A food update

Eating in Rabat (or at least, with this host family) is different than in Fes. People generally report not-quite-as-good-food, because I think a lot of Fesians are families with moms whose job it is to cook, whereas in Rabat the situation isn't quite the same.
Every day there are 4 meals - breakfast (bread or milwee and jam or honey or butter, a milwee is a little pancake thing - they're really good), lunch (varies -- often a tajine , generally has meat + vegetables + you eat it with bread), then a snack at ~6:30 which is identical to breakfast, and then dinner which can be as simple as spaghetti or sometimes a little more complex and resembling lunch.

There is less side dishes -- in Fes, we often had side dishes of eggplant, prunes, etc which let me have a good vegetable intake. Not so much here, unfortunately. Bread is a huge portion of my calories, and also meat. It's not terribly unusual to eat a meal of potatoes, bread, meat and eggs.

Couscous is definitely a Friday thing.

Insha'Allah

Insha'Allah translates to "God willing" but has a wide variety of meanings across the Islamic world.

In some areas of the world/contexts it just means "Hopefully," as in:
"Are you going to make it to dinner tonight?"
"Insha'Allah"


In some areas of the world it means "No," as in:
"Will we have a break?"
"Insha'Allah!"

In some contexts it means "I don't want to answer this question," as in:
"Mom, can we go get candy today?"
"Insha'Allah!"
(This is the equivalent of an American parent telling their child "Yes" as a way of avoiding the issue and then realizing 4 hours later that, as a result of thoughtless "yes"'s, the child is now owed candy, ice cream, and cookies. Insha'Allah is better! Bet you wish you knew this one when Natalie was a child, right mom?)


And lastly it means literally "If God wills it". From the wiki: 
One's use of Insha Allāh indicates not one's desire to succeed in an endeavor, but rather that the endeavor one embarks on will be within God's will, which might be interpreted as that which is best for Humanity, the Earth, and all of Allah's creation. It indicates one's desire for being in tune with God's plan... It is commonly used by Muslims, but is also common in Christian groups in the Middle East, like the Coptic Orthodox Church... The phrase also acknowledges submission to God, with the speaker putting him or herself into God's hands, and accepting the fact that God sometimes works in unexpected ways.

In the Qu'ran, Muslims are told that they should never say they will do a particular thing in the future without adding "in sha'Allah" to the statement.^[1] ... Surat Al Kahf (18):24: "And never say of anything, 'I shall do such and such thing tomorrow. Except (with the saying): 'If God wills!' And remember your Lord when you forget...'"

In other words, whenever you talk about the future, you have to say "Insha'Allah" because it indicates your desire to submit to God's will, a generally central theme of Islam (which means "submission" and a Muslim is "one who submits")

As an example of its usage, something that's happened to me a few times is I get into a cab, say something like "safarat miSr 3fak?" = "The Egyptian embassy please?" (it's the most well-known place near school, and the 3 is pronounced like you're gagging) and the cab driver responds:
"safarat miSr? Insha'Allah!"

This is a really common occurrence and I still find it funny because I really just want him to say "OK," not "hope so!". But I take what I get I suppose. 

The call to prayer

No matter where you are (even if you're up on a mountain) you can hear the call to prayer 5 times a day. Luckily I'm an incredibly deep sleeper so I rarely hear the dawn one (~6AM), but I have been woken up by it a few times. The call to prayer here is really harsh. It's like the guy is yelling at you; it was the same way in Fes. According to people who have been elsewhere in the Islamic world, this is unique to Morocco.

The exception is the morning call to prayer, which I have heard enough times to reach the conclusion that it is generally really beautiful. Admittedly I've never been more than half-conscious when listening to that call to prayer, so I suppose its beauty could be a figment of my dreams, but other people have agreed with me so I think it's actually just that the powers that be have decided that it's best to coax people out of bed in the morning rather than yelling at them to pray when they're tired and cranky. 

I am disappointed

Saw a Moroccan wearing a University of Michigan jacket today.

The tourism industry in Morocco

In Marrakech, people will throw monkeys at you, expecting your amazed friend to take a picture to capture the hilarity of a monkey running around on your head. Then he'll charge you a lot of money for taking a picture.

People will also offer anything and everything to you for free. The important thing to remember is that they are lying. Whatever they say is free is not free at all. Once, in Marrakech, we all sat down for dinner and were promised free tea. I didn't believe them and never ordered any tea, but some people did and bought it. We continuously asked them if it was free and they said yes (repeatedly). In the end they gave us the tea for free but charged us 5 dirhams for each piece of bread (it turned out to be the exact same price as the tea would have cost)

Sometimes when people rip you off they're really, really obvious about it. They're horrible actors. I asked how much some figs cost (they should be about ~30dirhams/kilo). The guy looked at me, looked at the (white) guy next to me, realized we were foreigners (my accent didn't help) and thought a second before saying "150 dirham" (in french). Generally people don't rip you off too much with food; prices are often posted and are just a flat rate. But I could literally see him thinking "how much can I rip this sucker off," he wasn't good at it at all. And this happens a lot, where people will hesitate to tell you how much it costs, look you over, and then name some really high price.


Lastly there was a restaurant in Fes, the owner of which was hilarious. Whenever we walked by he would come after us and tell us that there was a student discount and we could get this meal for 40DH instead of the sticker price of 70. I am about 99% sure that nobody has ever payed 70DH for this meal, he just tells everyone that there's a student price, even people who are clearly not in school. Also he always tells us we can see Mars from his terrace. "Come eat here to see Mars!" 

More cute pictures of my host family

My host brother 'Omar

My host brother Adam on left,

My host cousin 'Omar on right 

Our hotel in Marrakech

One interesting part about our Marrakech trip was our hotel owner. We didn't come with reservations (which was silly I suppose) so we just sort of wandered around trying to find a hotel, which wasn't hard because there were a million of them. Eventually we found this cafe hotel restaurant de france, which seemed decent enough -- we got 2 rooms, one was a four-person room (2 beds), the other was a 2-person room (1-bed). we had 6 people, one of whom was a girl (Jackie) so we gave her the 2-person room for herself and the 5 of us split the 4-person room (but one of us never ended up staying there, so it worked out well). it came out to about $5/person/night - cool.

Anyway, as we were buying the room, the owner was explaining the rules, and he mentioned (in arabic) that the doors closed at 1. We were planning on possibly staying out later that, so luckily we picked up on what he was saying and asked to clarify. We said we were thinking of coming back as late as 2 or 3, and would that be OK? He said it was no problem and we could just call a number and someone would let us in.

Fast forward to slightly later in the day, around ~8:00, and we were hanging out in the hotel room and invited other people, who were staying at a different place, over. As they entered our room the hotel manager started yelling at us, pointed at the girls, and said something along the lines of "albinaat tkhrj! mshlbnaat!" which as far as I could tell meant something along the lines of "no girls allowed". A few more seconds of us talking to him led us to be pretty sure that, yes, the problem was that we weren't allowed to have girls and guys in the same room together. This was a bit of a problem for us, because we have female friends and like to spend time with them in areas that aren't really cold (like outside). So we went to the hotel where the other people were staying, and spend a while there.

Fast forward again to slightly later and 4 of the 6 of us who were staying in our hotel headed back home at right around 1AM. The door was locked so we called the number, the owner came down and let us in. He had clearly just woken up. He counted us, asked where the other two were, and we somewhat awkwardly said they were planning on coming in a little bit.

It was clear at this point that there had been a miscommunication. I had thought there would be no problem if we came back late; it was a decent-sized hotel with a pretty fancy restaurant attached to it, so I thought that there was someone whose job it was to stay up and let people in (this was the situation for the place where the other members of our group were staying, so it was a reasonable assumption I think especially since he didn't seem to think it was a problem that we were coming back at 3AM when we first told him).
So at this point it certainly occurred to us that our friends coming back in an hour or so would possibly have to wake him up again to be let in, unless we could let them in, and we weren't sure about that.

Anyway, as soon as we said that, he got very mad, made a big show of locking the door and told us they couldn't come back tonight because he wouldn't wake up again. We wanted to ask if we could let them in ourselves but couldn't figure out how to, and we didn't have much time because he sort of stormed off.

So they slept at the other place.

Anyway, the whole thing made me feel bad because we ended up waking this guy up since we came back late. But the broader point that I'm trying to make is that hotels are way different in Morocco. Or at least this one was. And you definitely get the impression that Islamic values entrench everything about the culture -- no bringing women into hotel rooms, even with the door open, no staying out late, etc. It's sort of oppressive because it means that it's incredibly difficult just to spend time at night with friends, or spend any time with friends of the opposite gender.