Shots Across the Water, page 17
Claude and I were sitting around the chef with a group of travellers who were staying in the campsite. Most of them were travelling in Morocco and Algeria and Tamanrasset was the furthest south they would be going on their travels. ‘Have any of you met Rob?’ I asked, giving a description of him.
‘Yes, we have,’ said a woman and her partner. ‘He left two days ago, heading to In Salah.’
I was excited. ‘Is he still hoping to meet up with me?’ I asked. They replied that he had been asking quite a few people to look out for me.
We had a slow start the next day before leaving Tamanrasset. The road was now tarmac, but it was often hidden by drifting sands so we could still get stuck if we accidentally went off the road. We stopped for a while in the mountains. Some of these looked more like cathedrals or castles. Sometimes it was hard to tell whether they were mountains or sand dunes. It was an absolutely stunning sight. We stopped for a break near Arak when there was a massive rainstorm which lasted about 20 minutes. This time we stopped and stayed in the car until the rain passed. I hadn’t expected rain in the desert like this.
It was dark when we drove into In Salah. Like most towns in Algeria, In Salah had a campsite where travellers stayed alongside Tuareg camel trains. We stopped at the site and I looked for travellers; in no time I found a few sitting around a food stall eating couscous. And yes, they had met Rob, but they weren’t sure where he was heading. One thought that he was taking the route from In Salah west via the town of Reggane. We joined this group and had another delicious meal of vegetable couscous. I felt so good after eating this food, realising that I hadn’t been eating well for many months now, partly because there was often not much food available but mostly because most of what was available was meat. Travelling in Africa as a vegetarian had been very challenging.
We drove north in the morning after brewing a cup of tea and watching the sun rise over the mountains. Very occasionally we would see another vehicle. Claude and I chatted about all sorts of things, mostly telling our stories of what we had experienced in our respective Africa trips as well as marvelling at the sights we were seeing now. Every so often we would see a camel train led by Tuareg in the distance. They stayed away from the road. A couple of times there was a small sandstorm and we stopped the car and shut all the windows for 10 to 15 minutes while it blew through.
Claude was keen to crack on as he had a deadline for a ferry in Algiers and I was keen to meet with Rob again. We carried on through beautiful landscapes of sand dunes and occasional mountains and rock formations. I had hoped to have met Rob at El Golea but the information from the night before was that he had travelled in a different direction. I was sad but resigned to travelling alone after leaving Claude. I could have continued with him to Algiers but was keen to see more of Algeria and travel through Morocco. I felt my journey would be incomplete without spending time in these two countries.
Reunion
We drove into El Golea late afternoon after crossing a long plateau with high sand dunes dotted across the otherwise flat landscape. As usual we drove into the campsite, and who should be sitting around a food stall with a group of travellers but Rob. It was a real surprise as I had assumed that the information I’d been given was correct and that he had travelled across Algeria by a different route.
He jumped up and I leapt out of the car and we gave each other a massive hug. He was as pleased to see me as I was him. ‘I assume this is Rob,’ said Claude and I introduced them both.
The three of us sat together while we ate a plate of couscous. Rob and I could barely contain ourselves with our stories as we both wanted to know what had happened to the other since we parted company in Bangui, 3,460 miles and some time ago.
Then Rob asked, ‘Did you get malaria?’
I nodded.
‘When you didn’t appear at Ngaoundéré I remembered the night on the Congo. How was it?’
‘It was pretty bad and I’m still weaker than I was before,’ I said. ‘But I experienced the most extraordinary kindness from Michael, the local Director of UNICEF, and his family. Without his support I expect I would have been much more ill or worse.’ I was sombre as I said this; it was the first time I had properly acknowledged that possibility. Claude and Rob caught the moment.
We talked late into the night. It was lovely and the two of them got on well. Claude had of course heard all my stories and was sometimes telling Rob what had happened to me, which was really funny. He was clearly taken with both of our adventures. Towards the end of the evening, Claude broached the subject that we had avoided so far. ‘It’s time for you two to travel together again. I will leave you tomorrow and wish you both well.’
I welled up with tears. The two of us hugged. I had really enjoyed the journey with Claude and his little red Renault that had served us well across the sand. Claude left in the morning with Rob and me waving him off.
Before our reunion, Rob had found a lift to Timimoun with some Germans but there was no room for another passenger. ‘No problem, I’ll hitch a ride,’ I said.
‘I’ll wait for you at Timimoun, even if you take a month,’ he replied.
After breakfast, I walked to the road at the edge of town and started putting out my hand at each vehicle that would come past. The problem was that there was almost no traffic. I didn’t worry as I was soon joined by Omar, who was a little older than me. By now my French was passable so we were able to talk and I learned quite a lot about Algeria.
‘I am very proud to be Algerian,’ he said. ‘The government is socialist in deed as well as in name. The economy is strong, largely because we have oil reserves, but the money is shared.’
‘How is it shared?’ I asked.
‘There are lots of examples,’ he continued. ‘Healthcare is free. The government funds free machinery and working cash for farmers. And every town has a Jardin with oranges and dates that are free for all to pick, even travellers.’
Omar asked me a lot about life in the UK and was particularly interested in whether I had been to Paris. Many of the younger Algerians I met wanted to move to Paris, seeing it as a place they could make money and become successful.
Late morning a car came by hooting its horn. Omar and I got very excited, thinking this would be a lift for one or both of us. But it turned out to be Rob with his German friends. We waved and carried on waiting. From time to time children would appear and shout ‘Ajnabiun!’, meaning ‘Foreigner’. They were generally quite friendly and unusually didn’t ask for money. Although one boy appeared with my sunglasses. His father followed behind him and started beating him about badly so I intervened asking Omar to explain that I had lost them. The father stopped and was friendly. I had no idea whether the boy had found the sunglasses or stolen them but was upset about the brutality of the father. Half an hour later a woman appeared with a plate of couscous, beans, lentils, vegetables and meat for Omar and me to share (he ate the meat). This was probably related to the sunglasses incident.
After lunch Omar said, ‘I can see a bus coming – let’s get a ride on this.’
I agreed as it was very hot and I was keen to catch up with Rob. We hailed the bus, which stopped, and the fare to Timimoun was cheap. This was a lot of fun as Omar engaged me in a conversation with a group of young Algerians in a mixture of French and English, falling into Arabic from time to time, which I struggled to understand despite having some words. We had a long talk about marriage which moved into the role of women and their subservience to men, particularly when married.
I had been cautious about being challenging elsewhere in my travels but somehow I felt free to challenge this here and I was surprised about the openness of our conversation. We also discussed food quotas, as it appears that only a certain amount of food can be sold by each shop and then sales must stop. This is even if there is more food remaining in the store, including perishables. ‘This makes no sense,’ I said. ‘Can you explain why?’
‘Bureaucracy,’ they replied.
As the sun fell it lit up the mountains and sand into gold, orange and sometimes red. All conversation in the bus stopped as everyone looked out of the windows. We arrived in Timimoun in darkness after a four-and-a-half-hour drive through desert with occasional mountains and sand dunes. We sat in the square in the middle of the town listening to music played on the mandole, an instrument a bit like a long mandolin. Eventually Omar and I fell asleep on the street, along with some of the men from the bus. This seemed acceptable here.
Sand dunes and palms
The next morning Omar and I went to the nearest café and there was Rob. He had been looking for me. I said goodbye to Omar who was heading to the bus station to travel further.
‘Let’s walk to the Palmeraie,’ said Rob, and we walked to the desert on the edge of the town, with sand dunes stretching beyond for miles. Here we found the Palmeraie, a huge palm grove that runs alongside Timimoun. We climbed a little way up one of the dunes, which was not easy, as our feet sank deep into the sand with each step. And the heat was close to 40 degrees. But it was worth it for the stunning view back over the oasis of palms that is Timimoun, surrounded by desert and dunes on all sides. We walked back through the Palmeraie, enjoying the irrigation channels feeding crops of maize and lots of dates. We walked around this beautiful little town of red ochre houses, narrow streets, small doors, shops and a market. It was like being in Lamu again, but red instead of white. That evening we slept out under our mosquito nets in the Palmeraie, after a meal of couscous and vegetables followed by dates.
The next morning we hitched a lift with a driver of a small pickup truck. We sat in the back and bounced up and down sitting on our small rucksacks, hoping we wouldn’t damage ourselves. It was quite an ordeal and reminded me of some of the days on the top of the lorries in Sudan. The trip took five hours with a short break along the way at Ksabi, a tiny oasis village.
But it was worth it as Beni Abbes was simply one of the most beautiful places I have ever visited. It is called the ‘Pearl of the Saoura’. The town was of red ochre and white buildings dwarfed by one of the largest sand dunes I had seen. In the centre of the town was the Jardin, the municipal swimming pool, shaded by date palms and cypress trees. We immediately went for a swim in the fresh cold water, which was heaven. The pool was decorative with tiled walls, a stone diving tower, changing rooms and shade. We had a conversation with the man on the gate who said we could stay each night for 50 dinar for the two of us, sleeping outside by the pool. We could not believe this. Fifty dinar was the equivalent of 10 pence in UK currency.
We immediately paid for two nights, walked into town and had a hot meal of couscous and vegetables in the market, then purchased dried fruit, nuts and bread to keep us going that evening. We spent the rest of the day swimming, resting and talking with the local young men who came down to swim that evening. They showed us how to suck fresh dates off the trees so that you left the stone still on its twig. It was a heavenly place to stay.
I had been fascinated by the sand dunes of the Sahara since first seeing them. ‘For some reason I want to climb the dune and roll down it,’ I said. ‘I know it’s a crazy idea but if I don’t do this now I might never have the chance again.’
If Rob was surprised he didn’t show it, saying, ‘Let’s do it.’ We talked a bit about how we would manage this. We both had light, loose cotton trousers and light djellabas as well as long scarves of the type worn in Palestine and Egypt. We agreed that we would need to be fully clothed with the scarves wrapped tightly around our heads. We would not be able to see directly because of the risk of getting sand in our eyes but would be able to see a little through the scarves.
We set off with our water bottles full and climbed about 300 feet up to the top of the tallest of the dunes. Deciding that we would do it one at a time, I lay down on my side, held on to my water bottle and started to roll. I didn’t move at all. So Rob pushed me and eventually I gained some momentum and started to roll down. Immediately sand flew everywhere and I shut my eyes and gave in to the experience of rolling. It was an extraordinary feeling, like a combination of dizziness and weightlessness.
Eventually I came to a halt, took off my scarf and looked back up the dune, feeling dizzy. I had rolled down about two thirds of it. I stood up and shook out what felt like a few sacks of sand that had gathered inside my clothes, my hair, nostrils and ears. Luckily I had kept my eyes shut. Rob let out a cheer from the top and proceeded to try and do it himself. He couldn’t, so I climbed up and pushed him, telling him to keep his eyes shut. He rolled down as far as I had, while I jumped down a large step at a time, rather like moonwalking. It was a great experience but neither of us felt the need to repeat it, so we made our way back down the dune into the town and back to the Jardin, where we were in great need of a wash and a swim.
The next day we walked 10 miles out of Beni Abbes along the main road, which was almost empty. It was exhausting but I was really pleased that I could still walk this far despite the malaria I’d had in CAR. Around midday we got a lift from a driver who took us on to Béchar, a larger town which was quite industrial. We saw shops with lots of modern goods, hip Algerians and women dressed in Western styles, quite different to what we had seen elsewhere in the country. There was fruit to eat, including peaches and melons, which neither of us had tasted for a very long time.
Border tricks
We found a café and spent the afternoon forging our currency forms. I had been given a form when I entered Algeria at In Guezzam, which was to be filled in to demonstrate that I was spending the equivalent of US$25 a day while staying in the country. That sum sounds like nothing these days but I had been spending much less, closer to one or two dollars a day. So I had to forge signatures that showed I had exchanged currency. I was pleased with the job I had done and Rob was impressed enough to ask me to forge his. Only when we crossed the border would we discover if I was really any good and could make a career as a forger when I returned home.
That evening we hitched a ride with some men who took us to Beni Ounif and gave us dinner at the local hotel where we were also put up for the night. I ate a salad with olives. Olives! That was a taste I hadn’t had for a long time. I was beginning to enjoy food again. Algeria was one of my favourite countries of the journey. I liked the enthusiasm and generosity of the people that I met. Although I think the delicious vegetarian food had something to do with it too.
Rob and I woke early and headed for the border. We had heard conflicting reports as to whether it would be open, but we decided to go for it anyway. We set off walking early to avoid the heat of the day, as it was a five-mile walk to Figuig, the Moroccan border town. We got to the Algerian border post in just over an hour and thankfully there was no problem with the currency declarations. In fact the customs officer didn’t really look at them, he just seemed happy that we had them. Passports were stamped and we were told that it was reasonably likely that the Moroccan border guards would let us enter. We were a bit concerned about their use of the word ‘reasonably’ but we could see the border post in the distance and set off in what was now a 35-degree heat. We had left Algeria so if we had to come back we would need new visas and that could be complicated.
In 1980 Algeria was going through a relatively safe period in its recent history. Following a turbulent time in the late 1980s, the country began a civil war that lasted from 1991 to 2002. Estimates of civilian deaths during that war vary, but there were many massacres in villages and towns.
9
MOROCCO
Wedding party
Figuig is an oasis town on the southeastern tip of Morocco, surrounded by Algeria on three sides and dominated by a small range of mountains. Historically this lovely red ochre town played a major role on the routes of the trans-Saharan caravan trade.
There is a long history of conflict between Morocco and Algeria, which started when Algeria was still a colony of France. In the mid 1970s Spain announced it would relinquish control of the region called Western Sahara. Morocco claimed ownership while Algeria supported the independence movement. For many years there was a war of independence and as a result poor relationships between Algeria and Morocco.
This conflict was unresolved in 1980 and as a result Rob and I were not confident we could cross this border. But we did and received a very warm welcome from the Moroccan border guards and customs. Whether we would have received this were we Algerians is another matter. I suspected that the welcome was based on the fact that two Western travellers arriving on foot was unusual and a bit of an event. Mint tea and pastries were brought out and we sat with the small number of officers and enjoyed their hospitality.
It was around 1pm when we left the border post and walked the remaining two and a half miles into the town. We found a small café and ate yet another beautiful meal of couscous and vegetables. We were just finishing up when a soldier appeared in full combat uniform with a rifle over his shoulder. At the start of my journey I would have found this alarming but I was pretty used to meeting soldiers and police now. He sat down at our table and immediately engaged us in conversation.
‘What are you doing here in Figuig?’ he asked.
Rob replied, ‘We are both towards the end of long journeys across much of North and Central Africa. We have just crossed the border from Algeria.’
‘Welcome to Morocco,’ he said. ‘My name is Ouajdi and I would like to hear about your journeys.’
We were happy to talk and he ordered a round of mint tea and pastries. He was very enthusiastic and excited about our travels. After an hour of intense conversation he invited us to come and stay with him and his wife. We spent the night with them and they were very generous, although they kept giving us presents which of course we could not refuse. The problem was that we had nothing to offer them back, literally nothing apart from one of my dwindling stock of postcards. We had a lovely evening. They were very interested in hearing our stories and were extremely hospitable. I hoped that we sang for our supper.
