The (Long) Road to Marrakech

Life has been a mite hectic of late – hence no blogs for a week or two. The biggest problem was the frantic rush to get everything shipped to Morocco for the wretched Eco-Museum in Toubkal National Park. All in all it’s been a nightmare – working with the local authorities over there (half of whom have been hoping the whole project would be a disaster), funding courtesy of World Bank, Diana working here on the text and displays, SPANA Morocco doing the translations. That should give you a bit of a clue as to the squabbling, fights and major opportunities for gold-plated, 24 carat cock-ups.

I mean, not only are we doing each bit of text in three languages – English, French
(taking 30% more space to say the same thing), and Arabic – where of course the printers over here don’t even know whether it’s upside down or not! And if that’s not enough, some bright spark decided to add Berber as well. And all the locals argue about its alphabet, or even whether it really exists. What a nightmare.
Then the World Bank got difficult and said all the invoices had to be received for payment by 1st July – so a mad rush to get all the displays finished and packed off in the little SPANA truck (remember, it brought all the stuff over from Marrakech for Chelsea).

The truck had spent the previous month parked outside our house in Essex, gradually being packed with stuff –including a full size replica Friesian cow.

Just before the deadline – and don’t tell me, I know that this is a guaranteed recipe for disaster – on the day before we’d booked the ferry we were due to receive the panels for the food-web display. Very sexy – back lit Perspex, with integrated art-work, flashing lights etc – only they were 2 metres 90 long, and the truck was only 2 metres 70. Disaster. And the designers couldn’t give a toss and just walked off and left us. Simon (the lucky driver), Diana and I, sunk to the floor in desperation and gloom in the loading bay. We were already two hours late.

We suggested cutting a bit off one end. ‘Can’t possibly be done’, the designers chirruped with that melancholy glee unique to the British.

Finally, following a blinding flash of inspiration, we discovered that if we unloaded everything, put the panels in diagonally, then re-loaded everything around them, they might just fit.

I swear the designers were disappointed.

So we waved finally a cheery farewell to Simon, setting off for Lille and a rendez-vous with our Moroccan counterpart.(Of course the truck broke down en route, and then despite having all the correct papers the Moroccan Customs impounded the vehicle – but it’s just too painful to go into here.

Then all we had to do was organise the wedding in the garden for our daughter. Horrific weather, but the tents went up, along with the running battle to stop the blooming rabbits eating the bedding plants as fast as we could stick them in.
But we got lucky, last Saturday afternoon the sun appeared, the little village church looked lovely - half of SPANA’s staff turned up, including the overseas directors, and we had a great party in the garden – with much singing and dancing.

At least it scared the blinking rabbits away for an hour or two.

Now all we’ve got to do is write the next SPANA News – by Monday!

Jeremy Hulme