Exceptions To The Rule

One of the first things you learn when you come to Morocco is how to haggle. After nine months, I am by no means an expert, but I do have a grasp of bartering basics.

So now I'm constantly on the lookout for Moroccans who want to cheat me out of a dirham or two...or five or a hundred. And there are many of those Moroccans. In some restaurants, the prices fluctuate mysteriously depending on the customer or the waiter. In other situations, a quoted price often isn't the paid price unless you remember it and hold the Moroccan to it.

It's tempting to say that as a rule Moroccans are always looking to make a buck off of you.

However, this isn't always the case, as two recent events have revealed.

Item number one
A month or so ago, I started standard Arabic (Fusha) lessons with a new tutor. Although he has no experience teaching or tutoring, he was highly recommended by a Moroccan friend who studied English with him in college.

"One time when we got our papers back in class, I read his, and it was just like a newspaper editorial. The style was amazing."

On top of this, he does something few Moroccans do: "He has even read novels in Arabic."

So now I have a Moroccan tutor who speaks fluent English, writes eloquent Arabic prose, and has even read novels in Arabic. But since he has no experience tutoring, he was hesitant to set a price for our sessions. He said he was happy just to help me. I pressed four, five, six times. He wouldn't even give me a range of prices.

Finally I just set a range of prices. He picked a number towards the upper end, but not the maximum amount I said I would pay him.

I think it's a good deal, but I don't really know. I've never done bartering that way before.

Item number two
In another case of Arabic lessons, a French woman I know is also looking for an Arabic tutor, but for a Darija (dialect) tutor. She is working with the regional administration as part of an exchange between Meknes-Tafilat and the Centre region in France, but hasn't found anyone willing to tutor her for a reasonable price with regular meetings.

So I asked one of the brightest students in my classes if she wanted to tutor this French woman. I explained the situation, and I asked how her French was. She hesitated at first, but finally she told me that she always had the highest grades in her Arabic-French translation class. But then she laughed, in a strange gesture that was meant to deflate any hint of pride that might have come across in the sharing of such information.

The big concern for the French woman was money. So I asked my student how much she would charge.

She replied, "Oh, I don't need the money. I'll just do it for free."

"But couldn't you use a little extra money on the side? What if you want to buy something special? A computer or something?"

"I already have a computer."

"But for anything else?"

"My parents give me enough money for what I need."

My student is so isolated from the rest of Moroccan society that she can give away a valuable service, something that many people would pay a great deal of money for. She just wanted to meet first to make sure she was good enough. Such a humble, financially-disinterested mindset blew me mind.

This isn't just about money, though. In the first case, my tutor is a college graduate who is currently unemployed. He does not have a great deal of money. But my student comes from a wealthy and influential family in Meknes.

Both show a disregard for financial gain that is, at once, typically Moroccan in its hospitality and unusually oblivious to the time-honored Moroccan custom of bartering for monetary gain.

Nagging and Haggling

In Morocco you regularly haggle on prices.

This can be a bit strange at first, even if you have some prior experience with it (as I do from my time in Ecuador). If you really want to get a good deal, you need to be aware of the price ranges of all sorts of things; most adult Moroccans can quote you the prices on a great number of items at a variety of places around the city. What's more, you need to learn the tricks of the trade. Many times a decent deal requires a large time investment. I think this is why Americans tend to dislike haggling so much; it is anything but efficient and convenient.

And even if you speak the language well and are aware of the usual price range for an item, your foreignness can still bring the price up a notch. Often the desire to haggle a little bit more cash out of foreigners extends well into the realm that we would consider unethical. Sometimes you may be billed for nonexistent services, and sometimes restaurants may charge you at a higher price than normal. My roommate Daniel and I encountered this dynamic this past week.

A week and a half ago, after we signed our lease, the landlord came over with a handyman to repair a few things that were not working. He fixed some broken electrical outlets and started to repair the 15-year old blinds on a couple of our windows.

Since he was with the landlord and the problems existed before we moved into the house, we assumed that the landlord would pay the handyman. So it came as a bit of a surprise when the handyman showed up at our door a couple of days later wanting something. I wasn't home and so Daniel had to try to negotiate with him in French, but his French wasn't very good. Daniel refused to give him any money. So he went downstairs and got the concierge. But the concierge speaks less French than the handyman. Apparently they kept asking about me, as if my halting Darija (Moroccan Arabic) could help remedy the situation. The way Daniel tells it, the whole conversation sounds rather hilarious. In the end, he held his line and refused to pay.

A couple of days later, the handyman returned and tried to haggle a bit of money out of us again. I talked with him a bit, but before he got very far, I popped out my cell phone and dialed the landlord's number. I explained the situation in French and handed the phone over to the handyman.

I have no idea what they talked about, but I haven't seen him again.

The landlord, however, came over again this weekend with a different handyman to finish the repair job. He told us in unequivocal terms that he would pay for all repairs to the house and that any handyman trying to negotiate an extra price with us was to be refused.

It's a small comfort to know that there will be no haggling for anything regarding the house. However, I still have a lot to learn before I am anywhere near a proficient haggler for things that actually merit haggling.