Monarchy: 1, Daylight Savings: 0

That time the Moroccan government decided to change daylight savings... the day of...

What everyone in the U.S. (and the rest of the world) may not know is that Morocco is pretty new to the whole daylight savings thing.  They (re-)started a daylight savings schedule in 2008 (the first time since 1978).  Their schedule is about a month ahead of the times that U.K. and U.S. spring forward or fall back.  And daylight savings time stops for the month of Ramadan (because we should make this as complicated as possible).  Daylight savings was set to end this year at 3am on Sunday, September 29^th. 

Morocco is also a monarchy.  Not a constitutional monarchy like the U.K. or Denmark, but an actual monarchy (but with an elected legislature – it’s complicated and quasi-democratic) where the king has pretty powerful appointed ministers.  And this year, the Minister of Efficiency (or somesuch absurd office) just changed his mind about when daylight savings would end.

Changed. His. Mind.

Can I just emphasize that for a minute? Some guy, on a bizarre, last minute whim that potentially cost the country millions of dirhams in lost productivity and failed international travel coordination, changed the time of day.  ...Or un-changed the time of day... whatever...

Maybe this is a rant, and maybe I’m just failing to understand the complexities of the political system here.  But you can’t just change your mind about things like this.  We were trying to travel back to Rabat from Essaouira and that gets pretty difficult when no one in the whole country knows what time it really is.  And half the country didn’t even know the time change had been voided.  Imagine you’re supposed to catch a flight that day, or you can’t possibly miss 90210 – what time is it?? No one knows! 

And to compound my personal irritation, my computer refuses to acknowledge that humans can simply make last minute decisions to call off daylight savings, so everything is very, very strange.

lies

P.S. If anyone cares, daylight savings here has been pushed back to the last Sunday of October.  You know, if we don’t change our minds about it again…