Concept of Time

In America, when you say "Let's meet at 10", you show up a few minutes before 10.  If you show up at 10, you're late.  Here in Morocco, time is a much more obscure concept. Here you're more likely to hear, "let's meet after lunch" which could mean anything from 3 onward.   Several institutions are more likely to keep business hours such as the post office, banks and the dar chabab.  However, that means every time you have to go to the store to buy bread or try to get a taxi to go to another town or try to visit a friend, you never know if the store will be open, there will be taxis running or if you'll interrupt that friends meal and/or nap.

Most places in my town close for about two hours for lunch.  This means if its lunch time and you need something, you're out of luck until later in the afternoon.  It's happened to me several times where I needed just one thing to make lunch and I forgot to go get it before things closed.  I also had to learn the hard way about traveling out of my site during lunch time.  When I first got to site and tried to leave anytime between 12 and 2, I ended up waiting for at least an hour to actually get on the road.  Lesson learned.

Just when you think you have time all figured out in Morocco, they throw you a curve ball.  Daylight savings time.  Not everyone observes daylight savings time here.  Farmers work by the sun, not an actual time.  The only people who you know for sure follow it are those people who work in the post office and banks.  Not even all dar chababs are on new time which is confusing since the schools are.  This has now turned the conversation into something like this:
friend: Let's meet at 4.
me: ok, old time or new time?
friend: old time.
me: ok, so we're going to meet at 3.
friend: no, I said 4.
me: yes, but I am on new time.
friend: ok, well I'll see you at 4.
me: yes, 4 old time.
friend: inshallah.
me: inshallah.

Did you follow that?  So you can see the confusion this causes.  Most stores are still on old time.  The workers work with the sun and accordingly the call to prayer.  This means that now when I think it's lunch break, I still have an hour to go out and buy anything I need.  This also means that most things are still closed for lunch break when I am walking up to the dar chabab at four.  The best part about all this is that during Ramadan, everyone will go back to old time for the month and then spring forward again after Ramadan ends.  Are you confused yet??

Luckily, this concept of new time and old time is not new to me.  Even in Albania when there was daylight savings time, some people stayed on old time.  It's just like old leke and new leke or dirhams and ryals.  Not everyone uses the same unit of currency but after awhile you just know.  You learn who uses old time and who is on new time.  You plan accordingly.  If all else fails, you just blame it on old time.  "I'm an hour late?  No that can't be.  I'm on old time."

So you see, the concept of time in Morocco is quite different from America.  You get there when you get there.  An appointed time to meet is more of a time frame to meet.  Time is money in America.  In Morocco, time is uhm, well....... time is not going anywhere so don't worry about it!