Customs – Part Two (Feb)

We arrived back home at around midnight and collapsed into bed, only to have to roll out of it again not many hours later. Back in the train station once more we had an eerie feeling of déjà vu.

“Weren’t we here at exactly the same time, embarking on exactly the same journey only yesterday?”

Yep. Unfortunately so. Only this time we were armed with every possible piece of paper we could find. As Vincent had commented yesterday: “In future, when dealing with bureaucracy in this country, we need to travel with our filing cabinet.” Wise words indeed.

The morning went much more smoothly as we knew exactly where to go this time – bypassing the obnoxious lady at the office, we headed straight for customs at the warehouse.

After waiting for 20 minutes the chief customs guy appeared back at his porta-cabin and glanced over the new papers we presented. Everything seemed to be in order this time – job done? No chance.

Next it was back onto the office merry-go-round. We were pointed in the direction of yet another bureaucrat on the same site, who ignored us for 15 minutes before deigning to stamp the relevant piece of paper, enter the details into his ledger and send us back to porta-cabin number one. By this time though, everyone had left for lunch.

With nothing left to do but get lunch ourselves, we asked a security guy if there was anywhere to eat around here. Sure, he told us, just down the road. Foolishly or optimistically – you decide – we followed his directions and set off on foot. Once more, after 15 minutes of walking along the same dusty industrial road we were no closer to anywhere that looked like lunch. We gave up more quickly this time and hailed a Grand Taxi (these are beaten up old Mercedes that pick up and drop off people randomly and manage to squeeze seven people in at a time – very interesting when you’re tucked in with a big sweaty mamma in a synthetic leopard-print djellaba) and headed to a restaurant we’d spotted earlier.

Back at the site, and everyone back on duty, we carried on with the ritual to and fro and finally were standing in the TST warehouse, uniformed customs guys at the ready, correctly stamped papers in hand, and a fork lift truck headed towards us carrying a pallet with all our worldly belongings on it.

Deposited at our feet, the customs guys handed us cutters and motioned for us to start peeling through the layers of shrink-wrapped plastic and bubble wrap that swaddled our boxes like an Egyptian mummy. Apparently we had to open it in case we’d rigged it with explosives or something. The uniforms descended, picking boxes at random for us to open – although it quickly became apparent that they were fixated on books. “Books? Books? Which ones with books?” was the incessantly repeated question. They also wanted to know if we had any maps, especially maps of Morocco. “No, the only Moroccan map we have is back in our car in Fes,” I told one eager young inspector. “Can you show me?” he said. “Uh, no, like I said, it’s in Fes,” I insisted, inwardly groaning at the prospect of having to go back and fetch it – fortunately he’d moved on. He’d discovered copies of the newspaper and magazines I used to work for back in Australia and got very excited when I pointed to the by-line on the front page and said that was me. Off he went, round his colleagues, showing everyone. From then on it seemed like they were just being nosey, asking to see our wedding photos and so on.

Finally, with no illicit political or religious books being discovered, they started to pack everything back up. Concerned at the haphazard way our previously beautifully wrapped cargo was being repackaged, we took photos for insurance purposes, mindful of the fact the boxes still had to journey to Fes before making it undamaged.

With the inventory checker satisfied and correct signatures and stamps obtained we headed back to chief customs guy in porta-cabin one for the final sign-off. He looked over our papers again, scratched his head, and checked again. Hmmm.

“You don’t have your carte de sejour?” he said. “Not yet,” Vince replied, “we haven’t started the application process yet.”

Hmmm. “And do you have a letter from customs in England saying that you have officially left the country?” he asked.

“Err, no.” This was the first we’d heard of this new, apparently critical piece of paper.

He picked up the phone and dialled, presumably to ask a higher power what to do. Vince and I looked at each other resignedly and waited to hear our fate.

Shaking his head, sympathetic chief customs guy hung up the phone and cleared his throat. “I will have to write a letter to Rabat,” he said. “Because you do not have the correct papers, customs in Rabat will need to consider whether to release the goods,” he continued.

“This will take about a week, insh’allah, and then you need to come back to Casablanca.”

Silently taking in this new bombshell, Vince paused before translating this latest exchange for me.

I didn’t explode however. Somewhere along the line during this ridiculous debacle I had given up caring for the time being. I felt that it would work out somehow, my only concern was the mounting storage charges that would continue to accumulate while letters went back and forth between Rabat and Casablanca.

We shrugged, thanked the man for his time and prepared ourselves for yet another four-hour train journey home.

Post Script:

I wrote a letter of complaint to our moving company about TST’s incompetence in Casablanca, which was taken up by Vanguard – the shipping line – and battled out on my behalf. Fortunately the British side of the company was able to see reason and offered to pay our storage fees to date as compensation.

In the meantime, customs mysteriously decided to release our belongings with no further paperwork. Vince made the third journey to Casa alone and after paying customs 3000dh in ‘taxes’ and TST’s 1600dh storage fees our boxes were finally on the way to Fes.

They arrived the next day and were carried through the winding medina streets by a team of sweating carrosers (guys with two-wheeled trolleys). It was with great excitement that we unpacked some of our things, finding stuff that we hadn’t seen in several years since leaving Australia.

However we waited and waited and waited for the promised reimbursement of the storage fees until finally in May I emailed the shipping line directly.

The good old British side again got involved and TST responded by saying: “Mrs Bonnin must present herself at our office in Casablanca in order to receive the cheque” !!!

You can imagine how unimpressed I was upon hearing I had to travel to Casa again in order to be compensated for being made to travel to Casa…

This was my email response:

Dear Amal,

Unfortunately I never received the emails asking me to collect the cheque, thank you for your persistence.

However, asking me to travel yet again from Fes to Casablanca (a four hour train journey) to collect the reimbursement that was offered because of TST's original incompetence - which resulted in us having to travel to Casablanca three times at great inconvenience - is a joke I'm afraid. Morocco has a very good postal system. Please use it. Our current address is….If you require a receipt, I will be happy to send you one, also by post.

Could you also ensure this is taken care of this week, as I am going away for the summer and would like the matter resolved before I leave.

This was sent May 27^th. Unsurprisingly no cheque arrived before we left on June 8^th and I’ve received no further response. Rest assured though, I will resume correspondence once we get back in September…I’ll keep you posted!