9 Things

Some things I’ve noticed about Morocco that are different or surprising enough to write about (aside from the obvious like everyone speaking Arabic).

1 – It’s rude to whistle. I’m not talking about whistling at girls or anything, which is just as rude back in the states; I’m talking about the whistling Dixie / whistle-while-you-work kind of whistling. Imagine burping the alphabet, and that’s about what whistling is like. Burping is pretty much okay, though.

2 – There are a lot of trees here in Freedonia that drop a lot of leaves, and people solve this problem in the most obvious of ways: they burn them. You walk down the street and you’ll see huge piles of leaves just burning away on the side of the road, heaped up against a wall, or right in the middle of a park. Of course, not a whole lot around here is built of anything other than concrete or mud, so there really isn’t that much danger of danger, but it’s nonetheless American-mindset blowing to think how many lawyers you’d have rolling over you if you even thought about it in the states.

3 – You can’t talk about the future without using the conditioner “inshallah,” which translates roughly as “God willing.” For example, you’re talking about college so you say, “I’ll graduate in a year with my master’s, inshallah;” or you’re going away on a trip so you say, “I’ll see you in a week, inshallah;” or you’re cooking dinner so you say, “tonight we’ll be eating chicken, inshallah.” Always. And if you don’t say it, the person you’re talking to will add it for you. “We have a meeting here at 3, so I’ll give you a call 10 minutes before.” “Inshallah.” But “inshallah” has other connotations as well. It’s not polite to flat out refuse something, so people often just say “inshallah.” For example, “Hey, baby [(you say “gazelle,” actually)], can I have your number?” “Inshallah.” In this case, your translation is more along the lines of “if God compels me to [you sleaze],” and I think it’s something we should definitely pick up in English.

After spending only a little time here, though, I can tell you that sometimes it really does take divine intervention for things to happen.

4 – Television is king. This is actually not different at all from the states; I add this point mostly because it’s something I really didn’t expect. What’s interesting is that the people I’ve watched television with seem to be more invested in the watching of tv than the actual tv that they’re watching. I can’t tell you how many times we start watching something and someone will just switch the channel to another show, and everyone just goes along with it. Maybe after a bit and a few more switches we’ll be back at that first show, but by now we’ve missed enough of the story that it doesn’t make sense any more. I guess it’s not what you watch, as long as you’re watching something.

5 – There is tile all over the place. Not just like in the states where the only place you see tiles are in bathrooms and kitchens (and those are purely functional), just about everything is decorated with beautiful painted tiles. Floors, walls, doors – you can’t get away from them. And this translates into the streets as well. Morocco is not so strong in terms of public sanitation, and you find tiny bits of trash all over the streets and open spaces. This includes tiny bits of tiles, too. You can’t walk down the street without stumbling over beautiful fragments of discarded tile. I don’t know why they’re there; from an American perspective, it’d be like tossing out shards of stained glass with the trash. I’m thinking about collecting them and making mosaics.

6 – Dar Shebab. That’s what we call the center where we do our work when we transliterate it from Arabic. Except that it isn’t. Everyone (this pretty much just includes Peace Corps staff) calls it the “Dar Chebab.” Now, there is no difference in the way the two are pronounced, both sound like /š/, as in “shut,” as in everyone who writes “chebab” should shut up. (Obviously, they aren’t speaking in this case, and if they were, that would be ok, as the two sound alike.) Consider this: there are four different ways to pronounce “ch”: /č/ as in “cheese,” /k/ as in “chemistry,” /tč/ as in “sandwich,” and /š/ as in “shebab.” Are you considering it? Rather than having to worry about whether we work in the Dar /Chebab/, the Dar /Kebab/, the Dar /Tchebab/, or the Dar /Shebab/, we could just say “sh,” which has only one pronunciation and no worries.

7 – English and Shleuha (the Berber word for Berber) are not at all “bhal bhal” (identical), despite the fact that “eat” (as an imperative) and “etch” mean the same thing and sound like each other.

8 – Pretty much all meals are eaten from a communal dish, which is pretty cool (very much like Ethiopian food, for those of you who’ve had it). It usually consists of a meat of some sort (the idea of vegetarianism is pretty much non-extant here) piled upon which is an assortment of steamed – thoroughly – vegetables. This is not really surprising or strange in any way. It’s mostly just delicious. What is mysterious enough to warrant inclusion in this list is the meat. The eating thereof, anyway. There seems to be an unwritten rule that everyone eats the vegetables first (mindful to stay in your triangle of the dish and not to violate the triangle of anyone else, of course), and, at a time ordained by some higher power, everyone starts in on the meat. What I cannot for the life of me determine is when and how you know it is that time. For me, it’s a lot like playing Hearts and waiting for someone to “break hearts” so that you can start playing your heart cards as well.

9 – The word for “winter” in Darija is “shtah,” which is exactly in writing and pronunciation like the word “shtah,” which means “rain.” At first, I thought this was just a funny coincidence, but then I came to Freedonia where it rains everyday, sometimes more than once in a day, and sometimes not at all because it’s snowing instead. This makes me wonder in a bad way about the summer, which in Arabic is “saif,” which is often pronounced like “sif,” which means “sword.” That can’t be good.