I am in Tizi Ouzou for a week before going to set up shop in Bejaia.
Tizi Ouzou smells like hot dust—even here in the mountains, dust and sewage and moldy walls, budding lemon trees and coffee grounds.
There is now water 24 hours a day. What a difference it makes! Yesterday at breakfast my uncle said that he wishes for his country that all the petrol and gas that is exported from here would disappear. “Then there would be nothing to steal and we could maybe have a shot at a more egalitarian society.” The average salary these days is $200 a month. And like everywhere else in the world the cost of basic everyday staples are soaring.
I had a bit of a personal issue I was worried about—a two-year-old break up that I hadn’t completely dealt with head on since I have been living in the states. I was worried I would be met with hostility from certain family members and the person in question. When I revealed how worried I was they were insulted: “What, you think we are uncivilized idiots? Oh come on, it’s personal, your problem not ours. You are a Khazem. You always will be a Khazem.” This place always surprises me. One minute I find myself thinking: “everyone seems so confined in all this cultural pressure” and then the next minute none of it seems to matter. Even my oldest aunt said: “you know these things happen, you think you want one thing and then you realize you want something else. There is no reason to be so stressed by this!”
It’s raining and feels like winter even though the Algerian summer flies are out and everything is green and blooming. Tizi Ouzou always looks like it is hanging on by a thread with crumbling walls and enormous pot holes filling with brown sandy water every time it rains.
My Kabyle improves every day. I learn quickly playing with my toddler cousins. Besides language I'm still working on figuring out my housing in Bejaia, buying a cell phone, figuring out my recuitment plan of attack. Today I told my great aunt that I will come over after dinner and ask for a folktale. This is will be my first test run of folktale gathering.
Tizi Ouzou smells like hot dust—even here in the mountains, dust and sewage and moldy walls, budding lemon trees and coffee grounds.
There is now water 24 hours a day. What a difference it makes! Yesterday at breakfast my uncle said that he wishes for his country that all the petrol and gas that is exported from here would disappear. “Then there would be nothing to steal and we could maybe have a shot at a more egalitarian society.” The average salary these days is $200 a month. And like everywhere else in the world the cost of basic everyday staples are soaring.
I had a bit of a personal issue I was worried about—a two-year-old break up that I hadn’t completely dealt with head on since I have been living in the states. I was worried I would be met with hostility from certain family members and the person in question. When I revealed how worried I was they were insulted: “What, you think we are uncivilized idiots? Oh come on, it’s personal, your problem not ours. You are a Khazem. You always will be a Khazem.” This place always surprises me. One minute I find myself thinking: “everyone seems so confined in all this cultural pressure” and then the next minute none of it seems to matter. Even my oldest aunt said: “you know these things happen, you think you want one thing and then you realize you want something else. There is no reason to be so stressed by this!”
It’s raining and feels like winter even though the Algerian summer flies are out and everything is green and blooming. Tizi Ouzou always looks like it is hanging on by a thread with crumbling walls and enormous pot holes filling with brown sandy water every time it rains.
My Kabyle improves every day. I learn quickly playing with my toddler cousins. Besides language I'm still working on figuring out my housing in Bejaia, buying a cell phone, figuring out my recuitment plan of attack. Today I told my great aunt that I will come over after dinner and ask for a folktale. This is will be my first test run of folktale gathering.
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