First Day In Morocco

I’ve been taught not to trust strangers. This lesson prevailed in my head when a man started talking to me in the Boston airport as we waited to board our flight to Casablanca, Morocco. He asked why I was going to Morocco. “I’m volunteering at a school.” He was visiting family. He asked if it was my first time visiting Morocco — it was — then continued, saying that he didn’t like Casablanca, that it a very typical city, but other cities like Marrakech were definitely worth a visit. I decidedly wasn’t very talkative, fearful of this random man, and soon after our conversation began, it ended.

Seven hours later, I found myself feeling lost and confused from the moment I stepped off the plane. Literally. There were no signs directing us from the plane to the airport building, and since I was the first off the plane, I wandered aimlessly until I could follow a crowd, unsure of where my gate-checked bag would meet me. Morocco wasn’t available on AT&T’s list of countries where the international day plan operates, and my phone was locked and unable to use other sim cards. I sighed a breath of relief once I connected to the wifi and could text my mother that I’d arrived safe and sound. At the baggage claim, the same man from the Boston airport approached me and rather insistently asked if I needed a ride anywhere. Wary of getting in a car with a stranger, I graciously thanked him but assured him that I had already arranged transportation.

A lie. I had no sense of where the school was. I had neglected to map out the route earlier given that I had travel instructions from Mr. Harim, the head of the schools – a rookie mistake. But wanting to be more certain of where I was going, I frantically searched for the address of the school but to no avail. Apple Maps, unfortunately, had very limited knowledge of the streets of Morocco, although it showed that – what I’d hoped was – Berrechid was apparently a twenty minute drive away. It was around five in the morning, and I didn’t want to wake Mr. Harim, so I decided to wait for my bag then follow the instructions for finding the school that he had sent the day before: take the train to Berrechid then take a taxi to the school.

I entered the train station, and not a soul was to be seen. None of the booths were open. The security guard at the door between the airport and train station looked confused to see me, but I assumed it was just because of the early hour. I approached the lone worker sitting at the information desk and asked when the train to Berrechid was. He directed me to the ticket machines. I selected Berrechid on the screen. An hour and fifty-six minute train ride via Casa-Voyageurs. Strange. I thought it was supposed to be a twenty minute ride. I had just missed the five o’clock train, and the next one was in an hour. I felt exhausted and disoriented, and all I wanted at that moment was to get to the school. I decided to just take a taxi and hope that Berrechid was only twenty minutes away. I returned to the airport to find the taxi stand. The airport was now also strangely deserted.

I got in a taxi and showed the driver the address that Harim sent. He nodded, and we were off. I followed our trip using the location services on Maps and watched the map service that the driver was using. His phone said the trip was fifty-four minutes long, but uncertain of where I was going, I decided to trust the driver – a human instinct to assume people default to truth. As we arrived on Boulevard Driss Lahrizi, I looked around for a sign indicating that we had arrived at the British Language Academy. No one was on the street, not a car nor a person. The buildings were all dark against the rising sun. The phone announced that we had arrived, but I couldn’t find 19A. The driver drove up and down the block a couple times searching for 19A, but it was nowhere to be seen. He turned to me in confusion, but with his lack of English and my lack of Arabic or French, I found it difficult to communicate my own state of confusion to him. I had showed him the address, and he had typed it into his phone knowingly; we should’ve been in the right place. It was now almost six. Mr. Harim had given me the number of a Tunisian teacher that was meant to let me into the school once I had arrived, so I decided to call her. The phone rang a couple times before a weary-sounded voice answered. “Salam alaikum.” At the time, I had no idea what salam alaikum meant, but before long it would be one of the phrases I said most often. I said hi, introduced myself, then explained that I was in the taxi and had supposedly arrived but couldn’t find the school. I passed the phone to the driver, and he and the teacher spoke in either French or Arabic – both sounded like nonsense to me.

Eventually, we figured out that I was, in fact, not in the right place. Apparently we had arrived at the right street name, just in the wrong city. The driver typed in the new address that the teacher had texted him, and again, we were off. The new address was the exact same as the original address I had shown him, but now the phone said that we were somehow a little over an hour away. I figured the phone had just made a mistake earlier and didn’t say anything – even as I saw the sign for the airport partway through the drive and, after confirming with maps, realized that we had just backtracked the entire hour drive. Berrechid really was only twenty minutes away. We turned onto a dirt road and finally saw a building donning the sign, “British Language Academy.” At long last. The driver turned to me and said seven hundred dirhams. The exchange rate to dollars from dirhams is about one to ten, so I figured seventy dollars for almost a two hour drive sounded pretty standard. I wanted to confront him about messing up the location, because I had shown him the address in writing, giving him no excuse to have gone in the wrong direction, but seeing as the streets were all deserted, and I was completely alone, I regrettably paid him in full, thanked him, and got out of the car.

Mr. Harim later asked why I didn’t just take the train considering many of the taxi drivers often overcharge and, I guess, purposely drive to the wrong locations. He said the driver probably took one look at the address, saw that I was clearly a clueless tourist, and decided to completely ignore what city it said and simply drive in the other direction – either way, I wouldn’t have known.

My first experience in Morocco was getting scammed out of seven hundred dirhams, but I knew better than to let one incident ruin my perception of this new country.

So a few quick lessons: make sure you know where your first stop once you arrive at a foreign country is and, especially if you’re traveling alone, know if you’ll have a working phone or access to wireless internet once you arrive. Also, remember to not let one dreadful encounter close your mind to taking in new experiences and all they have to offer, because had I allowed myself to do so upon arriving at the British Language Academy, I would not have had met as many wonderful friends and made as many unforgettable memories as I did in the month I spent in Morocco.