Back to work....

I guess I am where I’m supposed to be. While it was incredibly hard to say goodbye to family in Seattle, my adjustment back here has been easy. This, after it taking a full 2 days to return!

I knew I had a 12 hr layover in Frankfurt (bought a day pass to the Delta lounge for snooze and internet), but had not counted on the 6 hours spent overnight in the Casablanca airport. Seems my research left out the fact that the train from the Casa airport stops at midnight and doesn’t resume until 6am. Fortunately (or unfortunately for them) I was not alone-there were about 20 of us taking turns going horizontal on the couple of benches w/o armrests all night long. Oh well, living large in Morocco, yak?

I was also greeted by many here in town as though I had been gone a long time..”fin knti?” “twaHshtk!” (where were you? I missed you!)-they made me feel like I’m a part of the town. Nice. Hamdullah.

I shared the news with the Cooperative women of the ecommerce company’s interest in their weavings. There were several questions I needed to get answers to, and have done so. Hopefully this additional information still works for the company, as it would be a terrific (and their first) export opportunity for the Coop. Either way, it is going to be a valuable model to learn from, ie; how to identify opportunities via the internet, how to export/bill/ship/etc.

Now I’m getting ready to accompany Zahra and Fatima to Casablanca for l-merid (expo). This is only the 2nd one they will have attended since I got here (the 1st was last week in Fes when I was in the US), and the 1st opportunity I have to observe what goes on. I plan on being a sponge for the next 4 days-how the women market themselves and their products, what opportunities the expo presents for sales/networking/info gathering, who else attends and what are they selling and doing, etc. Should be a terrific learning experience.

This of course is during yet another transit strike, although this one is only supposed to be today, just for petit taxis, and we’ll be taking the bus, which isn’t impacted by the strike. Inshallah.