My Daily Moroccan Life, Part 5.

There are basically no trash cans on the streets of Rabat except by the tram stops and occasionally one or two in Agdal, but there are people who clean the streets all day every day. They use -- get this -- giant palm leaves to sweep the streets, then they pick up the garbage and put it away. Also, much like in Europe, it’s pretty common to hose down the sidewalk in front of your shop, so I’m constantly stepping in “street juice.” (This is an inside joke between us Americans… at Pre-Departure Orientation, we were told NOT to drink the street juice, and all we imagined was nasty liquid flowing down the streets of Rabat, when in reality, street juice is juice sold on the street. I promise we’re a semi-smart group of kids.)

Every day on my way to school, I have tons of fruit because my former and current host moms think I’m malnourished or SOMETHING, so I have been giving it to the same homeless lady and her young daughter every day on the way to school. I think I’m going to get the girl a small toy or something on Christmas, even though she definitely does not celebrate Christmas. But anyways, this week I had an extra croissant and I thought, “this is going to be the best donation yet,” but that was the ONLY morning that they weren’t there! Big sad.

Mira is determined to do every single cultural activity in Rabat during our time here, so I have decided to mooch off of her research/organization and tag along! This week, we went to the opening celebration of Jazz Au Chellah, which is a Jazz festival that will be happening all weekend. The opening celebration consisted of 4 white men playing the saxophone at the end of the tram line, and then on the tram! On the tram is where I experienced immediate good karma because we had prime seats in front of the band, but then they moved away and we couldn’t hear them. An old lady got on so I gave her my seat. Then right after I did that, the saxophone sirs came back and stood directly in front of us! It was like a personal concert.

I was trying to pronounce the Darija word for “rebellious” when describing my pig to my host mom, and she proceeded to act it out, which meant that my sweet, tiny, elderly host mom was punching the air and snarling. Rebellious.

I keep telling my host mom that one day she will wake up to the call to prayer at 4am and it will be ME singing. I don’t know why I said that in the first place, but she thinks it’s funny so I’m going to take it.

I was in a taxi with Leah and Chloe the other day (we were two blondes and a ginger), and the guy put the meter on the highest possible speed. First of all, the meter is supposed to start at 1.40, and it started at 2-something. Then, we were in the taxi for LITERALLY 30 SECONDS, and the meter was already at 5dh. So we pointed to the meter and told him in Darija that it wasn’t working and that it was too fast, and he got mad at us. So we continued to tell him that it was too fast, and he asked us if it was our first time in a taxi in Morocco. I firmly told him to stop the taxi and he didn’t, and we all asked him a few more times and he finally pulled over, angrily. Then he told us to pay him “what we owed.” We owed him nothing. Chloe gave him two dirhams because she just wanted to leave, and she was in the front seat so I completely understood, but she hadn’t gotten out when he started yelling at us to give him more, so we paid him because the person in the passenger seat is always the most at risk. Anyways I wrote down his taxi number so I’m going to report that asshole. Nobody messes with us.

Apparently swears are super bad here, and NOBODY can say them, even though kids in my school are constantly teaching them to me. Like if I said “f*ck” in the US, my dad would be mad, but the average high school teacher or student wouldn’t even notice. But here, it’s a serious insult to call somebody gay, or even to say that they are a “son of a b*tch,” etc. You can’t even say it jokingly. The only exception is the n-word. You see, most Moroccans refuse to admit that they are African, and instead refer to black people as “African.” The Moroccans are not African at all, they are Moroccan. But, that said, non-black Moroccans do think that they have the right to use the n-word even though they deny being even African. It’s very weird, but entirely socially acceptable. If a black American was called the n-word on the street by some stranger, it wouldn’t even be seen as an insult… they use other words.

PRAYER BUMPS!!! This is my favorite fact. Oh my goodness, prepare yourselves, blog readers. Throughout my time in Morocco, I have been noticing that there are a lot of (mostly male) people in Morocco with purple circles on their foreheads, similar to a large bruise. It is very prominent, and I had absolutely no idea why so many people have this mark. But, Google knew, thank goodness. Google said that this bruise is called a “prayer bump” and is caused by praying so much that one develops a bruise on their head. This is because Muslim prayer involves touching one’s forehead to the ground a bunch of times. The coolest of facts.

By the way, last week’s French film was about a man who decided that he wanted to be the only person in the world to wear a jacket, so he started bribing people to be in his “movie” where he had them promise to never wear a jacket for the rest of their lives, and then he ran out of money so he started killing people and removing their jackets. And he kept adding deerskin clothing to his outfit, which was weird. And his fringe jacket spoke to him. Then he threw a rock at some kid who was watching him, and the kid’s dad got mad and shot the jacket-man in the end. It was a great movie, and I’m very glad that I invited my new Moroccan friend because the film was a great representation of how I spend my time and who I am as a person.

Everybody in school calls me “Kika” (cake, because Madeleines are tea cakes), and random kids that I have never spoken to will yell “HEY KIKA” in the schoolyard and it’s funny but also a little weird.