March 2008; Our Day as Displaced People.

Now, we are here to try and set up a business, but we haven’t taken residency yet, in part because there may be an impact on bringng in a foreign car (and we still love habiby!) and also because when we went to take in te forms to getb the process started, the official told me that he would need an incentive to be interested in starting our file!

In the face of such attitude, get to know a man who can, which we have done and should we go down this road in the future, we’ll have significantly fewer problems.

However in the mean time we have a 3 month visa that needs us to leave Moroc before it expires. This hasn’t been a problem before, and we’re expecting t go home in a week or so, but it just so happened that our visa was running out just before we had planned to leave.

So, Beccie went to try to get a “prolongation” and was told that was not possible, and that we should organise ourselves acordingly. Umm, a pain but understandable and so eventually off we went to ceuta, the Spanish enclave about 5 hours drive from Fez. It must be said that both you and I had been ill in the week preceeding our depart and so we left on what we thought was the last day of our visa...

Wrong!!

We had inadvertantly overstayed by a day. It was a genuine mistake but, as we discovered at te border, it was enough for significant disturbance. Suddenly as our little family happily filled out forms and gave over passports, loking forward t a day in Spain and all the culinery, alcoholic and consumeristic joys that that included, we were told that we would not be alowed back in to maroc!

What? Hold on a second, we’ve got a hire car, two nappies and no other change of underwear between us, what do you mean?

Now we love maroc, that’s one of the reasns we are here, but like officialdom everywhere, and definately border officials the world over, come the fault, come down from a great hight the direst consequences and surliest of faces. Our litle group turned from hapy day trippers to ill equiped PNGs, hitting the brick wall that is intransigent officialdom, and being invisible from the view of anyone with a smile. We were law breakers, we lacked respect for Morocco and the king, we may never be alowed to enter maroc again.

And sudenly, we were surrounded by the lowest of te low, young lads in hand cufs were hauled away, a bedragled man harranged at an officer with a knife in hand. People looked at us, officials and potential crims, as if we were a type, a dodgie type, an unwanted type, the type you keep out of your home and country..and only moments we’d been young entrepreneurs investing in ourselves and morocco, employng teams of people, building a future for ourselves and them....No longer..see how things can change if you take your eye off the ball...remember that Fin my son!

Eventualy we managed to get someone to agree to let us back in at 21.00. Why it was mportant that we had to wait for several hours to return I don’t know but in those situations it’s best not to reason why, simply to do!

Now of course these things have their bright side and we managed to indulge in a bit of shopping...new clothes, jamons, wine etc, and to find the best fish restaurant in Ceuta, which was marvellous, made even better by their showing the arsenal v Liverpool game live ....as a famous prophet once said..always lok on the bright side of life.

And so we returned filled, shopped and hapy, but with one of my favourite memories of you held within. You had been wonderful through out a difficult time, but as the evening wore on, and 21.0 is way pas your bed time, you obviously got tired and crabby..you do that some tmes.

Anyway, there we were in te best Fsh restaurant in ceuta (caled navara for future reference) and, as you ften do, you started to chew at my nose.. think it’s a teething thing, but we both love it...it’s a bit of a bonding ting too think. You chew with gummy mounth the end of my nose, periodically shaking your head and making wahhhh wahhhhh noises, and gigle.

But this time you did that and then fell asleep, both sets of gums still firmly atached to my nasal passage...ohhh how sweet was that..Big Love from daddy!

We finally got back to fez at 04.00 am and you obviously rose as normal at 06.00, umm not te best next day especially as we were told to see the foreigners olice here on our return, having been given a verbal warning at ceuta by te Moroccan police. I went to the police office, the same that beccie had been to

Funnilly enough we don't have any images of this day!!!