Ever since we got back from Morocco I’ve been dying to blog about my experiences there, I’ve just not got round to it. So this is the first of (hopefully) a series of posts about my first time abroad, spending a week in Northern Africa and my experiences during my stay. Hopefully this one will cheer up poor Kazzy.
Accidental Tortoise Purchase
Quite early in the week we went round the mini zoo in Agadir and were being followed around by a zookeeper who kept letting us into enclosures with the animals so we could get a better picture, in return for a small tip (tipping is a way of life in Morocco). We got to a cage full of tortoises and there was one particularly cute baby tortoise. I pointed at it and the man went into the cage and passed it through the bars to me. I held it in the palm of my hand (did I mention it was very small) and we took photos.
I gave the tortoise back to the zookeeper, very aware that he would be expecting a tip. Usually I’d give perhaps 2-4dh but as small change seems hard to get hold of in Morocco the only coin I had was a 10dh piece. I gave it to him discretely, but perhaps a little too discretely and I think he got the wrong idea. He suddenly gestured for us to wait and then disappeared.
After standing there wondering what was going on for a few minutes the zookeeper returned with paper and a pen. This is where it started getting tricky. He appeared to speak only Arabic, I speak only English and we were trying to communicate in a hybrid language of gestures and very broken French! He started making gestures which could only be interpreted as symbolising a plane, pointing at me a lot, pointing at himself a lot and pointing at the tortoise. Then he kept saying “address, address”.
After going through all the possibilities, perhaps he wanted to visit us in England or perhaps send us news on how the tortoise was getting on, we came to the conclusion that he had in fact accepted the 10 dirham as *payment* for the tortoise and wanted my address so he could send it to me. Through the post.
Now being very aware that it is now illegal to import tortoises into the UK and bearing in mind Laura’s mum was already worried about getting through customs with some rather dodgy looking mint tea, I was quite keen not to complete the transaction. It took quite a while for us to escape!
Of course there’s every possibility that I still interpreted the situation wrongly and that he was suggesting something entirely different. I guess I’ll never know.
Edit: Here’s a photo of my very cute accidental purchase…
