The Sahara Festival

The Sahara Festival in Douz was a wonderful experience.  I travelled with two companions-the first, an irascible Englishman, N, who speaks a bit of French and the other an unknown American who speaks Arabic and lives in Cairo, M.  You'd think, with companions like that, that we would have been able to understand what was going on; however, once again, understanding Tunisia proved elusive.

It started with the train.  We bought first class tickets.  Silly me, I assumed that with a westernized system here a ticket meant you had an assigned seat (especially since there was a seat number ON the ticket!).  What we found instead was a rush to snag seats  and several women who refused to move to their correct location in second class, even with the conductor's intervention.  I used to love riding the train in India, but here, it's something I never hope to repeat!  Maybe the British just did better than the French at introducing regularized, comfortable train travel to their colonies. 

Scenes depicting the activities of the Sahara Festival

But, after a long night, we made it to Gabes, where we switched to a louage (a shared taxi) and continued our journey to Douz. 

In Douz, the festival was in full swing.  In the town souq (marketplace) there were performances by the musicians and a contest to crown the best looking camel and horse. 

Most of the activities, though, took place at the fairgrounds.

There were performers from Tunisia and other Maghreb countries:

Tunisia

Algeria

Egypt

There were camel races:

Another confusing event-the camels didn't really start off together, and some of them dropped out before the first turn.

Snake charmers:

The announcer told us that normally this occupation is only done by men, but this woman has become a much beloved charmer

Camel acrobats:

They were rather underwhelming

Horse acrobats:

But these guys were pretty cool.  They did a lot of tricks with the horses and the horses themselves were trained to dance to the beat of the drums. 

Even some version of what looked like field (sand?) hockey:

It was a short game, so it was difficult to see how similar the rules were.

The event concluded with a Bedouin wedding ceremony:

Again, confusion.  We didn't actually see much of a ceremony, but there was a lot of noise and action and some horse racing.