What’s it 'tuya?'

Everyone has that friend who chomps at the bit desirous of others asking the origin of their belongings–unless, of course, we are happily unaware of being that person ourselves. Pride has many faces. In the spheres of life abroad, one type reigns supreme—the travel snob.

Just as intellectuals aim to increase their social capital by brandishing fully stocked bookshelves, the globetrotters of the world usually have a designated space in life to showcase remaining vestiges of some distant day spent far away from home. As Westerners, it may be an innate desire, an instinctual urge written in our DNA, galvanized through generations, to compulsively expropriate anything and everything lustrous to our eye.

I am no exception. Upon arrival in a foreign country, my pocketbook grows deploringly thin, as my fingers become all the stickier. It is a small wonder why street vendors view Americans in particular as a vortex of credit card debt. In spite of my best efforts, I am the typical tourist, sucking in endless trinkets and knickknacks that fall with range of my gravitational pull.

Lately, I have been tongue-tied in southern Spain. Effortless osmosis will not make me increasingly proficient in Spanish. However, there is one international language: money. It is an axiom in which we must all reconcile at some point. So what’s it tuya?

To a substantial portion of us auxiliares in Andalucía, a trip to Morocco was worth the cost. Like a herd of sheep, we roamed through the streets Asilah, the beaches west of Tangiers, the Caves of Hercules, and the medina of Chefchaouen’s mountain city.

Our flock encountered everyone from an exuberant Moroccan waiter, relentless shopkeepers hoping for a sale, enterprising hash dealers, and–most noteworthy of all, of course–one irate, anti-American local, flapping an unbridled tongue, while sporting a black eye, tenuously healing from a likely less than forgiving brush with someone in his recent past. His verbal volley of arrows were one of the few things that came gratis during the entire trip. Others were charged with the hidden cost of being stricken physically ill later.

Just before our departure via ferry, I stepped into one last store in Asilah with hardly anything more than lent in my pockets. I had seen some of the canvas paintings from the alley and thought I would try my luck with its owner. With only 50 dirhams and a jingling pocket of euro cents, I managed to walk out of the store, canvas art in hand.

First, it is of painful importance that I express the dynamic of shopping in Morocco. For one, the price is as firm as the practice of nailing Jell-O to the wall. To take the initial cost unquestionably is similar to birthing barbed wire without an epidural. It hurts and is not worth it. Secondly, keep a stone cold, stiff upper lip. Austerity is fundamental. Uninhibited enthusiasm is the requiem of every sucker. At any point in the transaction, the potential buyer must be able to strike the seller with a barrage of indifference. Finally, always keep in mind they will usually take anything, and, yes, I mean anything!

In my case, I approached the storeowner and told him how much I had left to spend, which of course was not even a quarter of the asking price. After he was done dismaying at the fact that I, an American, had no credit cards to turn over to him and God knows how many crooks lurking about the wireless information wasteland in Morocco, he was ready to do business. That was only the first step. The next step entailed feigning an exit from the store. Only after that was he willing to accept my offer to barter with 3 cheap Old Navy t-shirts and a pair of worn flip-flops. I laid my remaining money and clothing on the counter and, like clockwork, he succumbed to the negotiation.

I left Morocco with pep in my step and a Colgate smile smeared across my face. I had another item to vindicate my rank in the social strata of travel snobs. I left with one more week of Spanish classes in Seville. I had Spanish to learn and, soon enough, niños to teach.