前途: A Year in Morocco

Anyone who lives in Morocco knows that you have to pay attention to any and all important documentation that gets handed to you. Typos and errors (misspellings, etc) are common, and it is up to the consumer, rather than the producer, to make sure all the details are in order because the authorities, understandably, mistrust documentation with errors.

Case in point: the receipt I received for my carte de sejour (residence card) proudly denoted my marital status as “mariée,” or married. Lolwut? I am definitely not married, nor did I turn in a marriage certificate, which you need to do if you are married and applying for a carte de sejour. Also, as I found out upon re-entering the country on return from Jordan, a digit was missing from my identification number on the receipt, which was discovered by the guy at passport control who disappeared into another room to figure this whole situation out. Meanwhile I was just chilling at the border, unsure if I would be able to re-enter Morocco. No big deal.

Errors of this sort are most common when you have large groups of people: in groups of more than two, our waiters frequently forget an item we ordered or bring an incorrect one. (Side note, going to Spain for the day it was totally weird to have a waitress at the bar actually write down our order while standing at the table—most of the time when you go to pay your bill at a café in Morocco, they ask you to recite a list of what you ordered so they can add up the prices!)

So, it is no wonder that, when we went in a group of about fifteen to get cell phone numbers, I somehow ended up with the incorrect phone number on a piece of paper. This was quickly resolved (I had Tracy’s, and our numbers only differed by two digits at the end). I merrily waited a few months before actually memorizing this number, and for a while I was giving it out from an entry I’d saved for myself in my phone.

But it wasn’t until the other day, until I called someone to give them my number, that I realized my number had been incorrect all along! Mind=blown.

Just this morning, I went back to the paper that I was given by the cell authorities, and since it was a carbon copy sheet, I read what should have been an 8 as a 3. In conclusion, the error is mine (and probably could have been avoided if I had been given something other than a handwritten carbon copy sheet denoting my number).

I find this situation to be completely normal.