Hello inside of a Moroccan police station. I’ve been awake for the better part of 36 hours, but considering the fact that my spirits are high, things could be much worse.

Just doing a bit of stealth documentation for the Olmsted annals….

My good friend Christina is in the midst of filing a police report after her purse was surreptitiously removed from her person while boarding a train in Rabat about two hours earlier. It’s an unfortunate occurrence considering that she has lived in this country for almost three years and has less than a week before boarding a plane to rejoin her American life. 

Our police officer- well I’m not sure if he’s really a cop- he’s currently reading back his transcription of the theft’s circumstances to Christina. Their conversations in Arabic leave me largely out of the loop, and in my quasi-delusional state I have decided that this is just as good a place as any to paint my fingernails. 

The nail polish smells really strong. I’m half wondering if it’s going to attract their attention…

I figure I can do this with relative stealth (Christina and the cop are pretty engrossed in fighting crime) and they won’t yell at me for turning this rather drab and nondescript room into a beauty shop. The only indications that this might even be a government office are the photographs of the King and I think also his dad. I need to ask Christina about this- but at the moment I’m kinda busy pushing the envelope and have transitioned to documenting my surroundings with my trusty blog camera. If I get caught taking photos, I am not quite sure how I’ll explain myself to the Moroccan authorities- or Christina.

You’d get bored sitting here too…

I really do wish I cold snap a photo of our policeman friend. He’s sporting a nice white button-down shirt that somewhat matches his Hard Rock Café Key West baseball cap. He’s a nice guy too- and periodically he engages me in French to either clarify a question or to tell me a story about himself that I am kind of nodding at rather than truly processing. I’m a bit slap happy. My camera is being camouflaged by the lime green duty free shopping bag that I picked up in Lisbon.

I’m getting a little more brazen….and Christina has long since gotten bored.

Another guy in an equally non-cop looking collared shirt keeps coming in and out of the room holding a walkie talkie and a pack of smokes. He checks on us every five minutes, and each time he enters the room he pulls out another cigarette. I immediately identify him as an undercover chain smoker. 

While I’m sad that the purse has been stolen, I’m still very happy to be here having yet another decidedly Olmstedy experience. You’ve got to take the good with the bad- and I will say that this police station is far and away more accommodating than the Tanzanian one that I found myself occupying almost a year ago exactly. Here I can paint my nails in relative tranquility and not struggle with maintaining my composure as I describe items that were forcibly taken from me on the streets of Arusha. 

The cigarette guy continues to smoke and ash on the office floor, much to my amusement. It’s now 10pm and Mr. Nicotine has informed the Hard Rock Cop that the report should not be in Arabic, but in French. Merde. I don’t realize that this is the case until I have finished my photo essay and my nails are a pleasant shade of pale yellow. The police motion to me as a kind of fellow Francophone to come over to computer screen. They want me to proofread the police report that has just been retyped. At first, I’m a bit bemused: “I am sure that your French is far better than mine” I offer, but they don’t take no for an answer. I seat myself in front of the computer screen and immediately realize that yes, I will indeed be making corrections to this report.

It’s about 10:30pm by the time we wrap things up and get the statement printed out for insurance purposes. The cops offer to give us a lift to our hotel, and I’ve got to say that my trip to Morocco is already one that promises to be memorable. I figure now that if I can now just get some sleep, we’ll have penty more adventures to mentally plow through over the next couple of days.

Fifty-four miles worth of adventures to be exact. I think that the purse would have only weighed Christina down.