Tizi Ouzou was where we moved next after Algiers. My husband got a job as an interpreter and translator for the FAO agricultural programme. I occasionally gave him a bit of a hand. Basically you had to translate from English to French to give instructions on how to grow stuff which was supposed to help keep the soil from eroding. Also from French to English for the American agricultural specialists. At the time Tizi Ouzou was a largeish village in the Atlas Mountains. It is now a huge town.
Ben Bella was in power at the time, but there were so-called counter-revolutionaries in the mountains, and the Algerian villagers who worked for the programme would be regularly picked off by snipers overnight. Shopping in the village could be a little unnerving, as army trucks regularly trundled through, full of soldiers facing us with fixed bayonets, looking very nervous. They were black guys from the desert, conscripted because presumably the mountain guys would not shoot each other.
One night was quite dramatic as there was more shooting than usual from the hills, so we got up and looked out of our window (with lights off naturally), at the military camp and prison below us. People dashed about shooting a bit and it became rather scary, but fortunately did not develop into a very major incident and all was quiet again by the next morning. Things became much worse later, and Ben Bella didn't last in power very long after this.
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