In the beginning we had Fear. Fear and Novelty. And that amounted to a bracing dose of quasi-Solidarity.
The fear was first conceived as mild disinterest in a foreign malady that would never find its way Here. It gestated in the womb of skepticism (“This will not affect us. We are different.”) and false reassurance (“We learned from SARS. We are prepared.”). And then, suddenly, driving home from a normal day of work, we heard government announcements of a province-wide shut-down. States of emergency. Clean out your desk. Tomorrow will be your last day.
“We heard government announcements of a province-wide shut-down.”
That was when the Fear was birthed, attended by financial panic and the stomach-gutting realization that People Would Die. Real people. Our people. Right here. Everywhere. Store shelves emptied as the masses stockpiled toiletries in preparation for Armageddon. Doors closed. Everything stopped. It was Unreality, unfolding in unreal time. Things changed hour by hour. We hovered, breathless, over our devices, awaiting the latest statistics. Following the spread from one network to another, and eventually to Here. These are “unprecedented times,” said our bewildered advisers. We slept last night, and woke this morning in a blind Unknown.
We say it every year, to pretty much everyone we see, because that’s the thing to say in January. Do we mean it?
Well, of course, to some extent. Who doesn’t have a generic sense of goodwill towards the world at large after several weeks of holiday indulgences? Who doesn’t support the idea of a year of happiness to replace the year of whatever-it-was that just concluded?
But really, much like with “How are you?” and other empty social conventions, we aren’t particularly interested in the type of year most people have just had, nor in the particularities of the year ahead of them. We just want a seasonal alternative to “Hi!”
We may gaze fondly at our dearly beloveds at 11:59 on December 31 and offer them our affectionate good wishes. We may encourage those closest to us to pursue their dreams with optimism. But in general, we settle for a blanket “Happy New Year,” spread with equal (dis)interest over great populations of distant acquaintances, and consider our festive duty done.
In my family, this annual dissimulation of goodwill has traditionally taken the form of a “Family Letter” reminding others of our largely unchanging existence; and being a literary type, I am often the one tasked with trying to make our lives sound interesting. My earnest attempts at creativity have included detailed profiles of each family member, illustrated by elaborate collages and laced with carefully-crafted witticisms. The resulting epistle was typically sent to Everybody, with instructions to pass it on to Everybody Else. It was posted on social media, and maybe on my blog. Just to make sure that Every Possible Person had access to my self-absorbed ramblings.
Substitute teaching in a variety of locations has a way of opening one’s eyes to realities we may overlook when we spend much of our professional life in the same building. Sometimes a trip across town is a greater leap than a voyage abroad. This reflection takes a hard look at issues of equality in Canadian schools.
I recently walked into a Grade 3 French immersion classroom in a rural community. The students greeted me with rosy cheeks and cheery smiles as they walked in the doors and peeled off their abundant snowsuits. They immediately went about the serious business of being obedient schoolchildren. They hung on my every word (partly because I spent a good part of the morning impersonating Red Riding Hood in French, and partly because it was their natural habit of mind).
The most challenging students in the room were two boys who were obsessed with measuring things and doing puzzles. I had to confiscate their tape measure at one point because they were estimating and checking when they were supposed to be writing stories. I commented that one of the mathematicians may want to consider being an engineer one day (at this point he was using the springing function of the tape measure to carefully propel objects across his desk). “No,” he said. “I want to be a farmer. My dad wants to take over my grandpa’s farm, and then I’m going to be a farmer, too. I really want to be a farmer.”
The picture of wholesomeness.
The next day I walked into a Grade 3 classroom in an English school in an urban neighbourhood on the literal “wrong side of the tracks.” A little girl in a pink coat was curled up in fetal position on the carpet, and remained there, unmoving, until I left. “Give me back my g**d**m slime!” exclaimed another girl, flopped on a bean bag, grinning feverishly. Little boys ran around in their stocking feet, sugaring themselves with Christmas treats at 9am.
“Is there
anything I should know?” I asked the teacher.
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.”
So many changes. So much growth. Such very different lives.
Here, just a few days late, is my annual Gratitude List. A few items a day, for 365 days, to breathe a little positivity into the last wakeful moments of each evening.
What varied worlds this list represents, and what unexpected appreciations. At the beginning, Devan getting me “Mr. Propre” (Moroccan Mr. Clean) to save me an unpleasant outing to the grocery store on a Monday night; at the end, the sounds of laughter around my mom’s table, with all of the family gathered for our first Thanksgiving together in four years. In between, everything from donkey treats to doodle books.
Intrigued? Walk with me through a year of thankfulness:
A few weeks ago I had an unsavoury experience just outside my front door, which I then conflated with every other unsavoury experience I’ve ever had here, resulting in the uncomfortable feeling that Morocco and I have utterly failed each other. I wrote an eloquent, yet unpublishable blog post about the experience, and then started packing my bags for Canada.
And then I met this boy, and the man I assume to be his father.I was about 350 km from the mayhem of Casablanca in a perfectly-sized city called Tetouan. My cousin recommended it to me with the declaration that “there are few tourists for no good reason.” I had hoped to spend my final long weekend abroad in France, but when my plans to visit a friend fell through, I went against my own good judgment and booked a solo trip around the North of Morocco instead. No tour guide. No travel buddies. No guarantee. Just one last hurrah in this country that has hosted and haunted me for the last four years.
As intrepid as I am when jumping out of planes and zip-lining through the Alps, I was nervous about travelling alone in Morocco. But taking the taxi, the train, and the bus to Tetouan was easy. Easier than boarding a bus in Slovenia, that’s for sure. Finding my way to my riad in the ancient medina was also easy. Some guy walked me right to the entrance, without expecting compensation. I entered my darling blue room on the top floor and had a nap. Easy.
Then I went to the guy at the front desk and said, “I live in Casablanca. I am here to experience the opposite. I want to go for a walk in a peaceful, beautiful place. Where should I go?”
He wrote this word on a piece of paper, and I’m so glad he did. Partly because I could neither pronounce nor describe it, but mostly because it was where I began liking Morocco again.
The Honourable Doug Ford Premier of the Province of Ontario Legislative Building Queen’s Park Toronto ON M7A 1A1
May 31, 2019
Dear Mr. Ford,
I am writing in response to your request for feedback regarding your proposed changes to class sizes, as detailed in your “Class Size Consultation Guide” (March, 2019).
To begin, I thank you for providing the
information in this guide and for inviting feedback from those you refer to alternately
as “stakeholders” and “partners.” I
wonder, however, exactly how you define these terms, and what they say about
your priorities in this process. Who are
your “stakeholders”? Who stands to benefit from the decisions outlined in this
document? Whose opinions hold the most weight? Similarly, who are your “partners”?
With whom are you demonstrating a cooperative stance in this discussion? We
will return to these questions throughout my response to the Consultation
Guide, as they are crucial to identifying the intentions underlying this
policy.
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.
