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).

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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.

Step 2: Walk to the Air Arabia office.  Check.

Step 3: Pay for plane ticket.

And here is where the day began to fall apart.

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