Saturday, September 08, 2007

I am always excited by signs of enterprising spirit in Morocco. When people sense a market niche, and provide a product or service to fill that need. The only exception might be faux-guides and touts, both of who also make me excited but with...vigor. In any case, the reason I "geek out" to such an extreme am that this happens fairly infrequently. It's not uncommon for people to sell identical products directly next door to each other, the defining difference not being the products but the people doing the selling. It's a different way of doing business I suppose, one based more on family and friendship than what exists in the US today.

As readers know (ye few but faithful), my town got electricity a few months ago. It brought a lot of changes to town, mostly a lot of refrigerators (not one for me). My second favorite (of 4) store in town was seized by some of this above spirit. Perhaps it came down in a tongue of flame; maybe it was inspiration from the mosque that is a 30second walk away. In either case, 90% of the time the owner is prone on the ground slumbering so it must have been a strong inclination that leads him to start selling homemade popsicles. Wonderfully cold, and wholesomely simple. Morocco is blessed with a lot of faux-Tang, which he pours into a tea glass and adds a small stick from a tree in front of his store. A few hours and a 10 ryals (7cents) later I am a very happy man. The sublime joy of a cold treat and a meditative walk though the date palms is hard to quantify on a law school application.