Month: May 2017

Homesick in Morocco:  Transition at Ten Months

Brian Menard4 Comments

Last weekend marked ten months since we arrived in Morocco. We love living here. Still, as much as this has become “home” for us, all our domestic moves through our first 20 years of marriage help us recognize that life changes like this are not events; they are processes. 

Almost 40 years ago, William Bridges published the first edition of his classic Transitions, in which he presented any significant life transition as a balance between grief/loss and new beginnings. Such is the case with selling/storing/donating our belongings and moving to Morocco. So our process of transitioning from educators in the U.S. with friends and family from coast to coast, to expats starting anew in a country and culture very different from what we have experienced in the culture changes of our previous domestic moves, has been hyperbolically different. For the most part, we have enjoyed a spectacular experience. Yet, as a process and not an event, notwithstanding how happy we are with our lives here, at times we do feel the twang of missing people stateside. The thing of it is, you cannot sell, store, or donate the people in your life. They are pieces of you, and you bring them with you where you go…or at least you try to as much as you can. In reality, while the post-digital age allows for regular contact wherever a wireless connection exits, virtual interface suffices to maintain relationships but does not equal face-to-face and embracing-arms contact with friends and family.

So as Brian approached his 50th Birthday on May 22, he started feeling more homesick than at any time since we arrived. Not because he regretted moving to Morocco; but because he wished that he could share his milestone with people who had been in his life throughout his life. He thought about his parents moving from the Midwest to the East Coast more than five decades ago, leaving behind family (some of whom had never traveled beyond the county in which they were born) in pursuit of new horizons. As a boy, monthly telephone calls to/from grandparents kept relationships viable between summer trips back to see extended family and Christmas trips by grandparents flying eastward to see grandchildren who lived so many states away. Fast-forward to our move from America to Africa, and our world allows for much better and much easier contact with those we left stateside, and for cheaper than the “Reach out and touch someone” twenty-five cents a minute cost for an AT&T phone call. Nonetheless, the closer he got to his milestone birthday, Brian became acutely aware of the physical distance between him and so many people he loved back in America.

Wishing his turning 50 to be a wonderful experience for Brian, Audrey asked him what he wanted to do for his birthday to make it momentous. He said what he really wished was that he could bring together friends from his five decades and revel in the wonderful life he has had; but that would not happen in Casablanca. She was ready to buy him a ticket for the U.S. to celebrate with such a crowd; but overseeing end-of-year academic progress testing and evaluating senior capstone project presentations mandated that he be at GWA instead of flying west across the Atlantic. He did ask his mom if she would be interested in coming to Morocco on a whim to celebrate with him, but she likewise had commitments keeping her stateside. She did, though, appreciate his asking, and he appreciated that she wished she could come if she were not already booked.

Another factor that got him down was the juxtaposition of his birthday amid a very busy calendar time. The night of his birthday, a Monday, we both had to judge senior capstone projects. The preceding Saturday we both had to Chaperone the GWA prom. And the next weekend (now) brought the start of Ramadan, making a big 50th birthday celebration a bad fit culturally at the beginning of the month of fasting in this Muslim country. So there did not seem to be much opportunity to gather expat and native friends here.

A couple weeks ago, Brian started moving past his funk toward broader thinking, asking Audrey if she thought friends would come to a Friday night party, and if we could pull that off after working all day. She did, and so Brian started pondering options for a Friday party after work, rather than a Saturday party for which we could prepare all day. Brian did not want a big show; just a comfortable evening with friends to enjoy good people. He decided he would make chili; his friend M’hamed Rachad, GWA’s Director of Food Services, would make a chocolate mousse cake, and the assembled folks would play charades (hearkening back to our pre/post-marriage days when we hosted charades parties with friends).

So Brian made an invitation and Audrey send it out to a new crop of friends in our life here. All but one couple confirmed they could come, and Brian shopped for chili supplies. On the Friday before his birthday, as soon as he could leave his office and walk up the hill to our apartment, he headed home to make five gallons of chili (figuring also that we could enjoy leftovers for a few freezer meals). Soon our apartment was full of friends – with the special bonus of Charlotte prioritizing her dad’s 50th birthday party over high school teenager social things. Five gallons of chili disappeared. (There would be no leftovers for freezer meals.) Rachad’s cake was the best Brian has had in 50 years of birthday cakes. And, best of all, Brian’s charades team beat Audrey’s team by one point. It was a great birthday party. On his actual birthday three days later, the office staff surprised Brian with another birthday party…and another chocolate mousse cake.

After feeling homesick for a few weeks because he could not celebrate his half century with friends and family back in the U.S., Brian instead felt the blessing of having good folks here to celebrate with him. Feeling homesick was real, it was natural, and it was okay to recognize it for what it was without letting it put a big damper on enjoying our life here. Keeping things in the proper perspective is so important. Last Fall we wrote about “October” as an important month for new staff at GWA. Since then some people have actually left GWA after reaching a point when they felt Morocco just did not work for them or their families. Sometimes we wake up in the morning and think for a fleeting moment, “What are we doing in Morocco?!” Then we look around at the blessings that fill our life here and feel quite competent answering that question. While Brian felt homesick leading up to his birthday, he understood why he felt that way and never blamed Morocco for things not Morocco’s fault.

Two weeks ago, amid feeling homesick, Brian got rear-ended while stopped in road construction traffic directly in front of the entrance to the King’s summer palace that sits on the coast downhill from GWA. According to one of the King’s guards who witnessed the accident, a taxi driver plowed into the back of our Honda CRV because he was more engaged in talking on his phone than in looking for traffic stopped in front of him. The wrong perspective could lead Brian to blame Morocco for the accident and the nearly three hours afterwards on site waiting for an insurance agent to arrive (on a scooter) and write up an accident report. What makes such things happening here difficult is when we are not equipped with the skills or support to get through the things that happen: the language skills to understand what has happened and when life’s routine might return; and the familiarity with bureaucracies and procedures to know what to do when you get rear-ended, when your power or water goes out in your apartment, or when you get pulled over for making a left turn when the “No Left Turn” sign is obscured on the right side of the three-lane road and the car in front of you made the turn without getting stopped.

The truth is that Brian really could get rear-ended anywhere in the U.S. (or the world) by someone engaged in a mobile phone conversation instead of in driving safely. It is not a bad thing about Morocco; it is just a bad thing. Perspective.  Regarding his birthday, Brian could miss people back in the U.S. while still appreciating the good people in our lives here in Casablanca. Last summer, during one of our orientation sessions, Brian commented to the group that the strange things we encounter here are not worse, they are just different. That perspective has helped a lot at times this year.

The photo at the start off this post is Brian’s favorite from the last ten months. It shows a shepherd sitting while watching his herd of sheep feed in the field by the road up the hill toward GWA. The field is just a field, not more than it is; yet, the scene prompts some deeper thinking. It is the same field that weeks ago was lush with tall grass and colorful wildflowers; now it is a brown feeding place for sheep and cows who come to eat the stalks left behind by the straw balers. The field keeps changing with the seasons, each stage fulfilling a different purpose. Likewise, Morocco keeps changing, keeps providing us with new circumstances and new adventures. We will continue to enjoy them as part of our process, just as we will probably have future times when we feel more homesick than other times. And that is okay, so long as we remember that despite that feeling we remain blessed with good friends and good lives right here as well.

Things happen here, as things happen everywhere. Just like anywhere, changes and transitions happen not as distinct events, but as cumulative processes. In our process, we feel very blessed. With good friends to push us forward, we can handle the emotions that pop up and into our lives.

On your mark…get set…here we go!

When Simple Becomes Challenging:  Buying a Freezer

Brian Menard1 Comment

Audrey recently found an online article that listed 17 things that change forever when you live abroad. (Appropriately, it’s titled 17 Things That Change Forever When You Live Abroad http://masedimburgo.com/2014/06/04/17-things-change-forever-live-abroad/.) The description of Number 11 on that list (#11: You Learn How To Be Patient…) begins, “When you live abroad, the simplest task can become a huge challenge.” Among the latest examples of this in our Moroccan experience: buying a freezer.

First, some context. Through twenty-one years of marriage Brian has always been the skinflint to save money by buying in bulk and having the pantry, fridge, and freezer filled with things that we will use over time. Leftovers? Do not throw them away; stick them into a container and put it in the fridge or the freezer. Making soup, pasta sauce, or gumbo? Make at least a couple gallons, pour it into containers, and throw them in the freezer. Audrey balanced this out with militant advocacy for buying things one-at-a-time and tossing leftovers from the stovetop straight into the garbage. 

 As we started preparing a year ago for our move to Morocco, Audrey – who became ardently evangelical in the Minimalism movement – wanted to sell or give away everything we owned except the things we brought to Casablanca. (Granted, we did bring more than two dozen boxes and bags with us, most of them hers. See our 27 July 2016 post, Welcome to Morocco, for more about that.) Meanwhile, Brian would have been happy to put our whole house of stuff in storage for however long we lived abroad. Ultimately we compromised by selling or dumping over 90 percent of our things, the remainder going into three rented 5×10 storage units. Arriving at George Washington Academy last July, we took possession of a faculty apartment on campus with a small cabinet for a pantry and a fridge/freezer with roughly half the space of our kitchen unit in Arizona (without mentioning that in our Arizona garage we also had a second fridge/freezer). With not much capacity for storing things, we have had to make due amid our culinary activity. Meanwhile, through this year, (1) Audrey has become quite dedicated to providing our vegetarian daughter with dishes that require vegetable broth that she makes in large quantities from scratch; (2) twice we have brought big pork purchases home (once from the Commissary in Rabat, and once from a recent trip to Ceuta, Spain) to ration out consumption until our next opportunity to buy pork; and (3) Brian…well, he still cannot cook less than a couple gallons of whatever he makes. These things and more landed in the packed little freezer atop the fridge, with a need to dig and shove and rearrange to get everything inside, all while encountering periodic power outages on campus that fortunately – inshallah – have not lasted long enough to require a massive cook-off of vegetarian dishes and grilled pork and a big side of pasta to use what defrosted in an electrically-challenged freezer before having to throw it away. 

And so, nearly twenty-one years after our lives joined as one but our freezer policies did not, of late we seem to have switched personalities, or at least freezer preferences. In short, Audrey wanted to buy one and Brian did not. When we went periodically to Carrefour Hypermarche (what someone described to us as “Walmart without the Walmart people”) to refill our non-perishable supplies, Audrey began hanging out around the Appliances/Electronics Department to ogle the top-door freezers on display. “Don’t you think we should buy a freezer?” she would ask, looking at a 200 cubic liter capacity Whirlpool unit. “It’s so cute and it’s really small. It would give us the little bit more freezer space we need.” (The Carrefour appliances guy, a shark smelling blood in the water, floated over and offered the requisite supporting information: “Whirlpool…is BEST kind!” Ah, yes. Best kind. Now that we know that…) “No,” responded Brian, “Not when we have no space in our apartment and the electricity goes out periodically for undetermined periods. I don’t want to bring a couple hundred Euros of ribs and pork roast and bacon back from Spain to plop into the freezer and have the power go out the next day.” We have not had many arguments since we arrived last summer, but we had a doozie right in the middle of Carrefour a couple weeks ago about buying a freezer. It was a battle between massive convenience and “power goes out” logic. Audrey REALLY wanted the freezer; Brian REALLY did not. We agreed to go home and look at how much space the 200 cubic liter Whirlpool-that-is-best-kind would take on our kitchen floor. In the end, we compromised again: Brian promised to buy the freezer for Audrey, and Audrey promised to use it. It was a great compromise.

Actually buying the freezer proved to be pretty easy and uneventful. The following Saturday, after dropping Audrey at The Palace salon for a haircut (no doubt a future post in its own right), Brian zoomed out Ghandi Boulevard and through the Californie neighborhood to the Carrefour Hypermarche. Knowing the object of his quest, he parked, went inside to the Appliances/Electronics Department, asked the Appliances shark if they could deliver the freezer (“But of course! We can deliver it gratuit” – i.e., for free), bought the freezer, and zipped back to pick up Audrey so we could head back to campus and the annual GWA International Festival for which Brian had volunteered to grill 200 American cheeseburgers for the USA tent.

What DID prove difficult about this simple thing was actually getting the freezer to our apartment. Whether in philosophy or economics, a doctoral student could write a dissertation on the metaphysical question of when the condition of owning a freezer actually begins. In other words, like the proverbial tree falling in the forest with no one there to hear if it really makes a sound, if you buy a freezer at Carrefour and it never gets delivered, did you really own it?

With nearly ten months of Casablanca life experience under our belts, our nascent skills at communicating with a mix of English-French-Darija-Pantomime have improved tremendously. Notwithstanding this dubious prowess, regularly we find well-intended things lost in translation…which is exactly what happened with arranging for the freezer to be delivered. When Brian bought it and was told Carrefour would deliver it for free, he asked when it would be delivered. The Appliances shark regarded his watch and spoke a stream of French with a couple English words mixed into the sentence. Those English words were: one hour. Because that seemed almost too good to be true, Brian sought confirmation of delivery around 11:00 am as he gave our address. “Onze,” Brian asked him? “Oui,” the shark replied, then followed it up with another stream of French from which Brian tried to pick out words he recognized in hopes of context clues. Wishing the shark could return to an English-speaking capability that can at least produce “Whirlpool…is BEST kind,” Brian thought bizarrely that reverting to English would minimize the danger of a communication gap. He asked, “Is that 11:00 today?” The shark regarded his watch again and said, “Oui, one hour today…Demain.” Brains have a strange power to rationalize what you want them to conclude. In this case, Brian heard yes, one hour today and discounted demain, which means tomorrow in French. Rushing home with Audrey to prepare for the freezer delivery, Brian then went to the International Festival to grill burgers while Audrey waited for her freezer to arrive.

And she waited.

And she waited longer.

Three hours later, Brian had finished grilling and walked up the hill to our apartment to find no freezer there to greet him. Audrey, growing concerned that Carrefour would not deliver it, called the store to inquire when it might arrive. Upon their answering, she asked the Carrefour service person, “Parlez vous Anglais?” Carrefour hung up. Audrey called again, and again Carrefour hung up when asked if they spoke English. This repeated several times before Audrey quit in exasperation. Brian promised that in the morning he would drive to Carrefour and find out what happened to our freezer. When morning came, though, before he could depart Carrefour called around 10:00 am to say – in English – that they would deliver the freezer in one hour…around 11:00. 

Again we waited. Again 11:00 came and went with no freezer. This was worse than waiting for the cable guy to come for a service call in the U.S.

Carrefour called again a couple hours later, wanting to know where to deliver the freezer. “George Washington Academy,” we said. “In the Mariff,” they asked? (The Mariff is a neighborhood in downtown Casablanca.  GWA actually stands about 30 minutes south on the outskirts of the Hay Hassani neighborhood at the edge of Casablanca.)

“No, not the Mariff. Hay Hassani, on Route de Azzemour.”

“Ohhhhhhhh, Hay Hassani! Very good. They will deliver in one hour.”

We waited yet again. Again they did not come.

A few more one-hours later, Carrefour called once more to ask where they could find us. We gave directions for them to take the highway around town on the Rocade Sud Ouest (the Southwest Ring Road) like they were going to Dar Bouazza (a suburb 20 minutes further south of Casablanca), take the first right off the traffic circle when the highway ends, and take the first right again at the next traffic circle to go up the hill to GWA. 

“Oh, Dar Bouazza…By the swimming pool,” they said, hoping for a landmark – in the Moroccan fashion of giving directions – and presumably meaning a big water park down in Dar Bouazza. 

“No, not by the water park.  Not IN Dar Bouazza. Take the highway around, but instead of turning left to go to Dar Bouazza, turn right to go toward Hay Hassani.”

For the second time that day we heard, “Ohhhhhhhh, Hay Hassani! Very good. They will deliver in one hour.”

Sure enough, at long last, and after waiting most of the day again, we finally got a call from the guards at the GWA gate asking if we were expecting a Carrefour truck to deliver something. Oh boy, were we ever! A minute later we finally heard a truck wheezing up to our building. Brian ran downstairs to direct them to our third floor apartment. Two guys moved a big box out of the truck, dropped it down on the Tommy Lift, and carried it together up the stairs. They unpacked it, unwrapped it, and put it in the corner of the kitchen where Audrey showed them it fit, turning it to face out in the direction we decided looked the best and would be most functional. The phone guy spoke enough English to get his truck to us eventually, but these two guys did not bring English with them. The lead guy said something in Arabic while pointing to the wall outlet and then pantomiming a rocking motion. We looked at him puzzled. He tried again in French, but that proved no better. With more pantomime we finally figured out that we should not plug in the freezer until we had let it sit for a day so that coolant gasses inside the freezer could settle instead of killing us.

And so we did. The next day, Audrey and Charlotte went with the GWA Robotics team to Rabat for a two-day competition. While Charlotte and the other Robotics kids dominated the competition, Brian plugged in the freezer, moved a gallon of vegetarian stock into it, and made a batch of spaghetti sauce to add as well. Later we moved the Spanish pork and other things more at home in the deep freeze than in the upright freezer over the fridge. Audrey is very happy. Brian has even begun to admit his satisfaction with it as well.

The amusing footnote – and the lead into a separate post sometime – is that after our house helper, Khadija, saw the freezer for the first time, Brian came home to find she had moved it from the carefully and intentionally placed position where we had put it, turning it to face a different direction in the kitchen. And so it stays, for we have learned that we do not run our house. Khadija does.

On your mark…get set…here we go!