Shipping center meetings

Just braved the heat to travel to Ouarzazate yesterday, to meet with my delege about the shipping center idea. He had lots of insights, and practical information about how shipping items works currently, and what would or wouldn't work from his understanding. We had to break up the meeting into two parts, (we were meeting, and he took me in his car while we continued chatting, to find a certain couple of gentleman who had arrived to meet with him). They turned out to be on their way to his office, just as we went out to meet them at another location. We returned to find them waiting in his office ... he brought us all in, shut the door and they promptly began chatting away about a completely unrelated subject. I sat there, wondering if the meeting was supposed to be short, hence the reason he left me sitting through it, biding my time away. One of the gentlemen turned to me and inquired: "Are you okay just waiting on us?" "Well.. I do have errands to run. How about I let you have your meeting and we will resume ours this afternoon?" I inquired of the delege. He pouted. "Aren't you coming to my house for lunch?" "Umm.. no, sorry, I already have a lunch appointment." I guess he was just going to let me sit there for another two hours until lunchtime and then tag along with him. Glad I said something early on...

In the afternoon we resumed, me with a whole new list of questions. He thinks the shipping service should be located in Ouarzazate, as DHL nor any other major carrier currently operates here. It makes sense to establish something in a much larger city to provide service to the whole region, but in my mind is inherently different than a rural holding/shipping center. Plus, if I spend all my time working towards establishing such a thing in Oz, and DHL decides that Oz has grown enough to accomodate another DHL center, moves in... all my work is wiped away. DHL, UPS, etc. would never establish anything in a location like Agdz: 8,000 people, regional center for the area.. but still very rural. That is where I want to focus my efforts. We will see what the next steps will be. Still making strides to prepare my tourist/artisan/bizarre surveys. If I was fluent in Spanish, French, Arabic and German that might help.. translating them all myself, but alas, I'm only conversational in two or three of them.

On the drive home, I was, as usual, squished in a car with six other Moroccan men, hugging the door, trying not to think about being sick on the windy roads, in the 100+ temperatures. Miserable feeling. I stumbled home and tripped into bed, awoke an hour later and walked into the shower... all my clothes on. Ahhh...refreshing.