So back again for my third visit! Becoming a habit, n'est pas! Oui, my French is getting better although I still find group conversations hard and thinking quick enough to keep up is difficult, but one to one and everyday stuff is fine. I'm really pleased with the progress.
However I have been given another challenge by Ahmed's mother. Aicha speaks a few words of French and no English and has issued me the challenge of learning Tamashek in order that our conversations can be more direct. At present when I am with the women of the house she and I have to try to communicate via Ahmed's sisters English. Esma is only 17 and has some basic English from school and last year she was a very shy 16 yr old who was placed on the spot to show of her English. Now she has more confidence and can translate, but she is 17 and doesn't really want to be bother with this extra chore! She has so much to do round the house now.
The trip was great. We stayed at Sidi's house again on my arrival - there have been improvements since last year - the water supply is in and the water boiler is in place. Running water - a luxury!
When we headed to the desert Ahmed's friend Moussa (nicknamed Moussa2 to avoid confusion with Moussa1 one of the drivers on my first visit) and his new French girlfriend Claire came with us. Our cook this trip was a young man called Boubaker, who is also a musician and I videos of him playing on Facebook. I liked him very much - so full of life and always singing! It is the first time Ahmed has hired him, he normally works with the camel trains with Ahmed's brother Allelo, so came on recommendation. He was a very good cook and great company. I do love the soups he produced, they reminded me of my mother's, it is of course the animal fat in the stock that is the secret. So so tasty!
We spent our time first in The Tardart again, visiting Tin Merzouga and Moul en Naga - stunning dunes; then we headed over to Essendilene and Tilledilene skirting the great sand sea of the Erg Admer. I love that part but we didn't spend so much time there this trip. We got caught one day in a sand storm in the lat afternoon as we headed for our evening stop, visibility was really restricted, but we safely made camp. That night we were absolutely covered in sand by the morning even with sleeping behind the windbreak! We also had a couple of really cold nights when I wished I had brought my thermals! No kidding! We also had a few very hot days, I imagine the temperatures were up in the 35-37 C mark - definitely too hot to do much between 11AM-4PM except play UNO and take a siesta!
My last day was spent with the women and children of Ahmed's mother's house. The house is so full of kids, difficult for me as I am not used to this level of noise! Ahmed's youngest sisters - Esma and Amel , youngest brother Wofa, and cousins Aicha, Sarah, Imad and another small one whose name escapes me, and his nephew, Abdullah, were all there - again UNO goes down well! Sara and I exchanged a listen on each other MP3 players, although I have no idea what it was I was listening too!
Claire and I had spent the first afternoon with the women of Moussa's suster's house when the guys got the final things ready for the trip. This trip has shown me more of the women's lives here. Very domestic, home centered. It seems so strange given the Tuareg way that so much of the Arab way has been adopted. Traditionally Tuareg women are very independent, unveiled and have a lot of freedom, there was no segregation of men and women. Now they are still unveiled, although shawls have always been worn, very practical to cover your head and shield your eyes in the desert sands. But now the social ways are much more segregated – creeping Arabisation. Many of the houses are divided into women's and men's rooms, and effectively there is two separate worlds. Ahmed, his brothers, and his father all came to say hello to me but the men are always of out and about. Their lives are lived so much more out of doors than the women’s. When Ahmed and I went with Boubaker for a picnic on my last evening, we went out to the sands just outside of town. It is quiet a gathering place for the young people of Djanet and various other people I had met on other trips came to say hello. All men of course, it is outdoors! Boys will be boys anywhere with their 4x 4s!
I like Ahmed's family house better than the more modern ones I have visited. It has a open courtyard where people can mix and into which you first enter. On one side it has a public room with TV and has a guest area, it is effectively like a lounge or parlour. The courtyard is nice to sit out in on a summer evening as I did with his mother. Of to one side are the private family rooms of the house which I have never been in, of to the other is the yard where the goats are kept and also the wash block with the toilet, shower facility and with a washroom with a very large sink and what looks like either a washing machine or drier I wasn’t sure. That surprised me! To the third side of the courtyard is the kitchen. This house is in the old Zelwz part of town and I really like it a lot.
I had a long talk with Ahmed this time about his life. He clearly has a lot of responsibilities, being the eldest. Only one of the family is married – Hadija, mother or little Abdullah who has grown so much since I last saw him and whose face beams as soon as he sees his uncle Ahmed. I know Ahmed and Allelo work but I think that is still the only ones, although Morad must now be of an age to be working also. His parent have 8 children, 7 at home, so it is a big family to support. His parents are retired, I think they are somewhere in their mid to late 60s. This past year has been very hard, many fewer tourists, presumably because of the economic climate and the Euro exchange rate. He doesn’t see marriage and a family coming anytime soon – such a shame because seeing him with the youngsters I think he’d be a great dad. It is a lot of responsibility for a 35 year old!
Recently he had a prang in the 4x 4 which has left him with a problem as the 4 wheel drive keeps kicking out. He’s managed to sort everything else but the axel part will clearly cost a lot of money to replace and fix properly – take its cost in Algiers and triple it by the time it gets to Djanet! He is lucky he is a trained mechanic and so can fix this himself. His profit from this season’s trips is going to fix the car and to fund a new 4x4, but he clearly needs more personal clients next year to get a new one sooner rather than later. So anyone wishing to visit the desert…I can recommend a good guide, drivers, cook..and you will have an amazing time!
But back to this trip, it was nice to spend the last day at the family house and to have a shower after the desert trip and to rest up in anticipation of a long tiring flight home. Not that any of my trips back have been without incident - on the first trip, we had 3 attempts to get out of Tamanrasset because of bad weather on the Mediterranean cost, on the second trip I fell asleep at Algiers airport and missed my flight, and this time we took off only to find a fault on the plane, so had to circle for about an hour to use up fuel, to return to Algiers and board another plane. I have to give Air Algerie credit, they handle problems with consummate ease, perhaps they are so used to it that their practices all run smoothly, but many other airlines could learn a thing or two about customer satisfaction from them. Anyway I arrived home only 1.5 hrs late, thanks to Keith for the pick up.
When will I be back? I don’t know. I’ve asked Ahmed to visit here if he can get a visa. It would be so nice to show him my country, my life, my friends and family and to repay the great hospitality his have shown to me. In shallah!
