Final Day of Morocco

Day 5 Morocco
Sept. 14

I’m writing this 2 days after my last day because I ran out of internet so hopefully I remember everything or at least the important stuff. I woke up midmorning and went to breakfast with my friend. We decided to walk around Casablanca because my friend was in and around Marrakech for all four days on a field trip. I showed him where the medina was and we walked through a little.
One crazy thing that happened was when we were walking past this one stall. This guy led us over to his stall (we were walking towards it anyway) and we started browsing his familiar merchandise. He told me to choose something and I chose a piece of pottery I had been eying. He gave me a ridiculous price and I told him the most I’d be willing to pay. Every sales guy I asked a price from previously always gave me an extremely high quote. However, you could always expect to barter him way down. This guy however refused to go any lower. My friend urged us to keep moving and by walking away I was expecting him to give me a better price (this had worked many times in the past). He grabbed me and gave me only a slightly lowered price that I also refused. I told him what I’d be willing to pay (6 bucks for some plates and a pot) and he said no. His mother was there and he kept telling me this was his mother and I told him I didn’t care (this guy was getting increasingly hostile). We kept moving and finally he said 6 dollars. Since that was an extremely good price I turned and handed him the 6 dollars (something in the back of my mind, which I should’ve listened to, told me to get the merchandise first before handing over the money). As I reached for the bag, he pulled it away from me. I asked him what he was doing and he told me it was a down payment. Before I could grab the money out of his hands he gave it to his mother. Lucky for me my friend was there (he’d been pushed out of the way by the sales guy) because while both mother and son (the guy was pretty old) were looking at me, my friend snatched the money out of the mom’s hand and we both walked quickly away. The guy swore at us but we didn’t really care.
After that, I felt like it had put a little damper on my Moroccan experience. We kept going through the medina. A lot of the stalls were closed but some were open. Just about all of the stuff we had seen before in Marrakech. There were also shops located in actual stores along the main street. While walking along here we noticed that there were a ton of hookahs. My friend and I wanted to buy one each and send it back to our friends at home, but when we walked to the post office, the guy really couldn’t understand me and we kind of gave up on the idea. We walked back to the ship and had lunch with my roommate. He hadn’t been out in Casablanca yet (he was on the same field trip as my friend to Marrakech) and so after lunch I went back out (I really try to maximize my time off the boat) into Casablanca for the final time with my roommate (I forgot to mention we had to be back on the boat by 6:00). Since I hadn’t gotten a clear quote on the packaging of a hookah, we went back to the post office. The guy gave me a quote that would’ve cost more than the hookah itself so I decided that I’d officially give up the idea. While walking back, we stopped by one of the souvenir shops (it had the same stuff in the markets but at fixed prices) and I saw the piece of pottery I wanted at the stall this morning (the one with the argument) and saw the price ended up being 270 Dh cheaper (that’s somewhere over 15 bucks) than the one at the stall. My roommate and I looked around the stall and found all the stuff we’d seen in the stalls for way cheaper. When we were at the cashier, the guy gave us a 50 Dh discount so we were happy about that and I felt like I got some closure on that morning’s event.
It was getting closer to the time on the ship and we walked back and briefly went through the medina. My roommate went by one of the stores on the main street and bought a painting. We walked back and got on the ship with a comfortable amount of time.
Reflecting on Morocco, it was an amazing experience. I had some preconceptions about Spain and so I wasn’t really caught off guard when I visited there. However, a place like Morocco, I had no idea what it would be like. It was only a few days before I went there that I knew they were mostly Muslim and very similar to the Middle East except for more Western tendencies. The whole Islamic aspect, like I said earlier, fascinated me. It’s such an intriguing subject that people often misconceive and get the wrong picture. I do have more respect for the Muslim culture. Seeing hundreds of people lined up to pray and then bowing down in front of the Mosque was awesome. There was a good deal of poverty there but much less relative to many countries. I can’t wait to (hopefully) have experiences like this in future countries that I have no preconceived ideas about. What’s crazy is all the types of people I’ll be seeing: I’ve already seen Europeans and Middle Easterners, but will also see Africans (not African-Americans – one girl already made this mistake), Indians, Asians, and white people in South Africa probably. I am specifically looking forward to Ghana, Africa which is our next stop. I know a lot of people want to see pictures and believe me when I say I’ve been trying. Every time I log onto my blog, right before I post, I’ve tried to upload pictures but with the exception of one time, it’s always failed. Our ship’s internet system is horrible and slow. So I’ll try again in Ghana and hopefully I’ll get some select photos up from past ports.