Going awry…

Overdue for some Moroccan when I ran into my friend Monday morning I mentioned dinner – we both ended up working late, I had play practice and had to go wrap some emails up… so we got a bit of a late start. Given that he was just in town for the week and I don’t yet have a car the “cool kids” were left to the services of motorpool. Ahh, but a change of plans, a few others were interested in doing Moroccan Tuesday night (Veteran’s Day) so “how about Indian? It’s your choice since you’re visiting.” So we set off, through the traffic and over the bridge we went… motorpool dropped us at Delhi Dar Bar (a great Indian Restaurant) and zipped away… uhh, {broken French} “their closed?!?” So I dig through my bag, locate my phone, call the dispatcher “…yes, please send the driver back… yes, thank you.” 10 – 15 minutes later our driver returns. So, we head down the street a couple miles for Moroccan restaurant, I recognize the owner sitting out in front the Moroccan façade of his restaurant in one of the white plastic lawn chair surrounding his tea table. So, again, motorpool drops us off and zips away. “your kidding, you’re closed too? Is today a holiday?” back on the phone calling the dispatcher… ‘yes, okay, the driver is on his way.’ So the owner kindly offers us each a chair, a cup of tea (which I love) and a Moroccan cookie. We sort of talk… limited French, a smattering of Moroccan Arabic, at which point I’m absolutely worthless. He takes us into the restaurant so we can look around; I explain that we’ll likely be back tomorrow night. He yells for his son, who is suppose to translate for us, a college age kid who apparently does computer programming, he looks fifteen - amiable, but antisocial. It has been about 20 or 30 minutes, so I decide to call the dispatcher again… “you want the driver to come back again??” [apparently my second call got lost in the confusion of redundancy…] “yes, that’s what I said. This place is closed too...” “Oh, okay, I’ll send the driver back.” Ayeyae yie, by this point it’s about 9:30, maybe later, when we left work JW was already claiming to be faint from hunger… thankfully his disposition is not as moody as mine when I haven’t eaten all day. So we sit back down around the tea table and are introduced to the Moroccan expats who come by to visit with the owner. Alas, the driver shows up once again. As we pull away I mention that sometimes I wonder how I got here, sipping tea with Moroccan expats in Cote d’Ivoire… “Now where?” “Well, how about steak – Havana Club will be open… do you know where that is” No, is the answer, though this is not openly communicated, so the driver slows to ask a passerby, nope, they don’t know what he’s talking about… couple blocks later, repeat, no avail. “They will know.” the driver says with absolute certainty. Before I’ve totally processed what he’s talking about, JW is looking amused, the driver has pulled over to the side of a dark street to ask a group of “ladies on the corner”, ahh, but of course they know, I dig through my bag and grab a 1000CFA note, as I hand the lady the bill, driving away, JW is totally enjoying the fact that I just paid a hooker for directions… [what can I say, I’m happy to support the direction giving services rendered by the industry, who knows maybe I'll start a movement] Half a mile and voila! At which point we were both ready to find that indeed it was open for business. Yeah! Before long, our much anticipated dinner arrives – beouf avec haricots verts. Though plans went quite awry it ended up being a great evening of unforeseen adventure and bewildered hilarity!