Trekking in the Ksour

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I kept waking up like every 2-3 hours and finally couldn’t sleep after 6am, was just lying and waiting because everyone else was still asleep.

Everyone woke up around 730am and no one here takes a shower. Everyone just washed their face and hair and that’s it.

The dinner table was brought outside and the sun was just popping out and it was cold. I really enjoyed sitting outside with the sun rays warming me up. They heated the coffee and brought bread and a bowl of olive oil and everyone kept dipping the bread to the olive oil and that was breakfast.

The people here don’t brush their teeth either. I was planning on leaving after going to Chenini and Douiret so decided to take my backpack. Before catching a camionnette to Chenini I left my backpack in Amal’s shop. Amal has an electrical goods shop. Nasser being lazy said he is not coming with us because we tend to do a lot of walking. I bought some sweets from the shop near to where the Camionnettes are, Nadine bought a few sweets too. We took the Camionnette to Chenini at about 10am. The Chenini village looks very pretty from down below and we met this old woman. She gave me 1 euro in change and asked for the equivalent in dinars. I didn’t have the heart to give her little more than a dinar so told her to keep the Euros and I gave her 2 dinars. She gladly posed for pictures with us. She lives inside one of the mountain caves and I was surprised to see a fridge inside her cave.

Then we continued to the top and Nadine had to buy some batteries for her camera. After much negotiating this shop keeper reduced his price from 10 dinars for 4 batteries to 5 and Nadine bought them. Afterwards he was showing us around and at one point he was going to climb a rock. I climbed half way and I knew my limitations and I asked them to carry on while I stayed and took pictures of daily life in the village.

The shop keeper told Nadine that it is possible to walk from Chenini to Douiret and that it is about 6 kms and that if we walk at a good speed that we will manage it in 2 hours. The 3 villages Guermessa, Chenini and Douiret are all connected by mountains and it is possible to walk from one to another and there is a well trodden path. We saw the path to Guermessa too but we had already been there so decided to walk from Chenini to Douiret.

Before that we went to this restaurant to use the toilet and there was this guy smoking a cigarette. He was a kid, when we asked he said he was 16 but I am sure he was younger.

The walk was great and the views absolutely gorgeous. It took us about 2.5 hours to get tot Douiret and Nadine was feeling a little tired. In Douiret we went to this restaurant like place to see if we can find some bread as Nadine had finished all her sweets and was hungry but no luck. They didn’t have any bread so I gave Nadine the last sweet I had.

Finding transport back to Tatouine was another problem because at this time about 430pm transport was few. We walked from old Douiret which is the village in the mountain to Nouvelle Douiret which is the new village. We saw a car and we saw a family outside and we spoke to them. The family had come from Medenine to see the husbands parents and were about to go back to Medenine. We asked them if they can give us a lift and the husband same they will try to accommodate us. The husband had studied in Belgium and done a Ph.D. in agriculture spoke very good English and French. Their daughter, Nadine and I sat in the back and the husband drove and the wife and son on the passenger seat. They dropped us in Tatouine; it was too late for me to go anywhere so another night with the family. Funny how things turn out, I was planning to stay only one night in Tatouine and now it has become 3.

We met Nasser near the Camionnettes and went back to his cousins place. It is going to be my 2nd day with the same clothes and no shower.

I bought some oranges from the market as I didn’t want to go back empty handed and I had no more Toblerone left.

It was the same as last night but the difference being, the brother in law, the kid and one of their brothers had gone back to Djerba and the other cousin who was playing with the kid had gone back. So essentially it was the 2 sisters, one brother, Nasser, the mother, a new addition their mums sister, Nadine and me.

This night we had “macarone” for dinner. It’s essentially spaghetti but that’s what they call it and orange for desert. The mint tea ritual was done by Nasser today.

The younger sister spoke to me a lot more than yesterday and was asking me what job I was doing etc. She had stopped her education 2 months ago and her mother was making signs to show that she is stupid to have stopped her studies and have started to work. She works in a biscuit factory earning 60 dinars a month working 10 hours a day, 6 days a week. That’s essentially an average of 2 dinars a day which is a pound. It cost me 60 dinars to travel every 2 days. I was telling her why won’t she go and work in a call centre because they pay about 350 dinars a month.

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