So here it is the beginning of April and I am at the 90 day mark in Morocco. On Monday. That’s 90 days. To the day. And I know that because I’m flying to Spain so that I can see the sights and speak yet another foreign language that I have very little grasp of.  (Oh and get my passport stamped for another 90 days on my return.) I guess its a good time to stop and reflect on what’s been going on and what progress has been made.
Most importantly (if you know me at all) my hair has grown. A lot. I have had WhatsApp conversations with my one and only, Horacio. He is prepared for my eventual return visit to Canada and I am keeping him updated on my surprising zen as my bangs start to fall into my eyes a little more each day. But its all good. I still look fabulous. Or so the Internet tells me that’s what I’m suppose to think when I look in the mirror. 

Things don’t really phase me anymore. I don’t give a donkey a second glance. Unless its particularly handsome donkey. I think I am just remarkably well adjusted and adaptive. (All travellers are no?) But I am really curious to see what happens when I get to Spain. I am not particularly missing any one thing here. Maybe a clothes dryer. I am excited as shit to see my friends, Suzanne and David. But they are my friends so of course I am excited about that. I am excited to go to restaurants that don’t serve tagine. So there’s that. And I am excited to shop. Although my only real shopping list consists of a new power supply for my MacBook and a bunch of hail and hearty surge protectors. And sheets. I need some nice sheets. 

So other than just getting out of town, seeing some place new, staying in a hotel and traveling in general, I’m pretty happy here and everything is going well. I still notice some things that make me shake my head. Like having to go to the grocery store every single day. Trust me, I get that having your food sprayed and injected and modified in all manner of different ways is bad, but it takes a lot of adjustment to buy things at the store and find out ONE DAY later that they have gone bad in your fridge. You do not want to get your groceries for the whole week here. Ever. I bought a cucumber the other day, pulled it out of the fridge the following night and it had a little flower growing out its ass. Seriously. Healthy food comes at the cost of expediency. And I still miss prepared food. So very much. I walk into the grocery every night and think…”Tonight? Tonight do you have a little salmon teriyaki with a side of rice in a plastic container? PLEASE!” 

I had my electrical bill slipped under my door last night. I looked at the balance and thought “Wow! 366,74 – SO CHEAP” because in the lovely Liberal province of Ontario it would have had a 7 in front of it. But then I realized that number was in dirhams and it actually only works out to $50 Canadian. Smartest thing I ever did was sell that gorgeous behemoth of a house and down size to a tiny rental apartment. My house is reportedly empty and awaiting its new occupants on April 29th. Its going to be weird to visit there and not have that house to go home to. But that’s ok. Things change. Right? 

Daisy is doing fine and I keep in touch with her new family on the regular. I hope to see her little face in the summer and every day that passes gets a tiny bit easier. But not a lot. Just a little. She is still my love and always will be but she is in the hands of some very awesome people and that makes me sleep easier. She had a visit with Sheila for the week of March Break and that’s awesome. She saw Dani and Jagger and they saw her. And Suzanne. And some other friends. She’s good. She’s a good little girl. 

As for progress, I have launched a website. More importantly I built the damn thing. Which is a giant achievement in itself. So now you can come and visit us in Morocco and we will take you where ever you want to go. Roaming Camels is all about sharing the Berber experience in this gorgeous place. So take advantage before we become too famous. We have a bunch of travellers booked already and I could not be happier. While I am the second in command on that project, I am the one in charge of Internet Marketing and I can honestly tell you that is discipline that needs to be re-learned every 6 months. So there is a lot of re-learning going on here. Damn Google always changing things up on us. So rude. 

I am still planning on exporting and I am working on how to do that. And how to get residency as a nice by-product of that. I still plan on working towards sharing the Berber culture and experience and people with as many as I can reach. I love me a good Berber. We all know that by now. But finding a way to do all the things I want to do, in the way I want to do it…well….everything takes time. I can tell you that I can’t get my little friend Ittou out of my head. That gorgeous little tattooed nomad girl in the Middle Atlas mountains. So while I always stated my objective this half of the year was to come here, learn some languages and figure out how to move forward in business, that is all coming together quite nicely. Slow and steady. Just like Morocco. 

And I’m sure some of you were waiting for my comments on the passing of the former Mayor. I had some. I didn’t share them publicly because the guy died. And he has a family. I am not one to believe that death absolves us of the misery we caused when we were alive, but there are kids involved so come here if want to hear my thoughts on that. 

Now, I need to go to the pharmacy which I have learned is not open during the afternoon prayer / lunch time. I will be navigating passed old men in the main streets on carts pulled by donkeys being honked at by Arabs in Audi’s and will probably have to step around some unidentified substance on the broken up sidewalk and perhaps trip over some ladies’ Louis Vuitton bag as she sits in a cafe sipping nus-nus and speaking French. On my way home I will buy 1/2 a kilo of strawberries from a Berber with a cart in the street in front of a high end designer shoe store in some combination of broken Darija and French. They will need to be eaten tonight or they will not last. I will greet the parking man on my street, Hamid, with a hearty ca va Hamdula after he says “ca va mademoiselle” as he does everyday. I will find my laundry drying on the patio in the sunshine. What’s so strange about that?