A Wild Night with Omi

Today, Chloe got locked out the building (again) because she forgot her keys (again). I was talking to my host mother at the time of Chloe’s sad little phone call, so I offered to run the keys downstairs to her, but my host mom declined. Her answer was, in Darija, “I’m going to do what I normally do for Marwane” (her son). Then she grabbed an oven mitt and started walking towards the balcony. She told me to scream Chloe’s name as loud as I could, so I screamed a sad little scream, and then she gave me this look of “seriously?” So I SHRIEKED despite the fact that there were many people on the street below, and it was 10pm at night, and then Omi THREW the oven mitt off the balcony. Mind you, we live on the very top floor of an apartment building, and there were many people below. But she threw that mitt, with the key inside (I didn’t mention that the key was inside until just now, but that’s a ~minor detail~ in this story), and Chloe was able to get into the building. I laughed so hard that I cried, and was glad to be an accomplice in this scheme.

Later, our host mom started making fun of Chloe for being happy, and then we started dancing around singing the French equivalent of “Chloe’s in love.” Then our host mom did yoga on our bedroom floor for no reason at all, accused us of stealing herbs from the neighbors (there were herbs on my desk that were given to us by some of our friends nearby), and left. It was quite something.

In other news, I am switching host families so I can have a more immersive experience sans other Americans, and when I told my host mom, she cried. Multiple times. Then I cried and it was this whole thing. Nothing about my time here in Morocco has been easy, but it’s sure been worth it. I will miss Omi greatly.