Cultural Scenarios Courtesy of the Peace Corps

I am using the "Peace Corps Manual to Moroccan Arabic" as a tool for learning Moroccan. It is a great text and I find it very helpful, except today I stumbled on something quite interesting.

The last chapter of the book is full of situational conversations. These are examples of "typical conversations" that you might experience as an American working in Morocco.

The conversations included:
1) An American girl being stalked and sexually harassed by a Moroccan man and having to call the police
2) A guy getting his bike stolen on the street
3) A Moroccan trying to convince an American to smoke hash
4) An American being accused of personally killing Iraqis and yelled at in a cafe by a mob of men.

I am sure that if I hadn't been to Morocco several times before reading these conversations, I might be scared out of ever going.

Maybe I am just one of the lucky few, but I have spent over 1 month in Morocco on multiple trips and I never had any experiences quite like this. They seem a little extreme.

Of course, I have heard the words "zwina" and "gazella" more than any other two words in Arabic (they both mean beautiful and it seems almost a reflexive action for Moroccan men to say this when a blonde girl walks down the street) ...but a guy following you home every night in his car?? That's a little different. And no foreigner has made it 1 hour walking in Tangier without being offered hash..but a simple "la shukran" (no thanks) is always enough for me..I've never had anyone try to convince me why I should start smoking Hash. And, yes, there are debates about politics...but I have never felt like anyone blamed me personally for the US government policy.

I wonder how many peace corps volunteers read this before leaving and ended up putting up a barrier and being always on the defensive around Moroccans...and never really experienced the culture as a result.