Searching for Something #1: Our Very First Scam – Marrakech & Casablanca, Morocco

1: Our Very First Scam

8 Feb 2002
We’re Alive!
I’m sitting in an internet cafe in Marrakech, and who would have thought that the QWERTY keyboard is not universal. Those darn French people have their own keyboard that’s quite similar, however certain letters such as the “A” and “M” are simply in the wrong places. It’s taken a little while to remedy the problem (since all the OS messages are in French), but yes! I can finally type. Although every time the browser crashes I have to reconfigure the settings.

But anyway… enough with the ranting. As you can see, since the whining has begun, I am alive and well.

Our First Scam
We flew into Casablanca two days ago. Travelling elicits new thoughts and emotions within me. Other people make New Years resolutions, I make trip resolutions. I have a number of biggies to figure out on this trip, but one of my resolutions is to be more open and outgoing, receptive to talking to people and being cheerful and happy back to them. So OK, maybe this wasn’t a particularly wise resolution to have when entering the Casablanca medina, an old, often walled part of town with souqs (markets) and kasbahs (fortified castle-things). After happily taking the local train and bus into the center of town, we pulled out the trusty Lonely Planet, found a hotel, dumped our stuff, and headed out to see what was to be seen. Keep in mind that at this point, we’ve just finished travelling for about 18 hours.

The medina was small, but a maze of shopkeepers and people. Both Josh and I are getting stared at a lot (could it be the green hair and the shaved head, I wonder?), but we figure we’re just the tourist marks. Lots of stuff to look at: a heaping vendor cart of snails with people crowded around slurping snail juice and escargot from little tea cups, kids playing soccer everywhere, little shops with tons of cool lamps, teapots, pottery I can’t buy.

Anyway, after half an hour or so, a couple of men come up to talk to us. They are college students. They want to practise their English. They help me find the item that we’ve been searching everywhere for – toilet paper. They tell us folklore about medicines (cumin + ½-cup of hot water fixes upset tummies), education, their families, etc. We sit down in a tea shop and have a great conversation for a couple of hours about religion (did you know you could see Allah in the palm of your hand?), Osama bin Laden, and the health benefits of hashish, among other things.

All in all it was a great afternoon… until we were ready to leave and they at once start hounding us for money. “But, but, but, I thought you just wanted to practise your English?” We were guilt-tripped into a scam and gave them the equivalent of 9 dollars, which may not be much in US standards, but is a lot considering our hotels are costing about 5 dollars a night. Oh well. The end of our first scam. Which we later read about in the Lonely Planet as the most common scam in Morocco. That’s what happens when you sleep on the plane instead of studying your guide book. Hey, at least we were smart enough not to get stoned with them.

Redemption on the Train
The next day, we hopped on a train for Marrakech. Despite everything from the movie Casablanca, there really isn’t much to be romantacized about the real Casablanca. It’s a big modern city filled with modern cosmopolitan people. So we left.

Now on the train ride, we met Ahmed and Brahin, two men from the seaside town of Agadir who work for the United Nations doing something like protecting the rights of Moroccan workers. The only issue with this situation was that they didn’t speak a word of English. However, I am delighted to report that I managed to chat with them for much of the train ride in my high school French – Madame Varma would be so proud. So my faith in the travel gods has been restored… and we might even head down to Agadir to stay with Brahim.

Marrakech…
is ultra cool. We are staying in the medina, a block off the main square. OK, this really is like something out of an Indiana Jones movie. At night, the square transforms into a magical place. All the food stalls come out and sell all manners of things – freshly squeezed OJ, nuts and dried fruit, kebab stands where you pick what you want to be grilled, steaming pots of stews, sheep(?) brains, and heads of various animals, whatever your heart’s desire. Dancers and musicians wander around. Henna artists. The locals mainly congregate around the performers and the storytellers (unfortunately for us, the stories are in Arabic).

Everyone else congregates around us as we walk through the square. Everywhere we walk, Josh and I are on a strict snake watch, since the first time we walked through I almost stepped on a cobra. As I backed away in horror, the snake man put a little garden snake thing around Josh’s neck (it peed on him!). So now, we walk around eyeing the various baskets and bags lying around – strict snake-watch.

That’s all for now. Time for me to head to a hammam (Turkish bath).