Hawking Chickens

Street vendors are a common site in Rabat - men wander the streets carrying socks, coats, sunglasses and anything & everything made out of plastic, stopping pedestrians and accosting café patrons. Today as I walked back from the grocery store, I saw a man in front of me carrying three chickens tied together at the feet, hanging upside down with surprising forebearance. Watching him, I assumed he was bringing dinner home from the medina; instead I gaped as he started to peddle the birds to people on the sidewalk. I passed him just as he began negotiations with a man at a street café. Morocco is Morocco, I thought to myself. There is a veneer of a cosmopolitan city here in Rabat, but it is just a veneer.