{"id":8,"date":"2010-08-18T16:58:42","date_gmt":"2010-08-18T20:58:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/jalyhe.wordpress.com\/2010\/08\/18\/moroccans"},"modified":"2020-11-02T04:24:52","modified_gmt":"2020-11-02T04:24:52","slug":"moroccans","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.jaly.us\/?p=8","title":{"rendered":"Moroccans"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

Moroccans are all kinds, just like any other people. But\u00a0they are all fascinating to us.<\/span><\/p>\n

The most Moroccans we got to meet are merchants, guides, and\u00a0guardians for vehicles. Merchants are like elsewhere, selling items big and\u00a0small; but the difference is that their stores are packed into large bunches of\u00a0thousands in a square mile that it is confusing and fascinating at the same\u00a0time\u2014confusing because once one gets into the souks it is very easy to get lost\u00a0and almost impossible to accurately locate oneself; fascinating because with\u00a0seemingly hundreds of shops next to each other selling basically the same ware,
\nit is very hard to fathom how one could decide on buying from one rather than\u00a0from another. Of course most of the stuff is not marked with price, so\u00a0comparison shopping cannot be done easily.<\/span><\/p>\n

In cities or in tourist attractions, guides abound wanted\u00a0show us around for a fee. According to tour books, there are two types of\u00a0guides: official ones and faux guides. But we couldn\u2019t tell whether which type\u00a0each is, at least not with any confidence. The several that professed to be\u00a0official guides showed us picture IDs which are of such low qualities that a\u00a0laminated picture ID designed by a seven-year old could look a hundred times
\nmore official. And when we showed a lack of interest, one guide was willing to\u00a0lower the the official price of about 100 MAD (Moroccan dirham, locally\u00a0shorthanded as DH) per hour. There was also a young man who showed us a tannery\u00a0(dyer\u2019s market, but I suspect it was not the real one, but a small tourist trap\u00a0nearby). He spoke good English, pushed us hard to buy things, and refused to\u00a0accept a small fee. On the way out, I found that he probably was paid 50 or 100\u00a0DH by an elderly person near the entrance of the tannery.<\/span><\/p>\n

Then there are guardians, who are everywhere a car may be\u00a0parked. According to our tour book, there are official ones as well. They may\u00a0ask for about 10 DH for a night. But there are certainly more unofficial ones.\u00a0In Ifrane we stopped our car at a place near the town square where there was a\u00a0parking ticket machine AND a guardian. If we were to park there, we would end\u00a0up paying 10 DH for a couple of hours, barely enough time for a lunch, verses\u00a010 DH for the afternoon and overnight if we parked some 50 yards (meters) away\u00a0on a side street. In Todra Gorge, the self-proclaimed guardian was a boy of
\nabout 12 years old, who spoke a modicum of English (Moroccans generally speak\u00a0Arabic, and French, their official languages). When we gave him 10 DH, he\u00a0wasn\u2019t satisfied; only when I pointed out that we barely stopped for 10 minutes\u00a0that he backed off, saying \u201chave a good day, my friend\u201d.<\/span><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
Snake charmers on Jemaa el Fna<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

On Jemaa el Fna, the main square of Marrakech, there are\u00a0always people selling stuff and food, as well as artisans of all sorts: there\u00a0are snake charmers, musicians and dancers, people wearing fancy dresses, all\u00a0waiting for someone to take pictures for 10 DH. Supposedly there is also a\u00a0dentist who would pull teethes in front of spectators, but we didn\u2019t get to see\u00a0this feat. In Almoravid Koubba, the overseer told us the same five English sentences\u00a0(roughly) five times, transmitting no meaning because his English was so very
\nbad, and would refuse to take a tip less than 10 DH.<\/span><\/p>\n

Of all these people, most are men (or boys). Women can be\u00a0seen, although in much smaller proportion to men, but they usually don\u2019t interact\u00a0with customers (especially in Marrakech). The only exception I found in\u00a0Marrakech is a woman who operated a small \u201cteleboutique\u201d in a small alley near\u00a0our hotel, Jnane Mogadore. She apparently run the store alone, speaks good\u00a0French and enough English for me to buy the phone card and the put extra money\u00a0into it. In Ifrane a couple of hotels had a lone woman taking charge of the\u00a0reception desks for the two hotels I visited, and they spoke enough English to
\nconduct the business, although when I asked whether she spoke English one of\u00a0them said \u201cnot really\u201d. While people running hotel businesses generally spoke\u00a0English to some degree, those in the restaurants may or may not. <\/span><\/p>\n

Police is a different matter. Unlike in the US, Moroccan\u00a0police is usually not found driving around in patrol cars, but usually\u00a0congregates in small groups at fixed locations. We were flagged down getting\u00a0outside a small town by a group of about six. Apparently I passed a car where I\u00a0shouldn\u2019t, right before the place where they were stationed, although I really
\ncouldn\u2019t understand why\u2014I was not driving at a high speed, and the road was apparently
\nnot marked for no passing. The officer in charge was very polite, and attempted\u00a0to give me a short lecture. After seeing that our French was terribly bad and\u00a0couldn\u2019t get what he was trying to convey, he shortened his message with a\u00a0single sentence, of which we caught the last word \u201cAttention\u201d, and waved us by.\u00a0In other parts of the country we were stopped by police check points a couple\u00a0of times, each of which they simply waved us by without questions or\u00a0inspections. During Ramadan we saw a group of three or four police officers
\n(including a woman) passing the boring afternoon times in a restaurant, either\u00a0chatting on and off or nodding away in sleepiness. They were not eating\u00a0anything; and the restaurant was mostly empty.<\/span><\/p>\n

During our three days\u2019 stay in Ifrane, we met three families\u00a0of regular people. Each of these had one or more who spoke English, which made\u00a0communications with us easy. The first family we met were two young sisters,\u00a0named Inman and Ramni\u00e8 (sound). They no longer lived in Ifrane, but came back\u00a0during this time to be with their family. The second family was of three\u00a0generations, with the grandparents, a daughter, and a granddaughter named Maya.\u00a0We were surprised to learn that the grandfather is an official working for the
\nPrime Minister. The third family was visiting for the day from Fes. The\u00a0surprising fact of this family is that the young man spoke not only Arabic,\u00a0French, and English, but also some Chinese. It turned out he is an engineer,\u00a0worked in Qingdao (famous for the only type of Chinese beer seen oversees) for\u00a0six months cumulatively. Beside him, the family consists of his beautiful\u00a0sister, his reticent brother, both of who are high-school students, and his\u00a0apparently well-educated parents. His father spoke some English as well (much
\nmore than our French).<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Moroccans are all kinds, just like any other people. But\u00a0they are all fascinating to us. The most Moroccans we got to meet are merchants, guides, and\u00a0guardians for vehicles. Merchants are like elsewhere, selling items big and\u00a0small; but the difference is that their stores are packed into large bunches of\u00a0thousands in a square mile that it […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"site-sidebar-layout":"default","site-content-layout":"","ast-site-content-layout":"","site-content-style":"default","site-sidebar-style":"default","ast-global-header-display":"","ast-banner-title-visibility":"","ast-main-header-display":"","ast-hfb-above-header-display":"","ast-hfb-below-header-display":"","ast-hfb-mobile-header-display":"","site-post-title":"","ast-breadcrumbs-content":"","ast-featured-img":"","footer-sml-layout":"","theme-transparent-header-meta":"","adv-header-id-meta":"","stick-header-meta":"","header-above-stick-meta":"","header-main-stick-meta":"","header-below-stick-meta":"","astra-migrate-meta-layouts":"default","ast-page-background-enabled":"default","ast-page-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"ast-content-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-travel"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.jaly.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.jaly.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.jaly.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.jaly.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.jaly.us\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=8"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blog.jaly.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":461,"href":"https:\/\/blog.jaly.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8\/revisions\/461"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.jaly.us\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=8"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.jaly.us\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=8"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.jaly.us\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=8"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}