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The trip across Algeria will be guided by a local operator and guide. We will be hosted by their community in the southern parts of Algeria. All accommodation and food and water is sourced locally.
This trip makes a big difference to the Tuareg community of Aguelhoc in Mali. This is the only company to take tourists here and the people of Aguelhoc welcome the link to the outside world.
The mini-festival in this trip specifically helps:-
- local women who get paid for hiring out their tents and carpets and traditional adornments for the mini-festival.
- The young musicians of Aguelhoc – this trip will be supplying a loudspeaker and amp for the musicians to hire when they have parties to play at.
- Two remote primary schools for the nomadic families of the bush. Education is free in Mali, so it is not the fees which keep nomadic children out of school, it is food. These children have to stay at school all term as their families are a long walk away and it is the challenge of the parents providing cash for food which can determine a child’s education. The mini festival will be a yearly event and its aim is to provide supporting, sustainable funds for this purpose and to encourage the community itself to do what it can to help channel more festival money into the schools.
Sarid and his son Rhissa are our desert guides and driver and at their camp in Aguelhoc, Talla and the children, the sheep and the goats will look after us and sustain us. You will be staying in a camp, next to Sarid’s family, constructed for this trip by Rhissa in exchange for my last year’s vehicle which they will now rent back to me for your trip! At the end of the day we are all winners!.
Aguelhoc is one of two communities in west Africa where this company is in the process of establishing educational support projects. The company's stated aim is to establish, in consultation with the schools' governing bodies, areas where the company can assist and to look at a scholarship system to support achieving pupils to further their education.
All wages and costs are set by the community hosting us.
Company Ethos. This company aims to dispel a few myths and to show you a modern, vibrant, open, safe and progressing west Africa and to ensure that your trip has a positive impact on the communities which host you.
Too often tourism in Africa centers around the amazing wildlife and stunning scenery whilst the most vibrant, colourful and fascinating aspect of Africa - its people - pass by the window of the 4x4.
I try to reverse the focus by taking you out into some of the amazing communities befriended over my 20 years of travelling this vast and extraordinary continent. The landscape is merely the background to the colour music, vibrancy and hospitality of the people of west Africa.
Throughout the trip food and water is bought en route and as locally as possible. Before your trip you will be sent my Responsible Travel guidelines,
We invite every traveller who books a holiday via us to send in a review. Because we don't run the holidays they're completely independent and unedited... remember to read between the lines though, as two people on the same holiday can have different views!
