Knowing when you’re on holiday in Morocco isn’t quite as straightforward as you might think. Compared to life in Europe, which is structured solely around the Gregorian calendar, time in Morocco is much more flexible and harder to pin down than in the West. It can be a bit tricky for Europeans in the early years, but it’s not exactly straightforward for Moroccans either!
Day-to-day life is generally based on the Western calendar. People work on Fridays (although working hours are adjusted), whilst on Saturdays and Sundays, government offices and large companies are closed.
Everything changes, of course, during Ramadan and for Eid al-Adha, which takes place next week: religious festivals follow the Islamic calendar.
The Islamic calendar based on lunar observation
However, the Islamic calendar is a lunar calendar – exclusively lunar. Each calendar year, the dates of Ramadan and Eid, as well as Ashura, Mouloud (the anniversary of the Prophet’s birth) and numerous moussems, ‘shift’ by ten days. This disrupts the rhythm: over a 36-year cycle, Ramadan will fall during the summer and then the spring. It is not a ‘winter’ or ‘summer’ festival like Christmas or Easter, where the variation is limited to a few weeks.
But above all, ‘moon observation’ simply means ‘seeing the moon’.
According to the Muslim faith, the scientific calculation of the phases of the moon is intended to ‘support’ observation, but it does not replace it.
In other words, if after a few days we can’t see the moon, even though we should have been able to… we know that the date has still arrived.
And if we can see it even though all the scientific calculations say it’s too early for the new moon… we’ll go and buy some glasses!
The Ministry of Habbous is responsible for coordinating the sightings and for the official announcement of Eid or the month of Ramadan.
And – in theory – so as not to presume to know Allah’s will, as He may always give the galaxy a little nudge, we do not say in advance that Eid will fall on such-and-such a day. We wait until the day before.
Dates decided at the last minute
In practical terms, religious festivals are therefore fraught with uncertainty. Today, with Eid due to take place next week, I still don’t ‘know’ whether it will be on Tuesday or Wednesday.
I’m “suspicious” – with 99 per cent certainty – that it will be on Wednesday, but there have been surprises in the past.
So the whole of Morocco is waiting to find out when he’ll be on holiday, when he’ll be visiting his family, and when he’ll be back at work!
Business appointments are usually made for “Friday or Monday”; coach tickets aren’t booked until the last minute, just when half the country is on the move.
And in the same way, it’s always at the last minute that they decide to extend the school holidays. As if this weren’t an issue every year?
And what about the daylight saving time in all this!
The daylight saving time is a further source of confusion. Introduced relatively recently in Morocco, it has struggled to gain acceptance amongst the population, who wish to stick to the solar time they are used to.
What’s more, at the moment, ‘summer time’ is suspended for Ramadan, and resumes afterwards.
And, to top it all off, whilst Morocco was due to switch back to winter time at the end of September, it was announced at the last minute (just twelve hours beforehand!) that, on second thought, the time change would take place at the end of October.
The ensuing chaos – mistakes with flight and train bookings, public clocks that haven’t been updated, and the time on your phone that the operator doesn’t change (just like the time on your computer) – all of this confuses Moroccans, who end up forgetting about summer time even more.
As for the Europeans living in Morocco, they have long since given up on ‘keeping to the clock’, as they say here (‘You have the clock, we have the time’), but they are always rushing about…
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