mistaken identity

Since I seem to be recounting my time here in terms of weekend excursions…this past weekend I ventured to Chefchaouen, a town that’s built into the mountains. The entirety of our visit to Chef was rained on which made for cold feet, but also a beautiful misty mountain view. All the buildings in the city are white washed with blue accents and the town has a laid back feel which (along with the large amounts of weed you can find there) attracts a huge hippie crowd. In other words, stoned shopkeepers and grungy European tourists jumbled together among white and blue walls in a city on a hill. That’s Chefchaouen for you.

During our weekend trip, my friends and I naturally resembled the many tourists who were in Chefchaouen at the same time as us. Unfortunately, I’ve gotten to a point in my time here where I take serious offense to someone confusing me for a tourist. Having lived here for two months I think I deserve at least a notch above tourist. Anyways, here are a couple of mistaken identity stories from the past two weekends.

One of the shopkeepers we walked by in Chefchaouen thought he’d try a clever sales pitch by pointing to us and saying I know who you are. American students studying in Spain. This is the point where I would like to brush my shoulder off and rattle off in perfect Moroccan Arabic, Actually, I have lived here for two months, I study Arabic in Rabat, and yes I know you’re trying to rip me off. Only problem is that my brain isn’t quite ready to deliver that entire sentence in Arabic with perfect fluency. So, instead I settled for a La shukran (no, thanks), which seemed to be enough Arabic to make said shopkeeper smile. Case of mistaken identity #1

Two weeks ago, after arriving in Tangier we had to take a taxi to get from the train station to our hotel. Now, in Morocco, there are two types of taxis that you can take: (1) petit taxis which stay within each city’s limits and run on metered pay, and (2) grand taxis with whom you negotiate out a price. The petit taxis are usually the safer bet because when there’s a meter involved I’m less likely to end up on the short end of the money stick. Upon exiting the train station, we were immediately harassed by grand taxi drivers who offered to take us to our hotel for the “discounted” price of ten euros or a hundred dirham. Mistake #1, I AM NOT EUROPEAN. Mistake #2, I know for a fact that cab ride is supposed to cost at most fifteen dirham. So, instead we crossed the street and attempted to flag down a petit taxi. The first few drivers we encountered refused to turn on their meters, the first guy asking for thirty dirham and the second one asking for fifty dirham, claiming that our bags were so heavy he needed extra pay. We scrambled out of those taxis just as quickly as we had jumped in, saying Hshuma (Shame on you) along the way. Eventually, a third driver picked us up (with meter) and we ended up paying about ten dirham for the whole ride. Case of mistaken identity #2