The Other Street Sells Plastic

I’ve moved into a new apartment!!!

While this is typically exciting news in my case it is the most exciting news possible at this point in time.

I’ve had a rough go of my first year housing situation. Stress, noise, theft, a person being murdered just outside my apartment building (someone took a brick to his head), harassment, all rounded out with (this is literal) two cups of pee thrown at me through my 4th floor window from the roof of another building while I was tutoring.

Everything was more or less manageable except for being followed.

Being followed is terrifying.

Being followed throws your heart into your throat. 

Being followed in a place where telling people you are being followed gets you no allies is the kind of things that makes you lose your mind. 

It was really bad. 

I ended up with a whole pile of creeps who knew exactly where I lived and waited outside my house for me to come out - at which point they would level things as charming as “F-ck you c-nt.” 

My neighbors were silent on the matter- but put up a security camera facing just their door. Just feel the community spirit.

After a particularly harrowing day I got on a bus to Rabat. I didn’t have permission to leave here or go there. I just did it. I figured it was better than punching someone and I was at the brink.

In Rabat I started the process for a formal request for more money to switch which community I lived in.

I got approval - for not quite enough but for enough that if I supplement with a bit of my other things stipend I can do it just fine. 

I moved immediately into a house that a friend’s husband found me. 

How's that for the privilege of movement.

I was scared. I said so. I was taken care of. 

I moved to a place that is: safer, more well lit, with warm water, with more physical space, with less noise, with less neighbors, with more people watching out for me, closer to a mosque, and closer to all things I might need like a post office, bank and various stores. 

It’s like the privilege of movement home. 

It’s knowing that if there was an emergency America would get me home as quick as possible.

It’s knowing that I leave here in a year. 

It’s knowing that I could do Peace Corps again if I decided to and have the same privilege in whichever country I got sent to. 

It’s knowing that if I needed to leave here my bank account would allow me to.

It’s incredibly overwhelming to have the privilege of movement. 

I am thankful for it and surely won’t ever forget about it. I also fully intend to get right back into the inclusionary zoning political debate upon returning to the US. 

As for the process of movement I am guided by the system here under the same restrictions, both legal and societal that all single women moving in my town would face. 

My new landlord insisted on having a male present at the meeting where we wrote the contract. He went so far as to say he would prefer my new sitemate to me as the person doing the negotiations despite the fact that the contract was for me not him, and that he admits to not yet having a strong grasp of either of the local languages. 

My landlord also followed up asking if I had had relations with the men who followed me looking to blame my assumed promiscuity on why those assholes felt entitled to scaring the shit out of me.

Upon filling out the paperwork everything had to get stamped all the requisite times at all the appropriate places. 

I have to refile residency paperwork.

I have to refile all my Peace Corps paperwork.

I had to get another volunteer to come here and 'okay' this house.

I had to pay a bunch of money to move my internet, my electricity, my water etc. 

Beyond that making an empty apartment into a home has been a trip.

My big settling in gift to myself was a couple hundred dirhams worth of plants (have I mentioned I have incredible sunlight and a gorgeous private roof?).

Many things still need to be done. My shelves are sitting on the floor waiting for electric tools that might be a couple weeks off. My schedule has to get back to regular.

My current struggle is looking for a bath mat. My bath is REALLY slippery, as is my whole bathroom. 

I don't know the words and have tried just about every explanation I can think of.

The most recent response I received from a store owner after a really long discussion of what I wanted and why was a sarcastic, 'the other street sells plastic" not actually referring to any other streets.

For some reason when I heard it I chuckled and thought, "Yeah, the grass is always greener."

For once though, I surely do have the greenest plants. Now I just have to keep them alive.