Day 6 Rabat (visas)

Hmmm. Where do I start with this one? The consensus of opinion afterwards was that it was like feeding time at the zoo, Custer's last stand, first day of the FA cup final ticket sales, the battle of Waterloo and the last helicopter from the Saigon US embassy - all rolled into one.

The day started well enough with a nice ride on the little blue dodgems which in daylight and in rush hour turn out to be even more "interesting" than the night before. With horns blaring and brakes squealing they weave in and out of the traffic scattering cyclists and pedestrians and playing "chicken" with lorries coming in the opposite direction along the central dividing line. Everybody takes it in their stride, actions that in the UK would cause massive road-rage punch-ups or at the very least points on your licence here are simply ignored as everyone else is doing exactly the same thing.

The visa service opens at 09:00 and there's already quite a queue formed when we get there at 08:30, but nobody in our group is prepared for what happens when they open at nine. Well, I say "open", there is a single plain black metal door set into an otherwise totally featureless wall. At 09:00 the door opens just wide enough for 2 people to pass through, then slams shut again. That is the signal for the scrum down.

Stampede. People are turning up from all directions and we are witness to scenes of pushing, shoving and the most brazen queue jumping and barging. Every 15-20 minutes the door opens a fraction, two or three people slip through, then it slams shut again. By now there are about 70-100 people in the melee and things are starting to get a little stressed.

It appears that yesterday was a public holiday in Morocco and the embassy was shut, plus there is some kind of big festival in Senegal on the 25th, hence the crowd now forming. It takes (at least) 24 hours to issue a visa and the visa service is only open from 09:00 to 11:00, if you don't make it in by then, come back tomorrow. It is now Wednesday and Fri, Sat, Sun they are shut. Hence the increasing desperation.

It turns out that behind the dread portal there is a little 8 foot by 8 foot room with a single bank-teller type counter with one bloke behind it processing all the visa applications. He doesn't like it if anything on the visa application form is not to his satisfaction and makes you fill it out from scratch again.

Things start getting a little ugly. There is a little elderly French couple at the front close to the door, each time the door opens they are nearly crushed and trampled - even though people at the back can see that only 1 or 2 are being let through they still puuuush forwards. There's much shouting and yelling, a few scuffles break out and let's just say that we are not witnessing the brotherhood of humanity and peaceful international relations at their best. A fight breaks out on the fringes of the crowd which keeps everybody entertained (and so not pushing) for a few minutes until some spoilsport breaks it up.

By 10:30 we have moved about 8 feet closer to the door, perhaps at most 15-20 people have actually passed through it in the past 2 hours. An embassy offical comes out and tries to reason with the crowd along the lines of "I say you chaps, stop this shoving an shouting, it's just not on. How about you all just calm down and form a nice orderly queue over there, eh? If you don't then we will close the visa service until tomorrow." Unsurprisingly it doesn't have much effect; those who were already in a nice orderly queue are obviously not going to move and neither are the bargees.

By 10:45 we are starting to consider plans B and C, plan B involves camping overnight on the doorstep and forming a human chain around the door in order to be first in line in the morning, but even then we might still be waiting for the visas to be issued on Monday. Plan C involves giving up on the Banjul Challenge altogether and spending a few days touring around Morocco before heading back to the UK. We can see the queue is going nowhere so Andrew and I leave our places in the queue and join the huddle across the road, other teams are still only just arriving for the first time so it looks very much like game over. We get talking to an American lady, she's been coming to the embassy for 6 days now and is hoping to finally get her visa today.

Things then change very rapidly. We can see Steve at the front of the queue on his own and actually wedged right up against the door. It opens and the official comes out, walks out into the road and starts handing out bits of paper with numbers handwritten on them. "Take a number and you will then be called." All the bargees mob him with yelling, shouting and waving of arms. When they have a number and walk away with self-satisfied smirks, he goes back to the queue proper and distributes tickets to the queuees.

What a nice chap - he's dealt the tickets with high numbers from the bottom of the pack (40 upwards) to the bargees and the queuees get them from the top of the pack. Steve gets number 3 and is therefore in the first wave to go over the top. I have grabbed our pile of 9 passports and forms and roughly elbow my way to the front as he is being bodysurfed through the door, pointing in my direction and yelling "He's with me!" The door is slammed shut behind us. We're in!

Apart from members of our group who haven't filled their forms in correctly (or in English for God's sake!) which causes much tutting, shaking of the head and application of Tippex (C'est quoi "welder" ecrit sous "profession"? I am asked, "circus clown" I feel like telling him) the rest is a mere formality and 15 minutes later we are being pushed back out of the door and are told to come back at 14:00 tomorrow to collect our passports, before it is roughly slammed again behind us. It's been a close run thing, but it looks as if we will be continuing onwards to Banjul after all.

(And as for the American lady, she got her visa too.)