We are again on land with a day in Tangier. This is our first visit to Africa. Morocco is the only country in Africa with shores on the Atlantic Ocean and Mediterranean Sea. We are a scant 20 minutes south of Spain by high speed Ferry, which service runs hourly.

This is a place where cultures have clashed for millennia, each leaving a cumulative footprint. The Berbers are considered the indigenous people. Invaders have included the Phoenicians approximately 3,500 years ago, followed by the Carthaginians, Romans, Visigoths, Arabs, Portuguese, English, Spanish, and French. Morocco was a French colony during much of the 20th Century and most signage in Tangier is posted in Arabic and French.

We participated in a 3 hour guided walking tour of the Kasbah, formerly a walled fortress and now a bewildering maze of narrow winding walkways where multi-story buildings that date back hundreds of years seem to lean in on you from all sides. Most are residences in the upper levels, with the first floors presenting an array of shops themed for the needs of tourists and locals alike. Our tour included a visit to the Kasbah Museum, housed in the former palace that dates to the late 17th Century. Within the Kasbah is a Catholic Cathedral, a Jewish Synagog, and of course a number of Mosques, one of which dates to the 1200’s.

At the conclusion of the guided tour Christine and I continued wandering solo. We were seeking an authentic Moroccan restaurant frequented by locals rather than tourists. As we perused a map a young teenage boy approached us offering assistance. This was Anwar. He spoke excellent English and seemed nothing more than a Good Samaritan. He knew “just the place” and proceeded to lead us since he had “nothing else to do”. What we didn’t first perceive was that Anwar had made us his “thing to do”. We arrived at a fine restaurant after 30 minutes of following Anwar… who kept promising “its just ahead a little bit more”. It began to dawn on us that Anwar had designated himself as our hired guide, especially when he sat down to eat lunch with us!

The meal was wonderful, certainly authentic, and at 40 euros a bit pricey. We didn’t get tagged for Anwar’s meal, but we suspect that the restaurant comped it for him as he was responsible for bringing in paying customers (us). After lunch we did finally part ways, and I did “grease” Anwar’s palm.

I understand that his initial “help” is easily misunderstood. Our culture associates acts of kindness with the virtue of charity. Anwar has been raised to equate kindness with compensated service. Similarly, the vendors who incessantly approached us misconstrue our curiosity about an item or its price as a commitment to purchase, with only the final price to be agreed upon.

Where cultures clash, tempers may flair. It is not because someone was wrong and someone was right. It is just because each has failed to presume in favor of the best intentions of the other.

السلام الجميع (Alslam Aljmy… Peace Everyone!) Pete

Mark Twain wrote, “Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts. Broad, wholesome, charitable views of men and things cannot be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the earth all one’s lifetime.”

Sadly, travel is not a universally effective cure for those maladies.

We were joined at table for dinner two nights ago by two couples. Like virtually everyone aboard, these folks were seasoned travelers. Christine and I seem a bit unique as we have traveled only one other cruise together and never with Viking. We have found that most people we have spoken with are cruise veterans and Viking “frequent fliers”.

In the course of enjoying our meal, conversation wandered across a broad range of topics. It was inevitable that travel experiences would be among them. One of the ladies began to speak derogatorily about “those Chinese”. She exercised no restraint in assigning a whole list of negative characteristics to over one billion souls, oblivious to the possibility that those characteristics might not apply to every person of Chinese descent. More disturbing was that many of the highly professional wait staff are oriental and one of these servers was tending another table immediately behind and within easy earshot of the lady.

Christine and I exchanged glances and using our spousal ESP, jointly began talking about one of our favorite topics, grandchildren.

Thankfully, we were successful in redirecting the conversation, or so we thought. When it came out that we had 10 grands and that the births included a set of twins and a set of quads, the gentleman from the other couple quipped, “Well, you folks are certainly doing your part to preserve the white race!”

Dinner was near its end, as was our association with those folks at table. I am usually one who does not want my silence to be misunderstood as an affirmation of something another person has said. Under the circumstances, I have concluded that silence and declining to further engage in conversation was the appropriate course.

I believe the evenings experience to be an aberration. Assemble 900 random people and the spectrum of beliefs and prejudices will be well represented. Our friendships are not random and so we tend to be surrounded by like minded acquaintances. It is worth remembering that our personal beliefs are like the ocean horizon, other beliefs do exist well beyond the range of our own, and are held as firmly by others as we hold to ours.

One a much lighter note:

The day included early morning exercises, breakfast in our room, a lecture on pirate history (really fascinating! Spain and a Portugal looted over 500 billion dollars of wealth from the indigenous people, that’s as measured in current dollars, the largest transfer of wealth to that point in history.), team trivial pursuit, and high tea. Music in the Atrium, then dinner tonight at 8, followed by a performance by tenor Lee Bradley.

Peace Everyone! Pete