Roaming around the desert – part 2

Continuing with the drive around the desert area near our camp, accompanied by some lively traditional Gnawa music.

… along the way, we stopped to see a herd of donkeys that gathered around a well in the middle of a featureless flat desert.

The well was built by funds from the charity – Coeur de Gazelle as identified by a plaque above the well.  It is such a valuable resource that this organization is providing to the inhabitants of the desert.

These donkeys are probably owned by Berber nomads living in the area.  According to Wikipedia, Berbers, or Amazighs, (ⵉⵎⴰⵣⵉⵖⵏ, ⵎⵣⵗⵏ)) are an ethnicity of several nation groups mostly indigenous to North Africa and some northern parts of West Africa.

The area has been the home of nomadic Berbers for thousands of years. In Morocco, after the constitutional reforms of 2011, Berber has become an official language, and is now taught as a compulsory language in all schools regardless of the area or the ethnicity. In 2016, Algeria followed suit. Berber languages (generically Tamazight) are spoken by around thirty to forty million people in Africa. We observed that road signs and roadside advertisements were all written in Arabic, Berber, mostly also in French, and very occasionally English.

We saw a tent that served as a tea house for tourists to drink mint tea and socialize with the locals … not sure what these boxy homes were made of as they were all wrapped in some form of textile – certainly looked portable. A lady was standing outside her tent (see above photo) but unfortunately our guide did not make any arrangement ahead of time.

Do you know Zinedine Zidane was born in France to Kabyle Berber parents from Algeria ?

Though often thought of in the West as nomads, most Berbers are in fact traditional farmers living in mountains relatively close to the Mediterranean coast, or oasis dwellers, such as the Siwa of Egypt; but the Tuareg and Zenaga groups of the southern Sahara were almost wholly nomadic.

Prominent Berber groups include the Kabyles from Kabylia, in northern Algeria, who number about 6 million and have kept their original language and society; and the Chleuh in High and Anti-Atlas of Morocco, numbering about 8 million. Other groups include the Riffians of northern Morocco, the Chaoui people of eastern Algeria, and the Tuaregs of the Sahara scattered through southern Algeria and Libya, Niger, Mali and Burkina Faso. The staff who ran our camps were probably Tuaregs as they all wore the characteristic indigo-blue colored djellabas (robes).

Despite the hostile desert environment, people had apparently lived in this area for a long time. We drove through a ghost village.

The abandoned dwellings were built with adobe, or mud bricks made with sand, clay and organic matters. The guide did not say much about the history of this settlement, but it was pointed out that the mountain range in the horizon marks the border with Algeria (see below).

On the way back to our camp, we passed by this mysterious complex.

The buildings looked unoccupied – it could be a tourist hotel which was closed during the off-season.  The architecture is Malian, i.e., from Mali, a country south of here. Unlike a traditional building made with mud bricks, this one seemed to be made of concrete.

I think this building style was used in one of the Star Wars movies. We soon got back onto the paved R702 and then the N13 highway near Hassilabied and turned south, effectively circling Erg Chabbi in an anti-clockwise direction, arriving back at the camp in about an hour.

The desert was hostile and unforgiving, and it was a lonely and mysterious place.