Truck Drivers' Politics

Daniel and I decided to get some McDonald's tonight. I usually don't like Mickey D's much, but tonight I was in the mood.

On our way, the truck drivers who deliver goods to the electronics store a few buildings down from our apartment building stopped Daniel and started talking to him.

Since I had walked on the other side of the truck, I hadn't realized what was happening. After thirty seconds of waiting, I went back to see what had happened. Daniel was engaged in a Darija conversation with the three truck drivers.

"Did any of your ideas about Morocco change after you came here?" one of them asked.

He wanted to know if we had thought that Moroccans were cannibals or just exotic desert people and at what point we realized they weren't. I chimed in to say that we both were fairly familiar with the world before we came here, so we didn't have such strong stereotypes.

After he had finished that line of questioning, he decided it was time to give us his view of America: "The media in the United States doesn't tell the people what is really going on in the world. Americans don't really know."

I asked for some examples, and he cited the suffering of the Palestinian people and American support for Israeli killing. He then started citing a list of American vetoes on the UN Security Council that allowed Israel to do as it pleased.

I think he realized the conversation was getting heavy and that he was keeping us a bit long. He offered to drive us out to the Algerian border sometime when we were free and then he bid us good night.


As we walked away, Daniel and I discussed the conversation.

"There's nothing I like better before I eat me some McDonald's than a good discussion of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict."

Daniel smiled and remarked, "Stuff like US vetoes on the UN Security Council makes the headlines here in Morocco. Of course it doesn't in the United States."

"Yeah, and this isn't some over-educated professional or academic. He was a truck driver."