A Belgian journalist stayed in Algeria recently. He testified to the generosity and hospitality of the Algerians in an interview with a media in his country and twisted the arm of received ideas about this country that Westerners only know through the distorting prism of French newspapers whose clock is stuck in the 1990s.
“I discovered Algeria, the largest country on the African continent. Algeria is a variety of settings, cultures, populations, a truly exceptional history”, testified François Mazure. “However, it is a country where tourism is still quite discreet, whereas during the 1980s, tourism was really developed,” he recalled. “You will see that this is an advantage for travel lovers like me, because it makes this one all the more authentic.
I went to Algiers, I went to Ghardaïa, at the gates of the Sahara, and then to Timimoun, in the heart of the desert, another oasis that is there, I spent a short week, I took my eyes off it,” he said.
Our colleague explains that the image of the black decade remains. “This kind of terrorism that was latent is still scary but what I felt, because I was saying around me that I was going to go to Algeria, it was above all a kind of mystery and a real curiosity” , explained the journalist. “People, he continued, want to know what is going on there because indeed we hear less and less of people who come back as tourists from Algeria. So there is a fantasy around this country which was a French colony for a very long time.” “It is both a partly justified fear because there was this whole complicated period and, today, you feel it when you travel there: there is a lot of control and security services which are present but, above all, a real curiosity because it is a country which raises fantasies, and which are justified”, affirmed François Mazure.
“I think there is a real desire on the part of the new Minister of Tourism to develop the tourism sector,” added the journalist, who said he was convinced that “we will never have tourism like it is the case at the moment in Tunisia, mass tourism, or as is developing in Morocco or Egypt; we really want to develop authentic tourism, tourism for people who are initiated, who love travel.” “There is also a political will to preserve history, to preserve certain sites, there are many sites which are listed as UNESCO heritage”, underlined the host from Algeria.
The journalist expressed his love for the Algerian Grand Sahara, “a real fantasy”, he insisted. “It was also a childhood dream, it reminds me of the Tuaregs, the Berbers and the caravanserais. A deep desire in me to go there. It was absolutely wonderful. We first started at the gates of the desert, in Ghardaïa, pearl of the desert. It is a city that is located in an oasis. There is a superb market in the center of town. And in all its little streets, you could meet lots of people. And what is fantastic when you travel there, in cities like Ghardaïa, you are not seen as a walking dollar, there is no reflex to say to yourself: here is a tourist, I will sell him everything and anything. We are considered simply as a visitor and never alpagated. We circulated in a natural way”, he testified, thus joining what the French photographer Yann-Arthus Bertrand had said before him.
“It was an extraordinary experience”, assured the journalist who “went deeper into the Sahara”. “Six hours on the road to find yourself in Timimoun, in the heart of the desert, all red, a kind of beaten earth and it is a city that is irrigated by a very old hydraulic system. You should know that, in this city, there are two centimeters of water that fall annually, eighteen millimeters to be precise. And yet, there are cities that exist, there are palm groves irrigated by the fougara which brings water from the groundwater for miles. It is a magical and authentic city”, he was delighted.
The Belgian journalist said he was “amazed” by the capital Algiers, where he spent a “totally magical moment”, and its “charming” inhabitants. “And I’m going to tell you about the hospitality of the Algerians!” exclaimed, emphasizing that this is what “marked him the most”. “We are not seen as walking dollars. Sincerely, we are welcomed everywhere as if we were a member of the family”, he observed, giving the example of this gesture which touched him in a popular restaurant in Algiers where he discovered, once in the checkout, that his dish had been offered to him by an anonymous person. “We’re not used to all that,” he remarked.
The charmed tourist tells this other anecdote where a group of friends invites him to celebrate a birthday with him and was offered gifts in a souvenir shop. “It is to tell you that there was really this disinterested report, and that sincerely touched me because it seems to me that it is more and more rare”, attested François Mazure.
Translated from : https://www.algeriepatriotique.com/2023/02/16/un-journaliste-belge-ce-que-jai-vu-en-algerie-est-de-plus-en-plus-rare/
