DHL: The Saga
It was early Wednesday morning when we set off to take the train to the Casablanca airport and to find our way to the DHL freight office – it was two hours in two different trains followed by a 2 mile walk before we made it to the actual office. This walk took us from the airport, down an industrial road that appeared to be going nowhere, past a few unidentified buildings, past customs, past a security gate with an officer who (attempted) to assist us with directions, down and around a large Royal Air Maroc freight building, down another road that looked to be going nowhere, until we reached a right turn that lead us to the golden building of hope.
Upon arrival at a second guard gate, we surrendered our passports hesitantly before being allowed access inside. We were seen almost immediately by the customs liaison and assisted by the one English-speaking worker in the building, who merely opened our package and peered inside to validate it’s contents and that they were for personal use. With a short, handwritten, unofficial-looking note, we were directed to retrieve our passports, walk back more than halfway toward the airport to visit the yellow building, and see Mohammed on the first floor (about 50% of Moroccan men are named Mohammed – this could get ugly). After surrendering our passports again, Mohammed peered at our note and our pleading faces before telling us to go upstairs and pay. We walked upstairs and into the only open office where it took two men and twenty minutes to calculate the declared value (which was already written on the DHL documents) of our package. We were directed to go downstairs and pay the taxes on the declared value; we must have appeared to look hopeless, as two non-customs employees decided to help us. We were guided from one window to the next as our plight attracted the help of more and more Moroccans and we finally got to pay the man and received our tax receipt – and it only took us and fourteen Moroccans. We’ve never been so excited to hand over our money for a stamped receipt as we were in that moment. We then took our receipt and our accumulation of paperwork and began the trek through the guard gate, down the lonely road, through the other guard gate, back to our beacon of hope.
At this point Taylor needed food and Starbucks and we were lucky enough to be near to the only Starbucks locations in Morocco. So we headed to the largest mall in Africa – the Morocco Mall, ate some French fries, drank an iced mocha, and ate dinner while watching the water show, before heading back to the train station to get back to Rabat. It took 8 hours, 7 miles of walking, and 18 Moroccans to get our package back to Rabat.