone was bright. I just didn't have any learning issues, reading issues, math issues. I just didn't have any issues period. I guess I just assumed my kids would be like me. I had an incredibly stable childhood, which probably really helped. We've put our kids through tremendous stress and it's not getting any better. The int'l school in Manosque is properly accredited, which makes all the difference. That's hard to find in these parts, which makes it scary for the kids when we move onto the next place. I plan to come back sunday if nothing works out here and I will keep trying from France, slowly, at my own rhythm and in control.

This is my first month of experience in Morrocco. I keep forgetting how hard it is to be an expat. It already helps that I speak French. I cannot imagine how hard it would be if I couldn't communicate at all. And I have Najat who can translate for me and help explain the culture to me. It makes all the difference in the world. It's like having my own reliable, personal, capable guide to Morrocco. In that sense I'm very lucky.

My experience so far really is ok. It's just the school situation that has given me much stress, but like I said, we're learning quickly and I suppose adapting. Adaptation is really an acquired skill. I suppose you get better at it the more you do it.

I hope all of you stay well. If any of you do think about following to Morrocco. Please beware of the schools. Do it slowly during vacation if possible so you don't get stuck like the rest of us. Or prepare well in advance for homeschooling so you don't have pressure to get the school crap done. But definitely do ALL the papers for ALL the schools in advance because it is so much to do and really like a bad joke.

Phone, Bank card, Ladder Nov-Dec 2011

Shortly after my last blog lambasting the phone company and bank, I got things sorted out. The phone just started working finally. It took about 3 weeks total that I went without an internet phone, ie free telephone calls to my family in the states and to my husband in Morrocco.

The bank is slightly worse. Like all diligent, careful people, I wrote my code down. The bank asked me if I wrote down my code. Of course. Then she said, did you write it down correctly? Yeah, duh. She asked if I still have the record of my code that the bank sent to me. I've learned that in France, keep ALL your papers, you never know. So, I went looking for my code in my file assuming I chucked it and voila! I found it. I took it out and compared it to the code I'd written down and whoops. I wrote down the wrong code. The problems more or less originated with myself.

So, all that being resolved brings me to thanksgiving...

We had our traditional potluck on Dec 3 during a weekend that Xavier would be home. I really wanted to invite EVERYONE I liked. That added up to about 100+ people. I tried hard to find a venu that could hold us. In the end I couldn't find anything available and or that could seat that many people, so I resigned to keeping the numbers down to the amount of people I could conceivably fit into my house. This time we did a little more picnic style, so people could sit on the sofa and chairs away from the table. It worked out fine.

In my image of a great party, I wanted to utilise the 30m² terrace, but in order to do that, I would need to enclose it. So, I went shopping for tarp. When the time came to put the tarp up, it proved to be difficult. The tarp I bought was mislabled and way too small. The highest height to attach is about 2.5 meters. I am 1.6 meters tall to give you an idea. I had to climb up the ladder to highest height in order to reach the wood beam to attach the tarp. It was windy outside and I kept thinking I'm going to fall off this ladder and get myself killed. Xavier left at 3:30 to get his hair cut. People were due to technically arrive at 4.

At 3:40, I shifted my weight on the ladder and as I did so, the ladder flew out from under me taking my feet along with it sideways. I was up about 1.5 meters high and thought, this is going to be bad. I landed very, very hard on my lower back (coccix). The terrace is tile and I had nothing to protect my fall, no coat on since it was relatively warm outside. My hand hit the step and luckily my head just missed the step.

Anyway, there I was laying on my back, outside on the tile in December feeling like an idiot and in extreme pain. My body made a loud noise when it hit the ground. The pain radiating from my back was very, very great. I lost all feeling the my fingertips and looked at my hand. In the impact my nail had lobbed off a nice chunk of my finger. I looked at that and thought, I'm glad I can't feel anything because when I get feeling back, that's going to hurt.

My friend Barb was in town from Texas and was home with me at the time, thank goodness. I was laying there in shock. I checked to see if I could move my fingers and that was ok. I was thinking, ok I'm going to have to call myself an ambulance and go to the hospital, question is, when? I've got guests showing up technically in 20 minutes. I can't leave Barb here alone. She's in the middle of making her hors'ouevres, she isn't ready yet either, she doesn't have time to deal with this. Then I realized, crap, I can't do anything now. I can't finish getting everything ready, I can't work and I can't use my left hand at all.

Anais was outside so I told her to go get Barb. She came out and we ascertained that I could move my body. I crawled inside and stood up, so that was ok. At least I knew the ambulance was out of the picture. I decided to relax and wait for Xavier to get home. I shoved the icepack down the back of my pants. People came on french time, roughly 1 hr late, so that bought me some healing time. When people did show up, I felt terrible because I had to ask them to work to finish setting up the house for the party. I wasn't able to lift anything.

I called our friend who was coming to the party anyway who is a doctor and told him that I broke my coccix and maybe also my wrist, but I wasn't sure about my wrist, it was swelling and changing colors. So, I spent the night trading the icepack off between shoving it down the back of my pants and my wrist. A friend of ours is a nurse and I asked her if she wouldn't mind looking at my bottom to assess the damage. I don't think there was any visible damage, just a lot of pain.

Well, we had a good time anyway in spite of the accident. I wasn't of any real use, which really annoyed me. My friend offerred to call off the party and take me to the ER. Call off a party? No. Everyone cooked and everyone's here, it's alright I'll go to the hospital later. Our friend picked up a wrist brace and looked at my wrist for me, he said it might be broken, but not requiring immediate attention and that the brace is as good as anyone can do anyway. He had a contact at the hospital and could get me in and through the system in one go, so it would be better than blowing 4 hrs at the ER for nothing. I said fair enough. He said you can't do much for a tailbone anyway. It didn't feel like it broke in half or anything, but it did feel broken.

The problem is all this took place on Sat. On monday both Xavier and Barb were leaving. I thought, crap, I can't lift anything or use my left hand at all and my right hand was severely damaged due to my finger. It was really hurting. So, I decided I hoped I would heal a little before they left. It was pretty rough. I couldn't sweep the floor or do the dishes, so I just let everything sit for awhile and get dirty. I went to the hospital monday after everyone left and got x-rays of my body. My wrist is not broken, but I did a nice big fracture of my coccix. The dr said it would take about 1.5 months to heal. My bottom is healing faster than my wrist. It's been about 1 month, I'm now taking the wrist brace off, but there is still a visible bruise on it.

In the meantime, I was living alone in France. A single mom with no family, working part time and broken and having to prepare a large move to another country. A little insane. Sometimes, I thought what the hek am I doing? My husband was able to come home every other weekend, but the weekend of the 3rd would be his last weekend home.

Luckily I am blessed to be surrounded by a group of amazing and wonderful international women in France. They all banded together to help me. A few friends came over and helped me go through all our stuff that we've collected over the past 10 yrs and helped me unload. We gave carloads away to charity and threw the other trash out. Our neighbor has been a very great help. He has dumped all the big stuff for us, like our very old and broken sofa from TX.

So, all went well. We finally received an emergency last minute passport for Nicolas so we could fly to Casablanca and meet Xavier for Christmas. Together we found a nice furnished house to rent in a beautiful resort like place. The house is smaller than other homes for the same price, but we get to live in a beautiful residence with pools, playground, beach and lots and lots of other people and consequently lots of kids for ours to hopefully make some friends. We have also met some expats, but so far no one has kids the same age as ours. Most people have very, very young children or their children are grown.

More on Morrocco in the next blog.

Cheers,