Apartment Hunting

Thought you might enjoy an update not focused on the wedding... :) Although I just have to say that I have seen the wedding video 3 times (that's 6 hours total!) and it's been pretty fun to watch. Our Moroccan friends all love it and still talk about what a great party it was... Oh, and our friends keep on asking if we've sent the full 2 hour movie to our parents. We keep on saying that if they watched it without us to explain it they wouldn't know what was going on. But if anyone would like a copy (on VCD), let us know... Otherwise we'll just bring it the next time we see you. :)

In other news, we're STILL looking for an apartment. Now some of you might be thinking, "What is wrong with them? Why can't they just find something?" So I thought I'd give you a better idea of what looking for an apartment in Morocco actually involves. When we decided to move we weren't really sure how things worked in Azrou. In Fes there are men called "semsars" (sort of like a real estate agent) and you can find their offices because they have a key painted on the door. Semsars don't host open houses or have the keys to apartments, or have listings or pictures or anything, they just act as a go-between for people with apartments to rent, and those looking for places. Here in Azrou we hadn't seen any of the offices. So we asked some Moroccan friends of ours and they said they knew of a "semsara" (a woman). We went to talk to her and she had a few ideas of places we might like. Now, we thought we were pretty clear about what we wanted but it turns out she didn't actually believe us about size, number of rooms, location, price, layout (kitchen and bathroom attached), anything... until we had seen several houses that we didn't like and told her why. We left her with my phone number and told her we'd be checking back.

I think it was the week after that, our friends contacted another semsara and had her start looking for us. They also called us one night and said they had a place for us to look at but we had to come within the next 15 minutes or so. With where we live it was quite a rush, but we made it. We also looked at a few more houses with semsara #1, bringing our total up to 10. All had issues big enough to not make them possibilities, ranging from (and sometimes including several from this list):

• a kitchen or bathroom that was not attached to the rest of the apartment
• being right above a welding shop
• having a bathroom so short that even I couldn't stand up in it
  
• being just as far away from everything as we are in our current apartment
• only having 2 rooms plus a kitchen when we told her we really wanted 3 (over and over again)
  
• having only 1 window in the whole apartment

So this past weekend we talked about getting a bit more aggressive in the search. We weren't sure how to do this since we already had 2 semsaras looking, as well as our friends and several shop keepers that we know. Well, I had an unexpected visit from my homestay family yesterday morning and after they came for tea and apricot bars (a great recipe from Matthew's Granny in England) we ended up stopping by the house of their relative. She knew of another semsara who lived just across the street and I figured it was worth a try. I went with the mom and daughter from the family I lived with last year (Fatima and Saida). This semsara seemed very optimistic and tried to show us 3 apartments. At each of them we encountered the same problem (the person with the key wasn't there) and were told the same thing (come back in the "lashia"). Now, Moroccan "afternoon" is an interesting thing - depending on the season and the person it can range anywhere from 1pm 'till 10 or 11pm.

So I asked the semsara (#3) when I should come back and she said at 3:00. I arranged to meet Saida for the appointment, assuming we'd go back and see the apartments we had seen the outsides of in the morning. Instead we hiked across town with 3 women who walked REALLY slow to try to look at an apartment that their family apparently owned. The problem was that the current tenants weren't home so we couldn't look at it. We then tried to look at a few more but kept running into the "come back in the "lashia"". This time the semsara said to come back at 7 or 8ish. The whole time we were looking she would tell everything to Saida who would repeat it to me (all in Arabic). The semsara couldn't get it through her head that I was understanding what she said. Both of them seemed to have a hard time believing that I actually knew what I wanted and also kept on saying that they were sure Matthew would like certain things that I was pretty sure that he wouldn't. A disadvantage of getting married has been that people here now assume I've decreased in intelligence, can't speak Arabic, and am incapable of thinking without asking my husband's permission. They kept on trying to convince me that Matthew wouldn't mind only having 2 rooms and that it was ok to look at places that I had already said were out of our price range.

I had arranged to "kaskroot" (have the 5:00ish snack) with Rqia and her family and since I had a bit of extra time I decided to check in with semsara #1. She was of course on vacation but her husband was home and knew of a place that she was planning on showing us. He said he'd take me but first we had to walk a ways to find the man with the key. He, of course, wasn't at his shop but was actually in the opposite direction at his house. Matthew met up with us at this point and we went to the guy's house to try to get the key. He was sleeping so we waited on the street for a while. When he finally came down it turned out that he didn't have the key for this other apartment and won't until Thursday but he did want to show us an empty apartment in the building he lived in. It actually ended up being the best possibility we've seen so far, although it's unfinished and their 2 week estimate seemed a bit optimistic. After declining yet another tea invitation we went for kaskroot at Rqia's and watched the wedding video with them.

By the time it was finishing up it was after 7 so we excused ourselves to meet semsara #3 again. We had a grand tour of all of the side streets, alleys and byways of Azrou, and after walking for about 2 hours we had seen 2 apartments (both of which only had 2 rooms). At one place when we finally found the man with the key he said we couldn't look at it because it was full of sheep's wool. Another time the semsara called the lady who owned the apartment and she said she was on her way. After waiting for 20 minutes she appeared, only to tell us that she didn't want to rent the apartment. It was a bit disappointing, but we're getting quite good at being flexible and not getting our hopes up.

We went back to Rqia's for dinner which meant not getting home until after 11 but it was fun. :) Tomorrow we're heading out to Tagonite with the wedding video for another evening of fun. We have a trip to Fes planned for this weekend and we're looking forward to reconnecting with some friends.

We'll hope to hear from the semsaras, otherwise we'll check in next week. They keep on saying to wait until summer is done but as soon as that happens Ramadan will start and it's silly to actually plan to do anything during that month. We're trusting that God knows and that He has a place for us, we just need to wait for His timing...