Ooo hey. I meant to post earlier, like after this weekend - we went to this ADORABLE town called Assilah, near Tanger, and had the coolest experience with the beach (will write more later.. promise). But, of course, scheduling was weird this week and we were basically going to class from 8:30 am til around 5 pm, one day 6 pm. And I won't be writing for a little while because... drum roll...
Rural Village Stay!! We're leaving mad early tomorrow and ahh I still have some packing to do - hence the very short little piece just so you all know what's going on.
I'll just tell my real quick story before signing out!
So before Assilah we had class, as always, on Friday. But Friday is a special day in Morocco - aside from it being the day that most people go to mosque, it's also couscous Friday! So for lunch, you can bet that a majority of Moroccans are digging into the communal ceramic bowl every Friday, enjoying that wonderful meal. But ah, you can't have couscous without washing it down with something! And my family chooses to drink leben (pronounced luh-BEN) with their meal. What's leben you say? Yeah, I didn't know either - or at least didn't know the term. Which oh.. got me in a little trouble.
So my host mom (daughter? I don't know.. the younger woman who's a motherly figure..) had just gotten out of the shower and the older woman rarely leaves the house. So my host mom asks me to do a favor.. tells me to get leben, hands me a note that has the word leben written in Arabic and Latin letters, hands me a 20 dh note (around $2) and tells me to get some of this stuff, speaking in rapid French, and tells me to go right away so we can eat. One of the only words I catch when she's describing the stuff to me is 'les vers'.. 'the greens,' or so I think. So I think I'm on a mission to get some kind of herb, I'm guessing for the older lady since she's been sick, with this 20 dh note and I have no idea how much to get. So I turn out into the little street and make my way to the nearby souk. There, I see a man selling all kinds of veggies and guess that he'd either have leben or know where I can get it. So I ask him (he has little French btw..) and he tells me I must go a long ways down the street to get some. I have no idea which stand I should be making my way to, so he ends up leading me and pointing me to a little cart. I say shukran and he leaves.
So I go up to this guy at the cart and ask him for leben, showing him the piece of paper just in case my pronunciation is totally off. The guy nods and asks how much I want. I of course have absolutely no idea, not even knowing what leben is, so ask for 10 dh worth. The guy starts scooping tons of bigger couscous into a plastic bag... I question him and say leben? and he just says yes and keeps on scooping. He then opens another bag and starts ladling some think milk looking substance into another plastic bag. Ahhh. We had this last week for lunch. It was like buttermilk or something - real thick and sour and, in my opinion, not good and not something I want to have with lunch. But anywho, I figure out that that's what I'm supposed to be getting and so tell the guy that I don't want the couscous, cause I def not supposed to get that. I hand the guy the money and wait around for a little while, double checking that this was leben, and when he doesn't give me change I walk home. Dumb.
I get home with the bag of leben and at first my family looks happy. But then my host mom looks in the bag confused, asks where the change is, and when I tell her he didn't give me change she looks real mad. Freshly showered, she throws on her headscarf and djellaba and tells me to come with her back outside. We end up walking all the way back to the guy selling leben (apparently I walked waaay too far and should have gone to a closer stand) and watch while my host mom yells at the guy at the cart, hands him the bag he gave me and demands her money back. Turns out that this was one of the carts that people come up to to have a snack and so eat couscous with leben, like cereal, at the cart before going on their way.
My host mom and I then go to a little boutique right next to the veggie stand that I'd first been to, and I watch as she gets 2 cartons of the stuff for 6 dh total. Oh. If I'd known that's what I was supposed to be getting, I so easily could have done that cause that was nothing. But omg. My host mom was super angry, cause 20 dh and 6 dh is a big difference, and she was pissed that the guy hadn't given me any change. So while she's getting the cartons of leben, she's ranting to the guy about the man with the cart, saying 'Shuma shuma!' which means 'shame!' and is used often enough when someones done something taboo. All the other shopkeepers around were of course listening and exclaiming, clearly saying things like "Oh my god! I can't believe he would do that!" and so on. So awesome. I totally brought shame on a shopkeeper in the madina. He did rip me off so I guess he had it coming, but still. I feel bad.
So yeah, I don't think my host mom was mad at me at all - I think she found it somewhat amusing. But there's my story of issues with the language barrier and having NO IDEA what I was supposed to be doing.
Talk to you after the village stay!
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