RICK'S

So, click here to read our first real joint project--it's on a very serious topic. Casablanca

Residence Visa Processes Part 2: This is not Kafka.

The woman at reception: You have to see a man upstairs. But he’s away, come back tomorrow and I will take you.

Tomorrow. She points me down a hallway. You will see him. Room 316.

Room 316 man makes me wait. Then he says, no, see my secretaries. The secretaries chew over my name, cluck and flip through papers. They ask for dates. When was I here? More waiting. I wait.

A man walks in. Hello, you can come to my office. Down the hall. I never find out his name.

We begin an interview, which I had no idea I was there for. It lasts 2 hours.

Is there something wrong? I ask.

Oh, no, he says. It’s routine.

I give him the name of every school I’ve attended, with the exact dates. We realize I’ve forgotten to include a 6-month-long college job in a laboratory. No, he says, you must tell me everything. Those little jobs are exactly what I want to know.

This is all in French, mind you.

I tell him I studied oceanography.

Ah, he says, can you tell me why the ocean, the same ocean, sometimes it has very different qualities, the temperature.

The clarity?, I volunteer.

Yes, very different, he says. Why?

(I wonder, is this a test?) I mumble something about weather.

Have you read any books by Jacques Cousteau? Did you know that he was a Muslim?

(I wonder, do I understand French?)

The Koran, written so many years ago, gave a description of the oceans that is exact, he says.

(I’m convinced I don’t understand French)

You know, he says, talking slowly because I clearly don’t understand French. There is the sea. And there are animals that live in the sea. And there are rivers and animals that live in the rivers. And the animals that live in the rivers cannot cross to the sea, and the animals in the sea cannot cross to the river.

(What the fuck?) Smile. Nod.

Finally we make it to my second to last job. My French begins to fail me. I spent three years, I tell him, three years, working in New York for a … a…female dog on television. The word for channel is really awfully similar to the word for bitch.

We move on.

What is your religion?

I don’t really have one.

Ok ok, but what were you baptized?

I wasn’t.

No!

Pause. Looks intently at me.

Do you believe in God?

Pause. 

Yes?

As usual, my badass wife is being modest. Upon receipt of her pictured press pass, Solana hit the streets and got Obama reacts with the rest of GlobalPost's Team Islam, which resulted in our actual first story for GP. Here's the piece she reported _entirely_ in French. Which she started studying literally a month ago.

Where we've been

Don't give up on our blog yet! We've been inundated with work, thanks to a side project a friend threw our way. We're working, and no this is not an exaggeration, 7 days a week 12+ hours a day. That means less time to write a blog than you might think. Meanwhile, here's our first real piece on GlobalPost. 

Moroccan Residency Visa Instructions:

1: Take official letter from the Communi-cations Ministry to an agency named DGSN, which no taxi driver seems to understand. Ask a police officer where to find the DGSN only to be told that it isn’t around here, but there is a kind of petite DGSN you can try. 

2: Attempt to enter this place, which is called the police station, to be stopped and told the entrance you need is one block over. Wonder why you weren’t just told to go to the police station.

3: Pass through a metal detector which buzzes but does not prompt the three police officers guarding the door to stop cleaning their teeth with toothpicks.

4. Wonder what’s the point of the metal detector.

5: Speak to two women behind the counter as they eat their lunch. Say you need a residence visa. Wonder if their response, “Why?” is a trick question. Find out they cannot give you the forms until after 2 pm.

6: Try to have six photos taken, per the Moroccan government’s web site. Wait fruitlessly until 2:30pm in front of the photo place for them to open after lunch.

7: Return to the police station to see the same ladies now done with lunch. Get two sets of three forms in duplicate and a list of necessaries: 9 photos, a copy of your lease, two copies of the Communication Ministry letter, copies of your passport, your first baby shoe, your grandparent’s dental records and a lock of hair from your first pet.

8: You cannot bring those things back today. Said documents are accepted only between 9 am and 12 pm. Oh, and you need to go to another government office, across town, and get a stamp. One each. It makes the document official.

9: Wonder exactly how.

10: return to the photo store, wait another 10 minutes until they finally re-open after lunch at 3:30 pm. Ponder photos of the king in a cowboy hat, shooting a high powered hunting rifle.

11: Put off filling out the forms in triplicate until the next morning at 9 am. Become frantic when you realize it’s going to be hard to finish it all before the lunch-time witching hour.

12: Return to police station, set off metal detector, elbow Nigerian man out of your way. Ask if they really want to know every country you’ve ever visited, per the form. Answer: pick 5 or 6, whatever, not a problem. 

13: Remind yourself that this whole process was significantly easier than going to the Manhattan DMV or the Harlem Social Security office.

Barely legal.

We recieved official word and official papers today from the Moroccan government saying we can legally start doing the things reporters do. Since it seemed a little early to complain about our pay, we put out calls for a story.

But let's just say there's some rust that needs scraping from the college French.

A transcript, translated loosely from a call made this afternoon to what I believed was the office of the law professor who can give us the scoop on the success or not of a big-time overhaul of Moroccan Family Law that was supposed to grant women all kinds of new rights:

ME: "Ah, good day."

WOMAN WHO PICKS UP THE PHONE: "Good day?"

ME: "Yes. Good day. I am American journalist who makes an article about women. Women's law. I work for an agency of American news. I would like to make an article about the new women law."

WOMAN: "Yes, Good day?"

ME: "Yes, good day. I would like to make encounter with you for to talk on the subject of the new woman law and your opinions regarding success or not success these five years."

WOMAN: "Madame is not house."

ME [BEGINNING TO WONDER WHY THIS WOMAN'S FRENCH IS AS BAD AS MINE]: "Not at house?"

WOMAN: "Not at house."

ME: "I was believing this office telephone I call."

WOMAN: "[A bunch of stuff in Arabic]. Madame. No. House. See you tomorrow."

ME: "Okay. Yes. Maybe now is not well time for ask about my wife bring video camera to our encounter. I want to make Madame also encounter with video camera. Are you Madame's woman of clean-house?"

WOMAN: "Madame not at house."

ME: "Are you clean woman?"

[click].

Piratée

One crucial observation penetrated the exhaustion and jet lag during the ride from the Casablanca airport to Rabat. Even shacks cobbled together from corrugated steel, rocks and a tarp get satellite television. Just about everybody does. This photo is a shot of the phenomenon, though from the roof in our upper middle class Moroccan neighborhood. We hope to soon add a dish of our own. For a reported $60 bucks we can get that and a "piratée" connection, which allows free browsing on satellites the world over. Our neighbor demonstrated the system to us while we ate dinner with him Friday, connecting to a satellite called "Hot Bird." Onscreen appeared an English-language show featuring a man on a stage with his head up a donkey's butt. The neighbor gestured to the TV and said something like, "See? All in English." Don't worry, I'm 95% sure the Donkey was some dude in a costume. I can't wait.