Sunday - Day one

WE HAVE ARRIVED! Today is Sunday but it is somewhat disorientating from traveling for 31 hours and having eaten dinner at 3AM. We were warmly greeted by Raiis and Miriam, our hosts, armed with a fantastic dinner, if I recall correctly. it was noodles with chicken and it was inhaled. Our team was tired and hungry after all that traveling and we ate that up instantly. It is the custom here to eat with your hands and who are we to protest? All of us launched into that shoveling food into our mouth with our hands like a bunch of happy four year olds. It was magical. We managed to get to bed by 4AM with plans to get up around nine to greet the day. After waking up at 11 we got to meet the Not Forgotten International staff stationed here. They joined us to brief us on the culture and we then went to their compound for dinner. The ladies got to try on malfa's for the first time which are huge scarves wrapped to cover head to toe. We then migrated to the market and got our own malfas in preparation for the peace talks. In all honesty malfas are a lot more complicated than one may think. It's just one piece of scarf but you would be shocked at how impossible it is to wrap yourself head to toe in it. There were definitely some difficulties and backwards malfas, luckily the ladies at Not Forgotten knew what was up and gave us a hand with the cool way to wear a malfa. It was awesome to get acquainted with the culture and get to know the Not Forgotten team. Really looking forward for the memories and talks to come!

Thanks for all your kind thoughts,
Sarah from the Algeria team