I returned last night from Morocco, happy to be home. Don't get me wrong -- I had a wonderful time on my trip. But it was intense and fast-paced, and I slept less on vacation than I do normally in real life, so it was a relief to take a shower in a non-handheld shower and sleep in my own bed with my own dog.
The trip started off horribly. I did not remember that my plane tickets were paper tickets rather than e-tickets due to the fact that I haven't had a paper ticket in at least five years. My travel agent had mentioned this fact to me six months ago when I bought the tickets, but I of course did not remember. She mailed me the tickets without mentioning it to me, and they didn't get here until after I'd already departed for the airport. Not having remembered that I was waiting for a paper ticket, it never occurred to me to worry. When I got to the airport and discovered the problem, I ended up having to buy a completely new ticket (essentially, they resold me my previous ticket) and fill out a lost ticket form. I now await a refund from the airline and am hoping not to be out $1200.
Having surmounted the ticket obstacle, I mistakenly assumed things would improve. In fact, they would get worse before they got better. My flight to Casablanca included a large number of passengers from a church choir in Ivory Coast returning from a singing engagement in the U.S., and my seatmate was a man in their group. He started chatting with me innocently enough, as one does with one's seatmate on a long plane flight, and between his English and my French, we made small talk reasonably well. In retrospect, I made several mistakes that seemed innocent enough at the time that I recommend you, gentle reader, avoid: (1) when he asked me for my email address, I gave him the real one; (2) when he asked me if I have a boyfriend, I said no; and (3) when he asked me if I have any problems with dating black guys, I said no. Before long, he was telling me he loved me, trying to hold my hand, and trying to put his hand in my lap or my hand up his thigh. I told him to stop and that he was being inappropriate, and he would not stop, protesting his love for me. It's kind of a funny story now, but at the time, I really freaked out. Here I was, sitting with this man who was trying to molest me, who refused to stop when I asked and told him to do so, and I had no place to escape. Not only that, but it was an overnight flight, and the cabin was dark and most of my fellow passengers were sleeping. I decided it was time to solve the problem six-year-old style and tell an adult I could trust. I told this creepy molester that I felt sick to my stomach (true) and went to tell a flight attendant what happened. While most of my flying experiences seem designed to denude me of the least little shred of dignity, I must commend the flight attendants of this airline for sympathetically addressing my problem and moving me to a new seat in the non-molesting section. I evaded the molester for the rest of the plane ride and escaped the Casablanca airport without seeing him. However, when I returned home, I had two emails from him, titled "salutation" and "love," both of which were deleted unread. As I said, looking back on the situation, I can see where I made mistakes. I should have been more aloof, and I shouldn't have been so worried about telling him the truth (rather than inventing a boyfriend or a husband for myself) or appearing racist. Women are socialized to be polite and friendly, and my first instinct in any situation is to tell the truth, but that sometimes leads to being taken advantage of, especially when interacting with someone from a culture that believes American women are easy and that women in general should behave more coyly.
The trip did get a lot better after that. Morocco is a beautiful country filled with delicious, if diarrhea-inducing, food and extremely good-looking men who all think I'm a hot piece of American hard candy. I made several good friends on the trip that I think will go beyond our shared circumstances of traveling together to be real friends in my real life -- two single girls and a married couple. The male half of the married couple was constantly mistaken for a Berber, the native people of Morocco, and his wife, the other two girls and me, were at least occasionally confused for his numerous wives. One merchant in Marrakesh asked him how many camels he wanted for me. I am glad he did not try to make that trade.
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