On the ferry – waiting for what will happen
next.
What are the dynamics which have been initiated
here in the disco now converted to an official Moroccan boarder immigration
office where people’s documents are being checked and the stamp in order to
enter the beautiful Kingdome is provided in advance. This should enable us to
save time and of course to spend our day on the ship in the most useful
way: queuing for papers and waiting that
the officers are coming back from their lunch break, was it European or
Moroccan time they were giving? Not sure.
The persistent man from the desert sits in is
fauteuil with his book on the knees in the middle of the silent dancefloor next
to the formers Dj’s desk and waits. Getting Passattier’s papers done today
would save us a lot of hassle tomorrow. The other procedures should be mafi
mushkillah for us, as we are not importing anything and our luggage is really
small compared to the tons of bags and furniture the other cars have tucked on
the top of their roofs.
Waiting in order to see if the
“germanization” experiment worked out: A list has been established two hours ago
when suddenly the officer left for his lunch break without satisfying the
demand of around 20-30 people who had been waiting for nearly an hour to get
their carte grises checked and obtain the crucial stamp. Especially frustrating
for us: the desk was closed just in front of our kerch patron, nothing he could
do about it. But as soon as the servant of the king reappears it should be our
turn! We are number 2 on the list!! But will this slightly chaotic people stick
to the list? Or will it all transform into a big fight? According to experts
prognoses chaos will only emerge after number 5 on the list and after number 10
people will need to kindly submit the bribes in order to ensure that the
officer stays longer than his offices hours. One might wonder at what time a
disco would actually close…
The room is slowly filling up but people
remain still lazy and rather calm their lunch has not yet been fully digested. Sleeping
on the floor with a woolen blanket might also not have resulted in a fully
satisfying night for some of them. Most of the chatting and snoring persons are
man clearly having a rather north African origin wearing European jeans,
traditional Djellabahs, long or short beards or nor hair at all, trainers, flip
flops, sneakers or babouches. Our Mauritanian specimen seems to confuse them,
not clearly identifiable as being one of them, they keep addressing him in all
sorts of languages…
If it
would be my car with my name on the paper I could have done it probably much
faster… as annoying these traditional societies sometimes are for women, other
times it can be an advantage. The special women line for the passport control
went much faster and allowed me to overtake all man. Saleck had to wait about
5times longer than me to get his visa checked and therefore well was too late
for the second queue. I am not going to start a debate how this whole could
generally have been optimized it would be too frustrating. But apparently we
should be lucky that there is at all this possibility to do formalities on
board. I would rather like to be swimming and order to relax my mussels from
all the driving but the potentially inviting pool is unfortunately lacking some
water at the moment…Maybe the Italian/Greek company figured out that for trips
to Morocco this would be culturally inappropriate? Otherwise it’s quiet a decent boot clean and
offering besides a new type of office-discotheque two restaurants, a bar, a
casino (yes that’s a potential danger), a souvenir shop, male and female mosque
and I’ve counted about 6 emergency boats… But hey they are plenty of life
jackets in the cabin-
Ok we are just minutes away from things
getting to start again. The passport controller has already taken up his duty
again. But were is our bold guy? People start to get more aggressive, voices
are rising, the woman next to me asks me something in Arabic I totally didn’t
get. The passport line is getting
formatted, the table pushed further away. Still no sign of the other man of
power. A few other Europeans seem lost, a Maghreb guy seems to pick up a loud
argument with a black brother, he pretends in a friendly manner… The list is
still be handed around more names are added, we hope it won’t disappear. This
is one of the moments when I am glad that I can’t understand what one of the
guys at the passport line is excitingly shouting. They all look at him with
interest. There might be some queue jumping going on who knows. People here are
easy to upset. At our end there is still nothing happening, only the engine of
the boat calmly continues to vibrate bringing us slowly closer and closer to
Tanger.
There he is, finally, the man of the hour, in
his white shirt and black trousers and with his important figure. He sets up
his computer, I can see how Saleck is starting to fight nervously for his right
as second man on the list. Why is he adding some more names? Has he been designated
as official script writer? Who will read the names on the list? Boubou man
looks busy and concentrated, the process is starting. Is he getting the paper? He is trying to
return the pen used for the list to its legitimate owner, it doesn’t seem to work out. Looking
tired and nervously around him, what does it mean? Discussions about transit? Discussing with a smile, arguing politely, but then having to give in, transiting cars can only be dealt with in Tanger!!! All the time spent waiting was in vain …
Keine Kommentare:
Kommentar veröffentlichen