Shopping

Pictured: The girls at the carrot stand in the souk; the spice guy

This was written after our first week of shopping in August. There are one-stop grocery stores an hour away, but shopping here is quite different. This is quite long - but so is shopping!

In the States, I had shopping down to an art. I could be back home an hour after I left with a week’s worth of groceries. My shopping list was in order of aisle (which Gerald thought was plain scary), and all was well.

Now here I am in Morocco where I make what I think is a reasonable shopping list. Off we go – a family adventure – to the first hanut (tiny store) – one where we can actually pick out groceries rather than using our meager Arabic to ask the grocer what to pry what we need off the shelf. Then back to the car to drop off the purchases. Then to the next hanut to try to get a few more of the items. Back to the car. Then to the butcher – no chicken here – and it’s too early to grind beef. Apparently the chicken butcher is in the marche across the street where huge slabs of meat hang from meat hooks only inches from where you walk and only feet away from all the guys selling fresh produce. I’ll have to work up the courage to go meat shopping later. Next to the bakery where we buy “khobs” – delicious Moroccan bread, and baguettes – French bread.

When we return, I ask my neighbor where you buy the things I could not find – Vaseline? At the pharmacy. Pepper? At the spice stand on weekends at the souk. Brown sugar? Ha! There isn’t any. Butter? Try next week. And the list goes on. You never know when things will be available. When you see something you want, buy a lot of it because you may not ever see it again. I was at friend’s house the other day when her husband returned from shopping. He recited the entire list she had given him and the substitute he bought for each – not one thing on her list was available that particular day!

The next day we venture out to the souk – the huge, outdoor farmer’s market/flea market. In the heat we wind our way through booth after booth, stopping to explore the many items on the way – used clothes, shoes, kitchen wares, electronics (and no electricity with which to test them) – all laid out neatly on rags or plastic on the dusty ground.

Then we buy a glass of freshly-squeezed orange juice from the orange seller guy who happily washes our cups in the bucket of cold, dirty water at his stall. “It tastes like there are oranges in here!” exclaims Katrina. Then down past all the chicken butchers. “Look at all those chickens!” the girls exclaim joyfully not realizing their imminent fate.

Now on to the fruit and vegetables – an incredible and amazing selection! Merchants call out to us as we pass by, advertising their wares. “Why are all these people yelling?” asks Katrina. We see carrots, stacked four feet high, huge piles of parsley and cilantro, spice and nut stalls, and huge rags laid out with every kind of produce spread around the busy vendor who spends his time weighing what customers give him on his rickety scales. I tiptoe through the turnips, picking out my items and waiting my turn to have each one weighed.

The hardest part is the price – First of all, you have to figure out if they are giving the price in Arabic or French and switch you brain either way, then you ask three more times, because they say it so fast. Then you have to decide where the decimal is if they wrote it for you (Please tell me it’s not 4700 dirhams!!). Then you have to figure out if it is in dirhams or riyals (the old money system) – if it is in riyals, you have to divide by 20 to give the correct amount of dirhams. So you stand there for a really long time figuring out what on earth you are to pay, and finally dish out the cash hoping it is correct. In general, all food is more expensive than in the States except the fruits and veggies, which are much cheaper. I guess we’ll be very healthy!

Then we make our way back to the car back through the flea market again. Our last stop is at the chicken-lady tent where we buy a dozen eggs from a basket next to the chickens all tied up and panting on the ground, ready to become someone’s lunch. The eggs are placed in a plastic bag for us, and we carefully carry them back.

Then home where we all take naps, exhausted by this thing they call shopping.

Later, I wash the parsley and cilantro, roast the peanuts, wash and bake the raisins, de-bug the lentils, chop the beans, peel the garlic, etc.

There – our shopping is half done. To complete it, we will end up going to at least three stores, one pharmacy, one bakery, two butchers, and one farmer’s market totaling at least 5 hours over a week. By the time we are done, it will be time to shop for next week’s groceries!