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| secure parking outside the port |
My early start is delayed by half an hour due to problems at the hotel when I try to check out. The desk clerk is seriously lacking in common sense and keeps wanting me to sign for drinks that I haven,t had. This is not a good start for what will later become a nightmare.
Once again I am helping two teams by showing the way out of Marrakech and to the port and so I can help with the different languages. The journey starts with the rain in Marrakech, making my nice, clean truck very dirty. But, as the hours pass, the weather gets better. A quick fuel stop and the Hungarian team spot a problem with a trailer tyre. The tyre has caught against a kerb and has started to split. The wire inside has started to come out through the rubber. A replacement in Morocco is out of the question so he has to hope it will stay in one piece until we get to Spain. We make good time to Tangiers port and are surprised to see teams who left much,much earlier than us, waiting in the parking area outside the port.
SECURE PARKING OUTSIDE THE PORT......Our shipping carnets had been collected,the day before, and passed to customs for clearance and we were told to give our arrival time at the port so that we could be processed as we arrived. This now looked like our shipping agent was just being lazy and they waiting for everyone to turn up and process us all together. I was glad that I made the decision not to arrive early or I would be as unhappy as they were. A old man greets us in the parking area and asks who our shipping agent is. He has no I.D. badge and we are reluctant to give out this information. We have paid a lot of money to this shipping company and do not expect them to "contract out" the business to someone else. But, an hour later, we are given a piece of paper by him authorising us to go down to another parking area inside the port. The man then asks for money, team caps or anything else in return for his "services" which we all decline to do.
SECURE PARKING INSIDE THE PORT......Once we have all moved to this parking area, we continue to wait for another 2 hours before our carnets are handed back to us. One teams carnet is missing and we are not given a card which allows us to queue for the truck, x-ray scanner. We can only wait until the missing carnet and the cards appear. Another hour is lost! Despite high fences and some security, we watch as 3 stowaways enter the parking area and try to get under the trailers before being chased off by the different truckies.
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| Waiting to go through to the scanner |
THE X-RAY SCANNER......A 4 lane queue of trucks sits waiting to be called through to the 2 scanners. A system of "totally random selection" now happens. It does not matter who was there first, you can only hope you get called forward by an "official" and his "Moroccan hand wave". You can then join yet another queue before trying to turn the truck to the left and line up in front of the building where the scanners are located. The space is very tight and considering the port is so large, I cannot understand why so little room is allowed to manoeuvre a 16 metre long truck. More waiting just makes us all a little more tired and demoralised. Once through the scanner, you then park up in a very random manner and wait for a ticket that proves you completed this part of the process. Some teams are forced to join the queue again and go back through the scanner. Luckily, I am not one of them.
A search on the Internet and also talking to people has revealed that the EU has imposed this scanner process on the Moroccan authorities, to help with free trade to Spain. Where a race truck comes into this trade agreement, I do not know?
Scanner ticket in hand, we start to move back down in front or the trucks waiting to join the scanner queue. If you can imagine a figure of 8 pattern, this is how the trucks are moved around this very confined space. Everybody just seems to be in everyone else,s way. It is a totally ridiculous system and I think a child could have designed it in a better way. We now move towards some waiting police and customs people who seem to spend more time shouting, hand waving and paying no real attention to the job in hand. We are sat behind a Spanish team who seem to have a problem with some incorrectly written numbers on their scanner ticket. As I am now blocking the queue for the scanner, a policeman waves us around the Spanish and this is also confirmed by our shipping agent who has been shepherding the trucks through. I let out a sigh of relief as I finally leave this mayhem behind and start to drive the 2km to the ship departure lanes.
I TOLD YOU THIS PORT WAS NOT SMALL.
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| plenty of time for tea and coffee |
We pass a final police checkpoint, our scanner ticket has a bar code which is scanned and we are finally free to wait for the next available boat out of this hell hole.
THE DEPARTURE LANES......One race truck after another starts to line up at Quay 6, as we were asked to do. Unfortunately this is wrong, so later, we will all have to move again to Quay 7. Moroccan efficiency!!!!!! We all stand around waiting for the boat. Everyone has a story to tell of how the day has progressed and we are all tired, fed up and desperate to get out of here. When the trucks have to move to Quay 7, I loose my place and end up behind everyone else. This simple factor will signal yet another problem for us.
From out of the darkness, a ship arrives and starts unloading its cargo of trucks, cars and vans onto Moroccan territory. We wait and wait and after 1 hour, the boat finally starts to load up for the journey back to Spain. Some trucks are suffering badly with ground clearance problems and bits of wood and rope are put underneath the trailer wheels to help raise them up. I have not had chance to talk with everyone to ascertain if any trucks were damaged when being loaded. I will update you in my next blog post.
We are the last to go on to the boat. As I move forward, one of the security man with a dog, walks around the truck. The dog starts barking. A stowaway has climbed under my truck and is laying on top of the trailer wheel axles. If he had stayed there,he would have been crushed to death. When the truck is not running, the air suspension would have slowly dropped down as the truck was parked on the boat. I do not know what these people expect to do when they arrive as illegal immigrants in Spain. Do they think that they will get a job, money or anything else? Or is Morocco such a bad place that anything is better than staying there? In previous years of WTCC, some truckies have witnessed these people being beaten and even shot by the police. It is not something that we in the Western world ,can comprehend.
We are finally waved forward and two policemen ask to see our passports. We are then shouted at because we have not had our passports stamped with an exit date.
Remember the policeman and shipping agent who waved us around the Spanish truck? THAT,S WHERE WE SHOULD HAVE GOT OUR PASSPORTS STAMPED. A man from the company who operates the boat, Baleria Lines, offers to drive us quickly to the police to get this stamp in our passports. The police shout at him and walk away. We put our head in our hands and watch the police head towards the comfort of their police hut. Their rudeness is totally unnecessary and makes me hate them and the country they represent.
HOW DIFFICULT CAN IT BE TO LEAVE THIS BLOODY PLACE.
My job helps provide entertainment, employment and brings money to Morocco. I am not a criminal but I am made to feel like one.
THE DEPARTURE LANES, PART 2......We can see other truckies looking down from the back of the boat at us. They do not know why we have been refused but are powerless to help. The doors of the boat close and we stare at each other in total dismay. I leave the truck and talk to the man from Baleria and he says that he will drive us up to the police post. We can get our passports stamped but we will have to wait for the next boat which is at 0500 hours the next day. The man from Baleria explains the situation to the police. Today is 16th April and because the next boat is due on the 17th April, he will not stamp the passports! I start to complain but I am ushered away by the Baleria man. He knows how the police work and I am making the situation worse. On the drive back to the truck he explains how difficult it is for the boat companies to operate this service between Spain and Morocco. If the Moroccan authorities delay the passengers, the boats will continue to sail half empty. How can the boat companies make money when conditions like this are forced upon them?
We sit in the truck and try to get some sleep before we can go back the next day and complete the passport process.
0400 hours and we are woken up and told to take a shuttle bus back to the police office. When we get there, the same policeman from earlier that night, takes only seconds to rubber stamp our passports. Another case of Moroccan efficiency! It takes another 30 minutes of waiting on the bus before we drive back to the truck. We are concerned that we will miss this boat. There are only 8 cars and vans to be loaded and our truck. Luckily, the man from Baleria waits for our return. One more check for stowaways and we drive on. We are massively relieved and my hair has gone a little bit more grey. I am now a 3 times veteran of WTCC in Morocco and I have had enough.ALGECIRAS......A perfect sunrise over the Rock of Gibraltar goes unnoticed by both of us. The relief at having finally left Morocco blinds us to the beauty of life. Moving slowly out of the boat and towards the Spanish police, we are greeted with a friendly "Ola", a quick check again for any stowaways and we are FREE. But maybe not......
I try to go through Spanish customs without getting our carnet stamped. In my limited Spanish, I say what a beautiful day it is and where we are going but he knows his job too well and knows that I must wait for customs. I am not trying to break the law by avoiding this process as our carnets are only temporary and we can get them stamped at a later date. I am only trying to bend the rules to make my life a little bit easier. We still have a long journey back through Europe and we are keen to get going. One of the teams has managed to get through customs the night before. He got lost in the port when he came off the boat, but he just got waved through when he arrived at Spanish customs. I call him on his mobile and tell him that he has to turn around and come back because the Spanish customs need to do all the paperwork together. He believes me at first but I can not keep up my joke for long. Finally I tell him not to worry. I am glad he is away from Morocco and heading home.
We find a parking place inside the port and walk across to the Spanish shipping agents who will help us complete the customs process. Soon, some of the other team truckies start to appear and our story of the previous night is told over, and over again. It is 1300 hours before we are all finally clear of customs and we can go our separate ways. Some trucks are on a boat from Tangiers to Genoa, Italy while the rest of us will drive up through Spain. Some teams are keen to get their cars back to the workshops before the next race, while others will drive straight to Slovakia for the next race.
MY THOUGHTS ON MOROCCO......I have no desire to return to Morocco. I have tried using different shipping agents to help my our journey through this corrupt port system and each of them has had its problems. My 3 visits there have all been very traumatising. I resent being treated with contempt when I have done nothing wrong. I do not like the uncertainty of the police and customs processes. I cannot condone the bribery and corruption that myself and others have seen with our own eyes. Tangiers Med 2 port still has major problems that need to change. The security aspect is slightly better but is far from good. I do not like being offered to buy drugs or have my money changed back to Euros by people who should not even be in a secure area.
THINGS NEED TO CHANGE.
History has shown that a country needs good leadership. If the authorities are corrupt, how can it expect to set a good example to its citizens. And for people like us who are forced to go to these countries and work, it makes our life bloody difficult. A group of us were sat outside a cafe in Algeciras, waiting to clear customs, when a man came up to us and asked where he could find the office of the boat company to buy a ticket to Morocco. Everyone spoke at the same time and said to him, "YOU DON'T WANT TO GO THERE". And that will be our reply to anyone in future, even if it is just for a holiday.
If anyone reading this is Moroccan or thinks this blog has racist overtones, it is not my intention and I apologise. I have only told the story as it has happened.
I think that the King of Morocco,s son, who helped organise this race, needs to direct his attentions towards making the country a better and safer place for its people. Allowing a motor sport event does very little to help the people, like the stowaways around the port. They are desperate to leave their homeland because it can offer them nothing. Race teams coming to this country only serve to provide more money to the corrupt authorities, not the Moroccan citizens.
I would like to thank all the WTCC truckies for all their help and information during this trip. Special thanks also to "Moisty"(Virtuosi), Pete(Super Nova) and Rob(LED Screen Hire)
A new circuit for WTCC awaits us in Slovakia. Thank goodness we dont have to drive there via Morocco!