culture II (or: don’t go to Marrakesh)

When someone says that people from a particular place are friendly, it is invariably a conclusion drawn from a tiny number of anecdotes or encounters- and everyone understands this and nobody minds.  When we hear someone say “people from Pittsburgh are really nice, we don’t worry whether the assertion has been proven to scientific significance, we just accept the statement and move on. 

If I wanted to avoid that kind of overgeneralization, I would say this:  “Most people in Marrakesh are probably nice, but you probably won’t be meeting those as a tourist.”  However, I think I prefer to just stick with standard conversational procedure, and leave it at: “Everyone in Marrakesh is a real asshole.”



We didn’t like the hustling in Tunisia, but Moroccans have a reputation to uphold, and Marrakesh is the epicenter of tourism in the country.  We were pitched a Sahara excursion on the train ride down.  As we were walking across town to our hostel, someone draped a live snake around Cari’s unwilling neck.  As we walked through the narrow alleys with our big bags on, one young lad followed us for minutes, determined to give us blatantly false directions on how to get where we were going.  When I finally stepped between him and Cari and told him we didn’t care what he said, and we just wanted to keep walking the direction we were going, he swore at me.  A surprising number of our interactions in Marrakesh ended in physical contact and obscenities.  It didn’t matter:  he enlisted two helpers to continue hounding us to turn around and go the wrong way.  And why the hell did he care so much about which way we walked to begin with?  If you change direction (and are then led around the long way) maybe you give a tip.  If you’re already going the right direction (and we were) you don’t need a guide.

A henna-applicator toting woman wrenched Cari’s hand out of her pocket and had a death grip on two fingers (I tried to dislodge it and couldn’t) as we shouted at her that we weren’t paying for it.  She still demanded payment as she roughly scraped the henna back in to her plunger- and cussed us out- when we refused.  Another woman tried to force a bangle around Cari’s wrist.  I was quicker that time and tossed the bangle on the ground.  She cussed us out in Arabic.  So many of the jerks went for Cari that I found myself feeling like I needed to do a better job stopping them, and each encounter made me resolved to be more of a jerk myself the next time. 

Now, we are both pretty cheap, and certainly on a budget now, so maybe someone who doesn’t mind handing out Dirhams left and right could have a good time here- but I prefer to think that what the jerks in Marrakesh need is more people like us.  Not all cultural differences are beautiful or cute or need to be treasured.  I realize that it is only like this because there are so many tourists, and because it works, but the culture that has grown up around the tourist industry here is “bad.”  The world would be a better place without it.

It also backfired- we resolved to punish the area by spending as little money as possible.  We had four nights on the calendar for Marrakech but left after two.