Some Morocco Travel Tips and Advisories/I've Been Neglecting This Blog Too Long

Hi readers! Le bas? So some things I'd like to share, in no real particular order or cohesive pattern. I'm sorry it's been a little while, it's actually all just a sign that things are picking up here fast, and I can't believe how quickly the semester's going to fly, has flown already. Oh, proud to announce that I'm getting darn good on the French keyboard, and find my fingers paralyzed when confronted with an English one.

Ramadan update:
We are in Day 21 of the fast here, and I've observed all of them but two (a few others, I've broken the fast with just water; Ramadan is already a pretty masochistic holiday, and I did what I had to do to avoid terrible dehydration headaches). I ate during our trip to Fez and Meknés, since the restaurant reservations were already made, and it's hard to fast while traveling. I discovered this travel fact on Sunday during our weekend trip to the beach town of El Jadida (south of Casablanca). It seems that quite a few factors converged somewhere on Saturday evening to completely knock out my immune system and give me a very sore throat, aching joints, and fatigue on Sunday. I continued the fast anyway, since I got up rather late in the day, but it was the hardest fast day since the first, with switching trains, getting taxis, dragging backpacks, etc. Other than that, the days are actually getting easier, I swear. While I am still obviously hungry during the day, the hardest part of it is the social aspect; restaurants and cafés are such a big part of life everywhere, and Morocco is no exception. This means that many parts of towns look like ghost towns during the day, with cafés all boarded up (Moroccans, or Moroccan Muslims more specifically, can actually be arrested if they are caught blatantly eating during the day). Thus, ideas for exactly what to do with your extra time become much more limited (I mean, think about it, we eat out all the time in DC!). I am still filling the extra with lots of reading; I'm on my 6th book from the library, Crime and Punishment (thinking that one should last me through until daytime eating again).

Ramadan carries a few negative social side effects here in Morocco. Many people, particularly smokers, have a difficult time making it to the end of the day in a level-headed manner. Around 5:00 or so, many fights break out. Oftentimes, they are just yelling matches, but sometimes they can become really dramatic, like the one I saw in Fez: these guys were getting ready to leave a parking area when the parking attendant asked them a question. Apparently the two men were so incensed, they needed to jump out of the car, grab the attendant in a headlock, throw him up against another car and punch and scream a few times. Moroccans, when they see a fight like this, will sometimes shout "ash'al" or "light," saying that if a cigarette is that important, smoke it, don't fight. Ramadan also becomes quite dangerous around the hour of futour. The streets are relatively quiet all day, but around mealtime, you might as well consider the streets as you would at 3 am. The reason for this is everyone goes home to their families or meets their friends to eat; the only people left out on the streets are those who have nowhere else to go. A group of my friends discovered this when they went to Casablanca this weekend. They were walking as a group, using common sense, when suddenly they got mugged out of nowhere. They were all okay but for scratches and bruises, and were able to hold on to their stuff, but it understandably shook them up pretty badly. Just a word to the wise if they want to visit Morocco during Ramadan (and, yes, I'm being very careful about when I go out, and, no, I am not a participant in the smoker fights). Speaking of smokers, don't underestimate the "all-night" thing. Our guest last night actually took his lit cigarette into the Turkish toilet with him--I guess you need something if there's no magazine rack.

Family Update:
Everyone here is doing well, al-hamdulilah. Ramadan has gotten easier for them, too, and we have comfortable evenings together. TV is doing fine, too (I know I talk about him a lot, but he's just the most outspoken member of the family--it seems his only commercials are either about food or cell phones, and if they start out showing something else, it's really just an incentive to buy food or cell phones). Sabah and I watched a movie the other night, Red Eye, in French. As the bad guy chased Rachel McAdams around, Sabah would shout "wili, wili, wili" and shake her hand kind of how you might if your wrist was sore; it's the Moroccan equivalent of "tsk, tsk, tsk" and the finger-waggle. It's quite contagious, and I had joined her by the end (the bad guy just wouldn't die!). Widad paints her nails every night in a different color. Sometimes she likes to paint mine, too, but only when I am tired and our room is nice and dark. This leaves me with blinding prom-like pink polish swirled on this way and that in the morning; I stealthily chip away at it all through Arabic class. I can't say it's worse than any of the manicures I gave myself at 16.

General Travel Tips and Advisories, etc.:

--Advisory (given very lovingly, of course): A Moroccan family will not be afraid to feed you at futour until you are at the point of standing over a toilet of any style praying not to think about food.

--Advisory: The idea of "large" coffee, does not, I repeat, does not exist here (though I've heard rumors of a Starbucks in Casa). First of all, coffee as you may know it does not exist, it's actually lait au café. You can get it in an encouragingly American-standard small, Moroccan standard HUGE cup, but when you open it, you realize they've left room for a circus above the coffee.
Good thing I like tea, and am not actually an addict.

--ALWAYS ask a Moroccan taxi driver if the meter is running--they will definitely scam you if they refuse to turn it on. We ended up walking out of a cab yesterday in the middle of the street (obviously stopped), because the guy wanted 20 dh. (dirhams) for a 6 dh. ride-don't think so. Once you have settled on a cab, however, hang on for the ride. It seems that somehow in the Moroccan Drivers Ed. (I'm told such a program exists) that about 250 pages of a 300 page manual were pulled concerning things like, oh, proper lane usage, motorcycle awareness, tailgating, stop signs, crosswalks, sidewalks, pedestrians in general, and pulling out in front of large vehicles moving at high speeds ("HOOOOOOOONK!"). Here's a typical taxi ride: you climb in on the kitschy rug-covered seats, fight about the meter, you make sure the driver actually knows where you're going (often they'll pick you up, nod impatiently while you say your destination, and ask for directions five blocks later), and your finally off. Street spacing is all relative, there are no lanes, there are gaps, and you are sure as hell gonna squeeze yourself in there if it looks remotely impossible. While you are busy counting the hairs on the back of the head of the driver in the car in front of you, you realize you must have sucked the pedal-assisted motorcycle next to you under because it's disappeared. Suddenly you have no time to reflect on this because you are in the opposite lane of traffic passing and you must squeeze back over because their light has changed and their COMING! Now you're magically not only back on your side of the road, but next to the sidewalk, and, OH MY GOD, you're going to hit that woman, how do I say "look out" in Derija!? Oh no, good, she looked up and dived just in time. After repeating this sequence and rolling some stops, the driver pulls up with an inconvenient flourish at your destination in front of a large line of traffic, which immediately starts honking menacingly while you fumble white-knuckled for the proper change.
Don't even ask about the bus.

--Never underestimate the audacity and stupidity of a tourist, particularly traveling in groups. The other day my friend and I were working on our Arabic homework under some trees at the beautiful Andalusians gardens of the Kasbah Oudaias when a large French tour group complete with flag-waving guid trampled through. The guide spotted us and our books, asked where we were from, and announced, "Look, please, we have American students here studying Arabic." I swear, they looked at us, by which I mean they tourist-gawked, like we were some 9th century fortification wall brought by Martians. On the way back out, they felt it necessary to pepper us with questions in French, but, Arabic book in hand, I was tempted to say I had more pertinent language skills to master (though French would have been handy to say that now, huh?).

--That all actually brings me to the comment that I am no longer fazed or impressed by original conventions of multi-lingualism. Moroccans are a breed unto themselves, speaking 7 or 8 languages each, and always in the midst of learning new ones. Our tour guide at the Hassan II Mosque the other day (an annoying tourist trap if you are, duh, not going there to pray, but very beautiful) was learning Polish, while conversing with me in MSA/Derija/English, and barking at other guides in French. One of my friends asked her homestay sister which of her native languages she thinks in, and she responded that she thinks in ideas and then chooses how to express them. While all of us do that to an extent, I don't do it out of choice, I do it because I'm too lazy to think it out in general. Sometimes I get to practice my Spanish here, but the problem is that I store Spanish and Arabic in the same brain compartment, where they sometimes fight and jumble out together, leaving me with sentences that sound like "Bghit ir ila al playa hada semana." I know, I can't understand it either.

--Please forgive all terrible grammatical errors. I know some of you are the cringe-at-all-poor-grammar types, and I am too in hindsight. My worst writing habit is not thoroughly proofreading. I seem to really like comma splices and run-ons and leaving out words. I sometimes even mis-transliterate words (though I could have maybe pulled that one over on some of you). Anyway, if it ever gets so bad you can't understand the sentence, just give it up for lost because it probably wasn't that important anyway, or understand that I am not on my home computer and just don't want to take the extra time to go back and nitpick.

Ok, safi ("enough"), at least for this entry. Thanks for reading. As for this weekend, which you may know is my birthday, I haven't finalized the plans yet--working on sluggish Ramadan time. I'll let you know how it goes. Now, if you'll excuse me, it's almost time for futour, and I'm gonna go set the table. Have lovely weekends yourselves!