Orange you happy?

In the time that I have been gone, #1 son bought a house, quit his job and got a new job.  #2 son gave up his house, bought an RV and made plans to spend the next year as a nomad student CRNA.  Daughter ended a long-term relationship.  #1 granddaughter learned to read and tell jokes and #2 granddaughter learned to smile and roll over.

And now comes the announcement that I will greet #3 grandchild in October.  Last I heard they were calling the baby Clementine (but all I have is a stolen orange, so it will have to do).

I have been counting the days all along, because it's the only way to keep track of them.  I work an ocean at a stretch, but there aren't many markers. One more Deans' Memo to go.

Tonight was the Alumni Ball, which I skipped.  We had a formal dinner and the waitstaff even had special shirts for the occasion.  They went all out on dinner, and people wore clothes they had bought all over the world.  I wore a length of rayon from Burma, which someday will be a real skirt, with a scarf in matching colors I bought in India, earrings from South Africa, and a bracelet from Ghana.  Men wore suits they had made in Viet Nam.  Women wore traditional dress from China, India, Vietnam.  (Along with the usual skirts so tight and so short they left nothing to the imagination.)  There was a slide show I would have liked to see, but a friend asked for some help.  Then a dessert buffet that was like walking into a patisserie.  The ball itself was crowded, noisy, and full of flashing lights.  I checked in on the CCTV just to make sure there wasn't anything I might regret missing.

At this point, my only regret may be not bringing a bigger suitcase.  My main duffel is packed almost full of souvenirs (half of it taken up by the silk comforter I bought in Japan).  Today was another hard day as people decided to send their possessions home at $7.50/pound.  My office became information central for such questions as "You said in the Deans' Memo the scale is 15 pounds off.  Is it 15 pounds lighter or heavier?"  Yes, we are now the Bureau of Standards.  And the Bureau of Redundancy, answering questions with facts we have repeated over and over in the Deans' Memo.  Tonight a student was hurt that I didn't recognize him.  He said, "I'm the one who wanted to have a pizza party and you said I couldn't."  Get in line, Buddy.  That was one of 30 pizza parties and 50 taco parties I refused.

The Field Office has three doors, but all of them go through another room to get to the central reception area.  I have told people at least a thousand times they can go through our office space, no need to knock, go right in, no, second door, not the first one, I don't know if Karen is in, go look.

This afternoon, Karen came through and I said, "Quick, shut the door.  Or I will kill the next person who comes through it."

Karen said, "Just a second, I need to make a phone call."  Her days are pretty high stress, too.

We have not had very many lovely sunsets, so I took this one of the penultimate sunset.  The last one may not be worth a photo, and if there's one thing I've learned on this voyage, it's don't wait for a second chance.

Orange, I'm happy.

Party like it's ... Fes

Our incredible homestay host, Kaoutar, made our last night in Fes a memory worth its own blog post.

The home we stayed in is in the Medina of Fes, the old city.  The whole Medina is walled in, no traffic.  You couldn't fit a car on those streets, anyway.  Some of them can barely fit a donkey cart.  This means, of course, that when you buy a refrigerator, it is wheeled to you on a pushcart, pulled either by a donkey or a man.  We did see donkeys trotting around with all kinds of things, including tanks of propane for stoves.  Interestingly, they wear rubber shoes for better traction on the cobblestones, which get slippery when they get wet.  Since you can't hear them coming, the most important word in the Medina is "Ballach!" (bahLOCK), which means "get out of the way!"

The stores in the Medina are mostly open stalls.  The residential sections have massive wooden doors, with two separate sections.  A high doorknob for people coming on horseback, a low one for the rest of us.  There are tiny windows high in the walls, but most of the light and air comes from the courtyard, which is open to the sky.  A ritzy house has a screen over the courtyard, but many are completely open to the sky.  They have drains in the floor and the whole courtyard is a step lower than the other rooms.  Rain comes in, rain goes out.  Moroccan homes don't tend to have a lot of furniture.  The tables and chairs are iron frames and ceramic tile tops, so they are indoor/outdoor, just like the living rooms.

Will the real Moroccan please stand up?

[From left:  Meg, Michaela, me, Kaoutar, Kaitlyn, Phyllis, and Brooke.  We let the men back in to take photos after the dancing was over.]

Kaoutar's mother bought her house to use as a B&B about 15 years ago.  But she ran into licensing issues, because she could only outfit four rooms with separate baths.  She works with a homestay program now that has a lower barrier.  We stayed in three of the rooms, and our tour guide stayed in the fourth.  We did not meet the mother, who may have been staying in one of the other rooms that does not open onto the main courtyard.  The house is at least four stories high (three very tall stories, but also doors opening up midway up the flights of stairs).

All through the house, there is wonderful ceramic tile and iron work typical of every place in Fes, no matter how modest.  The bathroom may have no hot water (this is not really a hypothetical; the sink only has one tap and the shower ran cold from both taps), but the cold water falls onto gorgeous tiles.

On our second night with her, Kaoutar had a surprise for us.  At our request, she had bought the ingredients for pastissa, which is sort of a crèpe-wrapped pie, with chicken, almonds, onions, and loads of sugar.  Dessert for dinner.  It's a party dish, so she made a party for us.  She borrowed party clothes for each of us, color-coordinated ensembles with dress, overdress, belt, and head scarf, and then she dressed each of us.  And then we danced.

And we looked at her wedding pictures, and we talked about the baby she will have in December, and promised to send all our friends to Morocco to stay with her.

I haven't had so much fun dancing since Jefferson and Megan's wedding two years ago today.  Happy anniversary, you two, and I can hardly wait to see you in a few days.  xoxoxo

Got my snark on

Three more days and there's a definite change in the atmosphere.  Today is a study day, but there's no studying going on within earshot of the Administrative Office.

There's a scale, and people are weighing themselves and their luggage.  The scale that was there this morning was replaced with a scale that folks are saying overweighs by 15 pounds. 

Which is about what you might have expected to gain on a diet of croissants, bacon, and omelets every morning.  I know I'm not weighing myself until the dead of night.

Another group of people is signing up for "Luggage Free," the world's most misleadingly named freight company.  This is for people who cannot bear the thought of consigning their possessions to the airlines and would rather spend hundreds of dollars having FedEx consign them to the airlines for them after helpfully encasing them in plastic so they don't get dirty.  The cost to ship is $7.50 a pound from Barcelona.  You can spend $100 to check a second bag, or you can pay $375 for a bag at the maximum weight of 50# for most airlines.  Luggage Free indeed.

Obviously, it's difficult to justify this expense if you are flying straight home.  For the students who are spending several weeks traveling around Europe, the convenience may be worth it.  But, really, it's almost cheaper to pay someone to come to Barcelona and carry your bags home for you.

In addition to the general angst surrounding packing, there is the usual end of school year signing of yearbooks, exchanging of addresses, and trying to fit in time with friends.  All of which is going on outside my door.  Inside, I am battling printer issues, duplicating last minute exams, and answering stupid questions.  Pretty much a regular day.

Oh, and we've been in sight of the Rock of Gibraltar since 7 AM.  Passed it around 7, anchored in the Mediterranean waiting to get cleared to get in line to wait for fuel, circled around, approached, circled back, and now we've been filling up for about 6 hours.  (BIG gas tank.  We also filled up in The Gambia, if you recall.  As well as several other ports.)

So there's kind of a party atmosphere.  And a packing atmosphere.  And trying to get something done in the office so I can go party and pack.

It amazes me that 103 days into a voyage of 106 days, I am still being asked if this is the academic office, where the executive dean's office is, and if I'll make some copies.  No, down the corridor, and I don't have a copier.

A student just whined in an email that he couldn't file the folder on the public drive where you are supposed to drop your songs to be played at the Alumni Ball.  Which is tomorrow.  It's not unrealistic to think the folder might no longer be accessible, 27 hours before the event.  But I checked, and it is.  The student was unhappy that I hadn't mentioned it in the Deans' Memo, evidently missing this notice, which has run unchanged for a few issues now. 

Alumni Ball Song Requests   Had enough of Gangnam Style and Call Me Maybe?  Last chance to drop your favorite songs in the folder on the public drive.  Sorry, but no requests can be honored the night of the ball.

The folder is called <_DROP YOUR SONG REQUESTS FOR THE ALUMNI BALL>, so I guess it's understandable that he couldn't find it.  I tricked him up with that "favorite" in the description.  There are currently 263 items in the folder, which translates to 10-15 hours of songs for a 2 hour event.  But I didn't want him to be disappointed, so I wrote, "Look again, and I bet you can find it.  Here's a hint.  You don't have to go very far."  I also told him to check with the person who put up the folder if he couldn't find it. 

I was trying to convey my unhelpfulness, but I need to be less subtle.  I got an email back telling me how hard it is to find on a mac because the files aren't necessarily alphabetized and how much of a disaster the public drive is in general and how someone has changed the settings to make it nearly impossible to find.

Huh?  His mac must be one of those newer models where files are assigned spaces wherever they fit best, like a big game of Tetris.  Mine just has the usual choice of arrangements:  name, date (modified or created), size, kind, label.  I want the "random" choice!  Or maybe "nationality."  Also, on my mac, the folder is colored purple so it stands out. 

I am a very helpful person, but I am tired of people who make no attempt to solve their own problems and then blame their failure on you.  So I confess to answering his second annoying email by suggesting that if he has problems understanding his mac, he ask our IT group for help, and if he has a complaint about how Aparna named the file, he take it to her.  He took the hint.

A tougher case is the girl who came by the office this afternoon and said,

"I'm really stressed about packing.  Do you have boxes?" 
"No."  I did not bother to expand this response.
"Why not?"
"Why don't YOU have boxes?"  (The Deans' Memo specifically said, you'll have to get your own box in Casablanca.  We will not have boxes and will not have tape.  It took two days of inquiries before I could write that.)
"You should have boxes."
"Sorry, we don't."
"Do you have anyone who can pack for me?"

Yes, that's exactly what she asked.  She thinks the SAS should have a person tasked with packing for her.  Well, for all 637 students, I suppose, but mostly for her. 

"For a fee, of course."

Whew!  I thought she was spoiled.  She's just a job creator. 

As a matter of fact, one of our faculty members is packing for a student who bid $200 for the privilege in the shipboard auction. 

"You could put up signs," I suggested.  "I bet you could find someone who would do it." 

She flounced off.  She's probably looking for someone to put up the signs.

C'est Maroc

As predicted, it did not take me long to get lost in the medina.  Armed with google maps on my phone, Sherrie and I set off from the port entrance.  She wanted to exchange rupees for dirhams, so we went in search of a bank.  We were so late setting out that we saw friends coming back and they steered us to a bank a block or so along the way.  No luck with the rupee exchange, but we were able to use the ATM to get some cash.

While I was waiting, I tried to orient myself on google maps.  For some reason, the GPS still thinks I'm in Burma.  While I was in Burma, it was sure I was still in Hong Kong.  It has not been a useful locating device. This makes it difficult to use a map.  You have to have some kind of landmark starting out, like a street sign or a unique intersection, or knowing where the ship is berthed.

Or, you can ask someone to look at the phone and tell you where you are.  I asked the bank guard, who looked perplexed and sent me to the teller.  The teller tapped his finger on the phone, moving the map, and pointed to the area behind him, saying that was where the medina was.  The answer to all tourist questions is apparently the shopping center.  It's a reasonable answer for someone who's just gotten money, I suppose, but it was not the answer to my question.

So we wandered into the medina, which looks like a tangle of brain tissue on the map.  The streets laid out by the French are orthogonal and diagonal, and the medina streets curve around and fold in on themselves.  We picked randomly at the intersections, figuring we would untangle ourselves eventually.    Sherrie bought a lovely tunic and pants and some bras.  She tried on the former, but the latter was pretty much on spec.

The threat level in the port is 2, which we understand has to do with our being a big group of Americans rather than any particular political situation in the country.  At our diplomatic briefing, the consular officer told us that we were targets for theft not because we were American tourists, but because of our financial status.  What that really means is, take the same kinds of precautions you would in any big city.  Poor people rob rich people.

The harassment level seems to be a 3.  Everyone invites you into their shop, but they don't seem desperate.  The lady in the dress shop seemed quite intent on selling Sherrie more than one outfit--and quite intent on ignoring both our English and our French (how do you say polyester in French?), but most of the merchants let us walk on by.

One man struck up a conversation with me.  He wanted to tell me all the places he's been in the US, and it was a lot.  He's lived in Texas, New York, and Florida, and he's visited several other states, including Virginia.  He told me his sister in Boston frequents a Dunkin Donuts right at the site of the bombing every day, but was not at work that day.  (Not surprising.  The Boston Marathon is held on Patriot's Day, which is a state holiday in Massachusetts.  I can't speak for the Dunkin Donuts location, but I do know that.)

Meandering through my life, curving in on itself like the streets of the medina, I mention here that my Runner Boss had crossed the finish line in Boston shortly before the bombs exploded.  Sailing into Casablanca last night, sitting at my desk on board, I watched him on the local news, in an interview filmed only a few feet from my desk on land.  Because the internet connection spit out the film in fits and starts, I got to see every detail.  I've seen those photos, that clutter on his desk.  I know what's hiding just out of sight.

I was hungry for those details.  I am ready to be home.

But in the meantime, I am not, and I'm enjoying my last few days.  While Sherrie shopped for underwear, I talked to the Moroccan vendor, who told me his name, Said, means happy.  He told me this because he loves to go gambling and always wins.  He also told me pashmina is cotton and silk, very fine quality.  (Pashmina is goat hair, actually, and only from rather specific goats and rather specific areas of their bodies.  The best pashmina wool was traditionally collected from bushes the goats rubbed up against.  But perhaps the Moroccan goats rub up against cotton plants and silk cocoons?)

He had some very pretty scarves, and I was very tempted to add them to the family of scarves I have been amassing.  Although traveling in a westward direction has had clear advantages in terms of having so many 25-hour days, traveling in the opposite direction would have made for better scarves.

But we wandered on.  We wandered into a residential area, and I took this snapshot.  Beautiful tile fountain, it evidently serves as the community's water source and laundromat.

Eventually, we found our way out to a main road and oriented ourselves.  We ate in a French seafood restaurant (good, not great).  Sherrie learned her French from the concierge at a French whorehouse in the 70s, but apparently they are gastronomes.  She was able to translate the items not covered in Mme. Colignon's French class.  Which is proving quite useful here.

Code Blue in Casablanca

We are in Casablanca.  Except for the container cars, it looks as black and white as the movie.  The fog clouds everything, like Vaseline on a lens. 

If I’ve learned one thing from my travels, it’s get out of the port city.  In every port, we dock at a big, industrial port, just like the freighters full of refrigerators.  There’s no grass, no trees, just a mile of warehouses and security and gates.

Casablanca is Morocco’s biggest city, and its most Westernized.  I just finished reading The Caliph’s House, an ex-pat memoir by an Afghan-Scot immigrant to Casablanca.  Same as many other stories, the burned out refugee from the 20^th century decamps to some exotic vacation land and then tries to remake it to the standards he enjoyed in his home country, all the while complaining about how expensive it is to do a renovation with the horrid people who do the work for him.  Our Academic Dean recommended it to me as a good introduction to the culture.  I generally find this sort of memoir discourages me from going to visit, but here I am.

Thanks to my reading, I am prepared for a country where the population cannot be trusted, is superstitious, and has to be tricked into working.  Thanks to the diplomatic briefing, I now have a more objective vantage point.   Now I know that the drivers are crazy, the taxis are insane.  No one follows the traffic laws.  Also, there are demonstrations, terrorist plots, thefts at ATMS, and harassment of women waiting for me.

As Captain Louis Renault asks, “What in heaven’s name brought you to Casablanca?

Despite all of this, I am looking forward to visiting Morocco.  I have only one day in Casablanca and once we get through immigration, Sherrie and I are off.  It looks like we can walk to the medina and some of the main streets, to get a feel for the French Colonial architecture and the local crafts. 

Tomorrow I’m off to Fes, leading an SAS home-stay trip.  I had originally decided to travel with SAS because I thought Morocco played to the weakest of my travel skills, navigation.  My instincts are almost always wrong, and I’ve gotten turned around in every market I’ve been to on this trip.  My work buddy Chris had given me a hilarious but cautionary tale about getting lost in a souk, and I didn’t want to repeat it, especially not as a single woman.  So here I am, leading the group—I just hope I can stay out of trouble long enough to get the group back to home base.

Home base for one more week.  In just a week, we go through our last shipboard immigration, our last long lines to pick up our passport and get it stamped by bored people who would rather be enjoying the pastries our ship provides for them. 

Today’s wait was long enough that my computer finished downloading all the files I wanted from the public drive.  The lines stretched down a couple of flights of stairs, made longer by people who were sneaking in at the landings.  They listened in preport to the cultural information.  Moroccans don't wait in line, they push their way through.

Midway up the last flight, we saw our medical team in action.  "Code blue, code blue, code blue.  Deck 7"  The medical team came racing up the steps, along with several crew members.  Two for the stretcher, two with life preservers to use as pillows.  The passenger is okay, and left the scene in a wheelchair.  This is the team putting away the gear.  You can see two cooks (checked pants and hats), along with a maintenance guy (blue jumpsuit), several officers and members of the ship's medical crew.  Our SAS doc is already in the elevator with the patient.  (I have some decency.)

Faculty/staff are the first group to get off the ship after the Caribbean Sea, who won that honor as champs of the Sea Olympics.  With any luck, I should clear before lunch.  And that will give me a vantage point from which to take pictures of people struggling down the gangway with their carry-on luggage.

Not just another port; THE Gambia

“Hello, sweet sister.  Welcome to the smiling coast of Gambia!”  

It was a lovely greeting, floating up to the rail, where I stood looking out at yet another dock in yet another harbor.

Today we had an unscheduled stop in Banjul, The Gambia.  We gassed up, and we took on some medical supplies flown in from the US.  Our students have been warned, “Don’t play with the monkeys” in almost every port since Japan, but—being of a Certain Age—they played with the monkeys.  And now some have to have just-in-case treatment for rabies.

Maersk containers are omnipresent.

In a similar vein, a student came to the office today to find out just what would happen if he went over his points limit in Morocco.  “It’s the last port, so they can’t throw me off the ship, right?” 

(Students get points for various infractions of the behavioral code.  If they reach 10, they are supposed to be sent home.  Naturally, there are appeals and exceptions, but we have offloaded a few.  Evidently, this one is looking at one more night in the drunk tank pushing him over the threshold.)

Some of our students have the stated goal of being drunk in every port.  (Do they also have aligned goals, like “DUI before 25” and “Passed out in a gutter before 50”?  Better put “Friend of Bill W” on the agenda, too.)

To be specific, this means they are planning to go into an overwhelmingly Moslem, very conservative country and spit in the face of cultural norms.  USA!  USA!  I vote in favor of throwing him, literally, off the ship.

To be fair, most of the students on board share my opinion of these party animals.  Most of the students do not play with the monkeys.  They are the ones stressed out over their upcoming exams, working too hard to taken time to socialize.  They are the ones filling up classrooms for workshops on resume writing, volunteering in Africa, and founding an NGO.  And they are putting on the Drag Show and organizing Crew Recognition Day.  There’s a lot going on aboard ship—too much to take in, really—and most of the students are making the most of their days here.

Today, we stood still in The Gambia, the smallest country in mainland Africa.  It’s pretty much the banks of the Gambia River, 10 miles on each bank, running upriver about 200 miles.  Except for the mouth of the river, on the Atlantic coast, it is completely surrounded by Senegal. 

Because we had people getting off the ship, we had to go through the whole process of clearing immigration.  A dozen men came aboard, largely to drink juice and eat pastries, since there was really nothing else for them to do.  (In most ports, we have a face-to-face, where immigration checks passports for each passenger.  It takes hours.)

Outside, the locals called to us and tried to sell us their wares.  I suppose from their viewpoint, it looked like any other cruise ship coming in to the harbor:  immigration gets on, then people get off.  One enterprising fellow tried to sell an IPad and an IPhone.  (Who knew there was an Apple store in The Gambia?  Or, maybe not.)  It’s sad that they had nothing better to do than wait for people who could not visit.

One local did manage to make it up to Deck 6 at lunch.  This moth was completely intent on my lunch.  Even as I moved my fork closer and closer, it stayed on my plate. 

The moth, too, was bound to be disappointed.  The most interesting thing about the food these days is the new names the kitchen staff comes up with for the same old food.  This was minced beef, indistinguishable from meatloaf.  The potatoes are the best:  they are roasted, steak-cut, home fried, Lyonnaise, and present at breakfast, lunch and dinner.  They are rarely mashed and I’ve never seen them au gratin, probably to keep them dairy free.

Still, better than the alternative.  Food cooked for you doesn’t have to meet a very high standard, especially when someone else cleans up, too.

So add another country to the list.  I’ve never been to The Gambia, but I can see it from my window.

It's about time

Going around the world on a ship plays havoc with the notion of time.  Going in a westward direction, as we are, means you lose a whole day, but you pick it up an hour at a time.  In the mad dash across the Pacific, we had three 25-hour days in a row.  (I waste the extra hour, every time.  I stay up way too late every night.  When we gain an hour, I stay up way, way too late.)

One casualty is times for sunrise and sunset.  Generally, you can count on the days getting a bit longer each day from the winter solstice to the summer one, and shorter each day the other half of the year.  But when you are moving through time zones, sunrise and sunset catapult around.  On days when the clock is moved forward or back, the sunrise time shifts a whole hour from the expected.

Days, too, are hard to account for when you are dividing the time into “sea days” and “land days.”  Saturday and Sunday are just names, not leisure time.  I refer to the calendar many times each day to confirm the date. I cross the days off, not in anticipation, but so I can locate “today.” 

I have a chart in my office that tells me when we are going to change our clocks.  I added a column to tell me what time it is back at home base.  I’m not calling; I just like knowing.

We’re traveling around Western Africa at the moment, and we were scheduled to change our clocks tonight, and again in three days as we approach Casablanca.  But not, as you might think, going back an hour heading west and forward an hour as we head back east. We were scheduled to go forward tonight, and then back.  I think the time changes may be related to observances of Daylight Savings Time rather than geographic location.

Rather than disrupt our sleep patterns twice for a zero sum change, the staff captain appears to have elected to tick to our own clock.  It’s a sensible decision, but it makes me vaguely uncomfortable to be out of sync, even if it’s out of sync with an abstract and arbitrary concept.

Ghana sits very close to the Equator, and they do not observe Daylight Savings Time.  All year long, sunrise and sunset are at 6:30.  You could set your clock by it.

In Ghana, the sun is the only thing that runs on schedule.