Culture sensitivity fail

or, How Not to Lead a Team of 40 Geologists into the Field:

1. Don't bother to check if there are people living near the fault-line site that the team is to be investigating. (Goat-herding cave dwellers, in this case).
2. Upon finding this out, don't bother to go back into the nearby town to find a translator who speaks the goat herders' native language, so that appropriate negotiations for viewing the site can be made.
3. Also don't appraise the 40 geologists as to the goat herders' preferences about what might be a respectful distance to maintain from their cave, not to mention other points of etiquette about how to behave when one is effectively a guest in someone else's yard.

Sigh. So, we arrived at a ridge that overlooked the fault-line, and one of the goat-herders hurried out towards the vehicles. Not being in the lead vehicle, or anywhere close, we assumed that this was someone whom our group leader had arranged to meet us there, and we assumed that our group leader was making suitable arrangements with this person.

Thus, we followed the group leader up the ridge adjacent to the cave, and listened to the lecture about the surrounding terrain. The goat-herder kept her distance, and kept an eye on us and on her goats, meanwhile.

Eventually the lecture concluded and we were told that we had an hour to explore the site, so people started to wander around. Did I mention that the goats were baby goats? Exceedingly cute. A bunch of people were curious and began to wander towards the goats' grazing ground, in the space between the two ridges... and towards the summit of the cave-dwellers' ridge.

I noticed that two women in our group approached the goat-herder woman to talk to her and take a closer look at her goats, and I thought that it might be a good thing to greet the goat-herder too, so I wandered down towards her and said hello.

We didn't have a language in common, so we mostly just nodded in greeting. I pointed to my camera and the goats and gestured a questioning look as to whether it would be ok to photograph the goats, and she shook her head no. So I put my camera away and just looked at the goats. Then she made a soft "pssh" sound, and gestured first with her fingers rubbing together, then at the goats.

I gestured back - pointed to my purse, then the goats. She nodded.

Well, it's reasonable to request a fee in return for the favor of goat photography privileges, in this country where every favor earns a fee. I fished out a 5 dirham coin and handed it to her, and she nodded for me to go ahead and photograph her goats.

After I finished, she made another soft "pssh" noise. She pointed to one of the women who'd come over to her earlier, who was now climbing the ridge above the cave and the goats' herding ground, and made a "no" gesture. She seemed to want me to tell the woman not to climb on the ridge.

I didn't know the woman's name, and I tried just calling "Ma'am?" to her, but that didn't catch her attention, and it would not have been easy to catch up to her - she was already on the other side of some rocks that would have taken me a while to traverse. I shook my head apologetically, and climbed up the further-away ridge. There I was able to call to the various people who were hiking above the cave, and ask them to come down, which most of them did.

I joined Jay, who'd maintained a respectful distance himself, and told him about it. We mused on how our group really was literally in these folks' back yard, even if there wasn't a house and lawn per se... and that we were hardly being good guests if so.

At that point we remembered the good chocolate that we had on hand. We'd brought some from the states in case anyone invited us into their home, because Morocco etiquette says to bring sweets or pastries as a gift if you are a guest. We had it along in the field today because it had been seeming unlikely at this point that we were going to be invited into anyone's homes, so we were about at the point of just eating it ourselves or sharing it with the other geologists. But, well, here we were in a visiting situation, even if not exactly invited. So we decided to make a gift of the chocolates.

We headed back over to where the goat-herder had been sitting, but she was no longer there, and Jay paused to speak with another geologist who offered admiration for his lecture from the conference this week. I wandered near to where the goat-herder had been, hoping she'd return. While I was standing there, another of the goat-herders, a man who had been reposing inside a niche in the ridge, took his shepherd's stick and pointed it towards our group in gun-style fashion.

I thought "no, surely he isn't meaning that," but then he said "Rat-a-tat-tat!" and pantomimed a machine gun, and it was unmistakable what he meant. No one else in our group even noticed - I was the closest to him at that point.

I called out to those nearest, "I really don't think they want us here," and explained what I'd just seen, and got them to slowly begin drifting back towards our vehicles. The female goat-herder returned, then, and for a while she just sat on a high rock looking out at us. I stood where I was for a while, holding the chocolate box (and thankfully remembering to hold it in my right hand, unlike a certain prior moment in India). Eventually she came over to me, and I held the chocolate box out towards her, and she took it, nodding in what I think was a gesture of acknowledgment for the gift. Finally, maybe, we'd done one thing right.

And then we left. Our jeep group had a discussion about the incident afterwards, and I was sorry to have to argue with one of our colleagues about whether or not it was "their land." He finally acknowledged that at the very least, the goat-herders saw it as their land, and as their home, and that maybe future researchers need to act more in the manner of visitors and guests.

I know I've made a zillion of my own cultural gaffes in the short week that we've been here, so please don't take this to mean that I'm doing all that much better than anyone else. I'm not. Today, at least, I was aware of a few things. I'm trying to work up the courage to talk to our leaders about how that scene back there was Not Okay, and to make suggestions for future expeditions. I don't even know if they know what happened.