Time in Morocco

As with many aspects of culture, America and Morocco are distinctly different regarding their understanding of time. The way this is described in textbooks is that America is a “event-focused” culture while Morocco is a “person-focused” culture. In other words, in America people conform to and work within schedules events. Conversely, in Morocco, events are developed around the needs and schedules of people. A great example of this is that stores in Morocco do not have set hours (although I still look for them on doors to no avail). Rather, stores open and close when the owner arrives, and when he feels like leaving. If the owner wakes up late, has a long breakfast, or runs into a friend on the walk to work, the store will open later without concern. Moroccan time can also be described as non-linear. For example, when our friend at the T’Hanut opens shop, he may easily serve three customers at once. Unlike in the States where people form a line at a counter, here, But’hanuts smoothly multitask getting and giving money and goods to multiple people at a time. Note to self: if you wait behind somebody in line in Morocco, you will never get to the counter. As a result of this nonlinear activity, Moroccan time is much more fluid. Getting a taxi is another good example. Since taxis only leave when they are full, a person may find that they are last person to fill a taxi and leave right away, or they may sit at the taxi stand for hours waiting for the rest of the taxi to fill up. One must be flexible when a commute can easily double or triple in duration based on luck. One must also be careful how they describe things in relation to time. Recently, I found this out the hard way. We have been told in our language class that the common phrase “Men B3ad” (the 3 is a sound that doesn’t exist in English) means “later”. This can be a very helpful phrase when used correctly. The other day however, I discovered that “later” is not a sufficient translation. After three weeks of only cold water bucket showers in the bit l’ma, I was dieing for a shower and getting impatient, particularly because the last week has been uncomfortably cold, especially at night when I would normally bath. Under these conditions, I can’t find the personal strength to dowse myself with freezing cold water. Finally when I got home from school one day, I said to my host mother in broken language, “Is okay? I want hot water”. She gestured to the soup boiling over the burner and said something I didn’t really understand, but took to mean “I can’t because I’m using the burner/pot right now“. To ease her mind I said “Waxxa, Mashi Mushkil, Men B3ad (okay, no problem, later) which to me meant “when you are done making soup”. Two disappointing days later, and still filthy, I was forced to ask my language teacher for help. After some heated discussion with my host-sister, it was discovered that because I said “men b3ad” they assumed I didn’t need a shower for a week or so. Rather than "later" they thought I meant "eventually" when what I really wanted to say was "right now! Please, for the sake of everyone around me, right nooooow!". Lesson learned; time and especially time expressions are very relative. Luckily, that night I got a shower and I even had another one this morning! All is well.