Team Fall’11:
Marta, Anne Kristine
and Hanne
Charles de Gaulle, Paris, *15 minutes of free internet*11.30am: Time for our first blog!
So, what are you really going to do for three months?
Now we are already done with the first lap on our journey to our home for the next three months. While sitting in the airport of Paris we are wondering if friends and family really know what we are actually going to do and experience in Algeria.. Do we really know what will meet us when we exit the Algerian airport of Tindouf, the closest town to the camps?
Well, when we get to Tindouf in some hours, we probably won’t see anything. Tindouf is a military town where all planes arrive during dark in order to keep foreigners from seeing the town. Foreigners are not allowed to enter the town at all. While trying to get used to the heat, the sounds, the noises and the smells, we will be driven one hour into the desert and hopefully find tents of the Saharawi refugee camp Layounne.
So, we’ll be in Algeria, but it won’t really feel like it. The Saharawi camps are in the desert, hours away from cities. Our families will not speak French, but Hassaniya, and most likely Spanish. They are refugees, miles away from the place they call their real home, Western Sahara, a Moroccan “colony”. Is this the last colony of Africa?
Regardless, we are confident that we will learn tons about a new way of life, a new language and make lasting friendships. Not completely sure what we’re going to yet, but we know that each of us will live in a host family, we’ll have Arabic lessons every day and we’ll be teaching three different levels of English to voluntary participants. And there won’t be brown cheese. Or showers. Or sit-down toilets that flush. But believe it or not, that’s part of what we’re excited about.
Algeirs AF 2154 12.35 F44 A l’heure (soon it’ll say something like.. allé al port..?)
Untill next time! And then, from the camps! :D
