Appalachian State student Harden Kernodle, NYU student Kayla Harrington, and the author with couch-surfing host Abdou Leqdeh and his son Yahi Yah Leqdeh in Fes.

By Nicole Torres

“Would you like some tea? My mother will make it for you,” Abdelilah Leqdeh, a 31-year-old Moroccan English teacher, asked my two friends and I as we sat on his couch. We nodded and smiled, awkwardly, unsure of how to abide by foreign etiquette codes. The whole idea seemed a little strange; we were taken in for the night by Abdelilah— virtually a total stranger who I had “met” on the internet a week before— and were given three couches to sleep on and a home-cooked Moroccan dinner to look forward to. For free. In Fes.

Abdelilah, or Abdou as he liked to be called, lived with mainly women— his mother, his wife, his sister, sister-in-law, and his cousin— as well as his father and his four-year-old son. And while he was sitting and talking with us, the women shuffled in and out of the salon with trays of sweet green mint tea, bread, and apricot jam that they had prepared. They did the same for dinner. After some light exploring, we came back to find that the women had made a traditional Moroccan meal of chickpea soup and chicken tajine for all of Abdou’s guests (there were three other travelers staying). But we enjoyed our meal without any of the women’s company; it wasn’t until Abdou walked us to the terrace, that we saw the women again— crowded in the small computer room, dipping their bread into the hearty tajine. Again uncertain of what was proper behavior, we just smiled and graciously thanked them for our dinner. We offered to help clean up or wash dishes, but our gestures were met with Abdou’s laughs. “The women will do everything,” he said, as he led us out to the balcony and lit up the first hash joint of the night.

I met Abdou on Couchsurfing.com, an online social network that connects travelers to local couches all around the world. The site operates as a hospitality exchange, where members can host other members, or “surfers,” and offer sleeping accommodation in their home and also “surf” on other hosts’ available couches. The nonprofit network has become an easily accessible community since it went public in 2004, with free membership and several Couchsurfing groups popping up in cities where members are eager to meet and have events. Not to mention its rising popularity among young travelers and its increased media coverage.

Couchsurfing (CS) provides its members with not only the chance to find a free couch to crash on, but also the opportunity to engage in the local culture by learning about it from the best source— a native. It’s a cultural immersion process that you can’t get from staying at a hostel or a hotel; people can stretch out in an apartment in Oslo or learn about living in Monte Negro. Even if accommodation (it doesn’t necessarily have to be a couch) isn’t in the agreement, members often get together and show one another around their hometowns. Yes, they may technically be strangers, having never met in person, but that’s kind of what makes the whole Couchsurfing experience worthwhile; it works on trust and a willingness to keep an open mind in order to witness and understand the non-tourist, non-famous, local essence of another culture. It’s how you see firsthand a woman’s role in Morocco.

Couchsurfing was thought up by Casey Fenton in 1999, when he e-mailed 1500 students at the University of Iceland, asking for a free place to stay during his visit there. He got about 50 responses from students offering him their residences, and he started putting together this idea once he headed back to the US. With the help of Dan Hoffer, Sebastien Le Tuan, and Leonardo Silveira, the site was created in January 2003, and then officially launched to the public one year later. By the end of 2004, CS was bringing together over 6,000 members, but from publicity and rapid growth of the site, statistics reveal that today, there are 1,855,915 couchsurfers culture-hopping in 273 countries and territories. The Couchsurfing community revealed its strength in 2006, when computer problems destroyed most of the site database causing Fenton to declare that the site no longer existed, and opposition to his announcement created a Couchsurfing Collective that launched the site’s re-creation, Couchsurfing 2.0. International media coverage came soon after along with the newly adopted slogan, “Participate in Creating a Better World, One Couch at a Time.”

Couchsurfing was something I had heard about from all the media, but it wasn’t until a friend in Prague told me about spring break plans involving a free couch in Oslo, that I considered to forget what my mom always said about talking to strangers and surf in Fes. And this is a similar story among members (perhaps excluding my mom). “I decided to go to Iceland for a week by myself in 2008, and my friend suggested Couchsurfing to meet people,” Maggie Owsley, photojournalist and NYU senior told me, “At the time I was too scared and shy to actually stay with anybody, but I’ve gotten a lot more comfortable.” And Abdelilah too learned about CS from trusted sources. “My cousin found the website and met a man who was from France for tea here. Since then I made my own profile and have been hosting people from so many countries,” he said.
Ronja Altmann, NYU junior and another initial host, heard about Couchsurfing from a friend two years ago. The idea of hosting travelers was pretty appealing to her and her parents, since they were used to frequent guests in their home in Vienna, and their two vacant bedrooms made it easy to accommodate groups of people. “My family’s always loved having guests, so Couchsurfing was a perfect way for us to help out travelers and also learn a lot about different parts of the world,” she said. Altmann’s experience of hosting before surfing made her more comfortable with the whole concept compared to Owsley’s initial uncertainty. “[Couchsurfing] sounds crazy and it can be sketchy, but once you meet these people, you realize it’s not at all,” she told me.

Safety is probably one of the biggest concerns revolving around the Couchsurfing agenda. Patrick Shelton, a college sophomore who has never couchsurfed, said, “I mean, the idea of having a free place to stay is great. But it comes down to meeting people over the Internet, trusting their profiles, and then meeting them and sleeping in their house. Doesn’t sound like the smartest thing to do.”

Couchsurfing probably isn’t the smartest thing to do in terms of risk, but the network runs on a system of members vouching for each other, optional host verification through a credit card donation, references, and extensive profile information. These combined with the online messaging service of the site really puts members’ security into their own hands. “If you’re planning on surfing someone’s couch, you just have to be smart. Read what other people have said about the person and their home. Try to get to know them enough to feel comfortable,” Altmann said. CS may sound bizarre or foolish or unsafe, but members have the chance to make of it what they want. Safety is maintained mainly through an information sharing process, so that Couchsurfing.com says, “Through CouchSurfing, it’s more like meeting a friend of a friend,” as opposed to meeting total strangers like you would in a hostel.

“Out of all places, you’re going to couchsurf for the first time in Morocco?” my roommate Kayla asked when I finalized travel arrangements with Abdou. Her surprise wasn’t uncalled for; I knew nothing of Moroccan, Islamic, or North African culture. It was diving deep. But that’s what traveling is— getting past your comfort zone, trusting experienced references, keeping an open mind, and moving past assumptions. “I like traveling to feel like I am understanding the people and place where I am,” Owsley said, “It’s not about sticking to what I’m used to.”

Say your host all of a sudden asks for money or takes you somewhere you don’t want to go. Say your guest is disappointing, closed-minded, messy, and maybe even tries to steal from you. Say something even worse happens. The dangers of Couchsurfing are real, but members feel differently about the whole idea, seeing trust and referencing as the way to have a positive CS experience. And that’s what the website says it’s all about, “[creating] inspiring experiences: cross-cultural encounters that are fun, engaging, and illuminating.” Abdelilah said that he’d never had a bad hosting experience, and that his guests were typically what he expected from reading their profiles. “I haven’t experienced a negative CS encounter yet. And from what I know, there aren’t many of them. If there are, people will share what happened, and members can get kicked off the site,” said Altmann. Members are even given an emergency phone number to have on hand in case of anything remotely Couchsurfing unfriendly.

Freeloading is also considered a downside of Couchsurfing. You can travel all over the world without paying for a hotel or hostel— that takes a great deal of stress off the budget-conscious traveler and it keeps the wallet a little bit heavier. Of course there would be people to take advantage of the beneficial situation. “Yeah there are freeloaders out there who don’t care about anything else besides saving money on a place, but the people I know on Couchsurfing do not have that mentality,” Altmann said, “It’s more about immersing yourself in the culture with the resources hosts offer you.” And though no financial transactions are made for the hospitality, most couchsurfers will bring their hosts a gift, help with cleaning, cook, teach their native language, or give some money for food. The CS network is an active community of members who take and also give back.

The impact of this community is culturally eye-opening. A host shows his guests firsthand what it’s like to live in his city and introduces them to certain cultural norms. Couchsurfing.com is easy to navigate, easy to connect to people and easy to believe in. Kayla changed her mind about couchsurfing in Morocco; she joined in the Couchsurfing culturally integrating festivities— eating chicken tajine with her hands, playing with Yahi yah, Abdou’s wild little son, and coughing up some smoke on the balcony. “It was fun. Couchsurfing was the perfect way for us to really experience Fes, especially since we only had one night there,” she said.

It’s rewarding and enriching. It changes how you think of travel, operating as a vehicle moving you from tourist to traveler and even close-to-local. “I believe that once you have couchsurfed (and it went well) that you will never go back to “normal” travel,” Owsley said, because for her, “being forced to stay in a hostel magnifies how lonely and solitary the experience is.” Couchsurfing breaks borders and brings people from around the world together through one strong online community. It sounds crazy, and it is a little bit. But it’s also comforting, being welcomed into someone’s home and personally witnessing how different cultures live. Members make what they want of their stay, but they can also get a little surprised. In Owsley’s case, she had a big surprise. She fell in love. In Monte Negro. “Couchsurfing brought two people together from different cultures, backgrounds, places and because we had couchsurfing in common, among so many other things, we just clicked,” she said, “Of course, now I love Couchsurfing even more.”

Nicole Torres is a junior at NYU, where she is majoring in journalism and metropolitan studies. She comes from Danville, Virginia.