Where to buy a dongle in Rabat

A dongle is a small piece of hardware that connects to another device to provide it with additional functionality.

Since I am teaching GIS, and hope to do some research, I have a good computer.  I thought long and hard what we needed to bring.  I have USB cables for my three GIS/GPS data collection devices, which come with three different connectors, and thus three different cables, but then at least they can all charge at the same time.  I brought ethernet cables, but it turns out both of our 4G routers came with a cable.  I brought an extra mouse (never use a laptop without one).

GIS/GPS data collection devices, according to the researcher.  According to IT, infection vectors never to touch a computer.

But I did not bring any video cables.  A recon of the first classroom I was going to teach in showed it had a full size HDMI cable to connect to the projector, which was exactly what I needed.  I was set.  Then the teaching schedule and room changed (I am in three different rooms, in three buildings, and one is a 10 minute walk from our apartment, and the others are a 25 minute walk in a different direction.  The first room had a VGA cable, but the projector was just overhead and had room for an HDMI cable.

I had already purchased an HDMI cable.  We have three TVs in the apartment, each with HDMI input, and we wanted to hook one up to the computer.  We undertook an expedition via petit taxi to Marjane, the local Walmart equivalent, but struck out.  After trips to several other stores, we found a and cable, and can now connect to two of the TVs (we have not yet tried the bedroom TV).  This is not to watch Netflix (which has surprisingly good choices in Morocco, despite what we had read on the internet; we watched Casablanca last night, in preparation for Mary and her sister making a field trip to Ric’s café while I taught this morning.  So for the second class, I took my cable.  This room has a projector mounted on the ceiling in a very high room, where the cable would not reach, and the projected did not have any HDMI connector anyway.  Like the first day, I borrowed a student laptop.  

Our dining room.  Moroccan apartments are not big on desks or studies, so I am using the dining room table.  Why there is a TV here, I don't know, but it works very well, and even small text is visible across the narrow dimension of the room.

So I asked the students in the second class (same ones I would see in the third class) where I should go to get a dongle.  They did not know the word, but said adapter would work, and I had to go to the medina, the maze of streets with small shops where you can find anything.  But I decided to go prepared, went to Amazon, and got a picture of the dongle I wanted, and saved it to the phone.  When I went to a shop, I could show them the picture, and ask if they had “un HDMI de HDMI a VGA”.  While I was confident I could that part over in French, perhaps to someone who was much more confident in Arabic, there was the additional matter of gender on the two ends of the adapter, and how to get across.  The picture says it all.

The medina of Rabat, but not the electronics section.

The dongle I wanted.

The first area in the medina where we went first was all cell phone stores, but the proprietor said to turn right and go a short distance.  Sure enough, the stores there had computer peripherals, and we found our dongle, although not quite the small version I wanted.

The dongle we got.

No problems Monday or Friday with the new dongle, but this morning no luck, either on my computer or that of one of the students in Salle 17.  So we went to another class for the first period, and then had to come back, by which time the defective VGA cable had been replaced and it worked.  The students are resourceful and cheerful, and we go back and forth about how much in English, and how much in French.