Like I said before, we were excited about eating dinner at the Chinese/Vietnamese restaurant in Rabat.

We walked through the door, and Chris was greeted by the waiter rubbing his belly. OK, so that’s just a good-luck blessing. No big deal.
We’re shown to our table, have a seat. The waiter sort of stumbles in, and we ask him if he can get us some water. We ask in French. We ask in English. We ask in Arabic. He just stands there, not responding. Weird. He walks away, and we all just exchange an uncomfortable glance.

He returns again, still stoic. Another waiter eventually gets us some water and brings us some complimentary “sangria”. (It tasted like grape juice, at best.) Jill turns to ask him what he recommends. He starts talking, hiccups, and slurs, in French, “I… I rec…. I recommend…. the Chef.” Uh. Ok. He sort of stumbles out of the room. Everyone is pretty uncomfortable at this point.

Our star returns once again, this time Chris asks him a question about a dish. He turns his head away, covers his mouth and seems to wretch. He leaves through a service door next to our table. At this point we figure that he is either sick or drunk; either way we’re convinced he shouldn’t be serving us food. We discussed what we’d have done if this were America: it would include complimentary meals, walking out on the ticket, and speaking directly to the manager. But, It’s not America. And the customer is never right.

Everyone is generally uncomfortable. Robbie is shooting daggers with his eyes at this guy, who is aware enough to realize that something is amiss. When on the way to the restroom, Robbie witnesses the waiter nearly fall down the stairs. Robbie throws up his hands and looks to the head waiter for some sort of explanation, consolation, apology. The head waiter looks sympathetic, even slightly ashamed, but does nothing.

After our waiter’s most recent stumble past our table into the supply room to, presumably, wretch more, everyone at the table is uncomfortable to a new extreme. Robbie has been asking if we can leave since the waiter’s first appearance. But at this point, even Anna, the most accommodating and least-easily bothered member of our expedition, is asking if we can’t just leave. That’s when this picture was taken:

I decide to set up the video feature of my camera, hoping to catch just how uncomfortable we all were.
Notice his the slight swaying in his gait, the door he disappears into, and the general attempt of everyone at the table to pretend like nothing is wrong…

Unreal. So, we set the camera up for another clip. We couldn’t believe what happened next.
Notice the looks of terror on our various faces…

For the guy to pick out Robbie, the person among us who was most uncomfortable and was most upset/angry about the whole situation… wow.