Extreme Makeover - Ifrane Edition

What do you want when you’ve been away from home for a week? A home-cooked meal. A real shower. Your own, comfortable space.

When we arrived home last week some neighbor kids told us there had been a mess in our kitchen. I immediately figured the university had finally put in a new kitchen as was promised a long time ago to replace our moldy tiles and breaking cabinets. I ran into the apartment saying, “We have a new kitchen! We have a new kitchen! . . . We have NO kitchen!”

Yes, friends, this is the sight that met us. Our kitchen was GONE. Our dear friend, Asma, had moved all our kitchen things into the office/guestroom. The mattresses in the office had already been moved into the living room because we sold our furniture right before Christmas and there are problems with the replacements so we are sitting on the floor indefinitely for now. The guestroom bed frames were covered in dishes, pans, and the unbelievable amount of things we had stored in our kitchen. It reminded me of a raid the guys did to us in boarding school where they dumped all our possessions in the middle of the floor.

And my reaction was the same. I laughed. And laughed. And laughed. Asma (who had come back to look for the cat who had wisely run away) asked me why on earth I was laughing. I told her we have an expression in English that says you can either laugh or cry. And I had chosen to laugh.

To top it all off, they were in the middle of painting the bathroom ceiling so paint chips were all over the bathroom floor and for some reason two of our sinks stopped working and were leaking all over the floor.

The next day I did six loads of laundry and hung them out to dry (thankfully the weather was nice), scrubbed and scrubbed all the floors Cinderella-style because they were so filthy, watched my kitchen get destroyed even more, had an allergic reaction to the paint, and broke the wash machine (on the last load), and tried to ignore the fact that none of the rooms in the house look normal.

Yesterday was much better. The sinks and washer got fixed, some kind neighbors lent us their camping stove, and we got dishwashing set up in the tub. My Mom has made many wonderful meals in far worse circumstances, so why can’t I?

The kitchen should be finished by Tuesday. Inshallah (God willing).

It’s like Extreme Home Makeover gone wrong. Terribly wrong. It’s like the family came back too early. As Ron says, “Move that bus! No wait, move it back! Move it back!”