Greetings! I hope you had a great New Year. If you’ve already broken your new year’s resolution, you shouldn’t be hard on yourself. You should be thankful, instead, that you had something to resolve because if you were perfect you’d be boring.
So what’s life like in Morocco after having been here for four months? Good question, I knew you were wondering that. Well, I’ve yet to see sand, camels and monkeys sporting fezzes. However, I have seen lots of sheep, goats, donkeys, mules and horses. This time of year is especially popular for sheep sightings, as Eid al Kabir is just around the corner. Eid al Kabir (the big feast) is one of the most important Muslim holidays. The focal point is the slaughtering of the sheep. It’s not like the townspeople join in the central square to watch the slaughtering, every family slaughters a sheep and sometimes two or three. If a family can’t afford a sheep, they slaughter a chicken or something cheaper. As a promotional tactic, Tide and other consumer product companies are holding a Sheep Sweepstakes, of sort. It’s comparable to the Monopoly Sweepstakes at McDonald’s, whereby the winner gets a lifetime supply of sheep. Well, I don’t exactly if the grand prize is a lifetime supply of sheep because I don’t know how to say lifetime supply of sheep in Arabic yet (but I’ll learn tomorrow, I promise), but if it’s not the grand prize, it should be. The price of a healthy sheep is around 3,000DH (60,000 Rials for those who are keeping tabs – see previous blog entries), which is more than that average monthly family salary.
My host family is in the process of opening a chicken house, which I think is exciting. After they described how they were going set it up and do business, they confirmed, after my prodding, that it was going to be like every other chicken house in Morocco. Jokingly, I imparted my US-American capitalistic views with them and they thought I had fallen off the camel somewhere on my journey to Morocco. I talked to them about differentiation and customer specialization. In order to be wildly successful, they have to do a few things differently.
Firstly, light will play a very important role in attracting customers away from other chicken houses. They will have to construct a huge sign soaring 13.29 meters in the air so that people from far away can see it. The sign will be neon, of course, and will depict a huge yellow, smiling chicken seated with its left hand giving the ‘thumbs up’ sign and its right hand gently wrapped around a jovial family consisting of a husband, a wife and ten children. (I figured the ten children were necessary as a subliminal sign indicating that if you eat these chickens, you’ll have lots of children.) During the evening hours when it is dark, the powerful flood lights on the roof will beam into the sky like the opening of a grand movie. There will be colorful running lights around the perimeter of the building that blink in sync with the music that is blaring from the speakers. What a deal!!!!!!
Secondly, the relationship with the chicken that you buy will be an additional differentiating factor. With your chicken purchase, at no additional cost, you will get to name the chicken, get a full report of its personal history including such things as date and location of birth, family history and favorite ice cream flavor. For a small fee, you will even have the opportunity to have a picture taken with your chicken in one of three charming scenes: the labyrinthed old medina of Marrakech (fez and cobra included), the vast sand dunes of the Moroccan Sahara (camel and genie included), or the lush mountains of Beni Mellal (flying magic carpet and Joshua included). The picture will be taken before your chicken’s throat is cut, of course. What a deal!!!!!
And lastly, frequency discounts will be yet another reason with the chicken house will be the hottest thing since Yu-Gi-Oh (which they do have here). All customers will be presented with the Djaj Card (Djaj is chicken in Moroccan Arabic). Buy ten chickens and get the eleventh chicken and a glass of mint tea for free. What a deal!!!!!
Yeah, maybe it’s a good thing that my host family is opening the chicken house and not me.