Smelly times are upon us

Hey there, it’s been a while since I last entertained you with my informative and enlightening point of view from morocco. For any of you out there who think that PCVs don’t work, or are just lazy bums freeloading on government money, I am writing this today to let you know that that is not the case. Those of you who have read previous posts of mine may think that we have dropped the ball on one of our most important tasks here and again, I can assure you, that is not the case. We initially had a great deal of success doing our field research followed by what can only be called a ‘dry’ spell that I know most volunteers in Morocco experience during the summer months when so many local people intelligently head for the beaches in an attempt to avoid the scorching summer sun.

Nonetheless, after scouring store after store, I have recently been encouraged to once again ramp up my exploration. Within the last couple weeks I have come across two magnificent new products that I think could really be popular if they were marketed correctly. First, there is the delicious smell of Nana. Why should a scent of this magnitude just be limited to nursing homes and our favorite granny’s house. Imagine: you are a family of four and you’ve just picked your kids up from their favorite grandparents’ house. They don’t want to leave. Their bawling their eyes out and nothing you do is working. Then you remember you just purchased Nana and begin spritzing the minivan. Instantly, the children are silenced, reliving their weekend of spoiling. Of course this is only one of any number of uses for this fine Eau d’ Toilette.

The next will certainly have a very specific market base, but with a little luck, it too can be expanded, bringing profits to all who invest. The name: Springer. I know what your thinking, “Of course, the smell of that favorite dog of the bourgeoisie, the springer spaniel.” But I feel the makers were going for a much different appeal, thus, I propose the Jerry Springer angle. Sure it’s a worthless show about all sorts of nothing, but we, the American people love our worthless shows all about nothing. Do you really want me to start naming them off? No, I didn’t think so. One, because it would take forever. Two, you know there would be one in the list that you watch!!!

Okay so enough about work! Yesterday around 11 or so the power went out. Not a completely strange occurrence, so I thought nothing of it. A few hours later however I decided that I would just check to see if other houses did in fact have their power out as well. Since our fuse box is only accessible from other part of the house where no one lives, I have no way of checking if it was just a fuse or something along those lines. Well, am walking around and lo and behold I hear a TV. Oh no. I have to go find the landlord and get into the house and possibly even buy a fuse and I don’t know if they sell them in town or if I’ll have to make the trek to centre for it. I find the landlord and we walk back. We call (by call I mean find him in his car on his way out of town) the local electrician to also come take a look. He opens the fuse box and flips the switch. Nothing. Great, larger problems than I thought. We go outside and… turns out… the meter reader man took my meter!! Fantastic, I’m thinking at this point. Simply disconnected it from the house. Most likely because no one had bothered to pay the bill for a while, which our landlord said he was going to bring to me but hadn’t yet. So this is quite the predicament. Well, no worries. Our local electrician was already on it. Back to his house, he grabbed an open ended extension cord and hooked me back up via our nice neighbor’s light switch in his courtyard. Powered up in no time at all. All we need now is our own meter back because this morning our landlord came back and quick disconnected it giving me instructions that if anybody came asking I was to say that I didn’t need anything. HMMM, something smells fishy besides our cat’s delicious sardine feast.

This just shows what is great and not so great about life in Morocco. In spite and as a result of all this, we are doing well.