"I am a telephone."

The swine flu craze may have died out in the media, but it is alive and well in the hearts and minds of world governments. Upon my arrival in Rabat, I went through a fever detector before continuing on to passport control, only to wordlessly get sent to a room at the back. All Americans had to go into the Border Health Office. I didn’t really understand and was extremely jet-lagged at this point, so I was a tad nervous. As it happened they just wanted to make careful note of my contact info, how long I would be in the country, and give me a paper with information on what I should do if I felt sick. So when the doctor pointed at the number listed beneath the Chtatous’ address and asked me in French, is this your telephone? I replied, “Non, mais je suis un telephone.”

“No, but I am a telephone.”

The worst part is that I did not even realize my mistake immediately. It wasn’t until after he said, “Ah, vous avez un telephone?” while I was flipping to the correct page in my notebook that I knew I had used the wrong verb. A simple one, at that.

I came to Morocco to re-learn French. The last time I took French class was four years ago, and oddly enough the reason I stopped taking French is the reason I wanted to start again. French classes in college didn’t focus on the conversational elements that interested me the most, and I found reading and writing essays on French philosophers somewhat boring and extremely tiresome. But before I even had my luggage in hand, it was evident that I had forgotten much more than I had thought possible.

My frustrations with the language are going to dominate my blog entries here, since it’s so integral to my experience. The first time I met with my tutor Yamina (who doesn’t speak English really) for an hour, I was exhausted after twenty minutes of sheer concentration. It is like that almost all the time here…throw in some jet-lag and you have one very frustrated Sara.
It’s definitely getting better, though. On Sunday I spent the day with some Moroccan family friends who are tri-lingual (French, Arabic, English) and English teachers. It was the first time I really felt like I could converse and fully understand stories in French. Slowly but surely it’s coming back…at least I think so. But that doesn’t mean I’m not prone to a variety of mistakes…

Like Monday, when I went to get allergy medicine at the pharmacy, I forgot the word for medicine. So like many other words when I must resort to franglais (but think it might be the correct word), I frenchified the pronunciation and said, “J’ai besoin du medicine d’allergie,” thinking I said, “I need allergy medicine.” Of course it made perfect sense for the man behind the counter to look all kinds of confused because really I said, “I need an allergy doctor.”

The Moroccan French accent varies, and sometimes it has more of a throaty “ch” sound. The other day I was eating with my host mother Soundousse and her friend, when all of a sudden I realized I couldn’t understand what they were saying. They were talking super-fast, and I knew there was a chance it was Arabic, but I honestly thought they were just speeding along in French and I was totally incompetent because I could understand absolutely nothing. After a little while of sitting there wide-eyed and anxious, I excused myself, at which point Soundousse said in French, “Oh I’m sorry, we were talking in Arabic.” To which I sighed relief and told them how much they had scared me.

The craziest thing about the languages here is that Moroccans who speak both French and Arabic can switch between the two within the same sentence without batting an eyelash. Sunday night when our friend Mohamed Ezroura called my host father (and his friend) Mohamed Chtatou (side note: for serious, there are so many friends of my dad’s with the name Mohamed that they are just listed by last name in his phone) I heard him switch between French, Arabic, and English pretty much subconsciously. He says there are studies on why people who do that switch to another language when they do, but they haven’t really been able to figure out what sets it off yet. It’s ridiculous…and I’m also pretty jealous. Right now I’m just looking forward to the day when I’ll feel confident in my verb conjugations.