January 24, 2012

by Stephen Jan in Daklha, Morocco

UPS is clearly clueless about their operation in Morocco. Last Thursday, we called UPS about our package in light of that “abandoned” status. The agents at the call centers were useless. No one had any answers for us. You’d think that with thousands of packages passing through shipping centers every day, these centers know that their purpose is to facilitate parcels along – but no, not in Morocco. In Casablanca, shipping centers hold packages indefinitely. Last year, my friend’s family shipped a dozen Christmas trees from Brooklyn to war torn Afghanistan for soldiers to celebrate Christmas. Apparently it’s harder for UPS to get a 5 kilo package through Morocco, than it is for 12 full size Christmas trees to reach the mountains of Afghanistan.

How did we manage to dislodge our package from the clutches of incompetence and corruption? Weeks ago, we met a Moroccan business man who seemed to have a good idea about how things worked around here. I’m not exactly sure what sort of business he was in. All I know is that he wakes up after dusk, and never takes off his sunglasses. shrug So early last week, he had offered to have his agent in Casablanca investigate the package. By Wednesday, the agent actually managed to find the package. With the information he picked up, we spent all of Thursday afternoon making phone calls to UPS Morocco. By end of day Thursday we were promised that the package was in the hands of Moroccan Post. The package collected dust on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday. (No one works on Friday aka Couscous Day).

Monday morning, we received word that the package would arrive on Wednesday. It was brought to the airport and was coming to Dakhla via bus. This of course makes no sense to me: packages goes to the airport to be put on a bus? If I want a package to travel by plane, do I need to take it to a bus stop? I’ll never understand this place.