Thursday 24th September 2015

Breakfast (Not sure I would actually call this a breakfast. Gosh I miss the yummy juices Moncef used to make in Rabat!) is served at 7am, so not easy to manage to meditate a whole hour every morning. But I try to at least do 40 minutes.

Today is the Muslim holiday of Tabaski, or Eid Kebir as we call it in Morroco. It was actually declared a national holiday only yesterday. Quite a positive move from the government in order to show religious inclusion given of the international press is stupidly and incorrectly labeling the conflict a religious one.

So I was told yesterday that some of the staff would not show up and the other half would stay until midday only. OK, fair enough.

When I arrived at the office, I saw everyone waiting outside, like in recess. It made me laugh when they told me that they were waiting for everyone to arrive to start the generator.  REALLY???!!! They all need a computer to work? I know that for the work needed right now, half the staff is not needed.

And so now that we were all there, they start the generator. I start working on my laptop, but out of curiosity, I get up and walk around the offices to see what people are doing. NOT ONE is actually using their computer. I feel like breaking something and pulling my hair off because of how ridiculous the situation is. Right away I tell them to shut the generator off.

The driver comes by around 10 am asking if I need him to take me anywhere. He wants to leave for the day. After all it is a holiday. SO OK, anticipating how the rest of the day will go if I stay in the office, I tell him to take me to the offices of Caritas Holland. They have way more money and way better offices…with all day electricity, wifi, and even AC! Yay!

And so I spent the entire day there, being quite productive actually. I intend to show the staff tomorrow all the discrepancies within all the reports they had sent to Paris, so that we can finally have an accurate database from which to work, and be finally able to actually start the project.

Today I let two other Dutch expats. Really cool young people with incredible humanitarian experience. It was so good to be able to unload my bag of frustration with them, and hear that they had similar cases within their team.

Another good dinner and now off to bed. Tomorrow is Friday and promises to be yet another “interesting” day.

Am curious to see what the weekend holds for me…

Buenas noches!