9 More Things

1- Everything we do is informed by our culture. It’s not just the big issues like religion and work ethic, it goes all the way down to color preferences, how we sit, and the way we carry things. In the States, we tend to put heavy burdens on our backs and shoulders. I’m not saying it’s a corporate conspiracy of Big Schoolbag, but it’s a given with us that that’s where we’re going to hold what we can’t fit in our hands. We’ve all seen the pictures of other cultures where they carry their parcels on their heads. In Morocco, the default way to walk around with heavy items is to go tandem. I’m used to strapping it all around my shoulders, so it’s one of the hardest culture shocks for me to deal with when someone grabs one side of a massive bag and expects me to lug the other. And it makes me look even more incompetent in the eyes of my community that – never mind that I talk like a 5-year-old, that’s excusable – I don’t even know how to carry a bag of vegetables back from the souk.

2- Buying things is a very stressful process. Not only because you have to haggle for just about everything (and still likely be well on your way to the cleaners), but also because of change. Money comes in the form of completely insignificant cents, half dirham coins, one dirham coins, two dirham coins, five dirham coins, ten dirham coins, twenty dirham notes, fifty dirham notes, hundred dirham notes, and two hundred dirham notes. Anything worth fifty or less probably isn’t going to get you into any trouble (though sometimes a fifty can be even too much for the vegetable souk), but your hundreds and two hundreds are hard to break. Most hanoots (general stores) and boutiques just have a drawer where they put their money, and most souks and taxi stands are manned by a guy with a pocket full of change. They like exact change. Unfortunately, ATMs and banks like to give out one or two hundred dirham notes, so you find yourself very frequently having to excuse yourself for handing the guy a big note. He usually either begrudgingly tosses you your change or happily has it ready and makes you feel ridiculous for even imagining it would be a problem, but on the occasion that he doesn’t, he gives you a run for your money. Literally. He takes your (generally) two hundred and just walks away, leaving you there wondering if you just got had. Some five minutes later he’s back with change and everything turns out fine (he just had to go make change), but I can tell you it’s one of the most stressful parts of buying things, especially the first time.

3- One thing that always confuses (and entertains) me is the variety of street commerce. A good chunk of our produce comes seasonally (as you’ll soon see), and a fair number of those are really cheap. Particularly cactus pears, so it’s easy for venders to get their hands on them and put them on the market, and so a lot do. You’ll find yourself walking down the street in summer, and everyone’s mother has a cartload of prickly pears for sale. You can easily find them just meters from each other, especially if you’re at a taxi or bus stand. And it’s not just cactus fruit; it’s orange juice, popcorn and sunflower seeds, beach coffee, and convenience stores. The favorite economic model is “That’s working for him, so I’ll do it, too.” Some people are disparaging of the why-don’t-you-diversify sort, but what they fail to realize is that everyone wants cactus pears. It works.

4- It’s tricky sometimes speaking Arabic in Morocco, mostly because you aren’t really speaking “Arabic,” you’re speaking Darija (as we’ve discussed plenty), but they’re kind of mixed up, so you don’t always know if what you’re hearing standard or dialect. We volunteers are taught a pure form of Darija, but most people here are so used to switching the languages around (they’re all Arabic, after all), that they can catch us off guard with some of their Fos-ha Arabic words. One of those words is “maybe.” In Darija we say “yumkin,” which everyone understands, but your occasionally careless host country national might toss around a few standard versions: “robama.” I think you can see why this catches our attention. He we are having an ordinary conversation, when the other guy all of a sudden wants to start talking about our President. Again. It was bad enough taking the heat for Bush when he was still in office (why don’t you try explaining how despite Obama being voted in, W was still in the Oval Office for a three more months), but now you’re bringing up our new guy just about every other sentence. A friend of mine was running for local office in last year’s elections and I happened to be over at his house for dinner one night when he decided to make a campaign speech to the neighborhood. When he was finished, I was convinced that his entire platform hinged on the President of the United States of America. He must have invoked Obama about sixty times, and I was starting to worry that I might have to deliver something. Of course, it wasn’t until some time later that I learned about robama. Turns out that he was more of a politician than I’d realized.

5- The word for “head” in Darija is “ras.” You could say “kei darni rassi” (“my head hurts”) or “’andek ras kebir” (“you have a big head”), for example, if you wanted to use that word. But ras doesn’t only mean “head,” you can also use it for “self,” and around here, you will plenty. You’ve got your “talla fe rassek” (“take care of yourself”) and “kan tekelm ma’ rassi” (“I’m talking to myself”), just to mention a couple. Unfortunately for our language comprehension (but fortunately for our sense of absurdity in everyday life), we learn about “head” before “self,” and so we’re ingrained with completely new expressions. Now, when I’m sitting alone at home, I’m talking with my head, so it’s not crazy. And one of our most successful jokes is to follow up “take care of yourself” with the hilarious “with shampoo.” (Let it sink in.) Yeah, brilliant.

6- Family is confusing. It’s hard enough in America or with English, but out here families aren’t only huge, they’re all around. You need to know who’s who, so there’s a different expression for each relationship. There are four different words for each of our “aunt” and “uncle:” “my father’s brother/sister” (‘ami/‘amti), “my mother’s brother/sister” (khali/khalti), “my father’s brother’s/sister’s wife/husband” (mrat ‘ami/rajel ‘amti), and my mother’s brother’s/sister’s wife/husband” (mrat khali/rajel khalti). Not to mention the eight different ways to say what we call “cousin:” the son or daughter of my father’s or mother’s brother or sister. Eventually, people get used to it, and one way that helps is that the older will call the younger by the younger’s relationship to the older. For example, I have some friends whose brother just had a baby, which would make them her uncles (they’re guys). Instead of calling her “the daughter of their brother,” however, they call her “‘amti” – “aunt who is blood-related by my father.” I know another guy who calls his daughter “baba” (“my dad”), so you don’t even really need to switch the gender if you don’t want to. Not everyone does this (other times you just call all men “my father’s brother” and all women “my mother’s sister”), but this way, in my opinion, keeps things from getting impersonal. I’m thinking about calling my new little nephew “uncle” when I get back to the States. The problem I can see is that if I was married, she’d have to call him “wife of my father’s brother.” It’d probably be best for her to just say “Gavin.”

7- There are grocery stores in Morocco (they’re something of holy ground for volunteers), but they’re usually far removed from our sites (hence the pilgrimages). We buy pretty much everything direct from the source, which isn’t only cheaper, it’s more fun; every time I go to the souk I laugh at how all the yuppies back home would be paying thousands of dollars for this kind of organic, locally grown, free-range food that I’m getting for mere rials. The thing about the souk, though, is that you don’t get as much choice in what’s available, it pretty much all depends on the season. We’ve got watermelon season, strawberry season, cherry season, date season, and just about everything else season when the produce is so fresh it’s ridiculous. Of course, the downside is that you pretty much can’t get the seasonal fruits and vegetables when they aren’t in season, which can be hard, but also makes them even more delicious when they’re finally here. It’s like the beginning of baseball season. The only downside is right now (late winter) when the oranges and clementines are gone, and nothing else is in to take their place. That kind of sucks.

8- One of my favorite things about living in Morocco is going over to people’s houses. That probably seems fairly obvious, Morocco being so well known for its hospitality, and it’s usually pretty good, but that’s not the part that always makes me smile. My favorite part is knocking on the door. In Morocco, when you want to know who’s there, you ask, “shkoon (who)?” And wait for their reply. You aren’t waiting for their name, though, because the answer is always “qreeb,” meaning “nearby.” The idea is that the person visiting is a neighbor, and thus by extension friendly, and their response gives the host a chance to recognize their voice. No one ever seems to have any difficulty recognizing my voice, but it never works for me. I just have to trust that they really are my neighbor. These days, since I live on the other side of town from my host family, I like to respond with “b’aid (far).” No one else thinks it’s as funny.

9- Another of my favorite things to do is to talk about what other people said. It wasn’t always this way; actually, it was one of the most conceptually frustrating parts to start with. I’d ask someone “What did the king just say?” and they’d always say “Gal lik …” “Gal lik?” “He told you (me)?” I don’t think he was talking to me, though it’d be nice, I suppose to get a personal message from the king. This went on for a good half year, with untold zany misadventures, until I figured out that you can’t say “He said”; you have to say “He told you” even if what he said has nothing to do with you and he doesn’t even know who you are. I love it, almost as much as I love to tell people I have something to tell them. To say that literally, you’d have to say “’Andi shihaja li bghit ngoolek,” but no one would listen because they’d be too busy perfecting a what-you-talking-’bout-Willis face. You can’t say “I have something I want to say to you,” you say “Aji ngoolek.” “Come here I’ll tell you.” I’m trying to get my community to say “Aji nsoulek.” “Come here I’ll ask you.” We’re still working on it.