What better way to describe Kabylia than the reaction of the famous Chaoui writer (the Chaoui is an Amazigh ethnic group) Kateb Yacine.
‘You’d think today, in Algeria and the rest of the world, that Algerians speak Arabic. I thought so myself, until the day I got lost in Kabylia. To find my way back, I spoke to a peasant on the road. I spoke to him in Arabic. He replied in Tamazight. It was impossible to understand each other. This dialogue of the deaf gave me food for thought. I asked myself whether the Kabyle peasant should have spoken Arabic, or whether, on the contrary, I should have spoken Tamazight, the country’s first language since prehistoric times’.
What this writer is saying is that the Kabyle is the last survivor of a long history and has no intention of changing his way of life to become one with the men of the desert.
What better way to understand the distance between East and West than a village festival. The video is clear.
Video: The honey festival in Kabylia.
