After all, tomorrow is another day.

I cut my finger while doing the dishes tonight. Last week I had broken a glass in the sink and thought I had collected all the shards of glass, but one still remained stuck inside the drain. It was a pretty deep cut and after wrapping it in toilet paper I hurried to the town hospital to see if stitches were needed. Of course when I arrived, the hospital was closed. I took note of a group of men drinking tea outside the hospital and, as I suspected, one of the men sauntered into the hospital a little while later. That was the doctor.

Here begins my experience with the health care system in Morocco. Besides the hospital being closed when I arrived, I would give my experience there an overall high rating. I wasn’t sure if the hospital would even be open at 6:30 pm on a Saturday evening, but I had a feeling it would be open. I wasn’t asked my name or if I had insurance. (Not that that would matter here because everyone who lives here has free health insurance!) I showed the doctor my finger and mumbled in my pathetic Arabic that “I did something to myself.” He brought me into another room and told me to sit on the bed. I ignored what looked like droplets of blood and sat down. He put on plastic gloves and rubbed iodine on my cut. He still didn’t ask for my name, but he did ask me where I lived. He asked me if I could speak French and laughed when I told him I only spoke Arabic. He then quizzed me on my knowledge of the Berber language. I told him I didn’t know anything, but when I produced the right answer for the word “bread” he said I was already practically fluent. He put some mystery cream that looked like peanut butter on my cut, wrapped it up, and that was it. When I asked him if I needed to pay him, he laughed at me and said, “For a little bandage? No, I didn’t do anything.” Thanking him, I left feeling bewildered. How different that was than anything I’ve ever experienced at home.

I had another little surprise earlier in the day, too. There have been two men knocking down the wall in the apartment next door. I had just adjusted to the idea of the dentist working next door to me and now this? After two days of constant hammering and pounding and jumping over piles of concrete, I asked them what they were building. Where there had been one big apartment, they were making a wall to divide the apartment into two apartments. I asked if they knew who would be living there and the first guy didn’t know, but the second guy was pretty certain a gendarme (policeman) would be moving in. (nooooooooo!!!) Feeling forlorn, I walked downstairs to bitch to my friend in the bakery. Before I made it there, I ran into my muldar (landlord) who had no idea what the other guy was talking about and assured me that nobody would be moving in any time soon. He said the other guy was just “talking.” Hmmm, a common phenomenon here. I have learned to not always put stalk in all the things people tell me here. It’s about saving face. Rather than giving somebody a potentially wrong answer, or admitting you don’t know, you make something up.

I them made it to the bakery, watched the Addams Family with my friend and was about to leave when an old Berber woman walked in. She yelled to nobody in particular, “A Christian! That’s a Christian!” (Calling somebody a Christian is just an old-fashioned way of pointing out a white person) I was a little annoyed because it was the market day, which meant that the town was full of people who liked pointing and laughing at the American girl. I smiled at her and greeted her in Arabic to which she exclaimed to, again nobody in particular, “She speaks Arabic!” Then I’m pretty sure she was making fun of me when she asked if I could send her to France. I told her it wasn’t possible for me to send her to France and she asked me why. I told her I didn’t even have enough money to send myself to France, so she’d have to find another way. She then asked me if I prayed. Since Ramadan, I have been asked this question a lot. Especially when people learned I was fasting, their next question would always be about praying. When they ask this, they don’t mean just praying to God, they mean praying 5 times a day with prostration. I usually respond to this by saying, “I pray, just not like how you do.” Usually people respect this and move on. Today was a different story. The woman in the bakery did not understand why I wouldn’t want to be a Muslim. I finally told her that I believe in one God and that it’s the same God she believes in. This seemed to appease her. At this point, it should have been pretty clear to her that I could speak Arabic fairly well, so when she turned to her friend and called me “ugly” I got a little mad. I asked her why I was ugly and she laughed and said I was beautiful. Whatever. She then pointed at my clothes and said I was a good dresser. This comment really caught me off guard because if any of you know a thing about dressing in Morocco, you’d know that it’s not easy for me and it’s one of the things that stresses me out the most. Also, she had just called me ugly. I was dressed pretty conservatively that day with a baggy long-sleeved top and flowy pants. I think she was making fun of me the entire time we were talking, but I can’t be sure. Today was just one of those days, I guess. Some days are harder than others and this definitely was a day that tested my patience.

After all, tomorrow is another day! As Scarlett said in Gone with the Wind, and as my friend Jackie reminded me the other day.