Earlier this week, I went to the gendarmerie, or the headquarters of the gendarmes, where I live down here in the Sahara in Morocco. Since I live in a town, we don't have any police here in town like there are in Moroccan cities. Instead we only have gendarmes in this town.
Anyway, I went to the gendarmes to check on the status of my application to renew my carte de sejour (French, literally for "the card of one's stay"). Once a foreigner is in Morocco for more than three months, he or she is illegally staying in Morocco. To stay longer than that, one has to get a carte de sejour. After my first few months in Morocco, I obtained a carte de sejour. However, the carte de sejour is only valid for one year. Thus, at the beginning of this year, I applied to renew my carte de sejour. I gave the gendarmes passport-sized photos of myself, copies of the identification page of my passport, copies of my authorization to work here through the Peace Corps, and copies of my rental agreement for the apartment in which I live here in town. After I gave these photos and all of this documentation to them, they gave me a receipt indicating that I had applied to renew my carte de sejour. However, I figured that it wouldn't hurt to go back and check with them to make sure that they had everything they needed to process my application. It turned out that they indeed had everything that they needed, so I left the gendarmerie happy upon confirming that my application was indeed complete.
Later in the day, I headed over to the dar chebab (Darija, or Moroccan Arabic, for "youth center"), where I do most of my volunteering as a PCV (Peace Corps Volunteer). Usually when I arrive at the dar chebab, I visit with the moudir (director) in his office for a little while, to catch up on recent events which have occurred at the dar chebab, as well as to discuss upcoming activities there. When I arrived at the dar chebab on this particular day, the moudir was speaking with a computer science teacher in the office. A little while later, a boy, perhaps ten years old, came into the office.
During the usual banter of conversation, if a Moroccan thinks you're a little crazy, he or she is likely to say so. It's not only a common assertion, but also a relatively sure way of making Moroccans laugh, whether you call someone else crazy, or whether you claim to be crazy yourself. At one point, I told the computer science teacher that I'm crazy. He turned and asked the boy if he thought that I was crazy. The boy, certainly appearing to be a bit meek, said that he didn't think I was crazy. The computer science teacher turned back to me and said, "You see? He doesn't think you're crazy." I rejoindered in Darija, "Ah, but he doesn't know me," insinuating that if the boy did know me, he wouldn't say that, thus implying that I'm crazy. Unsurprisingly, the computer science teacher and the director laughed at my comment. It's a well-worn, but nevertheless reliable, source of laughter here in Morocco.
Anyway, I went to the gendarmes to check on the status of my application to renew my carte de sejour (French, literally for "the card of one's stay"). Once a foreigner is in Morocco for more than three months, he or she is illegally staying in Morocco. To stay longer than that, one has to get a carte de sejour. After my first few months in Morocco, I obtained a carte de sejour. However, the carte de sejour is only valid for one year. Thus, at the beginning of this year, I applied to renew my carte de sejour. I gave the gendarmes passport-sized photos of myself, copies of the identification page of my passport, copies of my authorization to work here through the Peace Corps, and copies of my rental agreement for the apartment in which I live here in town. After I gave these photos and all of this documentation to them, they gave me a receipt indicating that I had applied to renew my carte de sejour. However, I figured that it wouldn't hurt to go back and check with them to make sure that they had everything they needed to process my application. It turned out that they indeed had everything that they needed, so I left the gendarmerie happy upon confirming that my application was indeed complete.
Later in the day, I headed over to the dar chebab (Darija, or Moroccan Arabic, for "youth center"), where I do most of my volunteering as a PCV (Peace Corps Volunteer). Usually when I arrive at the dar chebab, I visit with the moudir (director) in his office for a little while, to catch up on recent events which have occurred at the dar chebab, as well as to discuss upcoming activities there. When I arrived at the dar chebab on this particular day, the moudir was speaking with a computer science teacher in the office. A little while later, a boy, perhaps ten years old, came into the office.
During the usual banter of conversation, if a Moroccan thinks you're a little crazy, he or she is likely to say so. It's not only a common assertion, but also a relatively sure way of making Moroccans laugh, whether you call someone else crazy, or whether you claim to be crazy yourself. At one point, I told the computer science teacher that I'm crazy. He turned and asked the boy if he thought that I was crazy. The boy, certainly appearing to be a bit meek, said that he didn't think I was crazy. The computer science teacher turned back to me and said, "You see? He doesn't think you're crazy." I rejoindered in Darija, "Ah, but he doesn't know me," insinuating that if the boy did know me, he wouldn't say that, thus implying that I'm crazy. Unsurprisingly, the computer science teacher and the director laughed at my comment. It's a well-worn, but nevertheless reliable, source of laughter here in Morocco.
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