Day three

This is day three of rain in Ifrane, and the forecast calls for more of the same for the rest of the week.

Those of you who live in rainy parts of the world might be thinking, "So what?" Maybe I should explain what it means to rain in Ifrane. Once the rain starts, there will be no hint of the sun or of blue sky for days. The rain never stops. The lake between the University and Centre Ville floods. And the rain is accompanied by wind that would put to shame that in Cheyenne, Wyoming. And, of course, it is cold. Think about the fact that many residents of Ifrane are pedestrians (being unable to afford their own cars) and that they live in unheated homes. We do much of our shopping in outdoor spaces. Add to all of that the fact that many ceilings and windows leak (including ours)*, and you might begin to understand why the rain is so miserable here.

I find weather like this to be extremely unmotivating. Somehow, T and I managed to make ourselves go down to the taxi station yesterday, take a taxi to Azrou, and walk around Azrou to go Christmas shopping. But now that I'm back in my apartment, I may not leave until the rain does. Especially now that… I have someone else to do my laundry for me! That's right; the only (non-literal) ray of sunshine on this gloomy, rainy day is that I have finally managed to hire a "maid" (an entry on my feelings about that word, and about the experience of hiring someone to do my laundry for me when I am perfectly capable of doing it myself, will come later). Today, I didn't have to drag my laundry through the cold rain.



*I have had leaky ceilings before, when I lived in the States. In the past, that sort of thing drove me nuts. But when I got up this morning and found the peeling paint on our ceiling and the wet spot on the carpet below it, I just calmly grabbed a towel and a bucket and called T to ask him to submit a work order. Living in a foreign country really is changing me. :-)