Systems

A brief portrait of Rabat transportation systems:

As a New Yorker, I don't bat an eye at the fact that the Rabat bus system does not run on a schedule. This is actually more familiar to me than having to show up at the stop at a particular time. Rabat, however, seems to be even worse than the M4 as far as gaps between service. You miss a bus at the wrong time of day, well, good luck. (There was also a strike last week - the Moroccan way of celebrating French colonial roots.)
The buses themselves are all metal on the outside, a steep climb to get in, a couple incandescent bulbs inside for light. You board at any door, and once inside the ticket agent comes to take your 4dh (fifty US cents!) and hands you a little slip of paper that says RAHA BUS Rabat - not valid until scribbled on in the agent's ballpoint pen. To signal your stop, you stand up. And if the driver doesn't see you stand up, he may go right past your stop (bus stops are sometimes hard to find - there are no shelters, just a single sign). If the driver does miss your stop, you go over to the door and bang on the metal box above it. Not kidding.

Of course, if the timing isn't right or the buses or mobbed you can take a petit taxi, little blue hatchbacks of various marks and ages (usually Renault, I think). Half the time, the meter inside is analog and not digital, fifties vintage, and is labelled either in Italian or Spanish. You can hail them down wherever and pay metered fare.
There are also taxi stands, and the fare from taxi stand to taxi stand is 4dh flat per person. The trick is that 3 people going the same way get into one cab. How, you might ask, does that work?
The taxi stand next to the train station (where I go in the morning) is a small triangular parking lot formed by two forking streets. Taxis pull in and park. There are two attendants - one is a tall youngish man in jeans, the other is grandfather aged, has a beard and wears a djellaba. As people walk up they find out where they're going, and sort them into cabs. Once there are three people, you go - but not before the driver tips the attendant (1dh, I think), usually by handing it through the window.
The thing about the whole system is that it's not exactly transparent - the attendant's not in uniform, there's no signage... for a week and a half I was going to Jam'aa Badr (Badr Mosque) as my destination until my sister told me to ask for Sharia Franca (Avenue de la France) which is much closer to Amideast but I had no idea it was a taxi stop. I've also seen people get a few extra blocks out of their driver, still on flat fare.

So far, understanding the taxis and buses is one of my few resident-creds. Not much, but it's a start.