Just ride trains in Morocco all day. Seriously. I’m pretty sure I got more practice listening and speaking and actually conversing on a 5 hour train ride than I did in the two weeks I was in France before Uganda.
On my first train, a mother and teenage son in the adjoining car (yep, they were yelling across cars) almost immediately started asking about me and insisted that I move to come sit with them and eat their food with them. I declined and struggled to explain myself, my luggage was so cumbersome, I didn’t want to cramp them, and my stomach wasn’t feeling well (really, it wasn’t) so food probably wasn’t a good idea. I felt bad, I think I insulted them. A girl across the aisle saved me by starting up conversation and when we got off the train, stood and talked with me about her life and views on Muslim women in Morocco for a good half hour and finally parted with a hug and two quick cheek kisses.
The second train had the cars divided into compartments so it was basically me sitting there and talking to different people as they came and went. When I first sat down, I stepped into an intense discussion between a Congolese expat (and former national soccer player) and older female about how lazy the youth in Morocco are. I started nodding along, trying to keep up with the conversation until suddenly he turned to me and goes (in French, of course), “so what do you think? What are the positives and negatives?” Uhhhhh……..I’m am American, and I just got here. So then the conversation turned into how good it is to travel and all the things about culture you can learn, which then turned into a discussion on people’s perception and value of money in different cultures. The second wave of people brought a VERY heated discussion on Americans perception of Muslims and Moroccan sentiments about the war in Iraq (if you haven’t guessed, everyone here thinks Bush was a fool). And the last wave brought a sweet mom and her shy 3 year old daughter who talked with me about EVERYTHING for a good two hours and ended in an insistent invitation to her mother’s house (whom she was visiting) in Fes for a couscous lunch on Friday. And I might just take her up on it.
They told me the Moroccans were hospitable, but this was ridiculous.
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