Our flight sat on the runway for 3 hours before leaving NYC. I was starving and thirsty and only had light snacks. I was excited though about having a seat with tons of leg room until I saw all the kids around me. My seat kept rocking with all the fuss going on behind me.
When my seatmate asked the kids to be considerate and not kick the seats, their mother chimed in from the row behind them that the request was unreasonable. They were kids and if we didn't want to be kicked we should have requested a seat with no one behind us. Then she suggested we give up our prime seats to the kids so they couldn't kick us. We suggested instead that she switch with the kids so they could kick her. She refused, of course.
We settled for asking her to tell her son (who was old enough to know better) that he should be mindful of our request. She said she could never tell her son to be quiet and sit still. Cultural? If she can't tell him that, who can? Why purposefully raise a child (male or female) not to mind anyone, least of all yourself? Well I had enough of going through her and after asking him a few more times to stop kicking my seat, the next time he jolted me awake, I abandoned English and hissed in French "Stop it, now!" That did it. He stopped. And he also started crying. Uh oh! Didn't mean for that to happen but the mother had ample opportunity to weigh in. Funny that she only became concerned about the situation then..."
Casablanca is a beautiful city that reminds me of Redondo Beach area in Southern California and Andrew of Montego Bay in Jamaica. There are beautiful stucco houses behind high stucco walls with ornate gates, modern buildings, lean-tos at the market, businessfolks, women in veils and robes and modern dress, the smells of diesel fumes and the ocean.
There are no left hand turn lights. The lefthand turners just get critical mass and keep inching out across the lanes 3 and 4 cars deep until the oncoming traffic has to stop. Craziness!
We saw a huge mosque with inlaid tiles and ornately carved doors that rolled shut vertically electronically and whose arched walkway and steps reminded me of paintings down in the Renaissance of Italian universities. I wonder which came first...
We were searching for a bathroom there and I asked a woman where to find one, but I used the term VC which is the proper term in French. She gestured that she didn't understand and began to walk away. Dana shouted toilette after her and she turned around and said oh yes toilette and took my hand and walked me across the square, down some steps and through a hallway until we got to the restroom. She literally did not let go of my hand until I was at the stall door.
Dana and Andrew took a picture of her leading me away by the hand. I will upload it as soon as I can. Andrew said he was worried when she came out of the bathroom without me. LOL. Turns out it was a Turkish toilet and I got an opportunity to place my feet on designated spots and squat over a hole. It actually wasn't that bad and is even a tad more ergonomically correct. The thing is though, if you squat over a public toilet and you lose your balance, you hit the seat, dirty though it may be. If you squat over the end of a pipe in the ground and you lose your balance...
We went shopping/sightseeing in the kasbah, drank mint tea at a cafe (a must) and then headed back to the hotel so we could get our flight to Bamako. Dana had said the dusk and night mosquitoes are the ones that transmit malaria and when we returned to the taxi we rented for a few hours it was full of mosquitoes. Everyone else appeared unconcerned but I know how mosquitoes love me (and my Deet repellent was in my checked baggage) so I set about slapping at them until I had killed them all. I didn't realize what a spectacle I must have been making of myself until I smashed a particularly hard to reach one in the back window and turned around to see Mustafa, our driver, looking wide-eyed at me in the rearview mirror. I didn't get any bites though...
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