Welcome to Algeria !


Location: Northern Africa, bordering the Mediterranean Sea, between Morocco and Tunisia
Area: 2,381,740 sq km Population: 31,193,917 (July 2000 est.)
Capital: Algiers Languages:Arabic (official), French, Berber dialects


Algeria through words by Samir Bouarour (sambouarour@yahoo.fr)


First of all, let me thank you for inviting me to write about my country Algeria. I hope that i could contribute in making people discover things that they don't know so far. Talking about a country is not as easy as it seems, that's why i prefer to deal with subjects related to everyday's life in Algeria. To begin with, i want to talk about my region. Why exactly my region? Because simply it is so much different than other ones in Algeria ; culture, language, nature.etc. I am sure that much people ignore the fact that a majority of north african people don't speak arabic. They speak, in fact, Berber which is called also tamazight. It has also other appelations like Kabyle in my region (Kabylie), chaouia in eastern Algeria and targui in the south. Well, let's focus now on Kabylie. It is situated in nothern Algeria, east of the capital Algiers until Jijel. The main towns are Tizi-Ouzou and Béjaïa. The region is mountainous and most people live in mountains for historic reasons. They have fled wars and they felt secure there. These mountains are seen as salvation because they have protected these people from disappearance, protected their language and other cultural things. The most important characteristic thing of kabyles is that they help between them through what is locally called Tiwiza. Each one who has a great work to do in the village is given help by all people. Most algerians say that kabylians have an occidental lifestyle. Of course, they do not obey to all arabo-islamic rules but it is their culture which is so. Many kabylian artists are known worldwide like Idir, Fellag and Takfarinas. Zidane, the world's best football player is from kabylie before taking the french nationality. His family is still speaking perfectly kabyle.
Understanding a country is understanding its different components. I do not know how will you find my article but i hope that it brings you some light and you have known something that you used to ignore and that's the important. If you want i will prepare some other subjects about Algeria. I wil do my utmost.

Friendly yours
 Samir

Please support this site - I need more Informations, Pictures and Tradional Recipes of Algeria !

Send Mail to: contact@worldfriendship.org


--- Back to main page ---