Souks and Bargaining – In Search of a Moroccan Lamp

Even though I’m no stranger to haggling my way through a market or two, I found that the Moroccans drive a hard bargain. I read blog upon blog that said it was in their culture to haggle, and that the first price offered was almost always ridiculous. I read guides on how to bargain, what to offer when someone offered you a certain amount, I researched the crap out of it. I felt ready.
And yet the day that we carved out as my shopping day, where I set out determined to buy a Moroccan lamp at the very least, I came back to our riad utterly defeated. They weren’t picking up what I was putting down, and I didn’t understand why. I read that usually whatever you’re offered, the real price you can expect to pay is about 50% of the starting price. So to give myself wiggle room I’d offer them a third of the asking price expecting that we’d go back and forth and meet in the middle.
Except we didn’t. One guy gave me some ‘friendly’ advice and told me to stop looking for lamps. And to leave Morocco. Not quite those words exactly, since I think that it was more colorful the way he put it. But still.
I tried different techniques. I tried in English and I tried in Spanish. I found it was easier in Spanish – probably because as a language it’s friendlier. I tried explaining that the Canadian dollar was low. I tried telling them that I was sure it was worth what they were asking, but I just didn’t have that kind of money and all I could pay was what I was offering. I tried telling them that the person a couple stalls down had X as a starting price, which was much lower than their starting price. I tried the walk away. I even tried being humble and when they’d ask me for my counter offer to their ridiculous opening price I’d tell them that I didn’t wan’t to offend them with something too low, but there it was. I came home empty handed that day.
By the time we left Marrakesh I didn’t have my lamps and Jordan could see I was bummed. I had told him that I wanted desperately to buy Moroccan lamps – silly as it may sound I had always imagined owning one and being able to say “oh, I bought that in Marrakesh”. A high school friend’s mother had one in their house that she had bought in Morocco and since then I was hooked. I have always bought things to decorate my home with from abroad to remind me of my travels.
We hadn’t bought any souvenirs thus far but I was fixated on my dream of owning a lamp so when we got to Fez we tried again. One last time.

Maybe it was because no one was shouting at us to come in to their stall (“looking is free, buy no buy, come see”), or maybe it was because the medina of Fez has no motorcycles so it immediately feels less chaotic. Maybe it was because we were nearing the end of our Moroccan adventure; but we started out the same way we had many times before, wandering the souks and asking the prices. We found a lamp I loved and the shop keeper was kind. He was warm. He was friendly. He was understanding when we told him we’d have to think about it and come back. As we left the shop Jordan asked me how much I would be willing to pay for the lamp – the shop keeper had asked for 700 dirhams. That was almost $100. I told him I’d pay 350 – half the asking price, but begrudgingly since I was stubborn and wanted to be able to beat the standard haggling bar that had been set online and get everything for less than half the asking price.
Jordan asked me why I hadn’t bargained with the lamp shopkeeper, but I had felt so defeated in Marrakesh that in truth I simply didn’t want to offend the guy and end up on the rough end of a confrontation. So Jordan offered to take care of it. He said “do you want to go back, and do you want me to offer him 250?”. Yes. Yes I did. I very much did. So we weaved our way back and tried again. Somehow this ended up with us talking about the price of 2 lamps, but still we couldn’t get him down enough. He would sell us 2 for 1000 dirhams. 500 was still too much per lamp, and Jordan was trying so hard when I told him that we should just leave it.
Defeated, again, we started looking for food. We still looked in each lamp shop and asked the prices but it was half-hearted. Then we saw one that was similar to the one we had spent so much time fussing over, but twice the size. When we were told the price was 600 dirhams we grew optimistic. How was this one 100 dirhams lower when it was twice the size and the same level of detail in the metal work? It seemed so much better priced! We had somewhere to start!
In the meantime we had devised a scheme for communicating pricing. Jordan wanted to know what I’d be willing to pay for something without directly asking me in front of the vendor – so we decided to use the months of the year as numbers. January was 100 dirhams, February was 200, and so on. So I’d look at something and tell him “well, we can always buy it when we come back in mid february” and Jordan would know that I didn’t want to spend more than 250, and plan his attack accordingly. I don’t know if it’s because he’s a man and Morocco is a sexist society that likes dealing with the men of the household, or if it’s because he’s just a calm, cool, collected guy who has a poker face to rival a stone; but it seemed to work. We bought those two extra large lamps for 900 dirhams. 450 each was still not fantastic, but I had resigned myself to the fact that we weren’t going to get this illusive 50% off and at the end of the day it was still less than the cost of buying a fake one in Homesense.
Finally we could go and get (an albeit late, as it was now 3:30pm) lunch. Except on the way I saw another lamp I liked – more exotic looking than the 2 we had just bought and I couldn’t resist asking. How much? 300 dirham. The work wasn’t as good – I could see that immediately. The weld joins were sloppy, there was some glue that definitely shouldn’t have been there, and even the shop keeper couldn’t open the little latch door to put a light in. I could have taken it or left it, so when he gave me the price I was half-hearted in offering him 120. I almost hoped he wouldn’t accept it.

But he countered with 220 and by now Jordan had walked in. We could buy it when we came back in mid January, I told him. Mid January – 150 dirhams. So Jordan offered him 150 and the guy came down to 200. Jordan looked at me since this would mean passing mid January, and offered him 160. He came down to 170 and we took it. I now had 3 lamps and this last one cost me a whopping $22.69 Canadian. It wasn’t worth a penny more, to be honest, but I was happy to give it a good clean and have it hanging in some non-existent room in our non-existent home.
In the end I bought those 3 lamps, one pair of hand made leather ballet flats and one large leather duffel bag. The ballet flats I was asked 90 and bought them at 70. The leather bag I was asked 400 and bought it at 300. Neither of these were that illusive 50% I had read about – but both of them were beyond reasonable. Where in Canada can you buy leather shoes for less than $10 and a massive leather duffel bag for $40? Nowhere. Though the work on the leather bag wasn’t awesome and I knew I’d have to replace the rivets and reinforce the stitching in a few places, it was still insane. If I had made that bag it would have cost $400, not $40. It’s easily 10 hours of labour, even if the leather is cheaper because it’s camel rather than cow. All in all even though it was a hit to my ego as a (what I thought to be) skilled haggler, I’m happy with what we bought and how much we paid – though a better deal is always welcome.

Marrakesh, Morrocco

I’ll be honest – I feel like I have a love/hate relationship with Marrakesh. Like an abusive boyfriend, this city forces you into a turbid relationship that you can’t help but remain in even though you know it’s not doing you any good. You love it, even though it kicks you, all the while smiling and whispering sweet nothings.

 

I’ve always wanted to visit Marrakesh. To me it was akin to Timbuktu and Zanzabar – far away places I daydreamed about and wished I’d one day see – so naturally when our plane landed in Morocco I could barely contain my excitement – my smile mixed with gasps as I inhaled and choked on the second hand smoke from inside the terminal. Gasps and smiles – how fortelling (I’m spoiled in Vancouver with our non-smoking and clean air, I know, but I still can’t stand that someone else gets to decide what quality of air I get to breathe).
We got off to a rough start. Landing in Casablanca, we went to the train station to go directly to Marrakesh. We had to change trains and sadly despite our best efforts the trains weren’t timed well, meaning we ended up sitting at a train station for 2 hours with no way of buying anything (no bank machines near by, and no one accepting credit cards).
Once we were finally in Marrakesh we walked out of the train station and into the waiting throngs of taxi touts. We know not to listen to these guys. We know this. But we asked how much to get to the Medina and the driver confirmed he had a taximeter. I was dubious, but we went along with him. Our bags in the car and 20 minutes (no joke) of back and forth trying to communicate in French with someone who barely spoke it, we got him to agree to drop us off in the main square since cars can’t drive in the Medina. Great – so lets turn on that taximeter and away we go. Except he didn’t. He turned around and said: “200 dirhams”.
No thanks. We were out of the car like lightening, and it was now 8 pm and we had to start this dance all over again. I was furious. I asked if he had a taximeter and if he would use it. He said yes. Why was he doing this to us? I know we’re tourists and I know that tourists pay more for things – but this seemed so unfair.
Finally we hailed another cab who also ripped us off, to the tune of 50 dirhams (I knew from the guidebooks that it should have cost at most 20 dirhams), but at this point Jordan was getting antsy about finding our accommodation since we knew we’d have to wander in the Medina and it was already dark.
Finally in the medina, Jordan armed with his googlemaps, we start walking. Everyone and their brother offers to tell us how to get where we’re going, even though we haven’t made mention of the place we’re looking for. We knew that this would happen. We knew to say “no, merci!” and keep on our way. We knew to be firm. But it’s hard. When you’re disoriented and tired and you’ve been traveling a long way and you have to dodge donkeys and motorbikes and it’s nighttime with not much lighting and street signs written in Arabic, it’s hard to keep your cool. None the less – we remained firm, even with our frayed nerves, and we were about a street away from our riad when a kid came up to Jordan and said the name of the riad. Jordan reacted by confirming that was in fact the place we were searching for, so the kid led us halfway down the alley that we were already standing in – and then immediately demanded payment. His English was perfect for his purposes, and Jordan handed him 5 dirhams, much to my protest.
Finally, we were in a safe zone. Except we weren’t. Another scam I had read about and was aware of was that some riad owners have more than 1 riad. You book in the nice one and when that one is all full they walk you over to another one that is definitely not of the same caliber. So I was particularly angry when the man who greeted us proceeded to do exactly that. He said that the riad we booked was being painted – and it was (Jordan asked to verify this by checking the rooms), but the place shouldn’t have been available to book if it wasn’t, in fact, available. The place we were taken to was obviously of a lower standard. I asked about getting money back – and the guy told me to talk to someone in the morning – except that there wasn’t anyone but him there for the entire time.
Another thing I had read about was that riads can be quite noisy and the walls are quite thin – so it’s always a smart idea to ask to be on the second floor rather than the ground floor. So when the man led us to a ground floor room I immediately asked to be on the second floor. But that wasn’t possible, since the second floor was full (no doubt with all the other people who had probably booked the same nice place we had done, and also received a bait’n’switch). Alright – it’s one night, let’s just get to sleep. But the people online weren’t kidding about the noise since people were loud and I could hear every word of their conversation, despite not being able to understand it. As an extra bonus, the smell of smoke started to waft into our room – someone was smoking in the riad, great.
I was woken at 7 in the morning to a couple arguing loudly in french right by our door. The guy said we could switch to the other riad for our second night since now it was all painted, so we packed everything up after breakfast (which consisted of 4 different types of bread: baguettes with butter, a croissant, a moroccan pancake and a crepe) and moved.

Much like its signature dish, the tagine, Marrakesh is a mix of things all thrown together and left to stew. It’s incredible.

You wander through the maze of the medina jumping out of the way of motorcyclists, donkeys, wheel barrows and throngs of people. It’s chaos – and yet it seems somehow to just work. We didn’t witness any accidents or crashes, which was shocking since every moment it seemed like there was a near-miss to a collision.
Our first day we spent exploring the Badi and Bahia palaces – beautiful works of Arabic architecture: one in complete ruin and the other perfectly preserved. We wandered through the famous J?? Square and saw monkeys forced to do tricks, ladies offering henna tattoos or offering to read your fortune, stalls of fresh herbs with the delicious smell of fresh mint leaves, row upon row of fruit juice vendors each vying to sell you a freshly squeezed OJ for 4 dirhams (50 cents), snake charmers (who, when they saw me taking a photo demanded payment so I deleted the photo), and all kinds of other things being sold. It was all so fascinating and a complete sensory overload. We took refuge in a cafe that overlooked the square and ate a tagine and a couscous.
Over the next several days we immersed ourselves in the Medina – only wandering out of it into the “New City” for a visit to a place I had read about on Tripadvisor, “Cafe du Livre”, where I knew we’d be able to get yoghurt and fruit for breakfast (Moroccan breakfasts are very bread-focused and that’s not something we’re particularly fond of) – plus it had the added bonus of having lots of books there, and I was sure we’d find a guidebook or two to help us plan how to make the most of our stay.
We visited the Saadian tombs, the ??? and ???, as well as trying out a few restaurants I had read recommended on tripadvisor, and I was sad that we didn’t make it to the gardens of ? and ?, but even with 5 days there wasn’t enough time for everything. Not when we were moving so slowly – and we were, because in 39 degree heat it’s hard to do anything other than move slowly. Most days we’d take shelter in our riad from 11am-3pm simply because it was too hot to be walking around. Between the heat and me having to keep covered, I was grateful for the cool haven of our riad. When we weren’t hiding from the heat we were wandering – often aimlessly though sometimes with purpose through the labyrinth of the medina.

I wished I could have taken some portraits of all the people going about their day-to-day lives – the barber in his shoebox shop with only one chair cutting hair; all the artisans working at their craft, the emotive faces of the people – but most demand money if they even see you pointing a camera in their direction (and usually I wasn’t even taking a picture of them) so the only portraits I took were stolen, which may be more authentic in an editorial sense, but I didn’t feel awesome about it and they aren’t well composed since they’re stolen glimpses.

 

In all it’s chaos it’s still incredibly beautiful and fascinating. It’s a feast for the senses with exotic spice smells and glimpses of sheep’s heads, with children running around and stray cats everywhere. There’s nothing you can’t find in the medina of Marrakesh, I’m sure of it. It was like I imagined – but better. I loved it. I loved it even when I was exhausted from saying ‘No, Merci’ for the hundredth time in an hour. I loved it even when it was hot and crowded and people kept trying to sell us everything under the sun. I loved it. It’s true – it’s not for everyone, and if you aren’t able to give in to the chaos that surrounds you you’ll likely hate the place. But if you can – you could easily close your eyes and travel back in time. Were it not for the motorcycles and scooters that zip through the narrow alleys with entire households worth of possessions loaded on top, you’d think you were in a different century.

It was a treasure trove, and even though it drove me to near insanity and tried my patience, I’d still go back in a heartbeat.

How to NOT Visit Morocco (Hint: We Did it Wrong)

Hindsight’s a bitch, and now that we’ve spent a reasonable amount in Morocco I can properly declare that we did it wrong. Absolutely and totally wrong.
What was our biggest mistake?

Our biggest mistake, and the one that impacted our trip the most was going to Marrakesh first.

Marrakech is an anomaly – like I wrote before, it’s seductive and toxic at the same time, and while I absolutely fell in love with it, it set us on a path of paranoia and even xenophobia, which I’m embarrassed to type.
Everywhere in Marrakech our muscles would tense and our hands would clench when someone approached us because, after being scammed within the first 10 minutes of setting foot in the city, and a total of 3 times before even making it to our hotel that night, we were on our guard. Anyone who approached us we immediately thought was trying to con us, was going to demand money from us, or would pretend to be friendly until suddenly they were trying to sell us something ridiculous.
Because of these experiences in the week we spent in Marrakesh, we wrongly assumed that this was just Morocco, and this is Moroccan culture. People had warned us about this very thing, while others had told us that Moroccans are some of the kindest, most generous people they had ever known. I questioned those people, because we didn’t experience kindness or generosity – but that’s because after Marrakesh we didn’t give anyone the opportunity to show it to us.
I was absolutely blindsided when in Fes a craftsman let me take his picture. I asked, expecting him to demand payment since in Marrakesh some guy had seen me taking a photo of a snake in the main square and demanded I pay for the privilege (I responded by deleting all the photos of said snake), but he just smiled and said “Of Course!”. I figured he must be the one nice merchant in Morocco.
And when we got to Chefchaoian and someone showed us the way to our hostel, and didn’t demand to be paid, but told us to have a pleasant stay, Jordan and I just stared at eachother. Huh?

That’s when we realized we had it wrong. The order in which we visited Morocco was

  1. Marrakesh
  2.  Essouiara
  3.  Merzouga (Sahara Desert Safari)
  4.  Fes
  5. Chefchaoian

The order we should have visited it is pretty much the reverse.

The kindest people we met who were likely being genuine when they told me to ‘open my heart’ after reading the distrust on my face were in Chefchaoian and Fes. In Merzouga we didn’t get to meet many locals and our exposure was to those who were in cahoots with the tour and trying to sell us something, so I would suggest Essouiara first, Merzouga next, and leaving Marrakesh for last.
Yes, you should absolutely go to Marrakesh. It’s an experience, and it’s not comparable to anything else. People may tell you Fes is similar but more authentic – and that’s not true. They are different – worlds apart even. Fes has the medieval charm in the medina, and the kind people, but Marrakesh has the organized chaos and the exotic ridiculousness that makes it so special. You can’t avoid it, but if you’re prepared for it and embrace it you’ll be much more accepting of the experience. Just, leave it for the last so it doesn’t colour your view of the rest of Morocco, as it did ours.