Without fail…
Every Dutchman I’ve met can speak English. Not just hack at it but, fluently with knowledge and confidence. My mullering of French and Spanish becomes almost comical in comparison. In between dozing all day in the lorry, fighting the ever present Tangier Tat sales team and going for a shower etc. The one exception to the rule with the ports hustlers was the money changer. Of all the people you could trust, it was this guy. You could give him 50 in Sterling or 100 in French francs and he’d return later with the best rate anywhere in the port. Even including his middle man cut, it was still the best. Life’s really odd like that. I got talking with a very knowledgeable Dutch driver. This guy had been to many more places than I had, including the middle east. We sat in the shade on deckchairs he kept in his side locker drinking beer, smoking duty free cigarettes and waving the flies away. It became clear to him that because I was asking a lot of questions about getting to Casablanca, I didn’t have the first clue. He was right, I didn’t even have a map of Morocco. Long before the days of Sat-nav and 247/7 internet access, drivers built up a collection of maps that were relevant to the countries that were going through. Google mapping a destination and checking it out on street view were just futuristic dreams. I had the European road map which gave you the best ways to do distance and an assortment of other maps including the Michelin France map, A Spain/Portugal map and Italy. My plan was to get a map when I got onshore but trying to get anything genuinely useful from the local sales hustlers was pointless and I didn’t relish the thought of wandering around town trying to find a road map. I was fortunate that there were other drivers going to the same place so, we could run in convoy. My new found friend from Holland told me to head for Rabat, go straight over the roundabout there and that’s all I’d need to get to Casablanca. He drew a straight line on a piece of paper with the word Tangier at the start of the line, a circle halfway down the line and the word Casablanca at the bottom of the line. Here, keep this he laughed. Looking back, he was right. He also told me to remove my number plate before I left the docks. Apparently the local kids had worked out that English trucks have removable number plates. Anything that can be easily misappropriated is fair game as far as they’re concerned. It’s also fair game to sell it back to it’s rightful owner and that’s exactly what the little cherubs will do given the chance. The unwary driver will be stopped at a set of lights and before they know it, there’s a knock on the door and tah dah, there’s your own number plate for sale at an outrageous price. In a way, you have to admire that kind of entrepreneurial spirit. I asked about the 4 hour drive down there and what to look out for. Speed limits were widely ignored, driving at night expect unlit donkey drawn carts to be on the main highway, there aren’t many petrol stations and just north of Rabat, a policeman hides behind an overpass and will walk out as you approach with his arm raised asking you to stop. I laughed when my new found Dutch friend told me to ignore him and drive around him. He was serious, just keep going everyone else does he said. Was he winding me up, or was he genuinely giving me good advice? I figured it would be his day off when we drove down.
The rumour mill was saying it would be another day before we were all cleared which meant another day of sitting in the the fly blown stinking port, bored witless, yay. There’s only so much talking you can do and after a while people just kept themselves to themselves. I’d read a book which wasn’t very interesting and sat on my backside for nearly 5 days. The only funny thing that happened was when ever the call to prayer blasted out from the mosque behind us, some clever clogs 4 or 5 trucks down from me would play Highway to Hell by AC/DC very loudly. My lorry was spotless, I’d managed to clean it so often, it looked I’d just taken delivery of it. I was looking forward to getting going. I was relying on other drivers to get me there and what ever their plan was, I’d go with it. The plan that formed was to get to a place called the United Seamans Service in Casablanca itself. The opinion of those who’d already been there before was that the food was ok, the parking was secure and there wasn’t anything else anyway. There were schoolboy giggles between the North African Virgins about the name but seeing as we had no plan whatsoever, that was were we’d go too. It’s not the longest drive by any means but, it did make feel a little anxious. The whole place seemed so lawless and barren. I was probably over thinking it but that might have been a good thing. John Manns drivers had been driving the length and breadth of it for years so it was hardly uncharted territory. I didn’t want to lose the convoy because I had no knowledge of where I was going. Just cross the roundabout at Rabat seemed really vague. I was sure it was more complicated than that. After a few false starts during the week about being cleared by customs, which I assume was because someone wasn’t paying sufficient backhanders to someone else, we all got our paperwork back on the fifth day. There was a sense of excitement and urgency as the news spread. Lorries were starting up and clouds of blue smoke (Euro 6 and Ad-Blu my arse) started rising across the compound. I figured I’d do my own thing in my own time and not get rushed by trying keep up, but I also didn’t want to get lost and become the ■■■■ of everyone’s joke later on. I think, it’s a long time ago now, there were 6 possibly or 7 of us. As the convoy approached the port exit, the man with a hat and Ray-Ban Aviators spent an inordinate amount of time checking everyone’s exit pass. There was an awful lot of stopping and starting with drivers almost running into each other in their efforts to get going. I was also very happy because I could relax in a cool air conditioned cab for the day, I no longer had to fend off the hoards of dodgy salesmen, argue with dodgy customs officers and continually bat away flies. The really good part was the smell vanished too!
I’d already taken my number plate off.