October 4, 1980

TAMANRASSET, ALGERIA
All the lowlife tourists, like myself, are preoccupied with getting a ride out of here. The three French-speaking guys have a possible connection tomorrow with some tourists they found at the hotel, but most people do the trip by truck. The guys that have been here as much as four days are parked at the main intersection, scanning every truck that comes in. There's an Italian here who seems to have been here quite a while. My Danish friend Jens says he saw people like that in a kibbutz, who'd been traveling, got a little comfortable I none place, and lost their nerve to continue on. ...Scary.

I've traveled pretty hard, for me, the last few days and I've just felt like relaxing today. A waiter in the café knows someone who might be able to bring me just to the border, but I don't put too much faith in it; tomorrow I'll start looking seriously.

There's a guy here who lives in D.C., but grew up in White Plains, NY. The group I arrived with has pretty much stayed together, so there are two camps of foreigners, in addition to a few strays. I've passed most of the day at the café, sometimes guarding luggage for the others; made a couple brief tours of the town.

Early this evening, Jean-Luc introduced me to someone who works at the bakery and Jens and I were offered a place to spend the night, inside. This was a blessing because although the weather was beautiful during the day, the night promised to be chilly. We got a guided tour of the works, with a demonstration of how the bread is made, then he invited us to his house for tea.

Tea at a café is one thing, but in someone's home it's quite another: it's an elaborate affair where the water is boiled on a portable burner, poured back and forth from pot to glass, all the time adding tea, mint leaves or sugar; the host tastes it, decides what it needs next, pretending he's the only person in the world who knows how to make it exactly right. This is how it's done all over North Africa. After we returned to the bakery and talked to the night crew about American Indians, Mohammed Ali and, inevitably, changing money and selling jackets, we went to sleep.

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