Listening to Nina Simone

I hitched a ride instead with Faysal, a photographer and friend of Said, headed back home to Tamanrasset from Alger where he had been visiting his wife and kids. Things apparently hadn’t worked out with his wife, but they were good friends he says. We left early in the morning for the 400km drive down to El Meniaa and then In Salah, where we would spend the night, Said entrusted with the task of sending my bicycle by bus.

Faysal drove like a man late for a meeting, the 240km took no time at all, and we arrived in El Meniaa before noon. The town used to be called El Golea under the French, and it is famous for its mineral water, still marketed under the old name. We discovered however, that no one in town sells bottled water (because…why should they: the mineral water comes out of the taps)! We filled my water bottles at a gas station.

Plaza at El Mineaa

The only gas station between El Meniaa and In Salah was closed. Faysal bought a jerry can (they call it that in Arabic as well), filled it at the gas station, and because it didn’t fit in the trunk, sat it on the back seat with all my stuff. He then pulled out some truly wonderful smoked salmon from Belgium out of the trunk for lunch, and we memorably set out for In Salah reeking of gasoline and fish.

Looking for jerry cans

Entry gate to In Salah

Late afternoon at I-n-Salah

Boubacar

Kasem had also made slide shows highlighting interesting features of the area around In Salah, and so I got the virtual tour of the petrified forest, the hot water springs, a small lake. I had thought to visit them personally, but Faysal had a schedule: it turned out he actually did have a meeting in Tamanrasset in two days.

Kader put us up for the night, and in the morning Faysel and I headed south. We thought we would make it well before dinner.

Wolf after the fire

Truck fire

Truck fire

All I could remember from my nights out in the tent was that the moon was setting lately in the west and that the town was north. We had to keep the moon to our left. That would have been fine but we had to find the piste, and that in the end took us hours. Even when we found something that looked like it headed in the right direction, we were forced to rely on the moon to keep us oriented; the number of possible tracks to follow and the number of times a track simply disappeared was truly disorienting. It was with tremendous good fortune that the moon didn’t set until just before we hit the highway, that the tire didn’t go flat until just before town, and that we had a full tank of gas to get us back. This is not an experience I care to repeat, ever.

I am back in Ghardaia now, and should be heading south shortly. After twenty eight years of simply imagining it, I’m going to see Tamanrasset. Happy Birthday, Mia. I love you.

written by  roel krabbendam on January 23, 2007 from Ghardaia, Algeria
from the travel blog: Harmattan
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Nasser was bitten by a snake while working at the farm last summer. He immediately sucked what he could out of the wound, applied a tourniquet to his arm, and was hauled off to Guerrera 30 kilometers away. There was no anti-venom available. As he felt the poison working its way up his arm towards his heart he was hauled to a hospital 120 kilometers away in Ghardaia. There, he spent four days in the hospital in a situation that might best be described as “tenuous”. He said: “it was important not to panic, because that only speeds your circulation”. He lived.

A young man from Guerara spent one holiday zipping around the desert on his motor bike without regard for the possible consequences. It so happened that the electricity went out that night in Guerrera due to some system failure, and so the glow of the town that serves as navigational beacon in the desert was lost. The young man guessed wrong about his directions, headed straight out into the desert instead of towards town, and ran out of gas without any idea about what had happened. It was mid-summer and he had no water and within two days he was dead, just a few kilometers it turns out from “La Source” and salvation.

One of the guys working on the farm was also bitten when he dared to have some fun with a snake he found at the farm. He panicked but had the good fortune to have anti-venom now at the farm, and so also survived. Death is usually a matter of less than an hour.

Snakes and scorpions are commonplace on the farm, but now, in the winter, they are all hibernating. In any case, it is only the snakes that are deadly. The scorpion bite is exceedingly painful, sometimes for days, but it will not kill a full-grown man. I found myself avoiding holes in the sand, covering my boots at night, and kicking rocks before picking them up.

Tourists are usually the protagonists in these death by desert stories, so it was refreshing (?) to hear the more local variations. In any case, staring around at the monochrome dust and remembering the level of tension as we tried to navigate to “La Source” at night, I’m left with a more than theoretical appreciation for the stakes and the consequences out here in the waste.

Nasser making sahara bread

Flies on your lips
Flies in your clothes
Flies on your eyelids
And up your nose

The wax in your ears
The salt in your tears
The sweat on your brow
All fly chow now

Washing their hands
Rubbing their feet
Keeping an eye out
For fresh (white) meat

They swarm, they flurry
Fly clouds in a hurry
Quick to swoop down
On the poop you don’t bury

Cockroaches may be here
Long after man dies
But I’ll put my money
On the survival of flies

Someone call Darwin or Leakey or Goodall: I’m sure it all started here, the origin of the species.

written by  roel krabbendam on January 22, 2007 from Guerara, Algeria
from the travel blog: Harmattan
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I took a taxi. The 120 kilometers went quickly until 3 kilometers outside Guerrera when we were stopped at a roadblock, and I was summarily hauled into the headquarters of the Guardia Nationale for visa violations. It is true that my Algerian visa states that it expires on January 14.

I will plead, however, my admittedly suspect case. On January 12, I went to the Commissariat du Police in Ghardaia to arrange a visa extension. The police chief stated that the terms of the visa were such that entry into the country was required before the expiration date, but that the 30 day visa went into effect on the date of entry and could run past the date of expiration. I did not need an extension. He was wearing a uniform and sitting in an office responsible for visa extensions, so I believed him…sort of. I presented this point of view to the Guardia Nationale, however, and they kind of shrugged me off as an absolute idiot. I couldn’t really blame them.

I have been “detained” in Morocco, the United States and now Algeria, and though each case ended just fine, I can now say with authority that I much prefer Algeria. In Morocco I was held on a police boat in Casablanca harbor for 8 hours for illegally sneaking into Casablanca harbor late one night and asking fisherman if they would take me out fishing with them. The three policemen who questioned me all night finally laughed and called it a day at the end of their shift, and one of them ended up arranging that fishing trip for me and later taking me out on a date…don’t ask.

In the United States I was once stopped for speeding, and driving with an expired license, registration and inspection. I had obviously been rather inattentive, in large part due to an impending divorce, yet the $450 fine seemed excessive and the inflexibility of the officers involved made me feel inhuman. Luckily I could plead extenuating circumstances in court, and got off for $50 and the towing charge of $75.

In the case of the visa violation in Algeria, nine Men With Guns and Uniforms put me in a chair in the chief’s office and suggested I tell them my story. I did, and suggested they verify it by calling the Ghardaia police, which they did without getting an answer. I filled in all of my personal information on innumerable forms, provided consistent answers to all of their (somewhat sneaky) repeated questions, and behaved myself for the hour or so that I was held. After more phone calls, and arguments in Arabic, and a little bit of finger pointing at me, my new best friends suddenly all smiled and shrugged and told me without any explanation that I was free to go. We walked to the door, we shook hands all around, I was reminded that this had all been for my own protection, I told them sincerely that it had been no trouble at all and a pleasure to meet them at that, and then I asked for my passport back and hopped back in the taxi, and we took off with a last, fond farewell through the window. In the end, I suspect, it may have been the mention of who I was visiting that eliminated all obstacles: the well-known Kherfi freres.

written by  roel krabbendam on January 17, 2007 from Guerara, Algeria
from the travel blog: Harmattan
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