Wisdom - Blogabond

I met Ben Sebgab Lakhdar over a year ago the modern way: trolling the internet. Lakhdar posted his picture and some photographs of Tamanrasset and the surrounding desert on a website called Virtualtourist.com, designed to showcase the travels of its members. I sent him an email from Acton discussing my plans to travel through the Sahara, and we embarked on a bit of correspondence which culminated in Lakhdar preparing and sending me a “Certificat de Herbergement”, a notorized piece of paper stating that he would give me a place to stay during my visit to Tamanrasset, between October 2006 and January 2007.

This statement is meaningless because in fact, I am staying at “Encampment Dromadaire”, not with Lakhdar, but the document is required to get a tourist visa to Algeria.

Ben Sebgab Lakhdar

On the site of a 100 year old Governor's palace, currently being reconstructed.

Lakhdar is an architect, a lucky coincidence that immediately gave us plenty to discuss. He studied at a university in the north of the country for six years, received his degree, came back to Tamanrasset, and within a couple of years found his present job.

Lakhdar works for the state, in exactly the same capacity as an architect working, for example, for the State of Massachusetts. He administers contracts, oversees the selection of architects and the development of the design and construction documents, and keeps an eye on contractor selection and actual construction. He told me that he appreciated his job, but that it kept him at a distance from the actual architecture and prevented it from being an affair of the heart. He hopes to open an office in the next five or six years for exactly this reason.

Ben Sebgab Lakhdar

Thursday here is Saturday in the States: the start of the weekend. I left him an email yesterday suggesting we get together, and he came by to pick me up this morning at “Dromadaire”. We went to a café for a cup of tea and then walked through the city discussing everything from city planning to meeting girls.

Camels

A marriage, he told me, costs 7 camels and possibly some clothes and jewelry. Lakhdar has 2 camels kept by his dad, who apparently wanders the desert “en trek” with a herd of camels. (He doesn’t take tourists, he doesn’t deliver salt, and there isn’t a route. He just…wanders…). Lakhdar stated the he found the girls here especially materialistic and this made it difficult to begin a relationship. Instead of discovering each others ideals and values from the start, it was imperative for a man to present himself first as financially substantial. Only then was it possible to begin any kind of discussion regarding affairs of the heart, a bit of a reversal of the American courtship, I thought. I pointed out a particularly engaging girl in the store of one of his friends, but he laughed and shrugged: “interesting, but for the moment impossible”.

Lakhdar took me to his home, where after some discussion with mom while I waited outside, we entered a small courtyard and then a concrete block room stuccoed inside and out with cement, with rusty steel beams supporting a corrugated metal roof. The doorway was open and there were no windows. We left our shoes at the door and relaxed on mattresses resting on rugs on the floor. Lakhdar brought in a metal cup of water and a plate filled with scalloped potatoes, carrots, onions and meat, from which we both ate using aluminum spoons. Naval oranges and three cups of tea served by a younger brother finished the meal.

Mosque under construction

A mosque currently under construction, the gift of a construction contractor.

Lakhdar told me that Tamanrasset experienced a lot of growth during the last ten years with the exodus from the north in the face of political turmoil, and the exodus from Niger in the face of famine. The city was unprepared for growth and did not have the resources to enforce any kind of master plan. Lately, however, services have been brought to the bidonvilles, a building permit is required, and enforcement of a master plan is in place.

I noted the lack of palm trees, a stark contrast to the M’zab Valley, and he thought the resource had been destroyed by the outsiders who bought land and didn’t understand the value of trees. I thought it was perhaps the biggest loss precipitated by all this growth. Lakhdar noted that the falling watertable level is a significant problem facing the city, with a pipeline in the works to bring water from In Salah 680 km away. I told him about the Rio Grande, and how it never reaches the sea.

Late afternoon bicycles

Late afternoon on a weekend

He enjoys traveling, and last year visited Sousse, Tunisia with friends. He went to Italy with some of the family the year before, to organize connections for his uncles “agence de voyage”. When I told him he should visit the United States, he said it was awfully far away.

We discussed building materials a bit, because I had heard at Poste Tagamart from Faysel that the village of Tagemart had been rebuilt entirely in concrete and stone. I thought it peculiar because the traditional mud and reed brick results in a much more comfortable interior, but Faysel stated that the State had paid for the reconstruction conditional on the use of cement. I thought: a stupidity that sounds like the World Bank or trade agreements or industrial pressure.

In fact, construction in stone and concrete is more impervious to water and probably requires less maintenance than mud brick. Lakhdar also showed me a 100 year old governors palace abandoned in 1935 however, sufficiently intact to merit restoration. I sensed that durability was perhaps in the details, not necessarily the materials. The good people of Tagemart have free, durable buildings in which to live uncomfortably for many lifetimes to come: presumably willing and possibly very proud participants in the arrangement. Somewhere, somehow, well intentioned people are perpetrating stupidity on a massive scale, though. I thought: “This too we have in common”.

Arcade

This is not a screed against people in government, by the way. I have met many of them, working with the State of Massachusetts and the General Services Administration in Washington, and I have found them smarter than me and often far more idealistic. It is more the recognition that wisdom is hard won, often underappreciated, and even systematically winnowed from some institutions; a triumph of the young, perhaps, but possibly the ruination of us all.

Surprising and wonderful things can follow from youthful or simply emotional impulses, there is absolutely no doubt. (Solo travel through Africa, anyone)? When I survey the stupidities I have personally perpetrated however, I understand this: I wish I had listened better, understood more, proceeded with a bit more caution, and considered the possible consequences. It’s a survey that makes me miss and appreciate my dad.

written by

roel krabbendam on February 3, 2007 from Tamanrasset, Algeria

from the travel blog: Harmattan

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