Ouedane, "Festival du Patrimoine"

We arrive in Ouadane, one of the seven holy cities in the Islamic world and dating back to the 12th century, and are amazed by a bristeling excitement in the air.
I open the window and ask a bystander
"what is going on?"
"The president is coming tonight to open a one week " Festival du Patrimoine" which happens once in 4 years.
My god are we lucky!
Promptly nomads on beautiful stallions ride through the main street to line up on the dust track leading into the 500 person town which now swells to 3000 overnight.
Every home has set up a tent in their courtyard to rent out to the people staying over, and as with every good president, he comes with entourage of hundreds of ministers, ambulances, media. In the early evening a never ending autocade enters the tiny town causing total chaos!
And then something happens that I simply cannot understand, for the evening and day that the president is here no one except his entourage and the media are allowed to participate. Everyone else is locked out by hundreds of soldiers and police.Читать далее