Protests and paperwork

Traffic lights can seem a little optional in Rabat, not only for stopping but also going, or in fact even being switched on at all. Riding through rush hour yesterday where lanes and priority lasted only as long as each individuals patience was a contrast to today's easy early morning journey back to the embassy. The sun was still yellow and shone through the dusty air over the city skyline as we paid Basha the blue coated parking watchman his 10 Dirahms per bike for the night.
The embassy already had a queue of depressed looking west Africans outside and a very efficient but rather pushy man from the office was moving people about, either with or without their consent as the pouring rain started.
First the form, then the challenge of translation. Luckily we met another biker, Peter from Slovenia, who seemed to know his way about the red tape, not that it helped when they rejected his first attempt right away for scoring out a mis-spelling on the form and then eventually issued it with the wrong date :/
Still, the man in the booth had a broad smile and seemed to enjoy our attempts at speaking French, stapling the paperwork, issuing a receipt and saying to come back tomorrow at 3pm. Once back at the hotel we found out one US American had waited 12 days for his Visa until the intervention of the US consulate.
It seemed a nice idea to hook up with Peter for dinner and talk about our journeys but unfortunately he didn't show this evening, I hope everything is ok, I suppose we'll find out tomorrow.
Riding in to Rabat originally I did spot a few signs of banners and even a couple of small protest camps outside buildings in the government area, couldn't tell if they were political or just celebrating Bab Tazza's 40th. Today we saw a small (~250 people) good natured march making it's way through the centre to the beach. The men were singing, holding a banner across the street and seemed very well organised; stopping or redirecting the suddenly very well behaved, perhaps even sympathetic traffic.