I wish I’d never put up this template, because now every time I look at it, I feel like I’m slacking for not publishing the ghost story. I tell myself it’s because I have to sketch up a little diagram, get the details in order – but the truth is, I’m kind of lazy. If something strikes my fancy, I can plug away at it for hours, but if it should be done, I can hardly bring myself to think about it. The only way I ever accomplish anything, actually, is by making myself little to-do lists every day. My husband spotted one once, and he said, “What’s that?” I explained the concept, but he just said, “Why don’t you just do things as you feel like doing them?”
THAT, my dear readers, is one of the things that makes me raving, blithering, insanely mad about living in Morocco. For example, his family owns a hotel. If I was the boss – and believe me, the suggestion has been made – I’d have a to-do list for that damn place stretching from Tan-Tan to Oujda. Instead, I have to make suggestions, apparently to the air, because nothing ever changes. I’ll mention something like, “Listen, we need new brochures.” The response is, “Yes, yes, inshallah, we’ll be doing that soon.” I might suggest, “Instead of buying toilet paper at a marked up cost every week in town, why don’t we contact the TP factory in Casa, tell them of our massive yearly TP needs here, and ask them to cut us a deal?”
“Yes, yes, inshallah, good idea.”
In the meantime, business goes down, because they don’t understand the concept of competition that’s beginning to make itself known in Morocco. Other hotels are providing better amenities and better service, while ours trudges along in the 1970s. AAAAAAAAAAA! If it didn’t have a great location and decent food, I think we’d be sunk.
And the reason for this complacent attitude? I think I know. Last year I met the owner of a small maison d’hote, struck up a chat with him, and at some point I casually said “Inshallah” after some comment. He went into a tirade about how that one word was the primary cause of many of Morocco’s problems, and if people would just get off their asses and do something, instead of having tea and envying their neighbors, things would rapidly improve.
I disagreed with him on half of that – I still say inshallah, because I never know what fate will throw my way, but the to-do lists are my way of living the “God helps those who help themselves” maxim.