Niels Hoven

Thursday the 15: I wake up and decide not to shower. I’m in Marrakech – really, what’s the point? I head outside the walls and on the way start to notice a number of unusual feelings coming from my stomach. But I’m heading toward nice parts of town, perhaps even with toilets with seats and toilet paper, so I decide to persevere.

On the way, I pass through King Abdullah’s Cyber Parc, a beautiful park with free WiFi and internet terminals. I try to use one, but it seems to be out of service.

I walk along the outside of Marrakesh’s ancient walls to Bab Jdid, supposedly the city’s best preserved gate. I think I may have been misinformed, as I am less than impressed. I still get stopped by a policeman who maybe makes me delete some of my photos.

I see my first camels, parked behind some cars.

The weather in Morocco is so perfect that the streets are lined with orange trees, loaded with fruit.

Get to nice part of town and am forced to pay 20 dirham for two scoops of ice cream so I can use their bathroom. I continue on, get a gyro (served in a baguette, how unusual. And still not as good as the one by Djemma el Fna) and use the cafe’s bathroom. I continue on to the Jardin Majorelle. Recently purchased and renovated by Yves St. Laurent, this is the most beautiful garden in Marrakesh. I wander around, walk through a museum of Arabic art, begin experiencing severe stomach cramps, and use the bathroom again.

On the bright side, I also take one of my best photos ever. I only had one chance to take this, as I feel a little weird about standing around snapping photos of strangers without asking, particularly in an Arabic country. I’m very happy with the result.

After the garden, I want to see the tanneries, but it is getting late and they’re on the other side of town. So I get a taxi. Despite bargaining him down to half his original price, I’m pretty sure I got ripped off since I paid 30 dirham and the driver offered to wait for 30 mins to pick me up afterwards and take me back for just another 10 dirham. Oh, that and the fact that as we pull out he grins at his friend, slaps me on the arm, and gives his friend a big thumbs up.

I still end up lost because my driver drops me off at the wrong gate trying to set me up with a friend of his who offers to show me the tanneries. I refuse on principle, though this may have been a mistake as this friend was the only guide I saw all day who actually had sprigs of mint to plug my nose.

The tanneries in Marrakesh still tan their hides in the old tradition. Which means using a lot of pigeon poop.

My understanding is that you can just wander right into the tanneries and start snapping photos, and so locals line the street offering to “show you the tanneries” for just a few dirham. To get someone who actually knows something, I was told to ignore them and walk into the tannery, at which point the owner would show me around, for a tip.

Unfortunately, it was nearly 4pm and the tanneries had already closed for the day for prayer. So after walking up and down the street three times, I paid a random guy 20 dirham to show me around two tanneries. Negotiated 10, but I actually really enjoyed it so when he popped the extra 10 at the end I happily gave the extra $1.50.

Getting a guide was actually more complicated than I thought. One guy who spoke fairly good English told me he’d show me around for 20 dirham. I told him 10 and said I’d come back. On the way back, I was accosted by a tiny old man who spoke no English whom I sent away, but he kept following me from about 50 feet away, presumably to collect a commission if I went into a tannery and bought something. Upon coming back to my first guide, the two of them them got into an argument over who I belonged to.

I tried to negotiate my first guy down to five dirham but he played his trump card and told me to go with the other guy. Damn! 10 dirham it is. But he dropped me off at a tannery and told me to go explore, I told him no, I wanted to understand what I was seeing and he and found he the guide I liked.

 

I saw an Arabic tannery, specializing in sheep and cow hides. The hides are soaked in lime to take off the hair, then pigeon poop so the ammonia can tan the hide, then a flour mixture to lighten them, and a few various other steps. Each soak takes week with the entire process taking months.

I also saw a Berber tannery, specializing in tougher camel and horse hides.

There are piles of fat trimmings that must be removed in the beginning of the process.

 

On way home, decided I wanted a jellaba, the traditional hooded robe of the Berber desert nomads. A heavy wool robe will be just the thing to curl up under on a chilly Seattle night. The first store I stopped at was a tiny hole in the wya far from the souks. The shopkeeper proposed 350 dirham, so I offered 75. Another guy came in while we were bargaining and I got them down to 320 before I gave up and left, following which it was back to the hostel to use the bathroom again.

Traffic jams in Morocco are a little different from traffic jams in America. Cars, donkeys, motorbikes, pedestrians – it’s all here.

On my way back, I walked through Djemma el Fna, again filled with the usual snake charmers, monkey handlers, and so forth. The “performers” here take panhandling to a new level, from harassment to straight-up intimidation. I met a few girls in the hostel who took a picture of a performer and were immediately surrounded by larger Arabic men yelling inches away from their face and demanding money for taking the photo. Like the old “windshield cleaners” in New York who would wipe your windshield and then demand money or threaten to break it, women will grab your hand and start a henna tattoo, then demand hundreds of dirham in payment.

So on my way back to the hostel I walked through Djemma el Fna taking pictures of everyone in sight, but without paying a cent. Turnabout’s fair play.

For every performer, there’s about five large men with him who scan the crowd, looking for the slightest hint of anyone taking a picture. By the time I got through the square I was followed by quite a few very loud angry men. To simply matters I only spoke back in Norwegian. One guy gave me very passionate “Fuck you!”

You can see him coming for me in the last photo.

I felt quite a bit better after that, and after emptying my insides in the hostel I was ready to get back out and bargain for a jellaba.

I decided I was willing to pay 150 dirham for a djellaba (about $20). Many locals wore them, and knew there was no possible way they were paying 150 dirham for them, so I was sure I’d find someone somewhere who would sell for 150.

The first few stores in the souks offered to sell at 500 or 600 dirham and laughed at my counteroffer of 75. One guy did offer one made from a much cheaper material for 150, but I wanted heavy wool.

Finally, one guy gave me a first offer of 200 dirham, which told me I was on the right track. I couldn’t get him under 180 dirham for a color I didn’t really want, but the next shop had the exact size and color I wanted and I walked out with a 150 dirham jellaba. Awesome. I’m getting this bargaining thing down.

The cool thing about Morocco is that every day gets a little bit cheaper as you figure what things are supposed to cost.

Afterwards I went looking for some mix to make the ginseng tea (hunja). I had one guy fill a bag with mix for me (street price several hundred dirham). I asked him how much tea it would make, he told me 20 cups, so I offered him 20 dirham, the price I’d pay for those 20 cups in Djemma el Fna. He wasn’t expecting that and told me to get out.

But the next shopkeeper agreed, quite quickly actually. I feel much better about my deals if my price gets declined a few times first. (Though I’m mildly concerned that the spice mixture may have been cut with something cheaper.) But I’ve got hunja, and that’s what matters…

Malcolm Gladwell writes about the difference between maximizers and satistiers. Maximizers will search for the absolute best product for their needs, or the absolute best deal on that product. Satisfiers just think, “Well, this is good enough,” and go ahead and buy. In the long run, maximizers do come out ahead utility-wise (slightly better products, slightly lower prices) but the satisfiers are actually happier.

One explanation is that if you’re a maximizer, all it takes is one person to find a better deal to ruin your day. All of a sudden you regret your purchase. But a satisfier isn’t affected in the same way. They bought because the product met their needs at an acceptable price, and that still holds.

I’m very much a maximizer, but I’m working on becoming more of a satisfier.

Markets like those in Marrakech are a maximizer’s hell. But the experience has been good for me. I’m very happy with my jellaba purchase and that’s not going to change, even if someone else buys one for 50 dirham.

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.

I’m posting this from the bus on my way to New York City. For $22 one-way, the new DC2NY bus offers comfortable seats, a free bottle of water, and… wait for it… free wireless internet! This is awesome. And so are my friends, whom I called last night and with less than 24 hours notice lined up places for me to stay for the next week.

I gave myself a 45 minute safety margin this morning to get downtown and catch the bus, which, thanks to DC’s first snowfall of the year (I can’t remember the last time I saw snow!) wouldn’t have been enough. Thankfully, my mom happened to pass me at the bus stop and dropped me off at the Metro station, following which I arrived at the DC2NY bus with 4 minutes to spare.

There are a bunch of discount buses (the “Chinatown buses”) that run from DC to New York. At first, they didn’t seem to me like they could be profitable. Even on the DC2NY bus, which costs an extra $10 or so (worth it for the internet access, in my opinion), seats only cost $20-$25. There’s 60 seats on the bus, but there’s only 16 passengers on here right now. If you assume the bus can maintain 50% capacity, 30 people paying $25 each only comes to $750.

It’s 220 miles from DC to NY, at (optimistically) 7 miles per gallon that’s 30 gallons, so about $100. Perhaps more realistically, at 3 miles per gallon, about $200. After deducting costs for paying a driver, insurance, tolls, and so forth, I guess you could clear a few hundred dollars on a single trip. Adding in the profit for a return trip for New York, it’s not a bad gig. Seems like a pretty narrow profit margin, but if you’re the guy at the top, hiring drivers while you sit on your butt and run a one or two man operation out of your living room, it could be a pretty reliable stream of income.

Tuesday the 13: If it weren’t for the random friendly Australian girl in my hostel dorm, I would never have known that breakfast was included. Every day gets better and better!

Breakfast was a bunch of puffy crunchy dough things with cheese and jam, and of course, the traditional Moroccan fresh squeezed orange juice. Over breakfast, I got to know an Australian named Phil and a Scotsman named Alan and we traded similar tales of woe at being ripped off by the locals.

I felt a lot better after hearing about Alan’s 200 dirham wheelbarrow transport and 70 dirham orange juice (the OJ should cost 2 or 3).

There’s one special tourist-oriented artist’s bazaar in town with all prices marked, no haggling, so we decided to start our day there, just to get an idea of what things were supposed to cost. After a few hours in the bazaar, we felt much better prepared for the souks (markets). On my way home, I got my first fresh-squeezed orange juice (with no ice, as my guide recommended, to lessen the chance of getting OJ thinned with questionable water). A tall glass of fresh orange juice, straight from Moroccan oranges for less than 50 cents. I could get to like this place.

Back at the hostel we rested up with more mint tea and fresh pomegranate. I also got Phil’s recommendation, as a medical doctor, to eat the local yogurt immediately upon arriving in a new location. The theory is that you start building up good bacteria to fight the bad bacteria when they inevitably arrive.

We hit the souks, where I was fully inundated by the sights, sounds, and smells of Marrakesh.

 

I found the wool souk, where Marrakeshis were busily dying wool bright colors.

 

Later, I bought a couple lanterns for about $30 total, plus some local pistachio yogurt on doctor’s recommendation. Though seeing as how the yogurt was about room temperature, coming from a street vendor, I’d say there’s a reasonable chance it will cause food poisoning rather than prevent it.

Back at the hostel, I traded souk stories with an Australian girl, who joined me for dinner where I polished off more tangine, my first real Moroccan couscous (delicious), and more yogurt.

I returned to the hostel, where after a few hours I discovered a way around their wireless router’s malfunctioning DHCP, got internet on my laptop and used Skype to call home for 2 cents a minute. Technology is wonderful.

Phil and Alan returned, and after hearing Phil’s stories of the most delicious gyros/doner kebabs in the entire world, I ventured out with him to find them. He was right, best gyros ever. Instead of being drowned in yogurt, they were covered with some mysterious Moroccan spice sauce. Wow.

Phil also introduced me to the local version of macaroons, crunchy coconut cookies sold by the local street urchins for 1 dirham each, if you can bargain them down. Actually, it’s pretty clear that 1 dirham per cookie is still a ridiculous markup, but those are the tourist prices, so that’s that. In fact, while we were buying two coconut cookies from an eight year old girl, a random Marrakesh guy stopped and checked in to make sure the little girl was ripping us off adequately. “Two cookies, two dirham? Ok.” And he was off.

After the cookies we were thirsty, so we got more fresh squeezed OJ. Mmm…

And then we were thirsty, so we got more amazing coconut cookies.

And then I remembered hearing about the hot ginseng tea available in the southern end of the square so we tracked that down… It was warm and spicy and sweet and burned like mad going down. God, it was good. (It also comes with the local version of spice cake, which was not so good and was very similar in taste and consistency to a scoop of a chocolate PowerBar.)