“We’ve been here for two hours, we took a number and we’re waiting.” In front of the Algérie Ferries agency in Marseille (Bouches-du-Rhône), Same is waiting for her turn, hoping to get a ticket to see her family this summer in Algeria, whom she has not seen for three years. But nothing is certain. She came especially from Haute-Savoie: “There, we can’t find” tickets, she explains.
In the queue, a man came especially from Belgium and hopes to find his relatives. “Honestly, I miss it so muchhe confides. Sometimes I cry: my family is my family, we can’t forget it.”
Closed since 2020 because of Covid-19, maritime links with Algeria reopened last November. It is therefore the first summer when travelers can once again embark from Marseille to Algeria and it is a rush. “I haven’t been there for four years.launches Djamila, impatient to see her mother and her brothers and sisters again next month. We miss it, the family sphere… I’m going to stay a month, but for me, it’s not much.”
Especially since the program promises to be loaded on the spot: invitations, weddings, baptisms… There is time to catch up and it is not Saïf who will say the opposite. The young man leaves with three of his cousins. “We’re super happy.” They go to see their grandmother and make up for lost time.
“The baccalaureate and patent celebrations… There are plenty of things waiting for us, we’re catching up!”
Especially when you’ve lost contact after three years of the pandemic, Riad smiles just at the thought of reuniting with your friends. “It’s a surprise for my friendshe smiles. They don’t know I’m coming, they’re going to be shocked, it’s too good!” This is also what his four children say, in a hurry to find their cousins. “The cousins, the cousins, they used to play together and go to the swimming pool together, to the beach and everything…”he smiles.
These few weeks in Algeria are also and above all vacations. Abdel doesn’t have his tickets yet, but he’s already dreaming about them. “It will do me goodhe assures, it will make me forget the Covid a little, a little the stress of paperwork, of all the daily life. I forget everything. I do not think about anything. Restaurants, beach and family.” A rest that has a price: to leave at seven, he plans a budget of 4,000 euros.
In Marseille, it is difficult to buy a ticket for a ferry to Algeria – Report by Mathilde Ansquer
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