Interview with a foreigner

Hamar Boussafi

For this cultural blog post, I decided to interview the father of one of my friends.  Hamar Boussafi is a man form Kabylia, Algeria. He left his country alone when he was approximately 18 years old but he doesn’t know his real age. He left principally for his scholarship and also to escape poverty, economical and political problems.

He first left to France where he went to school and continued to learn French, he had already started to take courses back in Algeria but his first language is Kabyl, a language derived from Arabic. It is in France that he met the love of his life. She was from Rimouski so he decided to move there and marry her. They had four children together, one boy and three girls.

When I asked him if his immigration was difficult, he answered yes. First of all, he had to leave some family (mother and sisters) without knowing if he would see them again. The difference of temperature was also a big change for him and it still is. When he arrived in Rimouski for the first time, during the winter, his girlfriend had warned him that it would be chilly. He was so stubborn that he arrived wearing a t-shirt! What he thought difficult too was the difference in attitudes. The way of thinking is really different in Algeria compared to Quebec. The religion was not a part of the changes because he didn’t follow any in his country and he kept it that way here.

I asked him what he misses the most and it is mostly his culture. He is also nostalgic from the place where he comes from. What he misses the least is certain of the attitudes of the Algerians; like he said the way of thinking is really different. Sometimes it is a good thing to be away from this but it is also difficult to adapt to new ones.

Finally, Hamar doesn’t have any regrets but anywhere he’ll be, he’ll want to be elsewhere. This is just who he is.