The WWE, Oprah, and People

So J and I definitely made the right decision to move in with the family. And not just because we can watch the sun set over the Atlantic, either.

No, right now I’m glad we moved in with the family because of the family. Not because they’re Moroccan (though that’s cool, too), but because they’re them.

Last weekend they sent up a few plates with some tea and some food (which was fantastic, by the way). When we took the plates back down, we decided to try and chat with them a bit. The whole point of moving in with the family was so that we wouldn’t create an American bubble around ourselves. We wanted to genuinely get to know some Moroccan people, and in order to do that we decided not to be the tenants that never leave their rooms.

So we went downstairs, and for the next thirty minutes, we laughed our butts off.

For starters, the dad is hilarious, and he’s hilarious in a way that crosses language barriers. Which is a good thing, since at any given time any one of four languages might be in use. Both the dad (H) and the mom (M) speak excellent Darija (Moroccan Arabic), Fus-ha (Classical Arabic), and French. They also have some English (It sounds like H served some time in the Moroccan military in the Gulf with Americans), but that’s a bit shakier. Meanwhile, J has good French and English, some Darija (way more than she should after a month of study), and some Fus-ha. I have English, a bit of Fus-ha, and some scraps of Darija and French that I’ve picked up from J.

So with that kind of language situation, just trying to figure out what’s being said can send the whole group of us into fits of laughter.

Anyway, we’re down there talking with H and M, with the younger daughter (Y) sitting near. Y is very shy. She’ll give us a both a big smile when we see her, but after a few days in the house, we couldn’t remember if she’d said more than a few words to both of us put together.

Anyway, we’re sitting there talking, I think about the television that was on in the background, when H just starts exclaiming, “John Seena! You know John Seena?” In the back of my head, I’m thinking, “Isn’t that the wrestling guy? But no, that can’t be right.”

But it was right. In no time, Y had jumped up from the couch and was yelling, “John Seena!” right along with her dad. It turns out that H and Y (an eight year old girl) love watching WWE wrestling together.

Speaking of stuff you don't expect to see in Morocco...

I have to admit, I hadn’t seen that one coming.

It then came out that M liked watching the Oprah Show, which is less surprising, but still.

It just goes to show that putting people into boxes is silly. I have described the people we’re living with as “a Moroccan family,” and I had certain preconceptions about what that meant. Some of those preconceptions might still be true, but I have to admit that others have been smashed like a folding chair over the back of a large sweating man.

It just goes to show you. Generalizations might be accurate, or even helpful, but if you think generalizations will really help you much with a particular person, you’re likely to be surprised (generally speaking). I learned that I was living with two WWE fans after two days with this family. I’m sure I’ve barely scraped the surface of who they really are.