When I moved to Morocco in 2015, every day held a story that I was eager to share with anyone who cared to read. By contrast, returning to Canada in 2019 has left me largely wordless. I had not written a thing since my return, when I came across a “receiving letter” that my thoughtful employers had written for all departing staff before we left. The idea was to prepare us, and the people who care about us, for the “reverse culture shock” that was about to hit us when we returned to a home that no longer felt like home. Here is that letter, and the thoughts it provoked.
So here it is: all that I have left unsaid since the day four months ago when I made my last voyage between the two places that have been home to me for the last four years: one, the place of my upbringing and my roots, the other, the place of my uprooting, and re-rooting, my redefinition of myself as “one who goes forth.”
Do you know the story of Stone Soup? It’s a story of deception and manipulation, cleverly disguised as “sharing.” I had a little taste of it a few weeks ago on my return trip from Slovenia, and it’s a bitter brew indeed.
I didn’t miss the bus. The bus missed me. And now I am missing hundreds of Euros. It stings. Oh, it stings.
It started the previous week in Casablanca, when I decided to play it safe and reserve a 20-Euro bus from the airport in Venice to take me to my final destination in Ljubljana, Slovenia. All through the convenience of online booking. Only I never got a receipt. Or a confirmation of payment. Or a ticket. Nothing. Of course my credit card was still charged. Of course I immediately emailed the bus company. Of course I got no response.
When I landed in Venice the next day I immediately hooked myself up
intravenously to the airport wifi, only to check my email and receive a message
saying “Please send us your phone number.
The bus driver does not have your name on his list.” Of course I responded immediately. Of course I received no further
response. None. I lost a Euro to an Italian pay phone trying
to dial a number that turned out to be out of service. I asked every possible person at the airport
who might be able to direct me to the bus in question. No one had heard of it. No one.
I should have read the reviews…
The phantom bus stop
I stood in the rain for an hour waiting for the phantom bus that
never came. Without an umbrella. And then I went inside and booked a second bus
with another company. Waited in the
airport for another three hours. Boarded
the bus without incident, and arrived four hours later in Ljubljana, soaking
wet but otherwise intact.
“It’s only 20 Euros,” I told myself. “It’s just money. Sometimes it goes away like that. You’re safe. You’re here. Get over it.”
I got over it. I economized
in other unfortunate ways. I walked
around in the rain all week instead of paying for taxis or transit passes. I ate oatmeal in my mini-airbnb instead of staying
in hotels and dining in Slovenian restaurants.
I did not buy jewelry or pretty porcelain mugs at the market. Only a flimsy orange umbrella and a
rainhat. To enhance my daily walks in
the rain. Without rainboots.
“Just take a taxi,” my mom said.
“Just buy some rainboots,” my mom said.
“You can do that, you know.” No I can’t.
I can’t.
One week later, I thanked myself for having booked my 5am bus ticket back to Venice with a reliable, reputable bus company that I’d used many times before.
I did not exactly arrive 15 minutes early, as the ticket suggested, but I was five minutes early. I ran. In the rain. Through the puddles. My shoes were flooded. The bus was waiting.
4:55am: “Is this the bus to Venice?”
“No.”
Oh no… did it take the liberty of leaving 15 minutes early?
Another bus pulled up.
4:58am: “Is this the bus to Venice?”
“No.”
A third bus pulled up. One of
the many cities flashing on its banner was “Venezia.” Oh, thank heavens.
For those of you who may be dreaming of an exotic life of travel and adventure, here’s a little reality check. Written a few weeks before my recent trip to Slovenia, it chronicles some of the more maddening aspects of international living.
So they’ve imaged a black hole. It’s a staggering accomplishment, according to those who know.
I will now attempt to image for you the black hole that was my Saturday morning.
It started last week when I tried to pay for a few things in dirhams instead of dollars. Big things, like a course at the French Institute and a plane ticket to Venice.
You see, ex-pats in Morocco are limited in the amount of money they can send out of the country in any given year, and as I don’t want to exceed this limit before it’s time to send my last paycheque home, I am trying to make big purchases using the local currency instead of my Canadian credit card whenever possible.
BAHAHAHAHAHAHAH.
I tried to pay for two things online using my Moroccan bank card. It took multiple restarts, emails, and pleas for help, and in the end I did not succeed. All went well until the very last of many agonizing steps: I was supposed to receive a security code from the bank by SMS to complete my transaction, but the magic numbers never arrived. (Side note: This is not unusual. SMS confirmations from Uber, Airbnb, and various other enterprises have also been sucked into the black hole before they ever reach my Moroccan phone. This is why I keep using other people’s numbers to do things that should be easy).
In this way, several hours were lost to the void before the day even started. The only thing I could do, I was told, was go to the bank. Any branch. Just go. They would know what to do.
So that was the first thing on my list of things to do this Saturday morning. Then, I could come home, make my two online purchases, and my life would be complete.
BAHAHAHAHAHAH.
Common sense reeled me in. Exactly how likely is it that the bank would be able to instantly remedy this situation? If you’ve dealt with Moroccan banks, you already know the answer: highly unlikely. Therefore, it is always wise to have a back-up plan.
In a normal world, I would return from the bank, try to make the transactions, and then consider alternate courses of action if necessary. But in Morocco, one must be wily. One must think ahead. Way ahead. Kind of like this:
I can pay for the course and the plane ticket in dirhams if I go into the city and pay in person. If I drive to the French Institute at 9am, the traffic will still be bearable. I can then pay for my course, walk the 15 minutes to the Air Arabia office, buy my plane ticket, walk back to the French Institute, and drive home. It should only take a couple hours.
Upon minimal reflection, I decided to make Plan B my Plan A, and make the trip to the bank a side errand. In this way, I would be certain to make my purchases in one day, and getting the annoying SMS issue fixed would just be the icing on the cake.
Step 1: Drive to the French Institute. Check. It wasn’t even awful. Waze actually found me a tolerable route. There was parking. There was no line-up at the cashier. All went eerily well.
Here we are in the Ides of March, and it’s the Ides of Ex-pat Angst.
It’s the season where many among us who live abroad have decided to move on, but now find the abyss of the unknown gaping before us.
It was not an abyss six months ago, when horizons were broad and sunny, possibilities were endless, and we were itching for a change. Whether it’s our insatiable wanderlust, or the inescapable pull homeward to our roots, or (in most cases), a combination of the two, we are people on the move, and it’s time to go.
Do you like the idea of going to remote places? If not, you will find this piece quite funny. You will roll your eyes a lot, and wonder why I’m like this. You will also spend the next few minutes thanking the merciful heavens that you did not join me on this vacation.
If, however, you do like the idea of going to remote places, this post might be just what you have been waiting for. I, on your behalf, will visit a remote place, and tell you all about it. And then you will laugh, roll your eyes, and think twice about your own vacation preferences. Continue reading
Now, three years later, I did the unthinkable thing, and repeated the experience. Same never-ending round-about. Same obscure church entrance. Same ghastly maestro. Same everything. But not the same me.Continue reading
I have been stressing out about French. Have you noticed? Likely not, because you think I’m still obsessing about the Royal Wedding. Forget that. I’m over it.
No, French is my ongoing obsession, more than ever now, as the stakes creep higher in equal proportion to my rising self-doubt.
What if I can’t do it? What if, no matter how much I study and how long I persist, I never pass beyond the blundering idiot phase of language learning? Oh, sure, I’m less of a blundering idiot than I was three years ago, when I couldn’t say, “I want to walk up the hill.” But the subjunctive has its own mode of blunder induction (did you catch that, French-speakers? Its own mode?). The more I learn, the more I blunder.
Now, these rising stakes of which I speak so melodramatically. What are they? Well, you know. Employment. That about sums it up. You see, I miss Canada. Continue reading
I want to talk to you about The Big Life (or La Grande Vie, as I called it in my first work of French pseudo-fiction, which I may or may not share with you at a later date, if you promise not to judge me by my grammar).
The Big Life: what is it? What makes a life small, restricted, or ingrown, and what makes it expansive, possibility-ridden, unencumbered? Is it where you live? Is it the people with whom you surround yourself? Is it finances, or family, or a sense of independence?
I remember doing a family history project with a bunch of six-year-olds a few years ago for social studies. One of the things I asked the students to do was to talk to their parents about their origins. Paper after paper came back to me, saying, “I was born in Lindsay. My parents were born in Lindsay. My grandparents were born in Lindsay.”
Now, Lindsay is not Toronto, or Montreal, or New York, or Paris. Lindsay is a small, rural community in the middle of (pretty much) nowhere. It has its charms, to be sure, but there is nothing particularly distinguishing about it. Even Bobcaygeon, a small rural community even deeper in the middle of nowhere, has a massive shoe store to commend itself to the wider world. But Lindsay? It’s just a little Canadian town, surrounded by lakes, trees, and farmland.
“What small lives these people lead,” I thought to myself, as I imagined generation after generation living, marrying, and dying on one little speck of this great earth. “I don’t want a small life. I want The Big Life. I want to Go.”
Going is a form of enlargement, I’m sure of it. In the last three years, I’ve visited a dozen countries scattered across four continents. I’ve lost track of the cities and airports I’ve passed through, the mountains I’ve climbed, the seas I’ve sailed, the terrain I’ve trekked. And I live now in a foreign land that is about as far removed from little Lindsay, both geographically and culturally, as it could possibly be.
Is this The Big Life? It sure feels like it, when I’m scuba diving in the Mediterranean or camping out in the Sahara. One does not ride camels in Lindsay. One does not barter for one’s daily necessities. One does not wonder how to say “thank-you” in Polish or “please” in Hungarian. One certainly does not climb the Great Wall of China. These are Big Life things. They are things that cannot be done in any alternative form of “elsewhere.” They are unique, defining, unreplicable experiences. That’s what The Big Life is all about, right? It’s about Doing Big Things and posting them on Facebook for all the world to see. Look at me and my gigantic, interesting life!
The Great Wall of China
The Bavarian Alps
The Eiffel Tower
Surfing in Dar Bouazza
Tiananmen Square, under the watchful eye of Chairman Mao
The Greek Acropolis
Berber bridal wear
The Sahara Desert
Camel trekking
Venice, Italy
The Atlas Mountains
Nice, France
Scuba diving in Greece
Buying oranges at the medina
You should know, though, that taking selfies with Chairman Mao is not representative of the real, everyday, Standard-Sized Life that I live in Casablanca. If anything, my Moroccan life has been one of shrinkage and thinning (not in body-size, unfortunately, but that’s another story).
It’s a little surreal. It feels quite final. I’ve made the leap.
I’ve made leaps before. Big leaps. Resigning, house-selling, relocating leaps. Blind leaps, for the most part. Great, optimistic, terrifying leaps into a new unknown. Leaps I’ve later questioned. And here I go again.
As much as I try to think of new things to be thankful for every single day, I can’t help but notice a few themes (read: blatant reiterations) creeping into this year’s Gratitude List. Can you spot them?
Bon courage!
Efficient meetings
Not being disregarded
Comfortable hiking boots
French is starting!
Patient housemates
Errands accomplished
Surprise sales
French again!
Knowing my passport number but not my bank account number
