Rials, Francs, and Dirhams...And Everyday Drama at the Souq

During our language lessons in my Community Based Training(CBT), I remember thinking how it would be unlikely that I would have to use numbers past a hundred at least for a short while. Going to the souq (outdoor market) during CBT was a wake-up call because no one there used dirham, the name of the national currency.  I was still trying to memorize the names of the veggies and fruits I wanted to buy. I still did not have a grasp of how things were priced or even why or how vendors would compute rials or francs to give prices.

Moroccan money

Rial and francs are simply the names of the currencies Morocco has had over the last 100 years. According to the authoritative Wikipedia, the rial was the name of their currency from 1882-1921.  Later on, the rial was converted to Spanish pesetas in Spanish Morocco and the Moroccan French Protectorate area adopted the franc. Once Morocco gained its independence, they changed the currency name to dirham. However, the name change did little to change years of history as people were already used to pricing everything in rials and francs. So for foreigners, the challenge is to refresh our mental arithmetic to be able to figure out how much anything costs and not get hosed in the process.

At Ain Leuh Souq

Rials are very popular at the souq and I´ve heard francs being used when buying appliances, negotiating rent, and other high ticket items. So for example, produce like onions, tomatoes, and potatoes, was yelled out in rials: tlatin(30) rial, sttin(60) rial, and tmnin(80) rial, and then for some of the expensive veggies like avocados, tlata miya u tmnin(380) ryals. My initial reaction to these large numbers was a “what the…@#&%!” Am I hearing this right? 30, 60, 80, and 380.  Can't be!  And thinking that I won't be able to buy much of anything with my Peace Corps allowance.  Thankfully, the mul xodra, vegetable vendors or literally masters of veggies, call out the prices of their entire produce line continuously.  The second time around I heard rials,  which was a relief, but now I had to figure out what all those numbers were in dirhams.

Fortunately, our Moroccan Arabic textbook has a graph with detailed instructions breaking down the rial, franc, and dirham confusion. Here’s how it goes:

Rial, franc, & dirham breakdown

Basically, one way to remember it all is that a dirham is the equivalent of 20 rial and 100 francs.  After a while you get used to hearing the rial prices at the souq, but sometimes you have to do some quick thinking when negotiating for a meal at a restaurant.  The other day I was at the Essaouira fish market looking to buy a plate a seafood.  Essentially, you go up to the fish stand--fish still wiggling and flopping around and crabs still snapping in defensive retreat--select what you want, and then haggle a price with the vendor.

At Essaouira a ready-to-grill fresh fish stand 

As you can imagine, I am no match for a professional haggler who knows the cost of his product and knows his rials and francs frontwards and backwards, but a measured pause can actually work to one's favor; that is, if you don't do your arithmetic out loud or use your fingers to calculate it all.  On the photo, you can see me staring off in the distance trying to compute the price.  The vendor, chilled out as ever, gives me the classic yawn as he awaits my counter offer.   

I still have those about-face reactions when people decide to use francs. The other day I went to buy a foldable clothes hanger for indoor air drying (great for the wet winters), and the gentlemen told me "ashreen alf"(20,000). I responded with a somewhat critical and surprised tone, "SHNU! Ash qulti?" (What! What did you say?). To which he responded, Iyeh! ashreen alf wlla rb3 alf rial (Yeah! 20,000 or 4,000 rial). After hearing the rial, I then proceeded to do some quick calculations without staring out yonder. Luckily, the round numbers were easy to calculate. So the item was actually only 200 Dirham, about $25. A bit steep, but not an overblown price. So I responded in typical Moroccan fashion, "Hadak gali bzzf, gali 3lya, nqsh swiya a3fk" (That is very expensive, expensive for me, lower it a bit please). I was ready to compute the new prices. I was ready to divide by a 100 or by 20, but it never happened as the gentleman stuck to his price and told me, “hada tamn mzyan, jouda mumtaza, u safi” (This is good price, excellent quality, and that’s that). It was a disappointing bargaining attempt, but nevertheless a learning experience.

Bargaining can be a lot of fun. When I step back to watch Moroccans do it, it’s like watching a mini-drama escalate to a climax that ends in either a deal accompanied with a handshake and a couple of God phrases like llah yxlf and/or llah yrHmu walidinik (God replenish you and God bless your parents) or a solemn goodbye followed with still a number of God phrases like, llah ya3wnk and/or llah yfdk (God help you and God protect you).

Fruit stand at Sefrou souq

It all starts with a question that is sometimes accompanied with a serious look as you try to discern the price and try not to give the seller any nonverbal clues that would reveal your interest in the product. The price is given. The buyer looks surprised, eyebrows go up, eyes open wide, and the jaw drops. The seller is sometimes indifferent or sometimes fires back with a few statements to prop up his goods. The buyer counters with his opinion of the product or shoots down the assertions of the seller with arms flapping and sometimes a little saliva flying out from all the hard Xs, breathy Hs, and the gargled Ghr sounds in their speech. The arguments cease and the buyer or seller offers price alternatives. The alternatives open up another round of arguments with sometimes some white lies about competitor prices, sulking looks from the buyer, and the occasional silent treatment to see who will give-in first. Then finally, ultimatums are given. The buyer pleads and the seller reasserts. Sometimes the buyer caves in and other times the buyer throws his final bluff, the slow walkout, hoping the seller will finally agree. Sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't. For some ladies, that’s the drill just for buying a few of kilos of tomatoes.

Price haggling is certainly a skill worth mastering. In most cases, my Moroccan appearance automatically gives me the regular Moroccan price, but that doesn't mean I can’t bargain that price down. I just start lower than many of my fellow volunteers. It’s comforting and nostalgic to go to a supermarket where all the prices are labeled, but it is definitely not as exciting. I like to see some drama from time to time even if it’s just about a few kilos of tomatoes and a few dirhams.

The Slurrrrrp

Medina Harira

I remember the day when I was handed my first bowl of harira, a dish that ranks up there as one of my all-time favorite Moroccan dishes. It´s a chunky tomato-base soup with chickpeas, lentils, onions, parsley, some vermicelli  and sometimes with a bit of meat.  I proceeded as I normally do with my soups to dab the bread and to munch on the dunked portion. I went about it without a care in the world completely immersed in the smells and the warmth of the soup. I was focused on my bowl, my bread, and devouring it all. As my tunnel vision began to dissipate with every bite, I remembered that others were at the table with me. I looked up from my bowl and saw my host family staring at me. I carried on with my bread dabbing, but much slower this time. As I placed the doused bread in my mouth again and savored the bite, everyone began to laugh. I laughed along with them and then tried to tell them in my limited Arabic how delicious the bread dunking really was.

My host father then proceeded to show me his way of eating the soup which involved grabbing the small bowl from the bottom, swirling the soup around in a gentle circular hand motion, and then to avoid the burn sssslurrrrping it with authority. I saw the rest of my family do the same so I decided to give it a go. My first initial slurps were painful lessons that quickly taught me to create the great vacuum that would enable me to slurp the scolding hot soup without having my lips, tongue, and throat suffer 3^rd degree burns.

Moroccan mint tea aka Le Whisky Marocain

Although I have burnt the roof of my mouth and tongue on occasion, it has not deterred my will to master the slurp. The slurp is not only used for soups; it is also commonly heard in many cafes where hot sugary mint tea and coffee are served. Often, when several teapots are delivered at the same time, you can hear for a very brief moment a symphony of slurps. There is the full, open, and loud slurp that is usually followed by a deep sigh of contentment, and the shallow, less overt slurp that is usually accompanied by a measured sip and a comparable sigh. I have also noticed that some simply seem to enjoy slurping and engage in what other Moroccans regard as long somewhat overdrawn slurps. My host father from my home-stay would probably fall in that category. Every here and then, we would compete to see who could generate the most volume and who could drag it out the longest.

Not everyone in Morocco slurps and I have encountered some Moroccans that dunk their bread like I do. I continue to dunk my bread, but I have also added the slurp into my eating and drinking repertoire. It feels good to slurp and to have Moroccans offer a bssha or “To your health” as I do so. If you haven’t slurped loudly and freely in a while or ever, I invite you to do so. Forget the spoon, grab the bowl or mug, swirl it around a bit, and then slurp like there is no one but you and your soup, tea, coffee, or whatever it may be. If you get some strange stares, tell them that this is how they do it in Morocco.

Learning darija: I speak in gaffes

Now that the official training is done, the real learning now begins. My fellow site mate working at a dar chabab, youth center, introduced me to a great guy who speaks English tremendously well who I've decided will be my Arabic language for the next 12 months, God willing (inshallah). He also happens to run a small sandwich shop that makes some killer sandwiches. His name is Ali, but everyone calls him Mister Ali, and his deli is named Snack Ali. We have lessons on the weekends at a local cafe. Right now, we’re in the process of rehashing my old lessons, correcting pronunciation, and finally putting all the disparate vocabulary and verbs into coherent sentences.

Couscous Fridays with the whole fam

I thought I’d share some of my language gaffes for everyone’s enjoyment. I laugh at myself all the time along with those willing to hear me out. I thought I might be pretty successful as a stand-up comedian in Morocco. My family is always asking me to say the most mundane of things at least two or three times and every time they crack up laughing. I’ve had a difficult time pronouncing some letters and will often confuse similar sounding words. So here’s a list of things I’ve said. I hope you enjoy it:

1. At the end of a meal, one way to stop the incessant calls to keep eating is to say “May God replenish you”, which in transcription would be written something like this: llah y-xlf. In my futile attempt to sound local I ended up running everything together and saying something in the neighborhood of “God is green pepper”, which is pronounced as llah flfla. My tutor worked with me on the Arabic ح , which is sometimes represented by a combination "Kh" or "X" showing me how I needed to almost rev back as if to clear my throat.  I have finally gotten down the God phrase, but for joke’s sake still include flfla so after every meal I tell my family “May God replenish you with green peppers” or llah y-xlf b flfla.
2. I was eating some olive oil with some fresh out of the oven bread for a snack one time and decided to share a bit of scientific fact I had remembered from my days watching the Discovery Health channel, which I also miss minus the gory surgeries. I wanted to tell my family that olive oil is good for the heart so I told them, "zit zitun mzyan l  l-klb," as I pointed to my heart. When I said this, my host father and host mother gave a me strange, bewildered face, and my host brothers laughed.  He then proceeded to bark followed by the transliterated word klb and the qlb while pointing to his heart. He did this a couple of times so that I could understand the difference in pronunciation.  The Arabic ق otherwise represented by the Q in English is a /k/ sound that is produced much farther back in the throat.  Thank goodness for context.  As you may know, dogs in most Islamic countries are considered to be impure animals not generally kept as pets.  As you can imagine, I am extra careful now telling people they have a good heart.
3. Over the course of the last several weeks, I've been confusing the following words: mosque, Friday, university, and association. In transliteration, they are, written in the same order, the following: jamﻉ, jmﻉa, jamﻉa, and jamﻉiya. As you can see, they're all in the same neighborhood so it's easy to forget which one you need to use at any particular point in time.  In fact, in setting up meetings, I’ve ended up telling people, “The meeting will be on the mosque at 10AM on the university, and please ask your Friday to be there.” Then I wonder why people don’t show.
   

This is all I have for now. I’m sure I’ll have some more in the near future. When I come across others, I’ll remember to share it with yall.

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If you'd like to hear and learn the Arabic alphabet, you can do so by visiting these two links:

http://mylanguages.org/multimedia/arabic_audio_alphabet.php

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ANIoxAxruys

Wide-eyed in the Land of the Far West

Arid hills of the Middle Atlas

Greetings from the land of the far west, Morocco. According to history--and I am paraphrasing what was said to me, which was probably paraphrased from some historian and to that I´m adding a few colorful details--Arab explorers sometime around the 7th and 8th century AD weary from the unrelenting Saharan sun and exhausted from crossing the arid rocky terrain of the Middle Atlas upon seeing that they were met with an ocean said to themselves, “That's it, the end of the world.  This is as far west as we can go.” One of the Arab explorers followed, "Yall can go back, but there's no way in the Islamic version of hell that I'm crossing the Sahara again." So he and others stayed.  After having a very nice tajine cooked most undoubtedly by a local Amazigh guide, and of course having a bit of tea, they, without asking the local guide for the name of the place, decided to call their newly discovered territory Al-Maghrib, the land of the far west or land where the sun sets.

As you have noticed from my blog title, I have adopted a Moroccan name. Yousef, whose English equivalent would be Joseph or in Spanish José.  I was donned the name by my host dad and mom from my training site. They thought that Jonathan was a little too difficult to pronounce and thought that a more appropriate name for me would be Yousef. Other Moroccans have complimented me on the name saying it is a good name so I decided to stick with it.

Peace Corps Director David Lillie

So here I am already three months in and done with our Community-Based Training(CBT). I swore in not too long ago at a really fancy hotel ballroom with amazing panoramic views of Fez. The event was quite memorable. It had the feel of a commencement ceremony. Two trainees from our language groups presented speeches in their respective Moroccan languages kind of like the speeches given by our salutatorian and valedictorian. They were selected by our Language and Culture Facilitators (LCF) or what you could consider to be the faculty.

US Ambassador to Morocco Thomas Riley and Nancy Riley

In addition to the faculty, the administrators were also present. Our Country Director, David Lillie, was the master of ceremonies, and the keynote address was given by the ambassador who also conferred upon us the title of Peace Corps Volunteer (PCV).  Many of our host family members made it to the event, applauded our achievement, and at the banquet incessantly and emphatically demanded that we sit, eat, and drink much like they had done for the last couple of months. It was a nice cap to the 11-week training period.

Training

The pace of the training was somewhat exhausting, but I actually wish there was more of it especially language. We had a Moroccan Arabic textbook that was made by Peace Corps Morocco staff and volunteers, which I thought was really good in terms of its methodology and its substance.  The LCF's knew that at the end of the training we would be to some extent on our own getting to our sites, doing a bit of shopping, searching for lodging, and getting acquainted with our counterparts and ministry delegates, so they wasted no time on theory and taught us whatever was necessary to survive those first few months.

The language training is an intensive curriculum that packs in the equivalent of two to three semesters of language courses into 11-weeks.  We covered the imperative, past, present, and future tense forms of verbs, how to use articles properly, possession, common adjectives, a huge laundry list of vocabulary, and a load of stock phrases used by many Moroccans.  

I remember past tense took an entire semester at my old high school. Note however that I said covered and not learned. Some were able to retain more than others, but I think we are all going through the process of defragmentation at this moment. We got so much information in such a short period of time and miraculously much of it is stored somewhere in the brain, but it’s like you need to reorganize your brain or review the information so that you can begin to put all pieces together.

At times, it felt like I was cramming for a final exam everyday. I placed my Moroccan Arabic textbook under my pillow as I had done prior for previous college exams, but this time around the process of learning by osmosis did not yield the same results. Perhaps Arabic script does not diffuse or is not absorbed as quickly or maybe my brain does not have the adequate receptors to properly retrieve the information.  Some volunteers broke out flashcards, played Arabic charades, and others closed their eyes and meditated on some of the common phrases like Buddhist monks. I saw a lot people slap their heads and faces, pull their hair, and forcibly squint their eyes in utter frustration. I did and am still doing a combination of all those things. It would be interesting to find out if any of the latter physical methods work better than others.

I once saw this documentary on how the brain works on Discovery Channel, which I greatly miss, about how information is stored but how it takes different triggers like a smell, sound, touch, or some visual association to restore it from the depths of one’s mental archives. Our LCFs did a pretty good job of trying to create situations that would help us associate words with actions through various mock plays, dialogues, drawings, or simply going to the store and trying out all our new vocabulary with the mul hanut, convenience store owner. When I am scrambling for a word, I usually flashback to those situations and in some cases can come up with a word or two that can explain my latest predicament.

In addition to the language lessons, we were given an overview of Peace Corps’ approach to community development and how it pertains to our particular focus. Peace Corps Morocco has at this moment various sectors: environment, health, youth development, and small business. According to the director and if I remember correctly there are either 200 or 300 volunteers in Morocco making it one of the biggest programs worldwide. Morocco also has one of the longest running programs since Peace Corps’ inception, and the small business unit is the newest addition to the PC Morocco portfolio. Per the Moroccan government’s invite specifically the Ministry of Tourism and Artisana, the unit was created with the directive to foster the growth of those two sectors with a special interest in handicraft and textile production. Our program managers provided us with a brief overview of the sector, which according to them contributes to nearly 20% of their GDP. Quite an astounding figure I thought. So as we muddled through our language lessons, we were also given a lot of information to prepare us for our role as small business development volunteers.

All in all, training was a blast. There were plenty of awkward moments of complete silence with host families and many others filled with laughter like when I introduced Sumo wrestling to my host kid brother. My host mother cooked some amazing meals like a delicious oven-cooked chicken with a parsley and lemon glaze and a bunch of other seasonings and with a ton of olives. For someone who enjoys olives, Morocco is about as close as you can get to olive heaven. The chicken was served in a large platter with the whole chicken in the center and a moat of chicken broth and green olives all around it. Absolutely delicious!

Not so delicious was the steamed sheep’s head we had for leid sghir, the dinner to break the Ramadan fast. The sheep’s brain was served on the side. My mother gave me the honorary first try at the brain. I can’t say that it tasted anything like chicken. It was more like a bland, white spongy mush. With a little cumin and salt I was able to take a few more bites. One of my host sisters played with the sheep’s ears as though they were conversing with one another. After the games, everyone sunk their bread bits into the head and began to take it apart. My host father took a jaw and began gnawing at it. I was also given one of the jaws, which I gathered was a precious portion as it contained some of the best meat, and just followed my host dad’s gnawing example.

During training there was still time for fun. I was able to take a couple of hikes, one near Azrou, my seminar site, and another in Ain Leuh, my community-based site. The view from the summit of the Azrou mountain ridge was absolutely breathtaking.

You could see miles and miles of rolling hills, clusters of cedar trees, narrow plots of green, recently plowed plots waiting for the winter rains, grazing pastures, and a concentrated bunch of apartment buildings sprawling out from the slope of the mountain and extending throughout the valley.

You try to capture everything within the expansive view, but you find yourself so inept in doing so that after a while you give up and just begin to marvel. Aside from the hikes, volunteers organized movie nights, dance-offs, a talent show, and various exercise groups did everything from yoga to intense aerobics. There was a little bit of everything for everyone. I led a number of yoga classes, which were quite spiritual I might add. A group of us would go to the roof of the auberge (youth hostel) and go through an hour long class as the sun would rise over the mountains. It was an awesome way to start the day.

The swearing-in ceremony was kind of a bittersweet moment. You’re excited to have reached this moment with your fellow PCVs, but sad to see them go. Also, the (LCFs) that we clung to no longer would be there to clear up those incidences when we meant no offense when we accidentally called a man a woman and vice-versa. I met some great individuals and we shared some great moments. Now the fun really begins in my new city, my new home in @#$%^& (Sorry, Peace Corps policy does not allow me to disclose).

Thanks for reading.