The Quaker and the Geek arrived on Saturday. (He's not as virtually immersed as the Kiwi boys but he works as a systems administrator so to me he's a geek).
Sunday being market day we took them to the market and Beloved got distracted by us changing our minds about where we were going and shouting directions he could not hear above the crowd and got his pocket dipped. He felt the wallet go and people nearby told us which way the guy had gone but as we didn't know what he looked like pursuit was pointless. There was a relatively small amount of cash but the Wafa bank card was in the wallet.
We hastily rescheduled the week's itinerary to go to Agadir on Monday to go to the Bank and cancel the card. The Bank were happy to cancel the card, no money was taken form the account, but they told us that they couldn't order a new card until we had obtained an "Accreditation de Pert" from the police. So we went ahead with the Geek to order a made to measure leather jacket from the leather tailor's and the Quaker and he went for a swim whilst we lounged on the beach and read. This is the Atlantic in winter so we have doubts as to their sanity but they said it was warmer than the North Sea in August. Nice lunch and then we left mid-afternoon to go to Taroudant police for an Accreditation.
When we got by the Saudi Palace there was extremely slow near stationary traffic clearly there was some obstruction. We crawled along. Some cars had tried to get ahead of the queue by driving through the Argan forest but that piste had now run out and they were rejoining from the right. Beloved said "I'm feeling squeezed here." And suddenly he was. A lorry in the outside lane was veering towards us clearly intent on moving to the inside. Beloved slammed on the horn and stopped. Unfortunately the lorry didn't. It was only after his wheel nuts caught on our car and scraped along starting to pull off the front that he stopped.
We were now causing a tailback with our collision crossing two lanes but as the traffic in front cleared we could see that the original cause was a collision in the outside lane between a grand taxi and a Docker. I would not like to have been on the Docker.
This was now a major spectacle for bystanders who all had their say and were helpful lending phones for us to call Hertz. After a while police arrived en masse.
It took some time for them to sort everything, measure, speak to witnesses, arrange a second Hertz man to move the battered car, a breakdown van for the taxi etc etc. What we didn't see was an ambulance. (Not for us, thankfully no-one was hurt, but for the docker drive; I think some-one must have taken him in a private car much earlier.) We were then very clearly told we were driving regular and were NOT GUILTY by the Gendarme with good english. However we were told quite sharply by the senior police officer who was snapping at everyone,mostly his own officers, to get in the Hertz guy's car. He was to take us to the police station for Beloved to make a statement. We couldn't argue, partly because we had no transport but mostly because the police were holding on to Beloved's passport and driving licence.
At the police station The Quaker and the Geek were left outside and we went in and Beloved was told to write a statement in english. This then had to be typed up in french together with passport details, father's name, grandfather's name, mother's name, number of children and nationality.
This last was problematical as apparently there is no equivalent of "British" in french and produced considerable discussion between the officers in arabic each time it came up. I think we Welsh ended up as "Anglais". The officers were lovely but we didn't leave the police station until about half nine and then we had to go to the airport to get a new car. We got Home about quarter to twelve and to bed at 2.00.
Nobody'd eaten except me as I went off badly at the airport and had to have a sandwich. I lost it with the clerk because they were charging us for not returning the damaged car full of petrol so we got no credit for the petrol in it. As we already knew we were going to be stung for the excess of £1000 together with the non-sterling currency charge of £150 which the credit card company will charge on it the petrol fee seemed the last straw for an accident which was entirely somebody else's fault. We have little hope that Hertz's insurers will bother to recover the excess and pay it to us.
Yesterday we went to Taroudant police to ask for the "Accreditation de Pert". The first guy we saw told us very clearly in French that you could not have one except for passports and ID cards. I asked could he give us a letter saying that to take to the bank. We seemed to have stalemate. Fortunately he spoke to his boss who had good english and agreed to give us one as "it is the administration's job to find a solution". He seemed quite regretful that we hadn't reported the theft of Sunday. We said as we could not describe the thief there was no chance they could catch him. He said he would have caught him because he knew all the thieves in Taroudant and would get them in and line them up and ask them if they'd stolen from two foreigners. If they said "No" he mimed slapping them about the face and said they'd confess. We explained you couldn't do that any more in Britain and he looked shocked.
We were now causing a tailback with our collision crossing two lanes but as the traffic in front cleared we could see that the original cause was a collision in the outside lane between a grand taxi and a Docker. I would not like to have been on the Docker.
This was now a major spectacle for bystanders who all had their say and were helpful lending phones for us to call Hertz. After a while police arrived en masse.
It took some time for them to sort everything, measure, speak to witnesses, arrange a second Hertz man to move the battered car, a breakdown van for the taxi etc etc. What we didn't see was an ambulance. (Not for us, thankfully no-one was hurt, but for the docker drive; I think some-one must have taken him in a private car much earlier.) We were then very clearly told we were driving regular and were NOT GUILTY by the Gendarme with good english. However we were told quite sharply by the senior police officer who was snapping at everyone,mostly his own officers, to get in the Hertz guy's car. He was to take us to the police station for Beloved to make a statement. We couldn't argue, partly because we had no transport but mostly because the police were holding on to Beloved's passport and driving licence.
At the police station The Quaker and the Geek were left outside and we went in and Beloved was told to write a statement in english. This then had to be typed up in french together with passport details, father's name, grandfather's name, mother's name, number of children and nationality.
This last was problematical as apparently there is no equivalent of "British" in french and produced considerable discussion between the officers in arabic each time it came up. I think we Welsh ended up as "Anglais". The officers were lovely but we didn't leave the police station until about half nine and then we had to go to the airport to get a new car. We got Home about quarter to twelve and to bed at 2.00.
Nobody'd eaten except me as I went off badly at the airport and had to have a sandwich. I lost it with the clerk because they were charging us for not returning the damaged car full of petrol so we got no credit for the petrol in it. As we already knew we were going to be stung for the excess of £1000 together with the non-sterling currency charge of £150 which the credit card company will charge on it the petrol fee seemed the last straw for an accident which was entirely somebody else's fault. We have little hope that Hertz's insurers will bother to recover the excess and pay it to us.
Yesterday we went to Taroudant police to ask for the "Accreditation de Pert". The first guy we saw told us very clearly in French that you could not have one except for passports and ID cards. I asked could he give us a letter saying that to take to the bank. We seemed to have stalemate. Fortunately he spoke to his boss who had good english and agreed to give us one as "it is the administration's job to find a solution". He seemed quite regretful that we hadn't reported the theft of Sunday. We said as we could not describe the thief there was no chance they could catch him. He said he would have caught him because he knew all the thieves in Taroudant and would get them in and line them up and ask them if they'd stolen from two foreigners. If they said "No" he mimed slapping them about the face and said they'd confess. We explained you couldn't do that any more in Britain and he looked shocked.
No comments:
Post a Comment