For those of you who are familiar with Facebook, you know that while you're checking out the photos of your friends' most recent drunken rampage, a little box will pop up and one of your Facebook friends (not to be confused with the real variety) will start typing messages to you. Those of you who are familiar with Facebook chat will also know how poor quality it is and thus understand why most people I know rarely use it, preferring instead AIM, G-chat, or Skype.
In fact, the means of communication for my generation of Americans has gradually migrated as we have grown up and the technologies have changed. In middle school and high school, ICQ and then later AIM were the chatting technologies of choice. No one really emailed anything of substance and there was no Facebook, Skype, or cell phone culture. In fact, cell phones were forbidden when we started high school because they were considered a part of drug culture.
But things gradually evolved. Cell phones were soon ubiquitous, and a quick phone call became the preferred way to communicate anything of any importance. Facebook came on the scene in 2005. Skype's technology made international calls free with internet access. And about the same time, texting took off, all offering legitimate ways to contact someone, albeit with different niches. And somewhere along the line, Facebook Event invites and Evite became the standard way to invite large groups of people to an event, sharing all the details and collecting RSVPs.
So, as an American these days I expect someone who wants to do something with me to use one of these many means: picking up the phone and calling me, sending an email, sending a text, using an Evite, or even sending a Facebook message. I also still accept snail mail, particularly for weddings and other formal occasions.
Needless to say, Moroccans do not share my view of the world.
Meriam: "I am mad at u"
This morning as I got on Facebok to spend my five to ten minutes checking up on friends, that little box popped up in my Facebook window and greeted me.
I knew why she was mad right away: we had planned to go skiing yesterday, and that didn't happen. There were a number of reasons it didn't happen, but in Daniel and my mind, one of the main reasons was our Moroccan friend's refusal to communicate with us.
We had been talking about going skiing in the nearby town of Ifrane since December, and we were all very excited, none perhaps as much as Meriam.
Everytime we got on Facebook, she told us how much she was looking forward to the trip. However, that was the only place communication ever happened. She never used any other means of communication to share her knowledge or expertise or recommendations about a place she was infinitely more familiar with.
Of course, this is not unusual. I have never had a Moroccan call me on the phone. It costs almost $.50/minute, and most young Moroccans seem to have concluded that no issue ever merits the importance of an actual phone call...which I find unfortunate. We Americans certainly think our friendship is worth $.50 or $1 once in a while. And no Moroccan I know has ever responded to an email or Facebook message (i.e., not chat). They just want to chat or maybe text (texts cost $.13 or so). It's exceedingly frustrating for us Americans when we want to communicate something substantial.
This week was eventful. One of our female American co-workers broke up with her Moroccan boyfriend, and so she wasn't sure if she was going to come with us. Since she was closest with Meriam (and was female) and since we're always a little afraid of how excessive contact between us and Moroccan women might be perceived, Daniel and I had assumed that the two women would arrange the details and share them with us. In fact, after settling on the day with Meriam a few weeks ago, I had explicitly told both of them to do that.
When Friday came around, our co-worker let us know she didn't want to go to Ifrane on Saturday. It turned out that she hadn't spoken to Meriam at all. So late Friday night, she gave us her phone number, and Daniel and I sent her a text asking if she still wanted to go. Our assumption was that since no email or other message with the details had been exchanged, interest had waned. She would have contacted us to double-check at the very latest by Friday night. Sometimes things slip to the last moment, but at the last moment you always make the necessary communication happen.
She never responded to the text message.
The next morning Daniel got a Facebook message indicating disappointment, but that was all. Then this morning I got my berating.
I found this horribly unjust and so decided to be honest. I indicated all of our frustration with Moroccan's lack of communication. After explaining what we were thinking, I listed all the various means she could have used to communicate with us: phone call, text, email, facebook message, etc.
The response:
Meriam: i always try to talk with u when ur online on facebook,but ur go offline quickly
That's right. We get on, look at photos, make a few comments, click on links, and we're done...which is why a phone call or an email or a text would work so much better.
She continued to say that she had tried to talk with our co-worker. So I decided to point out the cultural elephant in the room, saying:
was it all on facebook chat though?
because that's an awful way to communicate...we americans don't take it very seriously
i think if you want something serious to say, you send an email or make a phone call or even a text
also, another cultural miscommunication might be that we americans get on facebook for just a few minutes every day just to check things
it's not something we stay on all day or all night chatting
we find it strange when moroccans are on for so long
that might be why you think we get off so suddenly
we just have a totally different conception of communication and being online
I think that explanation might have done the trick, because we went on to agree that both of us could have done more to make the trip happen. And I offered a coffee as some sort of recompense for her disappointment.
I still don't understand Moroccans' communication habits. Some mix of fatalistic ideology combined with a lack of money and a differing relationship with developing technology probably all contribute to what I perceive as inconsiderate, bizarre behavior. It still seems to me that the desire to see a friend and do something together would trump financial and cultural obstacles, but apparently we just value adequate communication differently.
I try to suspend judgment and understand, but sometimes I just don't get it.
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