Algeria - part 2

Sitting in a mixed group of Americans and Europeans is always an opportunity to reflect on how much more we Brits have in a common with someone from say France than from America, once the language barrier is overcome. No European of my experience, will, for example, discuss their treatment for minor psychiatric disorder or sexual technique in mixed company of 24 hours acquaintance, both topics which Americans seem to regard as mere conversation makers. (Although having said that, the most alien working culture I have subsequently experienced is that of Sweden, where everything must be performed collectively. A Danish colleague commented despairingly to me: “ask a Swede a simple question and he calls a meeting to agree an answer.” Even allowing for Danish prejudice against Swedes – Danish joke: what do you call a Swede with a sense of humour? A German – I found this to be both true and completely different to the working culture of the UK, US or even say India.)

Among a small group of highly educated young Americans, it was also astonishing to discover how few had any languages included in their schooling. Spanish obviously, Chinese or Japanese maybe? Only one of six had some elementary Spanish to her name. OK, the USA is a big country: Los Angeles is further from New York than Bulgaria is from Birmingham, and how much do you know about Bulgaria? Go on, name Bulgaria’s current Prime Minister? In a café whose menu was in Arabic and French only, this mysterious educational gap at least offered the Dutch astronomer - who spoke 5 languages fluently, as all Dutch people seem to do - and myself minor opportunities for amusement. “What sort of sauce,” demanded one of the Americans, “is ‘Hamburger à cheval’ in?”

Marrakech is no more than a large tourist trap. Having said that, the nightly circus/fair in the Fna, the main central square, is still good entertainment, and we had a prime position. Our rather scruffy ‘hotel’ included a rooftop café with occasional service, enjoying excellent views of the snake charmers, jugglers, pickpockets, kebab stalls, water sellers in costume, beggars and bewildered package tourists.

An elderly Englishman with colonial vowels was also staying there. He had spent 20 years living in Libya, spoke Arabic fluently, and having apparently warmed to me for no good reason as a kindred spirit, announced he would take us to find beer. After much enquiry, we found ourselves in a dimly lit den, full of locals breaking one of the Prophet’s prohibitions (although in some interpretations of the Qur’an only wine is actually forbidden – perhaps they had chosen an appropriate translation), the kind of place no tourist could find. One of the Americans then announced he didn’t drink alcohol, grudgingly accepted that he would be unable to obtain caffeine-free coke, and settled on Fanta – always a disturbing option in the developing world, where it is a brilliant carrot orange, sickly sweet, and presumably full of additives banned in the west. The old colonial demonstrated further cultural distance by ordering it with a delicate sarcasm quite lost on its consumer.

A lengthy bus journey took me over the Atlas mountains to the splendidly named town of Ouarzazate. In brilliant, but still in April not actually baking, sunshine it was a beautiful journey with many stops for the passengers to get out and take tea or cakes, and for the bus to take time to recover from its last climb. High up the air was crystal clear offering magnificent views of brown and grey of scrub and mountains contrasting with lush green of oasis valleys filled with palm trees.

Local livestock transport.

I was the only tourist in Ouarzazate that day, and despite my evidently unpromising appearance, the owner of the local carpet shop decided it would at least relieve his boredom to feed me mint tea and make a half-hearted attempt to sell me a kilim. Somehow I have found myself in many carpet shops over the years, occasionally quite intimidating experiences where large men blocking the light from the doorway imply that it would be a good idea to purchase something in order to be allowed back onto the streets. Should you ever wish to purchase an oriental carpet, I can, however recommend the shop in Ouarzazate. To my uneducated eye the specimens were magnificent and the owner informative and pleasant. Others had clearly felt the same – he showed me a French coffee-table book of photographs of North Africa in which he and his array of wares occupied a prime double-page spread. He explained how to count the number of stitches per centimetre, a crucial measure of quality, and how to tell whether the carpet was silk or not – both by the way a tiny thread burnt but also more spectacularly by how the colour changed when held up to the light in different ways. I felt quite guilty in the end not making a purchase, but my budget barely stretched to food, transport and accommodation and certainly did not run to six-foot silk carpets at 50 stitches per centimetre.

The bus journey to the Algerian border was slow and hot. Boarding was a lengthy process as all luggage had to be strapped to the roof, in approximately the correct order to allow it to be retrieved as passengers got off. Once all bags were securely strapped down, a goat had to be winched up and tied safely. This particular goat clearly had an especially acute fear of heights, struggling forcefully against efforts to lift it, and then peeing lengthily over much of the luggage, to the displeasure of the passengers most thoroughly affected. When we eventually got going, I rather envied the goat its fresh air and uninterrupted view. The bus was stuffy, most people drew curtains against the sun, and we stopped continually. The road ran dead straight through a completely barren valley bordered on either side by a low ridge of ochre hills. Despite the complete absence of signs of human habitation, passengers were continually dismounting, requiring a lengthy retrieval of their luggage (or goat), and tramping off through the dust bound for the hills.

After an overnight stop, the Figuig border crossing itself. Leaving Morocco took about 90 seconds. Entering Algeria however, required 90 minutes. This was caused by the first appearance of a dread document: the currency declaration form, on which one was required to list all holdings of foreign currency in cash or travellers cheques. As I was carrying five different currencies at this point this had required a complex stock-take the previous night. The official purpose of these forms is to allow the government of whichever country insists upon it to artificially over-value its currency and require all travellers to exchange money only at the government-set exchange rate. Their effect, in practice, is to ensure that the most lucrative black-market money-changing operations are always run by the border guards. These fortunate individuals are on to a doubly good thing, as the currency declaration form allows them to assess precisely the worth of their customers, and if appropriate require ‘gifts’ to help the transaction along. I was fortunate, being merely required to change a certain amount of leftover pesetas into Algerian dinars at a moderately disadvantageous rate.

There was no transport away from the border, so I walked a few hundred yards to the nearby village and tried hitching. I was picked up almost immediately by a two French couples, holidaying by trying to cross the Sahara in a small removal van and accompanying small car, who offered to take me to the town of Bechar.

Before setting off they insisted on me joining them for lunch, for which, in true French fashion, they produced a table and chairs from the van, some bread, reheated beef bourgignon, and a bottle of excellent red wine, served properly in glasses. I discovered my 90 minutes at the border had been trivial – they had been there for 3 days of protracted negotiations about spurious duties needing to be paid on their wide variety of home comforts.

The border seemed to mark the beginning of the desert proper. Where there been dry hills, features, scrub, there was now just flat, stony wasteland. I rode alongside the driver of the removal van. Once safely underway, he performed a complicated manoeuvre resulting in the removal of both socks without ever slowing down or letting go of the steering wheel. He held them up ceremoniously, before hurling them out of the window into the desert, crying “Hello Sahara, Goodbye Socks!”

Despite my attack of nerves the overnight bus journey south from Bechar was remarkable only for a single curious incident. A slim figure wearing the wrapped turban of the deep desert boarded at a village, and headed to join the men at the back of the bus. The turban remained in place, obscuring all but his eyes – unusual but not completely remarkable behaviour. Some hours further south, however, the bus was boarded by police who led the man quietly away. I asked other passengers what was going on. The man, they explained, was actually a woman. The reason for her arrest was less clear. One group maintained she had run away from her family without permission, another that she was a terrorist – the offences appeared, in the eyes of these passengers, to be approximately equivalent.