前途: A Year in Morocco

So I’d heard a rumor from a fellow ETA (who lives in a more rural part of Morocco) that Morocco was going to move ahead an hour on Sunday, and then would move time back sometime in July. Due to the environment in which she lives, and having heard nothing else about it, I dismissed it as a rumor. After all, phones in the U.S. automatically adjust themselves when time changes occur.

Moroccan phones apparently do not, nor does my computer (which really should).

I found this out as I arrived at the train station at what I thought was 9:00 am for a 9:16 train, and discovered that not only was it actually 10:00 am and my train was long gone, but the next one was not until 1:16 pm. Due to the time change, I only had to wait about three hours. During that three hours, I experienced this from a guy sitting next to me: “Bonjour… bonjour… BONJOUR MADEMOISELLE,” to which I responded with a rather rude “I don’t speak French,” and an appropriately nasty look. “I speak English.” *ignores* “I just wanted to tell you that you look a little lost,” was the next attempt. “Well I’m not,” I retorted, “I actually live here.” No more conversation was attempted. Later on, I met a student from the English department.

I wandered in to buy a magazine from two guys at the train station shop, and the “shee” in my “Wash kayne shee bil-inglizia?” (Do you have anything in English?) was repeated as, “Sheeps? Sheeps?” I gestured at the magazines, he translated into French, and then we talked a little more Arabic, which was met with utter and absolute delight, as he tbarak Allah’ed me (God bless you) and then we all had a good laugh when he tried to get me to say my Arabic was better than his friend’s. Magazine in hand, no one tried French on me, although I did get a “Sorry,” and a “Hello, how are you!” on the train.

On the train, the young woman seated across from me was speaking Arabic to the family across the aisle. Her accent was a bit strange, but I didn’t think anything of it, until they started asking her about herself when she admitted this was her first time in Morocco. Turns out she was Libyan, and much surprise was had when all involved parties realized their dialects were mutually intelligible. Then the conversation turned to politics, and she was a little teary-eyed right as she got off the train, poor thing.

Then, as two trains passed at high speed, a pebble or something got kicked up, and, combined with the air pressure due to high speed, the window next to me shattered into a mosaic pattern on the outside. Let’s all take a moment to be thankful for double paned glass. I’d noticed this display of dubious artistry before and wondered how it happened. Now I know, and I have no desire to repeat the experience.

And the normalcy of the insanity of life in Morocco continues…