Wednesday the 14
Breakfast this morning is Moroccan pancakes with cheese and jam. After that comes a trip to the Moroccan post office to figure out how to send home the lamps that don’t fit in my luggage. Something tells me that should budget several hours for this event, though I can’t imagine where they’re going to go.
This where the hours go:
I arrive at the post office bright and early. No one speaks English, but the guy behind the desk looks at my lantern and says, “Fragile! Cartón, cartón. Bubble wrap.” And he points to the souks (markets).
“Souks?” I say. “Cartón, bubble wrap – souks?”
“Yes, yes,” he says. And so I head out to the souks in search of a shopkeeper to pack items that some other shopkeeper fleeced me for.
Most shopkeepers just refuse.
I find one who says 70 dirham. I try to negotiate, but he won’t budge. So I keep looking.
I find another. He looks shady. I give him my proposition. “How much?” he says. I offer him 30 dirham. The speed with which he accepts convinces me I’m still being ripped off.
“Give me money,” he says. I tell him I want to see the box first. He acquiesces, pulls out a stool, tells me to wait on it, and disappears.
Ten minutes later, he reappears with four, flat, mangy looking scraps of cardboard. I tell him, “No.”
He’s disappointed but tells me to come with him and we run off to a hookah store that has a few beat-up boxes lying around outside. After ten minutes of him trying to convince me that my lantern will fit in a box that is clearly too small for it, I’ve had enough and I leave.
Next stop is more successful, a lantern shop that sells lanterns nearly identical to the ones I’d bought. The guy there agrees to do it for 60 dirham. I still suspect I’m being ripped off (one of the lanterns that I’m trying to pack should cost about 20-30 dirham on its own) but it’s less than $10 and as I wait on a stool as the shopkeeper’s friend runs around the souk scrounging up boxes, I’m happy with how I’ve outsourced the process.
Though it takes 30 minutes and several tries, we eventually find two boxes the right size, patch them together with more cardboard and mummify them with tape. The shopkeeper says so after using so much tape and paper, he needs more money. Renegotiating a deal like this is standard operating procedure, I stand firm, and after another ten minute finally get out and head back to the post office.
I walk in the door of the post office and set my mummified scraps of cardboard on the desk. The man behind the counter hands me a crazy looking curved knife and says, “Open.”
I pull everything back out, the guy points to the box and says, “No go.” Apparently the writing on the outside is unacceptable. We break down the first box, turn it inside out and repack the first lantern.
He points to the other box and says, “No go,” this time indicated the nice Maroc Poste boxes on a shelf behind him. I say fine, I’ll buy a box, but instead of grabbing one of the nice boxes he pulls out a beat up box from underneath the cabinet. It’s clearly someone else’s old box turned inside out, but I know better than to object and we pack the second lantern up in this box. My old box goes under the counter, presumably to wait for the next customer.
Gesturing at the loving care with which he has retaped my boxes, the man behind the counter now requests a tip. I give him 20 dirham, which he seems to approve of.
The actual shipping costs come to another 500 dirham ($75), cash only.
Really, I just have to appreciate this morning as an adventure and a story, as I put the odds of my lanterns making it home intact are slim to none.
This is unfortunate, as I’d seen a mirror already that I really, really liked. I come back to the hostel and try to navigate dhl, fedex, and Moroccan post sites to figure out how much it would cost to send a mirror home. The answer is way, way too much.
On the way home, I take a couple videos of the walk from Djemma el Fna to my hostel. Even with the video, I can’t capture how impossible it is to navigate this city.
Back in the main square that evening, I watch acrobats of all ages perform.
I see a man selling candy out of his donkey cart. A customer asks him how much for one of his huge candy blocks, but the customer’s guide answers first. “Two dirham.”
The candy seller gets flustered. “No! Eight dirham!” and shows exactly how little candy 1 dirham buys. When the customer looks away, he smacks the guide as if to say, “What were you thinking?” Don’t tell him what the locals pay – this guy gets the tourist price.
After the situation is resolved, I head over. I give the candy seller 3 dirham, ask what will you give me? Apparently this is a confusing tactic. He offers me a little piece, I say more. He throws in some more, I say more. He’s puzzled. I motion to give me a little bit of everything on the table. He says ok and starts cutting. He’s happy to have ripped off a foreigner, I’m happy that I got to try everything on the table for 50 cents, the market works!
Ever since I arrived in Marrakesh, I’d wanted to take photos of Djemma el Fna at night, but there’s too much smoke and dust in the air to use a flash, and I ended up with white splotches all over my photos. But there’s nowhere in the entire square to rest my camera on so I can get away with a slower shutter speed.
So tonight I bought an overpriced drink from Le Grande Balcon du Cafe Glacier. I have a mini tripod with a strap which I wrapped tightly around their balcony railing and spent an hour snapping away happily.
And then down to the plaza for more shots at ground level among the brightly lit food stalls. Yes, those are sheep’s heads and brains in the last photo.
I had chicken couscous from one of the street stalls. It wasn’t that good, honestly, but these are the tired chefs who prepared it.
After dinner, I drank cups and cups of ginseng tea (hunja) and a mountain of macaroons. One 8 year old girl, flexing her bargaining muscles, tries to charge me 10 dirham for a macaroon and stops her mother from accepting my 1 dirham price. Even the 1 dirham per cookie price is apparently still a ripoff since whenever I buy a cookie the food sellers applaud my generosity. The 8 year old girl and I eventually settle on 2 cookies for 2 dirham.
