Algeria - part 1

I sat on a bench in the market square of the unremarkable Algerian down of Bechar, close to the Moroccan border, becoming increasingly nervous. Unaccountably, the tree-lined square boasted a loudspeaker system which piped soft, familiar music: Simon and Garfunkel’s greatest hits. It did not calm my nerves.

I’d rather be a sparrow than a snail. Nottingham to Nairobi, overland. The first leg of my intended trip around the world and just the minor hurdle of crossing the Sahara immediately ahead. I reread my guidebooks with a jaundiced eye. In the euphoria of planning the trip, watching Shirley Valentine twice in the company of some friends who were planning a year in Australia, resigning from my job, it had all appeared fairly straightforward. Lots of vehicles crossed the desert apparently. You just had to find one and clamber aboard. In the shade of a palm, the guidebook wording was suddenly more ambiguous: “Some travellers have reported that it is possible to...”; “at some times of the year it may be feasible…” The ridiculous thing was that I was not even faced with this challenge yet. My panic attack had been brought on by purchasing an overnight bus ticket to travel between two quiet provincial towns, not exactly either a novel or high risk action.

The trip so far had been far from high risk or novel either. A brief stop in Paris, bathed in spring sunshine, to acquire a visa unobtainable in London had given me my first brief taste of Africa. I had entered the waiting room of a gloomy consulate and sat down quietly in a corner. This, it transpired, was a serious breach of good manners. The correct etiquette was demonstrated by the next two arrivals, who entered, said good morning loudly to the room, and then circled it shaking hands with every occupant before finally taking a seat and silently waiting in turn.

A rather different process had been followed by the Consulate of the Republic of Burkina Faso in London. It transpired that this imposing title belonged to the dining room of a middle-aged Englishwoman living in Battersea. She had asked me which country I wanted a visa for – apparently she was the honorary consul for several -, extracted the necessary paperwork from a boxfile labelled “Burkina” in black felt-tip, and cheerfully stamped my passport on the spot in exchange for a fee of ten pounds.

From Paris I also captured a particular image of western prosperity, history and culture: that of the lights from the cars along the Champs Elysees viewed in early evening from the Place de la Concorde, which I romantically intended to contrast with… well, with whatever I discovered in Africa. Less pretentiously, I took great schadenfreude delight, pausing briefly between trains in Bordeaux, at watching the rush-hour commuter traffic crawling over a Garonne bridge. They had all spent a tedious day at work and were now jammed together battling to get home. Hah.

The only real hitch had been in Toledo, in early April a quiet town before the tourists started again at Easter, and which I had chosen as a peaceful and familiar stop in preference to the rigours of Madrid after two successive overnight trains. I had wandered out at night for a meal and then found afterwards that I had no idea which direction led back to my hotel. The high walls and narrow streets of the mediaeval old town became like a maze and in the end I arrived at the wrong gate in the walls. I tried a couple of times to find a reasonable way back, but in the end decided the simplest way was to walk right around the walls, a lengthy and tiresome trek which involved descending back to the plains below the hill and climbing back up to the main gate near the station. It did not bode well: if I could not find my way around a small town, how was I going to find my away around a small planet?

In Algeciras, a surprisingly smart city considering its main function appears to be the facilitation of the illicit import of marihuana and Moroccans into the European Union, I bumped into Dave from Dewsbury, who explained that he was heading for Budapest where he hoped to catch the train to Moscow and thence the trans-Siberian to Beijing. I pointed out that he was heading the wrong way, but he seemed unconcerned and suggested visiting nearby Gibraltar. Ten days after leaving England for my grand world tour, I found myself sitting outside a pub eating overdone roast beef and Yorkshire pudding, washed down with a pint of John Smiths bitter. The only un-British features of the experience were that the sun shone and the air was warmer than the beer.

Next day I took the ferry to Tangiers. I have crossed several borders marking cultural divisions – Turkey to Bulgaria, the USA to Mexico, Hungary to the Ukraine, China to Pakistan for example – but none in my experience quite compares with the brief boat trip from Spain to Africa for the abruptness of the change. Tangiers, its harbour rather pretty seen from the ferry with its white buildings rising up a hill towards the medina, actually is a scruffy town, half smuggler village, half tourist trap, but step down any side street and it is undeniably alien. Morocco is also noticeable for the relentlessness of the hassle from its touts, and this begins the moment you step down from the ferry. If unprepared, as were my new acquaintances from the boat, an American couple and a Dutch astronomy student, it can be quite distressing. On my first visit with a friend some years earlier, we had stayed exactly as long as it took to get on the next boat back. The solution is usually to appear to know where you are going and stride boldly ahead. Unless you are the only possible victim, the hassle will usually give up quickly in search of more vulnerable prey. Putting this stratagem into play, I led a march up the hill and we discussed the options for the Marrakech express. There were two trains, the sensible overnight express with cheap comfortable couchettes, which left at midnight, or the uncomfortable, uncertain and inconvenient stopping train involving a 2am change in Casablanca but which left Tangiers at 5pm. After 40 minutes experience of the pleasures of Tangiers, my companions immediately outvoted me three to one and we purchased tickets for the earlier option.

First sight of Tangiers.

It was Id El Fitr, the end of Ramadan with its daytime fasting, and a major feast in the Islamic calendar. The conductor sat down in our compartment to watch the sun set, marking the official beginning of the celebration. “Sun gone, now you party,” he instructed us as he clipped our tickets. The rest of the train took his instructions reasonably seriously, but evidently many of them were on their way to visit family and friends for precisely this purpose and practiced moderate restraint in anticipation. However the occupants of our later open, wooden seated, carriage from Casablanca to Marrakech suffered no such constraints, singing loudly to the accompaniment of much wild laughter, offering us cakes and drinks, letting off party-poppers, and generally creating an atmosphere reminiscent of a special rugby train. Their songs in particular, although in an incomprehensible Arabic dialect, had repetitive choruses which we were occasionally taught, and were often accompanied by gestures for which I believe anthropologists use the word “universal”.