Locked out of the Museum

Stump’s Travel Log

The museum which I thought was the purpose of my trip today

My string of tough luck continues. At least it is tough luck from the standpoint of seeing some things in person that I had hoped to. Perhaps I need to rethink the primary purpose of this trip. I’ll work up to that.

I’m writing this from a beach in Rabat, Morocco. I flew here this morning from Málaga, Spain, which I got to yesterday afternoon by a bus from Gibraltar (technically the bus left from a station right across the border into Spain). The point of coming here today was to visit the Museum of History and Civilizations, where they have on display the fossils of the oldest Homo sapiens ever found. These were discovered further south in Morocco at Jebel Irhoud, and dated to about 300,000 years ago.

Fossils were first found at the site in the 1960s by miners. A skull was originally thought to be a Neanderthal, because it has a more elongated brain case than we modern Homo sapiens do. Over the years, several more fossils from different individuals were found there that date to the same time period, and the consensus is that they are early Homo sapiens — or at least are well on their way to becoming Homo sapiens. And that’s the tricky thing with evolution: it’s very gradual when you zoom in to individual organisms. You would never say that one species had offspring that were a different species. But after enough generations pass, you do get a different species. This is deeply counterintuitive to our minds.

If you prefer logic, we could say that the relation “is the same species as” is not transitive. A relation is transitive when if x has the relation to y, and y has the relation to z, then x will have the relation to z. For example, the relation “is taller than” is transitive: if Aaron Judge is taller than Shohei Ohtani, and Ohtani is taller than José Altuve; then Aaron Judge is taller than José Altuve. And most of the relations we use to compare things are transitive. But not “is the same species as”: just because a is the same species as b, and b is the same species as c, that doesn’t mean that a will be the same species as c (at least if you put in a bunch more generations between a and c). The cutoff for when a species changed over from one to the next during its evolution can’t really be made at the level of individuals. We know that 500,000 years ago there weren’t any Homo sapiens. But we know that there were creatures living then who had babies, who had babies, who had babies, etc., and that the babies in that ancestral line 100,000 years ago are rightly called Homo sapiens. The line where they cross over is very blurry, and has to take up many generations (because again, we’d never say that a baby is a different species than its parents).

So these fossils at the museum in Rabat are somewhere in that blurry zone, as one species was transitioning to ours. That’s why I thought it would be cool to see them and tell a story about seeing them in the book. But here’s what happened (with more detail than is necessary):

I landed in Rabat this morning at about 7:30am after a very early flight. I went from a country where my literacy of their primary language is about that of a kindergartener, to one where it is about a three-year-old in their secondary language. So I mostly smile and nod, and do some charades, and things work out OK. But I couldn’t really tell what the very stern officials were saying as we disembarked, and so followed the crowd to where they were filling out some paperwork. I have no pen with me (why didn’t I pack a pen??), and there were none provided. So I wandered around a little, wondering what to do. Then I saw someone haggling with a cleaning lady to borrow a pen. He gave her some coins (I don’t know which ones) when he was done and gave the pen back. So I walked up to her and made the universal sign for writing, and she seemed eager to let me use her pen. So I filled out the standard boarding card paper, and gave her the pen back along with a one Euro coin. She made the universal sign for being disappointed with such a pittance. I responded with charades for “sorry, that’s all I have” (which wasn’t technically true, but I wasn’t going to dig into the bigger bills for renting a pen for two minutes), and she waved me away. Then I never had to show that form to anyone.

Immigration was OK, with a fairly jolly agent whose English was about as good as my French. He was a little confused about why I had no address in Morocco to give him. But I tried to explain that I was here only for the day, and flying back to Spain tonight. He finally let me through and I found myself out in the main part of the airport, wondering what to do next. I found an “information” booth, and walked up and asked in French, “do you speak English” and the guy responded in pretty good English, “yes, of course” to which I said in great relief, “Oh thank the Lord”. Just in time I remembered I’m in an Islamic country, and swallowed “the Lord” not knowing how that might be received. I asked him how I get downtown. There are taxis and busses. Do the taxis take credit cards? He laughed, “no, cash only”. I asked how much the taxi would charge? “Probably about 150.” After a quick internet search (thankfully my Verizon phone said it would be happy to connect me to a local network for $10 (I probably would have paid $100 to stay connected today!)), I found that the Moroccan Dirham is worth about ten cents in USD. So I went to a cash machine and punched in some numbers, and out came a thousand Dirhams in various denominations of bills. So far, so good.

I made my way to the taxi stand, and all the old men there were very glad to see me. Such a welcoming people! I asked, “does anyone speak English?” The response was “English, yes, yes” but that was about all I could get out of them. Then one younger guy who seemed to be in charge walked up through the crowd, and said with very good English, “I speak English, how can I help?” I told him I wanted to go downtown to the museum, but it doesn’t open until 10. So you can drop me off at Hassan Tower. He said “no problem” and pointed to one of the older men. And then a big palaver broke out with lots of yelling in Arabic. I asked my translator, “Is there a problem?” “No problem,” he said, “but I need to have you go with this other man, because he was in the queue first. He’ll get you there.” “How much is going to cost?” I asked, thinking it best to have the settled before I got into the cab with a man whose language I don’t speak. He said, “200.” I made the universal sign of disgust, indicating that this too much. He made the universal sign for “take it or leave it” and of course I took it.

I got in the cab and opened my Google Maps, so I could monitor our progress. I thought things were going fine, but then the driver said something, looking into his mirror at me, and the universal expression on his face for “where do you want to go?” I thought this had been communicated to him already, but I suppose in the palaver, something got lost. So I said “Hassan Tower” to which he replied, “Hassan” or maybe it was “Hessen” or some other slight vowel variant. And I said, “yes, Hassan”. Then he shouted what I thought was the same word several more times, to which I nodded and said “si” and then remembered this wasn’t Spain anymore, and said “oui”. Then I heard him talking on his cell phone, which he then handed back to me saying “English”. So I took the phone and said “hello?”. The person on the other end had English capabilities at about the level of my French, and evidently my charades weren’t coming through, so I handed the phone back, and showed the driver my phone with the map, clearly pointing at the very famous landmark “Hassan Tower”. And with an evident realization, he said, “Oh… Hessin” (or something close to that). And I smiled and said, “Yes, Hessin!” (or something close to that). So we drove a bit more in the general direction of the tower, and then he said quite loudly, “Hotel?” which I learned, is the French word for “hotel.” I said, “yes, hotel” thinking that was a reasonable assumption on his part, and that there was a Hotel Hassan right next to the tower. But then he turned down another road about 8 blocks from where I thought we were going, and pulled up to a different hotel (that had nothing like “Hassan” in its name), and said “hotel” (quite loudly). I figured this was as good as I was going to get, and so got out and gave him the 200 Dirhams. 

Hassan Tower, a UNESCO World Heritage site, that is pretty cool.

My next adventure in mistranslation happened at a cafe I stopped at, but I’ll spare you the details. Suffice it to say that I ended up with some very strong coffee and some bread, which suited me just fine. By then, it was getting close to museum opening, so I started wandering the streets in that direction. It is a very strange feeling to be walking around a foreign city where you don’t know anyone, and struggle with the language. Hardly anyone gave me a second glance, and certainly no one was mean or unkind. But it was as though I didn’t even exist. 

Then I made it to my museum. It was still a little before 10, but I saw there was a security guy standing out front. So I checked my Google translator and practiced the phrase a couple of times in French for “Does the museum open soon?” Then I walked up to him and tried saying it, and I’m afraid didn’t do so well, because he responded, “It’s OK, I can speak English.” “Oh good” I said, “is the museum opening soon?” He said, “no it is closed.” 

“I know it is closed now” I said, wondering if his English wasn’t really all that good, “but it opens at 10, right? That is what I saw on the website.”

“No, I’m afraid it is closed all day today. They are doing some refurbishments.” Uh oh, if he knows the word “refurbishment” I’m betting his English is pretty good. So we had a conversation during which I quite often made the universal expression for disappointment, explaining what I was doing here for this one day. I didn’t technically offer a bribe to be let in quickly just to see the fossil exhibit, but I asked several times if there was anything I could do, or anyone I could talk to, to get special permission to go in. To his credit and integrity, he remained very firm in his refusal. The museum is closed until September 28.

Great. I started wandering the streets again, trying to figure out how tomake the best of a bad situation, and see what else I might benefit from in this city. And as luck would have it, I stumbled onto a building that was called something like “Overseer of Museums in Rabat” (that’s my translation). I thought, “hey, maybe they can help” and tried to open the door, but it was locked. As I started walking away, though, it opened, and a security guard waved me in. So I went in and started speaking English, and they responded in simple English, but we weren’t getting very far. So one of them dialed the phone and spoke into it, then handed it to me saying “English” (evidently that is a common work around). A very nice woman with very good English talked to me, and I explained my situation, asking if there was anything she could do to get me into the other museum. She was very sorry, saying it had been posted on the Museum’s Instagram account that it would be closed for refurbishments in September. I wondered why it didn’t say that on the official website itself, and all I got was, “yes, that would have been good.” I tried a few more time to be pushy without being too pushy, and she finally said, “I’ll need to come down and see you in person.” I said, “OK!” thinking I might be getting somewhere. She appeared in a few minutes, and was obviously very professional and competent. She asked more about me, and what kind of book I was writing, and why this was important. I tried to emphasize how important these fossils are, and how it is wonderful that they are from Morocco, etc. She finally said, “OK, well the best I can do is try to contact the curator for that museum. Give me your email address and a short description of what you want to do.” She handed me a piece of paper, but no pen. So I started looking around for another cleaning lady with a pen rental side hustle, but thankfully someone at the front desk gave me one (for free!). I wrote down the requested information and gave it to her. Then I was escorted out of the building. That was five hours ago.

The very pleasant beach in Rabat

So after not being able to go into the Neanderthal caves and now not seeing the oldest Homo sapiens fossils, I’m wondering if this trip is a failure. It’s not quite going how I expected it would go, but then I kind of expected that it wouldn’t in every detail. And now I’m thinking about the trip in more evolutionary terms: there have been some unexpected turns and challenges, but that’s what happened in evolution too, and these helped to produce adaptations that allowed organisms to become more successful. So I conclude this (very long) installment of Stump’s Travel Log, sitting on the beach in Rabat wondering what adaptations might come from these travel challenges, and maybe even make my trip and project more successful than it would have otherwise been. Perhaps it will sprout wings and fly!