The tale of a Moroccan Rose...

There is quite high unemployment here in Morocco and also there is no social welfare.  Due to a combination of the two, there are quite a lot of beggars on the streets.  A Moroccan friend of  mine told me that he thinks about half the beggars don't actually 'need' to beg but are 'professional' beggars.  But some of the people have ingenious ways of making money.  For example there are very few places where you'll pay for parking - however, almost 100% of the time when you go to park there will be a man in a yellow reflective vest or a work overall, wandering about showing you where there are free parking spaces, helping you get in or out of a space - and when you leave you give him money....maybe about 7p -15p...so not exactly going to break the bank (a damn sight less than the criminal charges you have to pay back in Blighty).

Another way of making money is there are quite a lot of children who go around selling flowers like individually wrapped roses or for example, when we were up in Chefchaeoun, in the mountains, the kids were selling garlands of flowers.  I bought a garland of yellow flowers when I was there...

for the grand total of 2 dirhams (15pence), but then the kid came back and said that he actually wanted 5 dirhams.  My Moroccan friend Mounir told the kid that he couldn't do that, that once he's agreed a price that's the deal done, but the kid was really insistant.  So, through Mounir, I told him that if he gave me my money back I'd give him the garland back ~ which is what we did.  I wouldn't have minded giving him 5 dirhams in the first place (even though my friends told me that that would have been way too much to pay) - but I wasn't happy about him coming back after the sale to tell me that the item had gone up more than double in price.  Mounir said that there would be an adult or older child telling the kid to get more money.  So in the end I 'borrowed' the garland.

On Sunday I, with my uncle and 3 friends, went by train to the city of Fez - which I think is north-east of Rabat (me + geography =  confusion!!).  Near the end of the day we were walking along the street and I was walking with my friend Soufiane.  This little girl came running over trying to sell him a rose for me - which I thought was a bloody good idea....he wasn't so keen, but between the cute wee girl with her big brown eyes and my unashamed harrassment for him to buy me the rose, he finally gave in and bought it for me!!  :D

Granted it looks a little worse for wear now, but I still love it...my Moroccan rose!