Change of Scenery

Thanks to my sister Jo-Ann I am expecting to leave this week for Algeria for I don't know how many months of work with newspapers in Algiers.

The company that runs our Sarajevo center also runs a program in Algiers working with newspapers to westernize if not modernize editorial and business practices. Consultants are embedded into the Algerian newsroom for long periods to work with editors and top business people.

I will be at a big disadvantage because I don't speak Arabic or French and will have to rely on an interpreter. But the program needs new consultants so I've agreed to give it a try. I would be nervous enough about this without various colleagues and friends sending me every clip they can find of bombings in the city and bloody bystanders. The State Department issues wary reports for people traveling to North Africa and even the Algerian reporter I have connected with -- she's now studying in the US -- who gushes about the beauty and vitality of the city, adds: You will get used to it.

Another new consultant arrived in Algiers Friday and, knowing that I am feeling like I am about to jump off a cliff, has been kind enough to send me messages from the bottom. So is the program director, who I used to work with here. They are stressing the Mediterranean climate, the fantastic view of Algiers Bay from the office in the French Quarter, the fish and the lack of anxiety in general.

"Now I'm here i can see that it's pretty much like most Third World places," our consultant writes. "Very industrious. A shop on every corner. A classic mix of a country fighting with old conservative traditions as the modern world changes all around."

So off I go.

Jo-Ann played a forced role in my departure. Because I am in Sarajevo, I Fed-exed her my passport and a check to take to the Algerian embassy in Washington to get my visa. It took a month to get approval of that visa and she was supposed to simply go in, ask for Ali, tell her Kemal had sent her and get my passport stamped.

Things rarely work that easily in real life, of course, and she spent hours waiting for her "contact," sending me messages on her Blackberry about how to proceed, worrying about whether the routine questions she was asked were coded. If she said something wrong I'd be turned out of the country. "This is why I never wanted to be a foreign correspondent," she exploded at one point. When Ali instructed her to leave the passport and retrieve it later -- after I'd told her to stay and wait -- she asked if that was safe.

He looked at her, she reported by Blackberry, as if she'd accused him of selling my passport on the black market. "We have hundreds of passport," he told her.

But it all ended well, Ali and Jo-Ann are friendly and my passport is in a Fed Ex envelope on the way back over the Atlantic to me.