Moroccan Road Trip Hospitality

(submitted by Carolyn)

My husband and I lived in Morocco for five years. During our time there, we experienced the richness of Moroccan hospitality. One such story happily coincided with our last road trip that we took in Morocco, with our son who was about 8 months old. We had stayed at a National park for a few days and then were planning to drive north to a city along the Mediterranean coast. The hotel manager Abdellah (name has been changed) had been a great host to us at the park and helped us with hiking and sightseeing. During our time there, our vehicle was making some funny noises. Our last day there we decided we needed to get it checked before we drove another few hours to our next destination. We talked with Abdellah and he had a mechanic in a city about 45 minutes from the park. He said he would drive ahead of us and take us to his mechanic. So off we went, not sure what the day was going to hold for us, which is a little scary when you have a baby along! How long would we be at the mechanic? How much money would it cost? Would the mechanic find the problem? Would he be trustworthy?

We were at the mercy of a mechanic we didn’t know in a city we had never been to before. But we trusted Abdellah and faithfully believed his mechanic would be good too. Not only did Abdellah take us to his mechanic, he stayed and helped. The mechanic looked at our vehicle and found the problem. Luckily it didn’t need a big fix. About an hour later our vehicle was fixed and we didn’t have to pay too much money. And to make sure our vehicle was fixed, Abdellah came with us in our vehicle and we drove around a little to make sure everything was good. Wow, what hospitality! He drove to the mechanic with us and stayed the whole time. He really didn’t need to do this but he did. Because he is Moroccan. And Moroccans take care of you. I was almost in tears with gratitude and thankfulness. We thanked him about a million times! He said he would call us during the day to see how everything was going and off we went. And he did.

He called us a few hours later to check in on us to make sure we made it safely to our next destination, which we did. That road trip we saw many amazing things but our most memorable moment was how Abdellah took care of us. He’s not the only Moroccan who did this, we saw this time and again, sometimes in little ways and sometimes in big ways. We have learned so much from our Muslim friends in Morocco

and hope we can extend this type of hospitality to others.