Buy Local

After summer camp, I came back to the town where I live down here in the Sahara. For part of my return trip, I traveled with some friends, Chadwick, Tirzah and Emily, who are some fellow PCVs (Peace Corps Volunteers), on a bus. At one point the bus made a pit stop for about an hour. My friends and I figured that we might as well eat while we were there. After we'd eaten our meal there, I wanted to get something sweet for dessert, so I bought some cold milk at a hanoot (Darija, or Moroccan Arabic, for "small grocery store"), then walked to another hanoot to buy something sweet. Upon arriving at the second hanoot, I saw some large chocolate bars on the counter. I didn't recognize the brand name, so I picked up one of them, and saw on the back of it that it had been made in Morocco.

I'd been wanting to have some of this particular kind of Moroccan chocolate, but hadn't been seeing it while I'd been shopping over the last couple of years here. So I grabbed the bar of Moroccan chocolate so I could buy it. The man sitting at the back of the hanoot saw me pick up the large bar of Moroccan chocolate. He picked up a large bar of the Spanish chocolate which I see so often here in Morocco and brought it to me. It looks very similar to the Moroccan chocolate bar; both are big bars in red packages with white lettering. Consequently I could see how, from the other side of the hanoot, he might think that I wanted to buy a bar of the Spanish chocolate. But once he'd gotten to the counter, it struck me how he didn't comment that I should indeed buy the Moroccan chocolate. Since he's Moroccan, I would've expected him to urge me to buy the Moroccan product.