Insha’Allah

The photos are at the bottom if you want to skip the family chronicle!

One of the things on my to-do list before I left home was to write a blog post about Norah’s kindergarten graduation. It didn’t seem right to skip over it and go straight to posting about the trip, but I never got a chance and given the speed of my current internet connection, it will have to wait. I’m sure Norah will hold it against me someday but it can’t be helped. I’m hoping I have enough connection speed to post photos without going to the internet café. I’m currently using some sort of USB modem that you pay to add time to. I don’t actually know if it’s time or data that you pay for, only that my niece put $2 on it. Considering that the data price for my phone is about $20/MB, and I’ve transferred over 6MB in the last half hour, it’s a good deal either way.

We left our house a little after 1 p.m. on Tuesday. It is now 8:30 p.m. Morocco time on Wednesday (5-hour time difference – later in Morocco). The fun started over the weekend, because I am a big-time planner and I don’t like to wait until the last minute. My husband, and just about everyone else I’ve met from Morocco, lives by the principle of “If God wills it – Insha’Allah.” Me: “Do you want to come over for dinner next Thursday?” Everyone from Morocco: “Insha’Allah,” which roughly translates to, “If the stars are aligned I’ll come over sometime on Thursday and if there happens to be food, I’ll eat it.” Since I chose to marry someone from such a completely different world, I’ve obviously had to adapt to our cultural differences, but this one still gives me trouble. Most of the time we handle it well…I plan and my husband follows along (Insha’Allah), but when planning a trip to Morocco there is certain information that I need him to provide, and waiting until the last minute gives me heartburn. Let’s just say that I’ve gone through an industrial size bottle of Tums in the last 2 weeks.

Me: “We need to go to the travel clinic to get shots.”
Ben: “Insha’Allah we won’t get typhoid.”

Me: “How much cash do we need to bring?”
Ben: “Insha’Allah there will be an ATM machine in Morocco, and also Insha’Allah my new ATM card will show up before we leave because the ATM ate my old one.” (Apparently it wasn’t God’s will because it didn’t arrive in time.)

Me: (It is customary to bring gifts to family members because we’re coming from the Land of Plenty and they live in a 3^rd-world country where it’s tough to get something as basic as decent toothpaste.) “I heard that your sisters would like us to bring sandals. What size, color, and style?”
Ben: “Just get 5 pairs and Insha’Allah they will fit.” (I found out 72 hours before the flight that the criteria was “Clark sandals, 1 ½” heel, no thong between the toes, no ankle strap, sizes 8, 8 ½, and 3 @ 9 ½.”)

So you get the picture. Just multiply by at least 20.

By Monday night I had everything pretty much packed. We were carrying a lot of extra stuff for our relatives so we ended up with 8 big bags that were between 40 and 50 pounds each (50 pounds is the limit and the norm is to look around the house for any last-minute random items that would take each bag to 49.999 pounds, but I put my foot down on that.) We also had 1 carry-on backpack each, and I had a small carry-on for my computer.

The next problem was that everything had to be stuffed into or tied onto my Jeep Laredo for the 200-mile trip to JFK Airport. We ended up with 3 big bags wrapped in plastic and strapped to the roof. I strapped them down as well as I could, but I really had a bad feeling about the whole thing. I was ready to spend a half hour taking out the non-essentials so everything would fit into the car, but we had our neighbor come over to check it out and he proclaimed that the load was, “Not going anywhere.” My husband seemed to have no qualms about tying a bunch of stuff to the roof but I realized that it’s because in Morocco I wouldn’t be surprised to see a live sheep tied up there. (“Insha’Allah it will still be there when we reach our destination.”) I spent most of the trip staring at the bags in the passenger-side mirror, and checking the tie-downs at each rest area. At one point I looked away from the mirror and Ben tilted it down so he could see to change lanes, and I almost had heart failure when I looked back at the mirror and the bags were gone.

We had left home very early thinking that there might be traffic associated with July 4^th, but there wasn’t much traffic at all. We made 2 stops to buy last-minute things we realized that we forgot (a 2^nd rectifier/adapter and Benadryl cream), and still hit the airport parking lot more than 4 hours before the flight. It took us a while to get everything off the roof and unwrapped, but then we had an uneventful ride on the shuttle bus, and got the bags checked in. Now I know what it feels like to lose almost 400 pounds! I asked the security lady about Ben’s knee brace (he has a torn ACL) and she sent us to the Business Class line so he didn’t have to wait so long. Then the gate guy let us onto the plane early because we had 3 kids. Smooth sailing!

I was a little worried looking at the number of kids running wild in the gate area (and by “number of kids running wild” I mean at least a dozen kids running full speed and screaming at the top of their lungs while their parents allowed it – my kids just sat there in shock), but it in no way prepared me for the flight. We departed at 9:45 p.m., which means bedtime, right? Wrong. One 3YO sitting in front of us kicked up a huge fuss because he didn’t want to wear his seatbelt. He was traveling with his parents, teenaged brother and 18MO sister. The parents seemed to have brought nothing to entertain (or bribe) the kids with. The mom smacked the kid several times and ignored him the rest of the time, while he screamed until he started to gag. Later in baggage claim we saw her grab his hair and smack his head into the stroller. 🙁

Anyway…I was surprised to be served dinner (lasagna or fish, tossed salad, tomato/mozzarella salad, a roll, cheese, and chocolate cake), so that brought us to after 11 p.m. Time for bed! Not so fast. For the next 2 hours one of the kids from the same family was screaming, and other random kids would join in. I’ve never heard anything like it. I finally gave the 3YO my iPad and he shut up for a couple of hours. I was desperate to sleep and get our kids some sleep, because it was only a 6 ½-hour flight, with dinner and breakfast served, arriving at 10 a.m. local time. None of us slept much but I adopted a position that included headphones and a travel pillow which helped a little.

By the time it was 2 a.m. Massachusetts-time, we were flying in bright sun and people were awake and talking (loudly). One sleep-deprived passenger approached the screaming family and a fight almost broke out (seriously). Breakfast at 3 a.m. Mass-time was yogurt, a croissant, and a muffin, but my kids wouldn’t wake up to eat a bite. We finally got them up just before we landed, and it was really clear and they loved checking out the landscape from above – so brown and dry even though it was farmland. When we landed, Adlani’s comment was, “Great, we’ve landed in the middle of the desert.”

The planes don’t arrive at regular gates with jetways…they just taxi to a big airplane parking lot and a shuttle bus takes everyone to the airport. Our plane was met by an ambulance but I don’t know what happened. It must have been someone behind us because we saw the female paramedic come up the stairs with a medical kit and nobody was still seated in the rows in front of us. I was surprised that they didn’t ask people to stay in their seats while the paramedics got to the person in trouble, but I don’t think it would have worked anyway. We had to wait a while at Immigration, with the screaming family directly behind us (WTF?), but we got through without a problem. It took forever to get our bags since we checked in so early they must have been underneath everyone else’s stuff. They all showed up and we were off to Customs.

We have learned that I need to go first at Customs so they don’t hassle us and want to check each bag in hopes that we’ll give them some “coffee money” to avoid the trouble. The first time we came to Morocco I was like, “no way are we giving this guy coffee money (a bribe),” and they probably recognize that it’s pointless to expect most Americans to do it. I don’t care if they want to open each bag and rifle through my undies. I’ll wait. So I went first and the guy waved me through, but stopped Ben and asked for his passport. When Ben yelled to me that he needed his passport the guy realized that he was with us and let him through too.

We were met at the airport by 2 of my brothers-in-law and 1 of Ben’s uncles, with a minivan and a car. We didn’t have to tie anything on so I was happy. It takes about 45 minutes to drive home from the airport, and it’s a regular highway. We saw a few farm animals, a grass fire, a couple of wagons with horses or mules pulling them, but mostly the kids were either excited (Adlani), amazed (Norah), or freaked out (Aliya) because there were no seat belts in the back seat. This is common in Morocco, as is having 4 people riding in the back. (“Insha’Allah we won’t be ejected from the vehicle.”) When we got home our relatives were all waiting for us and made us a great lunch. Aliya and I took a nap while Adlani and Norah played with the kids, and then we had dinner. Aliya was fading fast although she said she didn’t feel sick, so she’s out cold now. The other kids went to the beach.

I am alone but luckily I wasn’t hoping for peace and quiet. It’s 10 p.m. here and there are kids running around outside the window, motorcycles whizzing by, trucks idling, and other random sounds. The call to prayer was a little while ago and I could hear several mosques from our house That will happen again later, and super-early in the morning too. Before dinner, I heard a sound and ran to the window (alarming Aliya) to see the heddia go by. A heddia happens when someone gets married, circumcised, and probably for other reasons – I’ll ask Ben. There was a wedding on our street yesterday – total bummer that we missed it, but the heddia was to take food to the bride. The food was loaded into a van along with family members, and a band follows behind with other friends and anyone who wants to join in, singing/chanting, clapping, and just generally participating in the excitement and celebration. I love the idea of random parades.

Maybe there’s something to the Insha’Allah way of life. If I hadn’t spent so much time stressing out over what to bring and all the other details, we probably would still be sitting here, safe, and with everything we need. I hope our kids grow up with some of my organizational skills and some of Ben’s Insha’Allah outlook.

I’ll have to post the video later because when I tried to upload it the progress bar said 873 minutes remaining, but here are some photos from today and yesterday:

At JFK Airport with the luggage: