Night in Tunisia

how are you?

2011-06-01T04:41:00.000+01:00

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Back into the swing of things

2006-02-28T17:19:00.000+01:00

Well,

Don't know if that post is ever going to make it to see the light of day...

do know that we're starting a newer longer-term blog that's not quite so specific.

What can I say? I guess we got used to chatting with the world on a more regular basis. That, and we'd kind of like to keep in touch.

you can find our new blog here: Continuity

Hope to start hearing from you soon!

Back in Canada...

2006-01-12T22:26:00.000+01:00

But thinking about Tunisia.

Actually, there's one memory in particular to catch my eye on. A while before we left Tunisia I sent in a little tag to the effect that I had been to a cobbler to have shoes cobbled. Then the thread went dead. I’m picking it up.

The shop was just off a lesser used road heading out of the Medina in downtown Tunis. Through an archway that would have at one time lead into a villa’s central courtyard but that instead lead to a gritty narrow alleyway, a sharp right-hand turn and up a long set of brick and slightly tiled (fully tiled in their day) stairs and into a high second-floor alcove-cum-hallway. At the top, a pile of discarded leather with the odd broken shoelace sat outside of a rough paint-flaking door. A knock and it opened.

I handed him my shoes - the soles were separating from the uppers. He looked at them. He looked at me. “Why don’t you just get another pair?”

“I like these ones.” He looked at me like I was nuts. Then he looked back at the shoes and kind of shrugged.

The room was full of odd memorabilia. There was leather littering the floor with the exception of a well-worn path from the entrance through to his workstation. There sat a pile of Nike knock-offs and a pile of leather that was prepped to turn into the knock-offs, all in front of a massive and ancient sewing machine. On the wall were photos, of kids, of his father, of the former president (conspicuously absent was any reference to the current president). There were also American-bashing cartoons, Chinese New Years balloons, Tunisian touristy scenes and magazine cut-outs of Italian or Lebanese models. Hanging above it all, reams of shoe-laces, multiple bobbins of different colours of thread, and leather-working tools sagged from perches all over the place.

Then, the scruffiest-looking chicken that I have ever seen peeked out at me from behind some internal doorway. The head was followed by a leg stretched straight out. The body followed. It kind of clucked then cocked its head.

I looked up at the cobbler. He was engrossed in his work. He had grabbed nails and glue and was doing something with them and with my shoes. I looked back at the chicken.

I was in the second floor of an older building - in the cobbler’s place of business - downtown. And there was a chicken. Its feathers were a mess, it was scrawny, and seemed blissfully unaware of anything.

Bang! One nail in. It startled the chicken. The chicken was now looking at the cobbler. Suspiciously. Bang! Bang! Bang!

He handed me back the shoes for two dinars. "Done." "Thanks."

And now I'm back in Canada...

Cold Keyboards

2005-11-24T15:22:00.000+01:00

This one's going to be short.

Because I'm in the internet cafe (Publinet) and there's no heat and it's officially winter here and the door's wide open.

It's not really that cold. But, there's the no heat thing. In Canada, you don't see anyone sitting out on the patio with their laptop. That's 'cause it's cold out there. They stay in where it's warm.

Though it's not 'that' cold here, it's still cold - you know, late fall temperatures. And that's late fall in and out of doors. Which is to say it's plenty cold where I'm trying to type.

With a repressed shiver, I'll send along a little chat about my shoemaker experience when I have a little more time to type. On a warm keyboard. For now, I'm just going to sign off.

Told you it was going to be short.

The Black Hole that is Tunisia

2005-11-18T08:49:00.000+01:00

I can't help feeling, particularly these days, that we have only
barely begun to understand the nature of the violations of individual
rights in our host country. With just a few weeks before our
departure home, we have started to open our ears more to the problems,
though by necessity we keep our mouths resolutely shut. This is not
our home so we cannot speak to the problems we see without politely
but firmly being asked to go, but ask me about it when I get home...

In the mean time, do check out the news. Tunisia is in the middle of
a major scandal around freedom of speech, Internet censoring, and
human rights. It is playing host to the World Summit on Information
Systems which is all about sharing technology and freedom of access to
information. It is a paradox that this summit is being held here and
it's putting in evidence the nature of rulership and it's grip on the
people of the nation.

I can't access the pages myself, but friends outside of Tunisia tell
me there is an article on Human Rights Watch on the Summit and Tunisia
that you might find interesting. Also, Amnesty International has
produced a country report on Tunisia that will be full of interesting
facts.

Please keep in mind, when reading these, that we are really not in any
danger here. If there's one thing that Tunisia does very well under
this leader it's to take very good care of its visitors. The police
may be a menace to the Tunisians who are brave enough to go against
the grain, but they ensure that their guests neither see nor hear much
about it.

And furthermore, I promise not to get involved. So you can feel safe
about that.

But do ask me about it over the holidays. There's so much we have to
be thankful for. So much we don't even realize.

Love you all!

Recipe for Lablabi

2005-11-14T11:17:00.000+01:00

Here is a recipe for Lablabi that I found online at the Congo Cookbook
of African recipies. (http://www.congocookbook.com). Go ahead and try
it if you like. Ours had hard-boiled eggs in it too, which I highly
recomend. I'd suggest if you want to party that you prepare this in a
crock pot and keep it warm before you go out ;) Just don't throw the
bread in until you're almost ready to eat it.

Lablabi (Tunisian Chickpea Soup)

Chick peas, day-old bread, lemon juice, and olive oil (and harissa,
Tunisia's famous hot sauce) are the basic ingredients needed to make
Lablabi—a soup in Tunisia.

What you need

* two cups dry chick peas (about a pound)
* four to six cloves of garlic, minced
* one tablespoon harissa sauce (from can or jar)
* one tablespoon cumin
* salt, to taste
* juice of one lemon
* six tablespoons olive oil
* a few slices of day-old bread, preferably day-old french bread,
broken into small pieces

What you do

* Wash chick peas and soak them overnight.

* If desired, rinse chick peas. In a large soup pot, cover chick
peas with water, bring to a boil, and cook until tender (ten to twenty
minutes). — Or start with two pounds of canned chick peas, drained and
rinsed, and heated in four cups of water.

* Add garlic, harissa sauce, ground cumin, and salt. Simmer for ten minutes.

* Immediately before serving: add lemon juice, olive oil, and
bread crumbs. Serve hot.

Some cooks add a pinch of bicarbonate of soda (baking soda) to the
water in which the chickpeas soak.

A more traditional method is to start with whole cumin and grind it
immediately before preparing the soup.

The soup can also be served by placing portions of bread crumbs in
each soup bowl, ladling the soup over the bread, and pouring equal
portions of lemon juice and olive oil over the soup. Serve with
additional harissa on the side.

A richer lablabi soup can be made by frying the garlic, some chopped
red onion, a chopped carrot, and some chopped celery in olive oil, and
adding this to the cooked chick peas. Additionally, the chick peas can
be cooked in chicken broth or chicken stock.

Lablabi soup goes well with hard-boiled egg or pan-fried fish.

Enjoy!

Dancing the Night Away

2005-11-14T11:12:00.000+01:00

Even though Loren and I love to go dancing, we rarely do. I think the
major blocker is that we both tend to fall asleep at around 11:30, and
that's usually when things are just getting started. In Tunisia, it's
been even more difficult since most of the clubs are way out on the
North side and there is not public transportation that will get us
there easily. In fact there's no public transportation to some of
these areas at all, except for taxis. And while a six or seven dollar
cab ride there might not seem like much, the cost doubles for the ride
home at the wee hours of the morning. Add cover charges and a couple
of drinks and you're looking at a 50 dollar night (which is about 10%
of my monthly salary!).

About two weeks ago, Anise, the owner of the small pirate video store
asked us if we'd been to any of the clubs in town. We'd talked about
some of the DJs that we like, and what kind of music we listen to
before, so he knew we were into club culture, at least some. Hearing
that we had very limited experience dancing in Tunisia, he offered to
take us out with some of his friends. About a week later, I gave him
a call and said we were in. He made some calls and put together a
night out with his friends for Saturday.

The party started at five past midnight, after he closed the store,
changed into black slacks and slicked his hair. He and his friend
Karim picked us up and drove us out toward la Goulette to a small club
called Le Jasmin. It was a very small club, probably the smallest
I've ever been in. Imagine a club with Che Guevara faces stenciled on
the walls, a central counter running almost the length of a room three
times the size of a large living room, a built in bench running the
length of all the walls, some cubes for tables and chairs, and a small
bar counter at either end of the room. That was our club. Oh, yes,
and there was a tree growing up through the building, and through the
roof. We took particular notice of that, as we happened to be
standing under it when it started raining outside and we got
thoroughly wet.

Can you believe that in that small space they managed to pack hundreds
of people? At the beginning of the night (after midnight) I leaned
over to comment to Loren that in Canada this would never pass, for
fire-hazard reasons. Apparently in Tunisia that doesn't apply. There
was a live DJ spinning tunes of all types together. Arabic, retro,
techno, euro pop and hard house, all mixed to a seamless electronic
drum-beat. There were so many people it was dancing room only. There
was nowhere to sit down, and almost no way to move through the crowd.
The last time I've felt so packed in was at the Edmonton Rave
featuring Charlie Mayhem and DJ Irene.

Anise and Karim's friends joined us over the course of the evening.
The total group consisted of four men, and four girls. We danced in
our little space for four hours! And the club was a hoot! Very
different from dancing back home. For one, all the girls know how to
move, and I mean really move, with swinging hips and shoulders, and
undulating bellies. And for another, all the boys dance too, and
dance together, for in Arabic culture there is much more interaction
and contact between people of the same sex, but much less between
people of the opposite sex. I should mention also that this
particular club (and maybe all of them?) had a healthy percentage of
gays and lesbians, though Loren and I are convinced that many of our
friends weren't aware (which may have been for the better).

I would like to mention too, that the forward nature of Tunisian men
applies to night-clubs as well as to the street. They're better
dressed, but otherwise not so different. Our entourage of four men,
Loren included, spent the entire night keeping the boys off us girls
(who were a pretty bunch, if I do say so myself). The men are forward
to the point of actually following us right out of the club at leaving
time. I got into a car with Loren, Anise and Karim, but the three
other girls climbed into a car with only one guy from our party. They
were followed by a car of four boys who had been trying hard to pick
us up at the club. At one round-about the boys got out, presumably to
get phone numbers, and we stopped our car behind them where Anise and
Karim got out too. Loren jumped out (with some difficulty, for the
child proof doors) to even up the numbers (four for four). About five
police officers materialized out of nowhere, as they are wont to do
here in Tunisia, and the boys all shook hands, and thumped each other
on the backs before calmly disbursing. The poor pursuers departed
without a single number.

At around 5 AM we retired to a the house of a friend. There some
drank water (to rehydrate and sober up), some smoked shisha pipes with
sweet apple tobacco, some kept drinking, and we all chatted with each
other. At 5:40 the mosque sounded and all we laughed as those smoking
and drinking held off for the duration of the two minute call to
prayer ("le moindre des choses!"). Two, kept right on smoking, and we
were advised that they were allowed because they weren't Muslim. In
fact the group was very diverse. We had to Canadians, one Lebanese,
one French/Egyptian, and a bunch of Tunisians. And among them we had
one Christian, one Buddhist, one Atheist, one Tunisian Jew, and
several Muslims. Quite a crowd.

By 6:20 everyone was ready to go, and we were loaded into the car of
yet another friend who took us to the city's best Lablabi shop, which
was nothing more than a canteen in the side of a wall. Lablabi is a
salty soup made of boiled chick-peas, harissa (hot paste), day old
bread and egg. It's heavy, spicy, salty and loaded. It comes in a
big home-made pottery bowl and looks brown, lumpy, and sort of gluey
and glutinous (from the soggy bread) like stringy cheese. We were
served this in the car, and it turned out to be the perfect solution
for day-after-party syndrome. Though it tasted pretty good, Loren
could hardly stomach it. I told him better not to look at it.

Then we were taken home, where we crashed in bed at about 7 AM. We
only managed to sleep until 11 before a call woke us. Still not
recovered, we were brought very much awake and decided to get up
anyway.

It was a wonderful party, and we really went all out. Did I mention
that we paid for absolutely nothing? Not cover, not transportation,
not one drink (and we got several more than we wanted), not lablabi
for breakfast. We were considered guests, and treated with Arabic
hospitality. They must have spent about 80 Dinars on us, but wouldn't
hear of letting us pay. Nothing expected from us, but to have a good
time. And that's exactly what we did!

Goth

2005-11-08T11:07:00.000+01:00

There are strange things done
In the Tunsi sun
By the girls who break the mold

The desert trails
Harbour twisting tales
Of a populace growing bold...

(with a nod to a Brit who romanticized the Canadian north)

Today, as I slunk out of a Metro three stops too soon (it was psychotically packed, and I had the time) I caught sight of a woman dressed in Goth. Not a little in Goth, but serious Goth Goth. She was wearing black, she was made up in white with a black tear creaking out of one eye, she had black hair with white stripes, she was wearing a Celtic cross 'round her neck... She was hardcore by Canadian standards. In Tunisia, nobody seemed to have the faintest clue what to make of her.

I don't know what she was trying to say - aside from making a break from the dominant social (dis)order. I don't know how she managed to find a Celtic cross. I do know that it took some tough stuff to wear it in the Muslim establishment. And for that - for a glimpse of individuality (regardless of it being adopted - or maybe more so for that) - for an original take - for the difference - for the gall... I'd tip my hat in her direction if I were wearing one.

Sahara Heartbreak

2005-10-19T14:05:00.000+01:00

Did I mention that Loren and I have been saving our little Dinars for a trip? Originally we had planned to go to Lebanon, Jordan and Syria for a tour with our friend Ian. We didn't manage to save quite that much, though. So the idea of a vacation was scrapped.

Then we learned of the Festival du Sahara in Douz, the far south and home of Tunisia's largest date plantation. Wow! The websites and brochures that we have said early November for the festival, and that it would include date harvesting, Berber dancing, camel fights (sort of wrestling/shoving match), hound races and other cultural events. What an adventure!

I quickly snatched up the Lonely Planet Guide to Tunisia and read all about Douz, figuring out if we could fly there (we can!) and what hotel to stay at (Hotel 20 Mars looks best!) and all the neat things to see and do. I even started calculating how to get to Matmata and Tatouine for the Berber and Starwars architecture respectively. Finally we were going to take a vacation. Hooray!

Then, on Loren's sober advice, I checked the dates for this year. The Festival du Sahara has been moved back to late December! Horror! Raagh! No festival for us!

Now my imagination has been entirely captured by the romance of the desert in the winter, and I'm loath to skip the trip. Douz, though, is a pretty small place, and without a festival to attend in the afternoons and evening, it could be a pretty quiet place with not very much to do. I guess it's back to the drawing board, but with a bias now, because I've got the Sahara on my mind. And when the desert gets in, it's hard to get it out.

Mythic Proportions

2005-10-14T09:49:00.000+01:00

We're ten weeks from home. Ten weeks. We're distance and time, but mostly just time, away from home, and we're closing fast.

I've started to notice how "adjusted" I am to things here. It's the little things. The way phones ring, the way traffic and pedestrians move, how to discourage men from talking to you in the street, how to buy food, what yogurt tastes like, what's a fair price for coffee, how to stand when you hail a cab - they are automatic now, done/known without thinking.

And then I think of home and things come flooding in. The wall phone ringing in my mother's kitchen. Waiting for the green light at the white painted crosswalk. Smiling at people in the street and the shy smile they return. Supermarkets and price labels. Berry yogurt in ENORMOUS containers. A cupboard full of herbal teas. All the empty seats on city busses.

And all at once they seem mythic, out of proportion, remembered so clearly, and so distantly as to be a favorite passage from the Iliad that you know because you memorized. How can the ring or dial tone of a phone be mythic? But it is. Oh, it is. I remember it fondly, but I don't think of it as a thing to return to. It's just a thing past. Or a dream. And how do you walk out of "reality" and into a "dream"? It's not like moving abroad, to a place you've never been. There's no base, no perception, no memory there. It's new, fresh, confusing and overwhelming. But to go back...

Apprehension of reverse culture shock? Maybe. More like a one-way ticket to the fairy-tale of "before" and an excursion into a place my brain has labeled MYTHIC! What an adventure it will be!

Nanowrimo

2005-10-13T18:06:00.000+01:00

Well now, here's another interesting tidbit from the Loren-Tiara duo. Once more we're going to brave the crazy month of November and try to crank out 50,000 words... That's right, we said 'once more.' See, last year we managed to write a book. A short book, granted, and one that needs lots of editing, but a book all the same. In a month. Not bad, eh?

Anyone out there feeling up to the challenge? If so, check out The NaNoWriMo Website. Still not really sure what I'm talking about? Okay, I suppose that's fair too.

NaNoWriMo stands for National Novel Writing Month and was started a bunch of years ago by a pod of geeks out in California. They were thinking, hey, I've never written a novel - and isn't that something that you're supposed to do before you die? Or maybe they weren't thinking that. I don't actually know, but they did start this challenge amoung each other. Since then it's grown a little bit... This year they're looking at something like over 50,000 participants, they have a school program, they have a laptop lending library, they have a cool website...

Check it out, even if you're only moderately interested :-)

Ramadan Revisited

2005-10-10T11:51:00.000+01:00

The Ramadan dichotomy...

Ramadan, we get told over and over, is about being with family, spirituality, and engendering a sense of equality. I will lead this blog with the assurance that I am no expert on Ramadan but in what I have been told - and that there's a disconnect between that and what actually occurs.

For the first, The breaking of the fast is spent with family - often with extended family. The evenings are a time for family outings and to experience cultural events. In this, I have no complaint. I think it's a wonderful period for togetherness and celebration.

For the second, essentially, Ramadan is a spiritual period. The fast, the extra session of prayer after the breaking of the fast (where, over the course of Ramadan, they read through the entire Koran), the innate awareness of a religious culture (everybody's doing it)... And yet, part of spirituality is a sense of balance, of tolerance, and of self-restraint. Over Ramadan, tempers flare at the drop of a hat, driving devolves to an even more chaotic and stress-laced mess, and the population seems to settle into an irritable and twitchy constancy.

Then you arrive at more sticky points. Part of what Ramadan is said to evoke is the prophet's long fast through the desert, after which he became inspired and heard the word of God. Certainly, the religion doesn't expect people to go completely without food or water - hence the breaking of the fast - since that would be very unhealthy / dangerous. But it does seem a period for restraint and to experience what it is to have less. Yet many Tunisians talk of gaining weight over Ramadan, of the fact that they spend *more* money than usual on food, that the nights become indulgences in excess - smoking, eating, and coffee... Ramadan is also supposed to be a period where there is less disparity between the rich and the poor - where the rich will give to the poor, and eat more typically as the poor eat. Well, they might give to the poor if approached - but they certainly don't go out of their way, and, as I've expressed, the eating misses this mark.

The whole period seems strange to me. Yet, in the West we have a similarly warped religious period: Christmas. I like the notion of gift-giving, but I'm not sure about the application and practice. Certainly, I don't believe that people should irreperably indebt themselves for it. Nor that the gifts should become the sole focus. But they do seems to cast a shadow over much of the rest... I like the notion of togetherness and family, and I feel that this is one of the few places where Christmas really does stand up. I'm not entirely convinced that I like the religious angle, because unlike Ramadan in Tunisia, the minority religions in Canada are far more prevalent and so the religious pervasiveness feels somewhat awkward, missplaced or even intolerant. I do like it from a spiritual perspective... hmm.

In the end, I'm left a little scattered. I'm not really sure what I think or where I go from here. Do you have any thoughts to contribute to this discussion? I'd be very curious to hear them. In the meantime, I'll stop writing, and let my mind stew a litle.

Faith for Fuel

2005-10-05T12:53:00.000+01:00

I'm not the type to do Ramadan, really. Of course, not being Muslim
is the biggest factor, but there are quite a few people who do it for
cultural reasons, not religious. In part I don't like the idea,
because I like to eat lots of small meals, not just one enormous meal
at the end of the day. In part, because I couldn't possibly go all
day - no matter what temperature - without water. In part, because
fasting all day will force your body to consume hard-earned
bodybuilding muscle for protein during the day, and feasting at night
will force your body to store it as fat at night when your metabolism
hits sleep mode. And in part because I don't like the sluggish,
drugged, slightly dumb feeling I get when I do it.

And how do I know I get feeling that way? Well, since it really is
part of a cultural experience, I figured I should give it the benefit
of one day's effort per week. I can't do more than that without
losing too much muscle (I work too hard to get it!). This way, I
figure, I'd know how others were feeling. What I'm not willing to do
is give up water, though. So I keep drinking.

So far, I've noticed a couple of things. The first is that the
smokers and coffee drinkers seem to be suffering the worst. Fasting
here, means that you stop nourishing the body. Nothing cleansing
about this at all, just sort of quasi-punitive. Don't put anything in
that fuels you. I'm thinking if Ramadan had a slogan it would be
Faith for Fuel! The second is that fasting with water has a markedly
different effect on the body than fasting without. Like everyone I'm
getting slow and I have a continual grumble in my belly, but I don't
"want" food. I want the hungry feeling to stop, but I don't
particularly crave anything. I even have an after eight mint on my
desk and it's not tempting at all. I just want the grumbling to stop,
and that has nothing to do with food.

We have a friend arriving tonight and we have to get him at the
airport, so I'll be breaking fast sooner than the usual time. That's
alright, though, since I'll get to do this again next week, and the
next.

I'm really starting to appreciate Christmas, you know? Feasting sure
beats fasting!

First Nights of Ramadan

2005-10-05T11:30:00.000+01:00

The situation has been devolving now for the past five days. Driving has become more erratic. There is more congestion. The other day, I walked the hour it takes home because there were no taxis available at the "heure de pointe" (rush hour). Tunis has become insane.

And now, and for the coming lunar month, most people won't be eating at all from sunrise to sunset. I'm sure that's going to improve their judgement. Ramadan is upon these hapless Canadians...

And what of it? I could complain thereby of another gulf between tradition and practice - Out in the western world, we have a similar chasm around Christmas. Here, during the month of fasting and spirituality, people many buy more food than normal and stuff themselves to excess at night. But that's not entirely fair, no more than complaining about corporate Christmas. Good and right and beautiful persist despite modern permutations.

It is still a period of togetherness and family. It is still a period of spirituality and social awareness. And the culture that comes alive at night looks to be incredible.

But if this sounds a little back and forth or wishy washy, well, I'm not entirely sure how I feel about the whole ordeal. I've never been flung into anything that is so completely outside of my sphere of reference and so completely pervasive. I think I'm going to have to give it some honest time to sink in. I'll try to get back to you a little later this week.

Inch'Allah

2005-09-30T10:55:00.000+01:00

What's in a phrase?

Apparently this phrase is supposed to be an invocation acknowledging that ultimately there's a higher power that will decide whether or not something happens. Thus, "I'll see you tomorrow, Inch'Allah" means that baring death, natural disasters or something truly wacky that I have no power over, I'll see you tomorrow. It's an "if it is God's will" kind of a statement that is at once sobering, fatalistic, and unperterbed.

Unfortunately, as it has slipped into the language of the everyday, that meaning has been ever so gently bent. Actually, it's a little more than a gentle bend. Now, tacked on to phrases like, "I'll call you tomorrow, Inch'Allah" it has come to mean something more like "if I think of it" or "but don't count on it" or "Maybe" or more commonly "or not." It's one of those phrases that should be comforting, but instead is more of a catch-all ducking of responsibility that makes me cringe as it's spoken. I find myself qualifying the speakers with questions like "does that mean you're going to try, or that you don't really feel like it?" or "what exactly do you mean, by that?" or "is that in the old context or the modern context?" (That one seems to confuse them) or "Right. Got it. Or how about I call you?"

What's in a phrase? Just two words. Change. Cultural shift. Something new that's a little more open to interpretation. A regular frustration. An endemic system flaw, or a cultural quirk? A crutch. Something to excuse inaction. Something to support the status quo.

What can I say?

From my perspective, life here's coming up roses. The future?
It'll be bright, Inch'Allah...

Life's little moments

2005-09-20T13:37:00.000+02:00

The officer stops a vendor on the street. The officer is wearing a flannel shirt and typical tunisian trousers. He's almost anonymous except for the swagger and the bulky radio that he's toying with in his palm. He smiles, and almost succeeds at looking amicable.

Everywhere here people need to carry identity cards. It's strange to think that I live in a country where such is not the case. Certainly, we need drivers' licenses, but nothing more - and if we don't have those on us at the time it's a small fine.

The officer takes the vendor's identity card. It's the ultimate power trip. Look! See! I've got ya now you capitalist-western-poor-and-therefore-aggressable-weak-and-it-makes-me-feel-good man... He bekons and the vendor follows him to the middle of the street to meet the two obvious officers. Those are the ones who bought from him yesterday, but today's another day. They have clubs at their hips, tiny guns tucked into holsters, French-style cuffs that tighten if you struggle and smug grins beside.

Today is not the vendor's day. He chats for a while - while they play with his identity card. He moves back to his mobile stall. He unhitches the moto - a Peugeot 103, pedal-start motorbike that tops out at around 80 clicks. He locks it to the rail and moves his little stall back into the shade.

No need to mention that he's been here every morning for the past four months. In plain sight.

He sits down on the curb behind an ineffectual guardrail.

Uncensored

2005-09-19T17:25:00.000+02:00

**taken from strangebeast.ca**

A Rant By Loren Letourneau

It rises out of some blackened pit - bile and bilge, the scum that would quiet and distort the reality of living. Is life always a nice little place? No! Then why the hell should it only be reported as such. Who would dign to take offence at exposed sexuality, exposed brutality, exposed cruelty? It's there! No amount of shying away, no angel-eyed money-sucking politician can convince me otherwise. And yet, we're told that for the safety of our children, for the safety of our national stability, for the sanctity of our person, you've got to shut up or be shut down.

I loath censorship, with every fibre of my being.

But what of hate-literature, they scream! What of the evil belly that produces trash to subjugate, injure, and disseminate wrong?

Do you really think that it could hold up to truly open competition. Isn't it always the most inegalitarian and corrupt of societies that are the first to clamp down on free speech? What the hell's wrong with a society that it so needs to hide behind some mock public decency screen, to shelter itself from alternative views? Do you really think that given all the opportunity in the world to see and be heard - take money and power out of the picture - that only the slime would surface? Sure as hell wouldn't see the same ra-ra-America - or wherever you're from - dominating the picture, but is that really a bad thing?

Or a different question: do you think that the nasty shit that everyone rushes to condemn would have real staying power if it were open - to be read and criticised and exposed to the masses? Who'd want to pen that crap and put their name by it? If it stops shocking its readership into a willfull acceptance that it's okey-dokey to kill or abuse others, if it just can't cut through the voices screaming for life and liberty, if it loses its naughty little niche, then where is it? Exposed; thin; rooted in suppressed fear, helplessness, impotence, anger... Not powerful.

No. The real crime and the real criminals go on under cover of silence. No one's privy to their actions. No one's privy to their motivations. They lull unprepared, scared, and hurting masses to rally behind an empty cause, an empty promise, a power-trip that pumps them up better than the most depraved junkie.

We take the power from the people. We twist responsability into a grotesque cirque-noir grin. We pretend to know what's best for each other - on the people's dime. We shit all over our freedom, strap us into steel diapers and tie us to a post. They keep feeding us a line that says we can't take care of us - and there's the hooked barb - they'll do it for us. Sure we need police to stop from being robbed, raped or beaten. But wouldn't that be easier if it were all visible? Instead, they'll rob, rape, and beat our brains into submission... am I missing something?

Kill censorship, kill protectionist policy, kill privacy, kill opacity, kill this leash - by whatever name - that tugs us around, legs hobbled and arms torqued behind our backs.

I hate censorship. I can't possibly be sympathetic to it. I am an artist and it is antithetical to my purpose in life.

I live to expose and create.

The censor exists only to conceal and supress. How fucking virtuous.

back on track

2005-09-13T11:30:00.000+02:00

Well, here's life as it slowly descends from insanity to... further insanity - but with respite in sight.

Too many hours devoted to all manner of things.
To Art - those precious few hours that are absolutely deserving
To Gym - power and mass lend a certain solidity to business as usual (and at the moment I'm a little shy of both)
To Music - as a release and as an outlet that's been missing for the better part of a year
To Work - Too much
To Tiara - probably not enough: just every spattering of ecstatic/fond/loving/intense moments throughout the day, and then our preciouse few hours of evening
To other endeavours - what little's left over. It ain't much.

Lucky me, however, my beastly 4-hour class is over tomorrow. The good news is fewer hours in class. The bad news is fewer hours in class - hit's the pocket-book, you know?

But for today life is intense and onwards. So. Here goes. And see you all soon!

Exhaustion

2005-09-07T10:48:00.000+02:00

And an excuse for my silence.

Last week I started daily 4-hour intensive sessions for English. This week I added a 2-hour daily intensive class. And I'm teaching a prep-heavy 2-hour individual course three times a week. Ten hour days are becoming routine... And so I've been a little quiet on the blog-front. Sorry about that. All should come together a little bit better next week, and even better the week after that.

Until then...

Wind-whipped, rainy season returning, thunder and Simon & Garfunkle's 'the boxer' to a stunned and rapt classroom, cat cleaning between its claws perched above a muddy street, Tunisia slipping back into its winter work-rush, and everywhere the everpresent press of construction and grit.

2005-08-31T14:40:00.000+02:00

These are pictures I found on the computer that were taken by enda staff following the flooding of February 2003. Nobody is exactly sure what the real story is, as it was never published in the papers, but apparently in the late winter of 02-03, the rains were so intense that the rivers, lakes and dams were surcharged. The government was afraid the dams would break, and so without public consultation or warning, opened the dams and let the water out. The existing waterways couldn't handle more and so the low-lying areas of town were flooded. Most of the low lying areas are the poorer districts, and Sidi Hessine (where these pictures are from) was one of them. In some cases the flood waters tore houses apart. Several people died though there is no official count. Apparently flooding occurs every year, but 2003 was exceptionally bad. I have posted several more images. Enjoy!

2005-08-31T14:36:00.000+02:00

Here's a view of one row of houses. You see the barricades they put up along the doors. Those are permanent. You can still see them today. It's become a part of the architecture of the place, now. How history is made!

2005-08-31T14:35:00.000+02:00

The flooding took place in February 2003. That's winter here, and it's still very cold (about 5 to 10 degrees if I remember correctly). The water wouldn't freeze, but it certainly wouldn't make living comfortable, and you could get sick if you were wet too long in that kind of weather.

2005-08-31T14:34:00.000+02:00

Water got into everything! Here is one woman inside her house. She's in her pyjamas and boots. That became her indoor wear.

2005-08-31T14:33:00.000+02:00

People used sandbags, bricks and concrete to seal up corridors and spent days bailing water to keep it out of their shops and houses. Notice he's in bare feet. Remeber that it's February!

2005-08-31T14:32:00.000+02:00

Here is a shop-keeper. These little shops are on every street. They sell water, canned goods, yogurt and cheese, bread and other basic necessities. Flooding like that can completely wipe out your stock and seriously damage your store.

2005-08-31T14:31:00.000+02:00

Here's a great image to give you an understanding of the scope of the damage. It just goes on forever!

Concerning Colostrum

2005-08-30T13:43:00.000+02:00

Pardon, first, to anyone who might be insulted at the following. That's certainly not my intent. I simply wished to announce to the world a rather less than fortuitous meeting of names, worlds, and questionable products...

Colostrum is the label on a strange-looking bottle with the requisite green leaf that adorns anything coming from a health-food store. On it is a picture of a woman breast-feeding a kid whose head is oddly deformed by the curving bottle. Above the bold Colostrum is written 'first milking.' Contrary to what Freud might say, that does not make me imediately want to ingest it.

But I'm confused here. What exactly is this stuff and what does it do? Apparently 'each losenge contains bovine colostrum, harvested from select Grade A dairies within the first six hours' - but first six hours of what!? And what is colostrum, anyway?

Colostrum : The thin yellowish fluid secreted by the mammary glands at the time of parturition that is rich in antibodies and minerals, and precedes the production of true milk. Also called foremilk.

Ewwwww... yick! yick! yick! And guess what, boys and girls, you get to chow down on the concentrated form. Of course the antibodies are all dead by then, but you've still got the minerals.

But wait! There's a doctor who can explain it all! Doctor Dick Cockrum the Colonostrum Guru! The man who rediscovered the joys of... well... cow teats. Ummm. I had a hard time holding a straight face when I read that one through the first and second times. breathe. okay. I feel like I'm in high school all over again. But seriously! What kind of parents would do that to their child...

And what does the magic pre-milk cow juice do? Not a clue. Naturally rich in vitamins and minerals... So's dirt. And vegetables. But that's beside the point. I suppose if I bought it I'd know what to do with it.

Hey, I'm not against homeopathic remedies. I'm not even against remedies hawked by a Dr Dick Cockrum. I think I could even go so far as to accept that I'd be sucking back pre-milk cow juice... I just don't really know what it does or where the scientific basis is for the extract... urg.

Adventures Abound!

2005-08-29T15:10:00.000+02:00

Well the summer is almost gone, and so is one half of our year in
Tunisia! So far the adventures have been many, and in some ways
they've been almost too much! Well, I guess that's what big changes
bring. We promise you we'll come home with lots of stories, and we
promise you we'll come home! We're working on plane tickets this
week, and we'll let everyone know when we're coming back as soon as we
know ourselves.

We have more adventures coming too. It looks like our friend Aryn
will be visiting in early October for about 10 days. Hooray! Tunisia
could use a few more Canadians, so keep 'em coming! We've had a
(repeated) invitation from our friend Ian who is currently working in
Jordan, to visit him and take a tour of Jordan, Lebanon and Syria.
That one has our fancy just tickled! And in late November, there's a
conference on Microfinance in the Arab States that will be taking
place in Marrakesh, Morocco. We might both sign up for that little
trip, though it's a touch pricey.

On the home front, be sure to ask Loren about his art adventures.
He's preparing canvases for either one mega show, or two smaller
shows. It's all acrylic on canvas, and the stuff looks great. He's
working on a venue, and might even go to the embassy for a leg-up.
Like I said, Tunisia could use some more Canadians, and that goes for
Canadian art as well!

And in our non-adventuring moments, we're hanging around on the
beaches, learning to cook with Tunisian ingredients, working, reading
and writing/drawing. I can't say it's all bad. I can't really say
it's bad at all!

The Impluse Buy

2005-08-22T12:29:00.000+02:00

For those of you who know Loren and I well, you can probably attest to
the fact that we are not impulse buyers. About the only thing we buy
on impulse is lunch. For anything more significant, there's a lot of
hemming and hawing and discussions, and usually at least one day's
delay to think on it.

Saturday, however, we did something beautifully impulsive. We had
wandered into a neighbourhood that we were not all that familiar with,
a middle class, well established kind of place, with lots of little
boutiques, cafes, businesses and even a small souk. We had come to
buy stamps for our Carte de Séjour in our passport, but didn't find
them there. We did find a coffee shop and have a sip, and then we
wandered upstairs to look for someone who could burn a CD of pirate
software for reading DVDs for about 3 Dinars.

As we walked through the little shopping complex, I noticed a music
store with guitars hanging in the window. I pointed to it and
suggested we go in. So after we bought our DVD software, we did just
that.

There was a row of classical guitars hanging on the small side wall,
and we asked the store attendant, which one was the least expensive.
He pointed to an all black guitar and said 75 Dinars. He brought it
down for us, showed us the make. We handled it for all of about three
minutes, when I looked at Loren and said: "Want it?" He smiled a huge
smile. "I do!" We dug around in our wallets, and I had sixty, and
Loren had ten. That would give us just five dinars for the ride home,
which was more than enough. I pulled out my stash, handed it to
Loren, and watched as he happily paid and took the cardboard box with
the guitar.

I think it's the biggest impulse buy we've ever made, and Loren hasn't
stopped smiling since!

Something Wicked This Way Comes

2005-08-19T17:02:00.000+02:00

Cigars.

You know, I hadn't really realised how much I missed them. Nor had I realised how much I missed being able to chat about them - think about the finer things, taste the finer things and just take time out to watch the world go by.

Because, that's one of the things about smoking a cigar. I don't really see the point of smoking one indoors, and it's impossible (indeed it feels taboo - and not in a positive way) for me to be anything but relaxed outside when I'm smoking one. So a casual stroll, or a quiet sit peppered with conversation and that drowsiness that the nicotine slips over. Enjoying the outdoors. Enjoying the time away from hustle. Enjoying the truly Buddhist sensation (in a not-so-Buddhist slightly drugged state) of just being, for an hour or so.

And then there's the nice cigar. Romeo y Julietta - the Cuban variety. Churchill size. That's a serious, and seriously delicious cigar. In short, I have found another cigar-lover. One that happens to have the opportunity to travel relatively often - to places where you can purchase the good tobacco. Hmmm.

And with that - adieu for now - with one last comment. Richard - send me an email. You should be able to find my address by following my name, if not leave yours in a comment and I'll delete that so that it doesn't get sucked up by a junk mail sniffer.

Noisy Bugs

2005-08-16T11:32:00.000+02:00

Brief impressions...

As anyone, in the Okanagan or otherwhere warm climes, who has heard them will attest, Cicadas are bizarre critters. Somehow in the noise and dust and construction and garbage that haunts every inch of Tunis, their rhythmic humming seems even more foreign.

The first time I actually identified what it was, I had to double-take and make sure it wasn't just a short-circuiting street-lamp. I stood there, transfixed in the evening's pooling light, staring until I could make out the little brown body on the steel post.

Since then, I've been finding them everywhere. On an overhanging fig tree, on a scraggly bush (perched above garbage tubs - that smelled most sentimental), they give new meaning to the urban jungle.

Liquid Night

2005-08-15T15:18:00.000+02:00

Wednesday afternoon half the enda headquarters staff left for a
semi-annual review. It was planned that we would spend Wednesday
night, all day Thursday and most of Friday evaluating the work done to
date, and what was left to do in order to meet the organizational
objectives of 2005.

We had little time to play, with meetings taking between 8 and 12
hours per day, and it would have been nice to have more time to get
away, as we had driven 3 hours to Tabarka, on the North-West corner of
Tunisia, near Algeria, for the working retreat.

As it turned out, after a staff dinner in the little tourist port
town, we managed to sneak about 3 hours, between 11PM and 2AM to
ourselves. Myself, a French intern, and six Tunisians found our way
to the beach and dug our swim suits out of our bags. We took turns
changing under towels on the unlit beach until we (the five of us who
wished to brave the waters) were transformed into beach-goers.

Leaving our day clothes under the protective eyes of our colleagues,
we rushed the water, running until it was too deep and our legs got
tangled in the black mass of liquid and we toppled over. The water
was the same temperature as the air, and the only way to distinguish
between them was the soft englobing pressure of the salty sea water
below and the still air above. We splashed around for a few minutes,
reveling in the freedom of the wild water and the night, after such a
long day in uncomfortable seats around a board table.

It was with a soft intake of breath that I first noticed it: the
horizon. The horizon was indistinguishable. The starry sky overhead
was spangled with stars, several of them shooting and streaking away
in little winks of light. The water, the same dark colour as the sky,
ran away from the eye and into the sky, where their texture and colour
blended seamlessly. We were as good as swimming in the sky, I told my
friends, who smiled and agreed. And when we realized that there
phosphorescence were winking with our moving limbs we laughed and
declared that we could make our own stars. It was a wonderful moment,
and we stayed floating in the dark water until we were too sleepy to
stay any longer.

What a feeling to float in the darkness all wrapped in the salty night
sky. I recommend it to anyone, anytime.

Hors Context

2005-08-10T17:10:00.000+02:00

Well hey there all. Sorry, as Tiara might say, for the radio silence. As it happens, there are a few good reasons for it all...

First is that the inlaws have been visiting. Gaila and Aleatha are incredible women and wonderful to have around (just so that they know it :-) ) and yet, just the fact that there's someone else to think about in our world means that life's a little busier and the side parts... like writing to a blog... slip by unnoticed for too long.

Second is that we've had this other little project on the go for a while now, and it's high time that we let you in on our wacky little 'secret'. We have (not quite officially) launched an e-zine at www.strangebeast.ca and replete with all the (still existant but semi-under-control) growing pains that implies, it has been taking a little time and energy to maintain. Y'all are welcome to visit and check out the archived stories should you so wish. It's currently sitting at version 1.1 of many iterations, and so will likely change a little over the coming month, but only for the better. Go! Read our fanciful and slightly macabre fiction and let us know what you think of it :-)

And with that it's off to work I go. Overheated (the 8th dwarf), over and out.

Fly away bottle!

2005-08-03T15:01:00.000+02:00

It's summer in Tunisia and summer means a few different things:

Summer is melons - cantaloupe, honeydew, watermelons, yellow-melons -
all for about 15 cents per kilo!

Summer is beaches - soft sand, hot wind, salty Mediterranean sea and
wide blue skys!

Summer is heat! - hot, sticky, smelly city heat and the hum and smell
of airconditionning!

And so, of course, summer is all about vacations away from the heat,
where we can lounge on the beaches and eat our melons (and Arabic
coffee - that's for all seasons!).

My mother and grandmother arrived about two weeks ago, and to soften
the blow of the city summer, we whisked them away to Tabarka, a
holiday spot on the Algerian border and on the sea. We spent four
lovely days there in an apartment on the old port, looking at the
ships and the old colonial fort on Tabarka Island. Very scenic.

There were a lot of high points on our trip - the sandy stone pillars,
the merchants, the tomato salads, the home cooked couscous. One of
the most memorable moments, though , was really a low point, not a
high point.

On the trip home we piled into a big taxi, called a louage, and
settled in for the 2 and a half hour ride. I had a bottle of coke
that I was drinking, and when I finished I moved to put it on the
floor. I was in the fron bench seat between Loren and the driver.
The driver tisked at me (that means no here, not shame on you) and
gestured at the open window. I shook my head at him. He reached for
the floor to grab the bottle and I snatched it up first and put it
between my knees.

He looked vexed and he gestured at the open window again. I said,
quite firmly, "No." I wasn't expecting what happened next. He
reached over, plucked the bottle out of the grip of my knees and
launched it out the window. My mouth opened to send some choice words
his way, and I promptly shut it. No matter what I had to say, it
wasn't going to change a thing.

The driver was actually conscious of his environment, but just his
immediate environment: his vehicle. He didn't want waste in his
vehicle. How could I explain to him that throwing it out the window
wouldn't get rid of it? He wouldn't understand. Out of sight, out of
mind.

All I could see was the small size of the country, the borders, and
the longevity of that bottle. In his mind it was gone, in mine it was
stuck there forever. For that matter, how can I explain that even in
the garbage bag, the dumpster or the incinerator, we're never rid of
the thing? The very act of producing the plastic used to make the
bottle creates a waste product we can't be rid of. That applies to
almost everything - paper byproducts, all plastics, shampoo, cleaning
agents. It's not the act of using it that hurts the environment, it's
the act of creating it. But as long as there's a demand, we'll keep
creating it, as long as it's there we'll keep using it, and as long as
there's a drain to pour it down or a window to throw it out of it will
be out of sight out of mind.

How does one explain this with limited Arabic to the louage driver?
One doesn't. It's sad, though. And I was furious for an hour.

cooking the in-laws

2005-07-18T17:55:00.000+02:00

Today is a hot day in Tunis

Really hot. The temperature reads in at 41 C - in the shade - at four pm... The hottest part of the day is between noon and two in the afternoon... Heat in the sun is generally between four and eight degrees hotter than in the shade... The Tunisian weather services tend to underreport the heat - or so I've heard...

It's hot.

In related, though not very, news, Gaila and Aleatha - my mother and grandmother's-in-law respectively - are visiting. They got here on Thursday, after which they/we avoided the heat of the weekend in a scurry out to Tabarka (northern city by the sea). Now we're back. And they said this morning that it didn't seem all that hot...

That's up there with 'look at all those %$#^ing indians' or 'I wonder what'll happen to me if I fly a kite in a thunderstorm' or 'Let's march on Russia'... No one, if memory serves me, had the foresight to knock on wood.

Now it's hot. Like walking around with your own private hairdryer on 'hot' is how I heard it described.

Hot. Heat. We're cooking the in-laws out there.

2005-07-12T14:26:00.000+02:00

On Saturday we hopped upon a private train with tickets to El Jem, a tourist stop famed for its ruined Roman coliseum. This was no regular trip either, this time we were on a chartered train headed to a concert of the Vienna Opera's Orchestra with opera singers and ballet dancers. The concert was staged IN the coliseum and all this was for just 25 Dinars per person ($25 CND). The train ride took two and a half hours and we arrived just after 8:30 as the sun was falling in the sky. When the thousands of us left the train platform and followed the small parade of musicians and children down the centre street this came in to view.

2005-07-12T14:19:00.000+02:00

A tunisian drumming team waves the local banner as they welcome the visiters to El Jem. You can see the coliseum in the background. From this view it's still hard to tell that the coliseum isn't a ruin from a past golden age.

2005-07-12T14:18:00.000+02:00

Entering the coliseum was beautiful. The planners timed it so well, all was still visible but daylight was quickly failing, and the torches all along the ruined wall were flickering as we went by.

2005-07-12T14:17:00.000+02:00

This was the setting for our concert! Three levels of arched entrances lookingdown into the ring below. A modest stage, with VIP seating on the ground level and us way up in the noseblead section, getting a good earfull and a fabulous view.

2005-07-12T14:15:00.000+02:00

Here I am just before the concert begins. Dusk behind all the little yellow flames (real torches affixed to the wall!)

2005-07-12T14:12:00.000+02:00

What a backdrop for a concert!

2005-07-12T14:11:00.000+02:00

Here's the crowd in the stands with some of the ruined coliseum behind.

2005-07-12T13:32:00.000+02:00

The stage and the crowd - to give you some sense of scale and size of the audience.

2005-07-12T13:31:00.000+02:00

End of the concert. Everyone takes a bow.

Canada day...

2005-07-04T17:13:00.000+02:00

It's Canada Day Up Africa Way
On the first day of July,
And I'm shoutin' Hooray on Canada Day
As the Maple Leaf flies high...
~Stompin Tom Redux

It was a little surreal to be spending this July first heading off in a taxi, wife in tow (or more like towing) for the Canadian Ambassador's Residence out in La Marsa. (La Marsa is a swanky and beautiful district of Tunis.) On the way out, we gave our semi-illiterate cabbie semi-coherant directions and trusted in fate and national pride to get us to our destination. In actual fact, we had a little map on the back of the invitation, but the cabbie couldn't seem to make any sense of it...

We hit the new highway in fine Tunisian fashion - Tiara remarked that it was a little strange how comfortable we'd become in Tunisian cabs. Had to agree as he swerved, stopped brakes and tires squealing, wove in and out of the typical traffic chaos... Then a big black mercedes, followed by a big black peugeot slid up along side us. The mercedes had a tiny Tunisian flag flapping above the hood. The Peugeot had an Italian flag. Both had MD plates (something diplomatique). They turned as we turned. We were headed in the right direction.

We nearly lost our way once, but I recognised an arabic-sign/landmark and quickly had us going straight-on again. And up. The Ambassador's house is nearly on the crest of a hill; The million-dollar house district. It is gorgeous. As we slid into place in front of the barriers and police guards, Tiara and I felt decidedly underdressed. Oh well. Buddha wouldn't notice, and we could do our best to pretend that we didn't either. Past one level of security - hand the invitation to embassy folks who we knew from before and up a long set of stairs to the terrace. Not wheelchair accessible. No real surprise there.

At the top, a beautiful yard, a big maple leaf floating in a swimming pool, live music, tons of swanky guests - ambassadors, admirals, generals, rich tunisians, oil people, tunisian government types, free alcohol, free food, and almost no one under 40. *sigh* People come to Tunisia for business ('gateway to the middle east from Europe - and vice versa') or to retire (stable almost-European and cheap). We did find an interesting pair, however. Friends that we'd made at our first monthly embassy meet and greet. One who was divorcing her Tunisian husband and moving back to Canada (originally a Tunisian woman) and the other who had lived in Canada long enough to get his citizenship, and who was now established again in Tunis. A very interesting and lively pair with biting sarcasm and full open smiles in almost equal measure.

We also had a look through the gorgeous house. Full of canadian art. From Riopelle to Maxwell Bates to a million names that I didn't recognise due to my lack of Canadian art knowledge, but whose style I am sure I have seen before. Abstract, Expressionist, Aboriginal, Printworks, and Sculpture (though less of the latter) as many styles as I identify with Canada were represented.

In any case, I have to leave some room for Tiara's comments - but suffice to say it was unique among our July firsts...

ten on the run

2005-06-27T16:58:00.000+02:00

There has been very little talk of my artistic output on this blog for some time now, and with that in mind, here's where it currently stands.

I am set up in Tunisia and the artistic undertaking is well under way. I now know where to get my supplies, I now feel comfortable painting and expressing in my new home away from anything comfortable, and the paint is filling our walls.

For those who know me better, I'm more of a sculpture or drawing guy than anything else, but then, sculptures are cumbersome to lug from one continent to another, and drawings are somewhat averse to excessive travel (and Tiara was getting a little creeped out by the black and white faces that dominated our old walls). So to the acrylics I launched myself with delighted zeal.

Which doesn't mean that I have that many paintings up. Only four at the moment (though one's around three square metres large), but ten more are in the works...

The drawings are in and the paint is aching to feel fresh canvas.

figs and lilliputian pears

2005-06-23T16:44:00.000+02:00

Most of what we can get in Tunisia is basically the same as back home in BC. Which shouldn't really be that much of a surprise. After all, most of Tunisia is semi-arid, hot and all the food comes from the northern agricultural region. Again, it sounds quite a bit like back home.

There are a few little exceptions, however.

First, let it be known that the base food for all summer fare is Pasteque - Arabic for Watermelon. And for those of you who know me passably well, you know that I'm loving it. Watermelons that are huge, jusicy, sweet and sold from the expensive early season price of a dinar a kilo, to the later season price of 100 millimmes (roughly ten cents canadian) a kilo. Or just shy of five cents a pound. Nice. Very nice.

And then there's a new exotic that has to be described, but from whom the experience is so far different from anything back home that I can't possibly hope to convey it. In a word, figs. And there are a number of varieties from spikey wild ones to soft green ones (called white) none of which resemble the dried-up brown (albeit tasty) chewy things we're used to back home.

I'll describe the experience of one of the only ones that I've tasted.

It's a green fruit that varies in size from the fist of a three-year-old to that of an adult. The green skin is soft to touch and gives a little under pressure - wholly unlike that of an apple. They can be eaten pealed of not, but the process of peeling is interesting enough to me that I'll describe it as well. On one side, call it the top, of the fruit there is a slight bulbousness that gives way under the pressure of a finger to tear eversogently at the thin peel. It unwraps a soft, pulpy, white mound.

If you wanted to, you could certainly bite into the fruit at this point. Just bite and savour. But if your curiosity got the better of you, you might want to tear it in half - as I did the first time out. The inside is where the fruit is truly unique. It looks a little like a sea anemone that's retracted into itself. Hundreds of darkish tendrils creep towards the centre to form a pliant, sweet-smelling mass. To the unaccustomed eye it seems counter-intuitive to follow this gaze up with a bite but it's well worth the discomfit. Strange thouhg it may look, the fruit is tender, subtly flavoured and incredibly delicious.

This is an incredible fruit.

As for the lilliputian pears, these are sold early in the season and are something around the pear equivalent to a crabapple. The difference being that they actually taste good and like regular pears. Strange world indeed!

And with that my adieu for today and I hope to post again sooner than last time.

The Menace of Chick Peas

2005-06-16T13:17:00.000+02:00

So I just have to write this, even though it really was basically
covered in the Science vs. Fact blog. Some things here I just don't
know what to make of...

Often, as a nice little snack over my break, I go to the corner nut
vendor to get 50g of roasted chick peas. These have been cooked, and
then roasted in an oven and he puts them into a twisted paper cone
(usually from a medical journal, and I get to read about neat things
like blood poisoning in French), and I pay the equivalent of 25 cents.

Usually I eat them outside, but it's starting to get so hot that I've
taking to eating them inside with everyone else. Usually my chick
peas don't draw any comments, and most people aren't that fond of
them, so my offers to share get turned down, or people take a single
chick pea to eat.

The staff knows that I'm on a "regime" - that's diet in French - as
I'm no longer eating Habiba's prepared meals, and I pass up cookies in
meetings. Unlike in Canada, people here are really supportive when
you're on a "regime". And they keep sweets, etc, away from you if you
turn them down once. And they don't ask about it or talk about it,
which is also very nice.

You can imagine then how surprised I was to hear them tisking at my
eating chick peas in the kitchen yesterday. One co-worker said
"aren't you on a diet?"

My quizzical look prompted the response from another co-worker: "Don't
you know that chick peas make you fat?" Habiba, the housekeeper who
doesn't speak French, puffed out her cheeks, bowled her arms in front
of her belly, and shuffled around in a circle to show "fat". (Don't
you just love communication barriers?)

Apparently everybody knows that chick peas make you fat. Except the Canadian.

How in heaven's name an entire culture has come to the conclusion that
chick peas make you fat is beyond me. Could it be that when someone
takes a liking to chick peas they become obsessed with them and
develop a compulsive chick-pea-eating behaviour? Or perhaps there is
a special Tunisian gene that, when combined with chick peas, causes
metabolic rates to drop and cravings to jump?

What's more, you don't just get fat generally. No, it's quite
specific. You get fat in a ring around your middle - stomach, lower
back and oblique fat-rolls.

So when Loren descends off the plane in Kelowna in December and he has
to roll me into the airport on my perfectly round tire of fat, you'll
know it was the chick peas that did me in.

You know you're hooked when...

2005-06-15T10:56:00.000+02:00

Last night I worked late, and when I got home, instead of doing my
share of the chores, I chatted with Loren, ate, prepared lunch for
tomorrow and then went to bed. I didn't even clean up after myself.

Loren on the other hand, since arriving home at 6PM, had done the
laundry (by hand, mind you), swept the whole house, cooked a meal, and
prepared 10 canvases for painting.

Out of guilt, though not from any reproach from Loren, I got up at 5AM
to do the dishes before going to the gym. Loren got up at about 5:20
and, half-asleep, stumbled into the kitchen. Without a hello, or a
good morning, he opened the fridge, scratched his hip, and pulled out
the coffee beans. Closing the door, he seemed to stall for a moment,
and then reached past me for the hand-grinder. Then he turned around,
his hands full, and stumbled back to the bedroom.

A moment later, I could hear the sound of the hand grinder pulling
apart the beans. It lasted about four minutes.

It took me 10 minutes more to finish cleaning the kitchen, then,
figuring I could start the coffee, I went in search of the
hand-grinder, now supposedly full of ground beans.

Loren, back in the bedroom, was fast asleep with both hands wrapped
around the hand grinder, carefully, unconsciously, keeping it upright
on the mattress. The covers were thrown back, there was a sprinkling
of coffee bean bits on the sheet and Loren, not a stitch on him, lay
peacefully curled up with his hands protecting his cherished Arabian
beans.

I almost didn't wake him. Though he would have been heartbroken, I
think, to not have had coffee after

And to think that only a few months ago, we drank almost exclusively
tea. Well bad tea and fabulous coffee have done their trick. We're
hooked. One of us, perhaps, more so than the other...

And one last comment that remains to be said: Good taste runs in the family.

Like mother, like son.

squeegee kids do it differently in Tunis

2005-06-14T11:44:00.000+02:00

Many things are done a little differently in Tunisia. Squeegee kids, for example. In north American cities they can be seen lurking on street corners ready to pounce on the next victim/dirty windshield - and have been a source of frustration for city lawmakers who decry them as over-agressive and scruffy image-despoilers.

Here, there are no squeegee kids. There are no punk-styled spikey-haired scary kids in army fatigues ready to launch themselves at innocent vehicles. There are, in fact, very few punky kids anywhere. There are, however, street-corner vendors - usually young boys - who sell what appears to be a rotating inventory of stuff. And stuff is the only word that fits.

I have seen them outright begging, I've seen them selling photocopies of pages from the Q'ran, I've seen them selling coffee-cup holders and sun-screens (the fold-out aluminum ones for car windshields - saw one with cute little puppies on it today), and kites.

The latter is the one that particularly cracked me up. They came out about two weeks ago, and I saw the last kite-seller yesterday (remember - rotating inventory. Wherever they get their stuff, they seem to all be selling the same thing at any given time). What really got me about the kites, though, was the pattern: huge rainbow triangles.

For someone with a modicum of exposure to the GLBTQ (gay / lesbian / bisexual / transsexual / queer) community back in Canada, the rainbow triangle is a bit of a loaded symbol. The symbol of GLBTQ solidarity and support throughout North America. The symbol of a fight against injustice, injury and otherwise inequitable treatment. Here it's just a pretty picture.

The contrast, the disconnect, the clash of cultures is often hilarious. Like seeing an older very conservative arabic man wearing a shirt with "Wannabe Spice Girl" as a coworker related to me yesterday.

Old world meets new world. Almost. More like new world collides with old world and the resuting chaos has its little moments of absurdist humour.

Tunisian Metaphor

2005-06-10T13:00:00.000+02:00

It's not so much where they stand
As how they stand
There
Two men on a weather-beaten slab of wood
Six floors up

The edges are packed with fabric
Like gauze in a wound
The edges are wrapped by thick nylon rope
No knots
Six floors up

A pregnant bucket rests still between them
Paint flies in drips and slashes
Two men
A chaotic dance
Six floors up

Paint cracks
Splinters off my building
It's old
Ten years is a long time
Six floors up

Freedom of Speech

2005-06-10T09:07:00.000+02:00

Yesterday I participated in a round table brainstorming session at the
Cooperacion Espanol (pardon the lack of accents), a major donor
operating in Tunisia. It is about the Spanish equivalent of CIDA, the
Canadian International Development Agency. NGO's from all over
Tunisia were asked to participate in this session to help the CE
decide on future spending priorities within the country.

We were divided into four groups - and I was placed in the group
called "vulnerable populations" while my two enda colleagues were in
"rural development" and "gender issues". I spent the better part of a
day with seven people I had never met before hammering out what we
thought a "vulnerable population" was and what the CE should do about
it.

Our group was a bit slanted in views. There were six people who
worked with the handicapped, including adults and children with mental
and physical disabilities. I work with the poor and economic
development, and the last person, a heavy-set young woman with
beautiful dark skin and eyes, worked in democracy and women's rights.

At one point, we were listing weaknesses in the development sector for
assisting vulnerable populations. All ideas were being collected and
listed on a large sheet of paper. The woman from the Women for
Democracy NGO stated that a lack of freedom of speech was a weakness
of the environment which effectively prevented her organization from
being able to achieve its goals (mainly communicating the injustice of
structural and physical violence committed against women and the
cover-ups that go with it). The group paused for a moment, and then
two of the members began to argue against it vehemently.

I didn't understand. This was a brainstorming session, and all ideas
were supposed to be included. Furthermore I agreed with her. If her
organization was being forced to publish their finding in Morocco
because the Tunisian government didn't want their population to know,
then freedom of speech is an issue. So I, very gently, said that if
she felt it was a barrier then it should probably be included. The
one other woman in my group agreed. That put the women against the
men, with one abstainer, Father Marcel, who seemed slightly amused by
the whole debate.

I caught on after a while, that the men's arguments were all logical,
but impotent, and the driver behind all the myriad excuses they could
find, was fear. The women, arguing heatedly with the men may have
seen it or not, but they argued to take apart their logic, not their
fear. I asked if anyone was uncomfortable with it, to which they
uncomfortably responded, not at all!

Finally the woman who had suggested it marked it anyway. And the men
became sulky, but settled on adjusting it to read: freedom of
speech??? (question marks included).

I hadn't realized how far this population had been pushed into fear;
fearing that even being part of a group that made this complaint,
would find them under surveillance. As one man later said - even
leaving that on the sheet implicates us.

Now imagine what the women from this democratic group are doing. They
illegally shelter women who have been beaten and abused or divorced
and left destitute. They publish their findings of sexual harassment
and abuse in all spheres of society. They call the government on any
activity that is discriminatory towards women regardless of their
level of poverty or influence. They are constantly under surveilance,
followed by "les flic" (police), have their letters opened, and a
number of them have probably been arrested. Other members of the
social sector get nervous when these women walk into the room, are
afraid to be seen with them. They are afraid of the calling down upon
their own heads a fraction of the persecution these women willingly
take on in the name of democracy and justice.

I was proud to sit next to her, and deeply sorry to regret that I
could not join her group. An act such as that would have me evicted
from this place in no time.

I hope that if ever my own country were to become like Tunisia, I
would have the outright guts to take in women who were abused and
neglected. I hope that I would have the strength.

Encourage Me!

2005-06-08T15:39:00.000+02:00

I think it was about a week ago when it happened. I was passing by
the front desk, located at the side of the house with Meriem, who
gives me a ride home everyday. We both stopped to say hi to the
Secretary, who's very quiet and a real sweety. We chatted for a
moment, and then just as I was about to move on, and head back to
work, the sweet little secretary stopped me gently and, smiling, said
"Tiara, tu as grossi!"

Did you catch that, or should I translate?

She said YOU GOT FATTER.

Aargh!

I knew KNEW I was supposed to take it as a compliment. That's how it
was intended, but I couldn't. I think my face went bright red, and I
just about swallowed my tongue. I tried to smile - I'm not sure if
that's what it looked like. And then I gibbered a bit and then went
to my desk and sat there grumpy.

I have put on about five pounds since I arrived. Certainly not a lot,
but a bit. Here married women are all big. I'm still considered a
skinny thing, and a lot of people think I can't possibly be married
yet and that it's not befitting of my status as a wife to be so small.
So when I put on a bit of weight they're all determined to support me
by graciously noticing and encouraging me (picture the housekeeper
saying bersha-bersha, more-more, as I try to stop her from heaping
cous-cous onto my plate).

Can you imagine how devastating it would be if every time you put on a
couple of pounds your friends stopped to tell you that you're getting
fatter and to pinch your arms and cheeks where the fat accumulates?
It's like a perfect nightmare, everybody smiling as they point out
your big-ness and getting-bigger-ness to others so THEY can smilingly
tell you you're fat too. Until pretty soon you have a little ring of
Tunisian women all looking and smiling and pointing and you think
you're going to die right there.

I swear I am going to come home skinnier than I ever was.

I have now created a hit list of do not eats - and it includes almost
everything traditional Tunisian. What is considered traditional
Tunisian? Well if it has tomatoes and you DROWN it in oil (hear the
women saying "olive oil is so good for you it doesn't count" as they
pour a half cup over your grilled vegetable salad appetizer) then it's
most likely Tunisian.

I'm also writing down what I eat so I know if I'm putting on weight or
not. That way if they say LOOK YOU'RE GETTING FAT! with their happy
smiles and nodding heads, I will know if I really am or if they're
just "encouraging" me.

Australian's Don't Burn

2005-06-06T16:08:00.000+02:00

Saturday was our first real trek to the local beaches. With Shelley
and Jodie in town we couldn't pass up the opportunity to go, and
although the best beaches are in Hammamet, about 1 hour south of Tunis
by car, we figured the local beaches would be a close substitute.

Loren called our good friend Slim and asked him where the local
beaches were. He told us that we could go to La Marsa, where most of
the locals went, and that we should be able to have a good time there,
and maybe eke out a bit of space for ourselves. Loren corrected him,
here, saying where was the best TOURIST beach we could find in town.
(You see, we girls get gawked at enough having light hair, light eyes
and pale skin. The last thing we wanted was to be half naked on a
local beach, with much more of our visible difference exposed.) We
were looking for pasty white tourist skin on the beach, where we would
fit in just fine.

We were directed to Gammarth, to a club there called Dar Nawar that
had an opening to the beach front and restaurants, etcetera, in case
we got peckish. We piled into two taxis (taxis won't take more than
three by law - you'd think it was restricted to the number of seat
belts, but those don't work anyway...) and were there 15 minutes and
7.5 dinars (each) later.

The beach was great - white sand, blue sea, blue sky, brown palm beach
umbrellas, overpriced beer, vendors selling all sorts of things too.

I had put on half a bottle of suntan lotion before heading out, and
it's a good thing I did too. I am pink, pink, pink and some places
are just a little uncomfortable.

Our two guest though, who in Jodie's words are white sub-smog worms,
didn't. I think that Jodie, who had purchased a special bottle of the
precious goo, just simply forgot. But Shelley didn't because, she
says, Australian's don't burn.

Oh, don't they?

We were in the sun for 6 hours. We all burnt.

Loren went a nice deep brown-red on his shoulders.
Tiara went rosy pink on her back, chest and left hip.
Jodie sort of burnt all over - worst on her calves and back.
And Shelley looked like the devil had turned the torches of hell on her.

She couldn't lay down on any side without hurting. Her back looked
like it would glow in the dark and put of enough heat to roast a small
chicken. She had some choice things to say about it when she got her
first good look at the damage in our only mirror in the bathroom. The
string of profanity in that perfect Australian accent was enough to
set the rest of us into fits of howling, that lasted all Saturday
night and Sunday morning.

And we were sure to remind her, whenever we had the chance, that
Australians don't burn.

Working Stiff

2005-06-03T16:15:00.000+02:00

Hello all!

So today I am the only person in my office. There are others in the
building, to be sure, but of the six people who are supposed to be
studiously at their desks, I am the only one. The co-directors are in
Morocco preparing a regional conference for November.

How does that expression go? When the cats are away...

I told Loren this would happen, at least I figured it would since it
happened last time they were away for a Friday. He said he would show
up after lunch and take me to the beach. Jodie and Shelley, who are
visiting, seemed inclined to agree.

I don't know about you folks, but I just can't play hooky. I could in
University when it was my money paying for the classes, and even then
it was hard if the teacher was good. But at work, someone is paying
for me to be there and work. I realize that a lot of people can just
let that slide, somehow, but the guilt eats me.

Most of you have probably heard that this is a challenging work
environment. The only way I can cope with it is to know that I'm
doing a good job, regardless of what others think or say. Knowing
that I do a good job is protection against feeling anxiety, fear or
guilt. When someone comes in with accusations and you actually are
guilty, it can really hurt. But if you're not, it doesn't have to
bother you at all; they're just wrong. At least that's how it goes in
my world.

Loren got it straight away, and said no problem and he'd see me in the
evening. I'm glad he gets it too! It's always nice to have people
support you when you need it. So I'll finish reading the Impact Study
and working on the Strategic Plan (a new one!) in my office on my own.

The up-side is I get the air conditioner to myself ;)

Sublime

2005-06-01T16:28:00.000+02:00

The word can creep in at the most unusual of times.

They were three men and a woman. Your typical rag-tag troupe of what I first took for either unemployed types or university students. The lurched into the train with soft laughter and not-at-all a-typical physicality. This is a touch culture within its traditional trappings of the Muslim faith, so this wasn't a particular surprise. As I stood there in the swealter as the train snapped closed, a snacks and tissues vendor "Mouchoirs! Ch'wing Gum!" with an unusually bright display and a flower behind his ear made his way through the human mass.

He got to the four, with a gentle "A-saalema." One of them grinned made as though lurching forward, steadied himself on the salesman, stole the flower. He gave it an appreciative sniff and as the other reached for it, slipped it behind his own ear. He grinned again and struck a pose. The others in his group snickered. But he smiled. No malice. Returned the flower with a flourish and offered a high-five in truce.

The salesman smiled at his disarming accostor, slapped in his assent to the jest and continued on down the train.

I was a little surprised. There is so much cruelty here. At my work and in my classes I see and hear jokes and interjections designed to cut off the other and build up by breaking down. An impossibility. Here was an example of pure delight in a moment, of an aknowledgement of whom was taken advantage of and an apology for any injury thereby. It was open, exposed, confident and warming.

The three men were also anomolous for being in good physical shape - strong bodies, and quick to laughter. The woman was in fits of slightly odd giggles. But no boastful posturing, nor insecure demanding of attention.

And then with a flourish of hands from one to the other it struck me. They were all deaf. Deaf to the criticisms, deaf to the cynicisms, deaf to the patriotic carnage. And in a country that doesn't exactly pander to the disabled, they were joyful in an entirely sublime moment that streatched until I exited to work.

leaning buildings and friends

2005-05-30T15:50:00.000+02:00

There was just a little something I noticed today with slight alarm.

A number of buildings in Tunisia are a little skewed off perpendicular with the horizon. That is to say, they are tilting. Strange that it took me so long to notice. I suppose that so much in this country seems a little off-balance, that I didn't really give it a second thought or second glance. Now that I'm starting to settle in this weird world, as my world has started to sink in - however tenuous the foothold, that the world itself is a little askew comes as a surprise.

Maybe it's the clay on which the foundations are built - after all, much of Tunis is filled-in ocean as of the last century (the medina, the old city, may be wonky, but it's all standing straight and tall - all of the leaning buildings are in the new districts). Maybe it's the fact that it's all heavy masonry construction with limited foundations. Whatever the case, it seems quite natural that there's an established maximum building height imposed here!

It's not as though all the buildings are tilting, but there are enough to give me pause. Frankly, any tilting building is enough to give me pause. Something about the details. Like last night buying a vat of 'vanilla' ice cream only to discover that it was vanilla mixed in with the dregs of pistachio. Odd.

Another one of those you're not in Kansas moments. Enough to reflect - and then to accept and get on with the day.

Anyhow, a last comment before I sign off. We have two guests stopping in to the Letourneau inn today - Jodie and her friend Shelley. Two little Anglos stepping into the franco-arabic Tunisian wilderness. Wish them luck - Tiara and I are just happy to have a little extra company.

Scrapping Population

2005-05-30T12:58:00.000+02:00

I don't know why, but for some reason men here always seem to want to
fight. Maybe it's the hot-blood of the Mediterranean peoples? I'm
not sure. But since I have been here I have seen more street brawls
than I ever did at home. And not just in the slums of Hay Ettadhamen.
They happen in Ennasr, the wealthiest district in town, too.

You know where I used to see most fights? In high-school yards. That
seems understandable, since that's probably the most volatile and
insecure times of your life. But after that, for the most part,
people just don't scrap. Maybe a couple of times they might get into
something in a bar, but even that is rare (in my experience). Here,
though, people lose it and start swinging and their friends end up
breaking up fights all the time.

I can't even attribute it to culture. In Canada, it's considered bad
manners to lose it like that. Here it's explicitly illegal. If you
get caught scrapping you're hauled off to jail. Not the police
station, jail. If you are even a part of the argument that started
it, you can get shipped out in the paddy wagon. And remember they
don't have to have proof to hold you. You could be there for a while.

I get the impression that people here are way more abused than North
Americans in general. That's not to say life at home is a piece of
cake. But imagine if your whole life you had people yelling at you,
telling you you're incompetent, that your best is garbage, that you
have no rights, that your opinion doesn't count. Imagine how you
would start to feel. And now imagine that there's no where for you to
go. You can't leave the country, either because you don't have the
money or can't get the visa (after all you're Arab, right?) or both.
You can marry and have a family, but no matter what you do, you'll
never escape the oppressive environment.

So what happens when someone insults you or insinuates that you're
stupid or a loser? If he's stronger and more powerful than you, or if
you need that person (for a paycheck, to stay out of jail, to get a
permission slip, etc.) you swallow it, bitterly. If he's as strong or
maybe weaker or you don't have any ties? You probably let all that
rage boil right up, see red, and start swinging. I've seen kids,
boys, teen-agers, street youth, college girls (usually egged on by
boys), and full grown men hitting kicking and swearing for everything
they've got. There is always someone there to pull them off before
there's more than a nosebleed. Nobody wants to get picked up by the
cops. Though in Ettadhamen a real crowd can appear. I steer clear in
all cases.

I guess it's another thing I'm grateful for, that I come from a
population who for the most part is well enough in their society that
it doesn't need to lash out at the first thing that is potentially
defeatable.

That's my though for today. Hooray for conflict resolution!

Science and Fact

2005-05-25T18:34:00.000+02:00

Since we're on the subject of things that drive me crazy, here's another one:

People here find unrelated causality and call it fact. They will
defend these "facts" past the point of reason, and even in the face of
science. How about some examples:

Tunisian Fact: Consuming black pepper will give you stomach ulcers.
Why is this a fact? Several people have members of their families who
have ulcers and these people sometimes used black pepper in their
food. Many of the Tunisians I have met have solemnly agreed that this
is true, and so, correspondingly, it must be a fact.
Why is it then that cultures that use black pepper often are not all
diagnosed with stomach ulcers, if black pepper truly is the cause? No
answer. A fact is a fact.

Tunisian Fact: Apricots, if consumed to early, will make you very sick.
I can't count the number of people who have warned me off of eating
slightly hard apricots for that reason. And everybody who comes down
sick and can't make it to work will be diagnosed with having eaten
green apricots. So far three people have been diagnosed (by the
staff) as such. And what's more it's considered a VALID reason for
not attending work - no doctor's note needed.

Tunisian Fact: Diet pop has as many calories as regular pop.
This is where science comes in. Apparently in a world with minds
ingenious enough to send us to the moon and back, to create vaccines
for polio and tuberculosis, to create more plastics and advanced
engineered materials than we could possibly count, we have no one
capable of making a sugar substitute that is low-calorie. No science
will prevail. A fact is a fact.

There are others -
Drinking very cold water will halt your digestive process.
Seatbelts are dangerous and can be fatal.
Keeping your house warm in the winter can make you sick.
And many more.

I have stopped trying to explain why I defy these warnings. I have
stopped asking people "why". I sort of say "oh" and then after a
deliberate pause, continue doing what I was doing. I think most
people believe I will die of ulcers, digestive problems, winter
heat-stroke and hanging by seatbelt before I get home.

How do we Canadians survive, eh?

settling

2005-05-24T16:31:00.000+02:00

settling.

In one word, so many thoughts. Does that mean that we're settling into Tunis? I suppose that we are. Does that mean that we're settling into a sense of where we want to go in our lives? We're getting there as well.

Tunis is an unusual city. But you already know that. The split between the rich and poor, the conflict between occidental and oriental worlds, the religious crisis, the almost frantic desire to be modern in one generation, the plumetting birth rate, the clutching political environment... It's interesting, and we're starting to settle into a routine, an acceptance, and an awareness of all the subtle currents.

Then there's nothing like ripping out of a familiar pattern and world to one completely foreign to develop a sense of who you are and who you want to be. For Tiara I won't say too much - that's for her, and would inevitably flawed in my retelling. For myself, it impressed in no uncertain terms my desire to head into the arts world full bore. I'm producing more. I'm developing daily habits around art production and communication to the community. I'm thinking it, writing it down, laying it in ink, I'm talking it to the most unlikely audiences...

I'm settling - but certainly not settled. For the latter, maybe it's in the future, and maybe not. Still, there's a certain satisfaction to the former and I'm more wired and enthusiastic than I can remember.

One thing is sure. It feels good.

Safety IQ and Dead Men

2005-05-24T09:29:00.000+02:00

There are a few things about the culture of this place that get to me.
This isn't the last time you'll hear a rant about this sort of thing
from me, I'm sure. But the thing that upsets me the most is people's
attitudes and education around safety practices.

Each morning that I get into a taxi (which isn't every morning) I tell
the driver where I want to go, and I buckle up my seat belt.
Unfailingly I am told that a seat belt "n'est pas utile", is not
useful. I curtly reply that I prefer it. Sometimes they shut up.
Sometimes they don't; and then I have to listen to five minutes about
why seat belts are dangerous. Mostly it comes down to the excuse that
they prevent you from getting out if the car rolls, catches on fire,
or some other unlikely event. Of course, they never seem to touch on
the fact that the most likely type of accident is that you hit
something, and then go flying into the windshield, unless, of course,
you're wearing a seat belt.

I keep my mouth shut. That, I can stand. You know what's worse?
People drive down highways at 90+ kph with their child standing in the
back, leaning forward between the two front seats jabbering away to
his or her parents. No seat belt, no retraining device of any kind,
separating this child from the windshield if the car has to come to a
sudden stop. Do you realize how much this child weighs? Sometimes
less than 40 lbs. And it doesn't take much of a change in momentum
for a child to lift off and go sailing through the air.

I get a ride home with people who do this. It's cultural, and I can't
blame them for not seeing the danger. After all they've done this and
seen it done their whole lives. And because it's cultural, I really
can't say anything. People think I'm nuts, or take offence that I
think they might allow their child to be put in danger, you know?
That is not my intention at all. So mostly I sit in the back seat
with my eyes peeled for traffic anomalies and get ready to grab the
kid if I need to. I have nightmares that I wouldn't be able to react
fast enough.

Did I mention, by the way, that I saw a dead man in the road on the
highway I take everyday to an from work? He had fluorescent yellow
socks, a white sheet over his body and blood all over the road
spilling from under the sheet where his head should be located. I'm
guessing he died on impact. He was surrounded by people (maybe 50-60
along the roadside), with two officers standing over the body. Nobody
was coming to get the body for a while, and according to a friend who
had traveled the same route he had been that way a good 20 minutes
before I got there.

I was just about sick that night. It's a lot less glamorous than what
you see in the movies. In fact the horrible thing about it is how
normal it is. It should seem totally out of place, but it doesn't.
That's what makes it shocking, I think. After I got over the shock, I
was mad, and I've been mad ever since.

I want to scream at the cab drivers, the parents of free standing
children, the idiots who build an elementary school next to an open
highway, the workers on unstable parapets and platforms, the motorbike
drivers without helmets, and generally anyone with an abysmally low
safety IQ: "If you don't give a crap about your own lives, at least
spare me the need to see your dead body in the road."

I don't of course. I can't. And for the most part, if I did they
wouldn't understand me anyway.

For all of you living in your safe homes, driving on your safe roads,
working in your safety-smart work spaces; for all that it's a pain
sometimes (and I know it can be) say a little prayer of thanks that
you live in a world with all the precautions that exist. I love you,
others love you and your society's systems are keeping you safe.
Remember to see it that way from time to time.

And so you know, I promise, and I have made Loren promise, that
whenever we get into a taxi, no matter how much we think we will be
ridiculed by those around us, we fasten our seat belts.

Tyranny in the Office!

2005-05-23T16:50:00.000+02:00

This may be my last posting for a short while, while all internet
privileges are revoked at enda. It is a long story. Apparently not
only are people surfing the internet during working hours (only
permitted during break hours) they are also downloading copious
amounts of information AND stealing each others work off the company
network (god only know why!) and working on it in their "spare time"
(even less comprehensible!).

As of today all internet was revoked. For some reason I can still
send emails, so I am attempting to send this to the blog over my
break. However even this feature may be disrupted in the future.

I do not know how they expect their researchers to do online research,
their grant writers to access online documents, their financiers to
publish financial results to the MIX Market (online rating agency).
I'm sure they'll sort it all out. Later.

On the up side, I took the morning off to meet with one of the world's
foremost experts in entrepreneurship for developing nations. He
happened to be in Tunis for a Women's Entrepreneur conference, and I
emailed him to ask if he had time to meet. He was very enthusiastic
and made an appointment for Monday (today) at 8 am. I had to take a
taxi to Gammarth (8 Dinars!) where he bought two coffee and we talked
about entrepreneurship. If you're interested, he is the Executive
Director of the Beyster Institute. You can check it out online at
www.beysterinstitute.org It mostly talks about their in-country
programs on the site, but I can assure you they have a comprehensive
development focus.

It was a fascinating talk and he (Dr. Smilor) requested that I send
him my information so that he could keep in contact. He also
suggested a document to read (which I will!) produced by the UNDP
(United Nations Development Project). What a very exciting morning.
Almost enough to keep me smiling through they tyranny in the office.
Almost.

bitter tea

2005-05-23T15:45:00.000+02:00

The tea is bitter.

It has the biting acrid character of smoke from a sulfur pool. It lingers on the tongue. It dares anyone to challenge its legitimacy.

The day is cloudless, but for a thin sheet of smog that is busy being sucked away by a midday wind. The sun pronounces its presense in a thin film of sweat that sticks deleriously to the body. The road is pitted.

It has character.

I sit in a squat two-bedroom flat of a chattering upscale bourgeois district that has no sea, no greenery, no history but it has construction. From out of the window the rattle of building shakes the city's attempt at silence.

The clay of the earth is red. The blood in my veins is red. The flags of this country are red. The flags of my country are red. The cape of a bullfighter is red. Red seems to seep below the surface.

It is a new day like any other, but it will be a newer day than any other.

I plan to be there when it happens.

fastest taxi...

2005-05-20T13:32:00.000+02:00

Well, I guess it's what I get for opening my big mouth (or big moot, as I heard a Quebecois once say). Today I had a ride. The full meal deal - adrenaline pumping, feels like I'm in a movie, yayayayaya! Only it wasn't in a movie which took some of the shine off the experience. A lot of it, actually.

It was the fastest cab ride in a slow car that I've ever had in Tunis.

Slow car, you ask? Yes, the car couldn't manage to crack 100 km/h (as others that I've been in have - consistently). It just wasn't in good enough condition, and hey, it was rush hour. But that didn't mean that it wasn't fast! Far from it.

There are all sorts of ways that you can go fast if you really want to. You can burn every red light (check!); you can squeeze a fourth car in a two-lane road (check!); you can add a third turning lane when there's only supposed to be one (check!); you can pass vehicles as you're cresting a hill (check!); you can honk your horn a lot to intimidate the other drivers (check!): you can go over the speed bumps at full speed (check!); you can swerve around oncoming, turning, stopping or otherwise obstacle-creating cars (check!). There was more. Things like honking at pedestrians and speeding up towards them or whipping down a one-way road, but I'll leave those to the imagination. In any case, through the whole of it, my driver maintained a calm face and managed to avoid hitting anything, so I was somewhat relieved. Except for the whole being in the passenger seat part. Oh well.

Welcome to Tunis!

marbles in the road

2005-05-18T15:56:00.000+02:00

Every day that I head on into AMIDEast to teach my English courses I pass a group of four or five young boys playing marbles. A lost art? Certainly not so in Tunisia.

In any district, from the richest to the poorest, they can be found focussed with knuckles in the dirt and huddling around a dirt marble pitch. Eyes intent and totally sucked into their micro-world, their knees are dirty, their hands caress the marbles' surface, their talk is animated, and they play the game.

It's incredible to me coming out of Canada and our pre-fab existence. The magic of the tiny crystal in this world evokes Bradbury's world of Dandelion Wine and its endless days of summer. I cling to it, and I hope never to lose it.

Future Tense

2005-05-17T17:40:00.000+02:00

I was noticing with Tiara today the look of the workers coming into Citee Ennasr and couldn't help but think of those old photos of Brooklyn in the late 20s through 40s. The similarities are as startling as the differences. They are for the most part either first or second generation city-dwellers caught up in the typically industrial rural exodus and fitting themselves into the 'modern' world. They are the street-sweepers, the housekeepers, the masons and plain old manual labour.

Tiara works down in their world, and while it's not the picture of despair that comes to mind when we think of the early Italian or Eastern European or Irish quarters of old New York, I don't know that it's far. It's not unusual for a family of six, with grandparents and cousins and uncles to live in a small house together. They import their religion and cultural values to the city that will not validate them, and they work for the people who are the most flagrantly open and un-traditionally muslim in the entire middle east. Granted they have a house, and that's one of the differences that I'll get to in a bit - because it's nothing like you'll see in North America.

The men and women who are able take the 'popular' (meaning cheap and incredibly crouded) bus to the rich neighbourhoods or factories and work all day for pitiful wages and then back to their world - out of sight and out of mind.

The masons in particular come to mind. You see them, eight stories up (nothing goes up very high here, which is a good thing...), walking narrow scaffolding that consists of boards punched through the brick wall on which other boards are set or affixed (sometimes a nail or two will be used). And they lay bricks, cement, plaster, electric cables... The heat rises, they crack out their plastic bottles for water, and roll up their sleeves. They are thin, due to a meagre diet with very little protein and also to their intense physical exercise. They grin, they're missing teeth, the rich few ride in on those strange little motorbikes that hack black up the hills. The contrast to their millieu is stark.

And there's a difference, around them in Nasr, the culture is the height of modernity - the women are in pants or shorts - showing skin that the men in their districts would never show. The vehicles that roll by are a parade of brand-new Audis, Mercedes, Coopers, SUVs, Hummers. The coffee at 2 1/2 dinars is TEN times the price of the their cafes. The gap between rich and poor is flaunted. It's also a gap of years - every day they move from the 1950s of Citee Ettadhamen - cars / trucks / brick ovens / dirt roads and collapsing asphalt - to the 21st Century with escalators / blase teenagers / computers / reliable electricity and water...

The weird bits are where it crosses over. Houses, for example. There's a strong house-building initiative in Tunisia, there's an established family-planning program designed to limit population growth, new clothes and consumer culture are solidly intrenched to say nothing of the police controls. These last serve a dual purpose of balancing the cultural revolution and protecting the population such that thefts, let alone agression, are rare.

The new third world. The old and the new. The world.

Slowest Cab in the World

2005-05-16T16:07:00.000+02:00

Slowest Cab in the world...

Generally in Tunisia the cab rides are somewhat interesting. If the regular traffic makes up its own rules and gets irritated when they are not followed, Tunisian cabbies tend to push this to the extreme. For canadians, they talk about the orderly and civilized drivers of Montreal who always obey the law and never honk their horns - they talk about it like the contrast of night to day. Nuff said.

But then not all cabbies are insane. Unfortunately. I had to get to work this morning, and after waiting for ten minutes to catch a cab (two is about average) I sat down in the slowest cab in Tunis. Woualla (swear to god), I have never seen anything like this guy. Traffic rushed on by us at rush hour as we crept along in the slow lane. We didn't break 40 kph.

To make it even more interesting, we would slow to a dead 10 kph crawl for every crack in the road that could have punched out the vehicles linchpin and left us stunned on the concrete. Apparently linchpins are something to be careful of in cars. This car, anyway. And the driver regularly slowed as his hacking stopped him from being able to pay attention to the road. That way, more people could pass us with propriety. Did I mention it was a slow ride? Sssssllllloooooowwwww.

I have been in a cab where the driver's wife and kid were in the backseat, the latter practically crawling over it to get to him, and we didn't drop far below 70 kph. It was still a rather slow ride by Tunisian standards... but acceptable.

Anyhow, eventually I got to my destination. The cost was on par for normal since time is negligible with respect to distance on the meters. Thankfully. Seriously, I've had to make the trip at rush hour, and it wasn't rush hour this time, but it took almost as long. About double the average and triple the frustration.

And now I will go on with my day.

Look What's Following Me!

2005-05-13T15:46:00.000+02:00

I was in the gym today with Loren working on arms and shoulders. I didn't feel like working out, but after a while I started to get into the rythym of exercise and I slipped into that "workout mind-space" where you don't notice that you don't want to. It's sort of like being on automatic pilot, except you're working really hard.

I reached for a set of dumbells for the next set of shoulder exercises and a movement caught my eye. Something very small and green, like the floor, jumped.

It was a frog.

What's with all the frogs? I can't say.

And who has ever heard of a frog in a gym?

Loren and I were the only two people in the gym and I pulled him over so he could watch it hop behind the weight rack, under the rows of weights and out into the open. We couldn't just let it hop around in the gym, and now that I am an experienced frog catcher, the job was up to me.

I think it realized that we were going to try to grab it, because the frequency of its hopping increased and its accuracy and grace decreased. It hopped so hard that it consistently landed on its face. Loren nearly came undone in a fit of giggles. When I caught up to it, it stopped moving long enough for me to get my hands around it.

Catching frogs is harder out of water.

In the water, you are able to get your hands further around them and if they leap they fall back into the water. I barely managed to get a hold of it and stand up before it found a hole in my fingers and shoved its way through, leaping high into the air. I leapt after it and managed to catch it in mid air, safely back in my hands. We repeated this once more, before I was able to catch it with my fingers tightly together. Then I happily marched it out of the gym, and following Loren's instructions I released it near the bushes at the edge of the lawn. It took a moment to adjust and then high-tailed it into the plant life and away from us.

Then I washed my hands.

After all, frogs are sticky critters.

Brown Green Monsters

2005-05-12T10:53:00.001+02:00

I thought I would relate a moment from the trip that Loren and I took last weekend. We traveled out of the city toward the west of the northern tip of Tunisia, into the foothills and "mountains" that stretch from the centre to the border with Algeria. It was a fabulous trip, and the world became greener and greener as we climbed in altitude.

We saw some amazing things. Forests of olive trees, overhangs and caves where wild cows birth their calves, foot-long green striped lizards scurrying over the red earth and red-purple rocks, two royal eagles, turns, swallows, skinny white water snakes, wild rosemary growing EVERYWHERE (we picked a small shub's worth for cooking), a Muslim Saint's final resting place, natural springs and newly dug earth irigation ditches, and more.

It was a hot four hour hike up the mountain and we had a marvelous time (and I got a little burnt too!). But the real highlight was at the end. When an unplanned meeting began, in Arabic with a visiting Palestinan Microfinance consultant, Loren and I and a few others walked down to a small river, formed from the culmination of small irigation culverts running together. It had a flat bottom made of concrete in a park-like setting and there were children playing and men praying and picknicks here and there.

We heard frogs singing, and Clair, a French volunteer, said first person to catch a frog wins! I've never tried to catch a frog. I wasn't really sure how to go about it. They move very quickly, and they are slipery, right? So I figured I would find one and then circle my hands around it slowly. One had been singing near a family sitting on the edge of the river on the wall that stands about four feet high. I saw it's froggy eyes poking out of the muck so I reached down and slowly circled my hands about it. When it moved it was too late. It managed to get its head out between two fingers and one foot out too. I lifted it up triumphantly and the woman sitting on the ledge, who had been following my activities with her two little boys, let out a scream and lept back onto the grass. Her husband burst out laughing. I guess she hadn't thought the frog would look so much like a little brown-green monster!

I caught two that day, though no body else did. But I was sure to catch them well away from the family on the wall. That, I think was the highlight of the trip!

This is Spring?

2005-05-10T16:36:00.000+02:00

Today it is hot.

Apparently this is still Spring weather. Apparently this is not hot.

Indoors with the shade and with the fans turned on us, I am still sweating. It must be close to 30 degrees in my work space. Outside in the sun, you don't last for more than two minutes before you need the shade of a tree or a building. The difference in temperature is significant.

I asked the director if we would be able to turn on the air conditioner. The answer?

Absolutely not!

If they can find one that is in working order, they may lend me a fan for near my desk.

A couple of Tunisian coworkers, walking around in sweaters made fun of my intolerance. But I was relieved to see others, in the same room as me, faning themselves with bits of paper.

This summer will be a hot one, they said. I'm afraid to even imagine.

2005-05-09T18:15:00.000+02:00

Arrival at the park for our camel trip. See the desert in the background? Ready for an adventure?

2005-05-09T18:14:00.001+02:00

Here's the start point and a great view of Touzeur

2005-05-09T18:14:00.000+02:00

Jason the Touareg! The black cover and blue eyes were fabulous.

2005-05-09T18:13:00.000+02:00

Our Bedouin guide. He is about 30 years old and he's a camel racer. This man is made of steel, or at least harder stuff than us. He did 110 km over two days through the sahara in plastic flip-flops!

2005-05-09T18:10:00.001+02:00

Loren the bedouin!

2005-05-09T18:10:00.000+02:00

We stopped for lunch in a palm grove where they grow Nour Delgat Dates, the best in Tunisia. We had to find someone that the host knew to be offered some shady spot where we could eat our lunch. Here is the porch where we rested. It is a one room shack in a well ordered grove. With improvised tables, a bent hub cap for a cook stove, and removed car seats on the ground.. You'll see a better shot of the whole shack in a moment.

2005-05-09T18:07:00.000+02:00

Here is the shack that our host lives in. It's not much, but it has shade and a bed.

2005-05-09T18:06:00.000+02:00

Here is a shot of the camel I was riding. It's name is Saber though the meaning is not the same in Arabic. He is a three year old camel and white, which is a less common colour. Every time he was asked to kneel he hollered and bared his teeth. Apparently he dosen't like that part much.

2005-05-09T18:04:00.000+02:00

A close up shot. Isn't he fabulous?

funny little motorbikes

2005-05-09T17:06:00.000+02:00

I just realised that we haven't really spoken about this particular issue yet. So here goes.

In the capital, Tunis, and actually everywhere that we've been, there appear to be three primary forms of transportation - public/walking, which most people apparently hate; cars, which are mostly the pint-sized euro-ecomomical variety; and funny little motorbikes and scooters. The scooters aren't such a new or impressive thing, and indeed you all know what I'm talking about in that case, but the motorbikes are another story.

Largely made by the French automaker, Peugeot, these little puppies are relatively cheap to buy (cars are psychotically expensive here), cheap on gas (which is about on par with north american prices - and expensive relative to the average wage here) and don't require a license (under 110 ccs). They are popular and they are bizarre. But a description is in order.

Imagine the general trappings of a motorbike made smaller and kind of stupid. There's a wheel in the back and a wheel in the front, for starters. The engine and gas tank are both under the seat (which strikes me as a touch stupid) and the buggers spit out their poorly-burned fuel out of an exhaust pipe near their rear wheel. Then there's the weirder bit. They have pedals which serve a dual purpose. The pedals help you to initially turn over the engine (no starters) and they provide a little extra oomph for going up steep (read: poorly thought out - and there are many) roads if the 'vehicle' is in less than optimum condition. There are very few in optimum condition.

I think they're hilarious. What's even better/scarier is the way that people ride them. Even though they have no power, the aggressive owners persist in weaving in and around mostly faster traffic - without helmets, with their wife or buddy clinging on behind them, sitting side-saddle and ignoring the traffic lights. Of course, not all of the drivers do this, since some have ambitions in life that don't include being roadkill, but then the many stupid ones are particularly noticeable.

It's like taking an old Citroen out to the F1 circuit for a spin. Sure it might be exhilerating for a moment, and maybe you can kind of forget that your car's not formula one, but not for very long.

rug dreams

2005-05-05T16:09:00.000+02:00

Hey there all,

A minute post from me today, but I put up pictures of the infamous rug.

Hope y'all enjoy! And I'm off to work!

2005-05-05T14:52:00.001+02:00

and the camel's hair rug, in the nomad tradition, that we eventually purchased :-)

2005-05-05T14:52:00.000+02:00

fuzzy photo of our carpet store in Kairouan

Wild Camels, Deep Sahara and Cell Phones

2005-05-04T17:44:00.001+02:00

It's getting past due for information about our desert trek, and with more adventures comming up, I'm afraid I won't be able to get all of it down. Here is a bit of information about the trip. I'll be sure to dig up some of our photos for you in the next couple of days too.

We rode from Tozeur to the famous Tunisian Dunes (where Star Wars was fillmed) in one day and rode back the second day. The total trek was about 110 km. The mounts were not entirely comfortable, and every hour or so we opted to walk for ten or twenty minutes. Loren walked more than Jason or I and I think he prefered it to the hard seat. But it was a challenge for any of us to walk, especially on the first day as we rode through the rough, sparse scrub of the Sahara under a sun burning full overhead at temperatures reaching more than 38 degrees.

We were pouring sweat and consuming our water much faster than we ever would have imagined. We had to wrap our faces up completely in our Touareg scarves leaving nothing showing but our eyes (and Jason even put on sun-glases). The heat poured down and bounced back up, coming at us from all directions. The temperatures had not been expected, and I'm sure our guide would have insisted we leave earlier in the morning had he known.

I would like to mention about our guide that he walked the entire distance there and back wearing plastic flip-flops, the kind you find in america designed for poolside lounging in your back yard. 110 km through the Sahara in two days in flip-flops. Next time you go to the store and look at shoes remember that, and be amazed at what people who don't have much money do to get by.

We saw things that sparked a grand sense of wonder. The vistas, the sun, the dunes in the evening rising up to a clear sky and sunset. But the most amazing moments for me were watching the wild herds of camels. My mount was always able to percieve them before me, and so I kept an eye on the direction his ears were pointed. In the distance on the gentle rises of the Sahara's srub landscape, they appeared to be semi-circles on two stilts with a curved handle protruding from one joint where the semi-circle meets a stilt. Up close they were fabulous, ranging in colour from dark brown to grey and even white. Their enormous humps are hairy on top, likely protecting their water supply from excessive heat. I know it sounds backward, but after 35 degrees you want as much covering on you as possible to trap the sweat next to your body and conserve it. Exposed skin in the desert is a prime area for water loss and it is evaporated off of you as fast as you can sweat it.

There were some very surreal moments in the desert. My personal favorite is when we were riding, four hours into the desert, gasping from the heat and wondering at the expanse of desert scub-land, when Loren's cell phone went off. It was his mother, calling from Canada to say hello. He chatted with her for about 10 minutes before turning off his cell phone for good. The blusey ring tone had been most troubling to our sense of adventure. We wanted to believe we were inaccessible by civilization. Alas, these days that is almost an impossibility.

up in smoke

2005-05-04T16:44:00.000+02:00

Here's a novel solution to the problem of waste by the roadside. Burn it.

As I walked with Tiara the twenty minutes or so to her pick-up point for work this morning, we wandered past tiny fire after tiny fire in the ditch on the side of the road. "Doesn't that seem a little odd in a semi-arid area?" She asked. And yes, yes it does. For the environmentally conscious amoung us, it also seems odd to see plastic bags, old chunks of tire, packing foam, shrubs, chunks of tar and cardboard bits all lumped in together in neat flaming piles.

That stunk.

Ah well, welcome to the genuine high-end third world. And in other news the temp here is up in the low thirties to high twenties... which is a little warm, you know? And in the sun... But Janice knows that this makes me smile! No more Edmonton and its insubstantial heat!

Mount Up!

2005-05-03T17:53:00.000+02:00

I can't post much today. Work is exceptionlly busy these days. But I wanted to put a bit down for you about the camel tour.

It took us a while to get ready to go. There were three camels staked to the ground. Two that appeared younger and one that looked much older and shaggy. Our guide had not yet arrived from town where he was buying supplies. We waited about ten minutes before he arrived, saddled up the camels (I know that sounds strange) and loaded the supplies onto the front, hanging from old potato sacks and shopping bags.

I should describe the saddles. It's the same traditional saddle they use on donkeys, a long colourful stuffed cushion folded down the middle and then strapped on to the camel from every direction: over the chest, under the belly and behind the tail. It is held in place on top by a wooden triangle with fitted joints. The saddles were old, but cheerful looking. It wasn't until we were on them that we realized how uncomfortable they are.

Camels are not like horses. They have a huge lump on their back and a strong back bone to support it. If you know horses, imagine a foot tall whither at the shoulders, and you on a cushion folded around the whither. Needless to say I brused by tailbone and my pubic bone. But you'll hear more about that later!

the art of teaching... or not

2005-05-03T15:18:00.000+02:00

the Another day, another brief blog.

I've discovered something. I don't particularly like to teach English. Which throws me into a connundrum. It's good work and nicely paying for Tunisia, so I'll certainly continue, but anyway, here's the quandary.

I don't particularly like teaching in this format and so I'm not particularly motivated to do an outstanding job. For anything that I choose to do I feel it is important for my sense of self-worth that I do an outstanding job. I choose, daily, to teach in this format. Would that be a catch-22?

So every day I'm writting lesson plans, evaluating my success with past lesson plans, dragging my posterior to work, teaching (which for anyone who hasn't done it is both elating and extremely draining), and doing art. After all, that's what I like to do more than anything. hmm.

Well, with not too many more thoughts I'll just leave it at that for now and mull over it some more. Maybe I'll have stronger conclusions by tomorrow. Then again, maybe I'll do like a very good friend, one of my bestest, and pack this job into a MEC backpack and blaze the trail less travelled - more perilous and less sure and more interesting by a mile. Probably, I'll stick this out for a bit, support my incredible wife in some endeavour of hers, do art all the way through and then try to ease my way or muscle my way or force my way onto the scene in around five years time. After all, I've got all the time in the world - and time now, means time to grow, develop my craft, develop contacts, and make serious choices.

Concrete

2005-04-29T11:23:00.000+01:00

I don't know whether we've mentionned anywhere else in this blog, but the predominant construction method in Tunisia is brick and concrete. Everything in the house is Brick and Concrete - the walls, the floors... For support beams, the bricks are packed full of concrete (normally they're hollow). For extra couches/chairs/beds, a concrete base is built and rugs or pillows are set on top of it. This all comes about because both bricks and concrete are subsidised by the government in an effort to alleviate housing deficiencies, and are therefore cheap. Consequently, if people are unhappy with a particular wall in their house, they take a sledge to it, and if they want a new floor (up to a safe maximum of three) they just build stairs in a corner, blast out a section of roof and build up. The lack of preciousness and the self-actualizing attitude are quite neat, and very refreshing.

The downside, though, and everything has to have a downside, is that the remains of old construction are all over the place. People mix their concrete in the street, for example, which eventually hardens into little lumps all over the place. And everybody mixes their concrete on the street - whether for a house or a massive apartment complex - so that the little chunky lumpies are all over the place and contribute to wear and tear on the road (think logging road washboard effect). Also, one of the most common sights on abandonned lots is of piles of red chunkies that are the leavings of once-bricks that either got crushed or trimmed in the precision hack-at-with-trowel method that though imprecise, is quite handy.

Ah well, these are the little differences that make such an experience interesting. The upside of the construction with brick is that people have incredible liberty to build all manner of shapes and orientations of buildings, without the canadian limitations brought on by the strength of either poured cement (and the moulds that hold it in place) or the of wood beams. The result is an interesting array of different forms, and an absence of uniformity or rote construction that keeps the eye engaged.

2005-04-28T14:38:00.000+01:00

bedroom - blue light for a cool summer. And crepe paper bleeds like crazy!

2005-04-28T14:37:00.000+01:00

study room

2005-04-28T14:36:00.000+01:00

hall critter, my hairy bird

2005-04-28T14:35:00.000+01:00

living room and the first attempt

Lights On

2005-04-28T14:14:00.000+01:00

One of the first projects that I undertook when getting into our little abode was a set of light fixtures for the house. we wanted something that would be quick and cheap - and it would be nice if they were kind of quirky and played into the organic. So I built and installed papier mache bird-forms. Thought you might like to see :-)

Preparing for the Desert

2005-04-27T13:05:00.001+01:00

We arrived in Tozeur in the dark. For the past two hours we had been driving across increasingly flat land, speckled with scrub and stones. Mountains lay like sleeping giants in the dark on either side of the car, and as we traveled the moon and stars came out overhead. It seemed very magical and we were happy to drive in the dark as though towards some ancient city of mystery.

Tozeur wasn't that mysterious, but it had enough elements of an ancient city to keep our imaginations sharp. We didn't have a reservation so we circled the town a couple of times in search of the tourist district. We found it, but the hotels were big and they looked to be out of the price range that we could afford. After a while we stopped to ask a police officer where we could find a decent hotel for a reasonable price. With a smile and thoughtful look he gave us directions to Hotel Karim and sent us away with a waive.

People in the south are renowned for their kindness and hospitality. Like in Canada the environment dictates that people help each other or perish, and that kindness to strangers and travelers has survived even though modern technology has made living there much less hazardous. Seeing the smiles on the dark brown faces reminded me of home and I felt more relaxed than I had since the trip began.

Hotel Karim was a gem. It was built on the corner of a street and it's structure is triangular. The centre is open to the sky and has a courtyard with potted plants, a fountain and several small tables. Looking up you see a balcony running the three connecting walls and doors to individual rooms behind them. I didn't realize at first that it was open air, and kept looking for the hallway where the current seemed to be coming from. Loren finally helped me by stopping me in the courtyard and making me look up into the sky full of stars and wispy clouds. It was quite a sight.

We were hungry and the local couscous was on the menu at the restaurant connected to the hotel. Before we made it to the restaurant, our one-armed hotel manager asked us why we had come and when we told him it was to do a Sahara trip he suggested he could be of service.

We were reluctant to let him arrange anything for us to begin with as we didn't want a package tour with cars and oasis-tourist stops. We wanted the real thing, out into the Sahara for a night and then back. He assured us that he worked privately with a local Berber man who didn't do group tours and who could take us off the beaten path. He said he would call and ask if he was available and then we could make up our minds after dinner.

Dinner was good if not fabulous. I think we all agreed that Loren's lamb couscous stole the show, and as a result Jason and I kept stealing bites from his bowl.

Back at Hotel Karim the hotel manager had called and told us the guide was available and it would cost about 85 DT each for one night in the desert, but that he would take us to the dunes. The dunes are the largest sand dunes in Tunisia and they provided the backdrop for the Star Wars films on the planet Tatouine, which by the way is the name of a Tunisian city. Our hotel manager figured that was about 40 km away and it was fairly deep into the Sahara. We would be fed and given a shelter to sleep under at one of the local Berber family tents. He had even made the guide promise to cook Berber bread in the sand. We were sold. It was more than we had planned on spending, but it covered the cost of the guide, the food, the camels and a very authentic non-tourist experience.

We retired to bed, knowing that we would have to wake early to be ready to leave by 9AM. Before we could nod off we had to repack our bags, and Loren had to make a couple of calls to deal with our BC Student Loans. You can't get away from student loans, you know. Not even in the Sahara.

We met for breakfast at 7:30 the next morning, ate our complimentary coffee, baguette and fig jam and jumped into the car to head to the central market. We were in need of a couple of things. The first was a whole lot of water for the trip, as we were responsible for our own beverages. The second was head gear to protect our fairer skin from the strong Saharan sun.

Have you ever seen a picture of the Touareg? They live in the desert of Algeria and Morocco dressed in dark blue-purple and black. They are usually depicted riding on camels and they are famous for having never fully integrated with modern society. The head scarves that they wear are lengths of fabric, about a foot and a half wide by about nine feet long. This they wrap around their head, leaving a third of it to then wrap around their mouth, nose, cheeks and neck. By the time the vendor had us all wrapped up there was nothing left of us but our eyes. Loren, Jason and I each were presented with different colours - Jason's was black, the darkest, and Loren's was cream coloured. Apparently only darker-skinned folk should wear the lighter wraps as the lighter colours won't block any UV rays, and you can still burn. Jason also bought a black and white checkered head scarf in the Arab tradition so that he could be sure that his neck was covered.

With our essential supplies now in hand, we returned to the Hotel to wait for our ride. Ten minutes later a horse and carriage pulled up and took our things. Then we climbed in and headed for the local park and monument to the poet Chebbi where our desert adventure would begin.

Celine Scream

2005-04-26T11:57:00.000+01:00

(Post sent a little after the fact...)

Apologies in advance to Jason when/if he reads this...

We're just heading from Kairouen to Gafsa and my new old nemesis, come to haunt me from Canada has come on the radio. Can you guess? Yup, that's it. Celine the canadian queen Dion... Tiara guestures to the radioi in mock defeat and what does Jason do? He turns her up!

AAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!

That's one small scream for man, annd the most deserving of screams for music-kind. Adding insult to injury it's English Celine with that deadly (as in can invoke the desire to commit Sepuku) Titanic theme song. There's no escape. Even as we're heading in the direction of the Sahara...

Carpet Ride

2005-04-25T09:18:00.000+01:00

Thursday was a holiday, it was the Birthday of the Prophet Mohamed, called El Moulud. Since it was officially a day off with pay, I requested Friday off too and we prepared to leave for the South of Tunis for a long awaited vacation and camel tour of the Sahara. The adventure is too long to tell you about it all in one go, so you're going to get installments. Hope you don't mind!

We ran into a number of problems. The first was that in order to avoid the very touristy group camel rides that last about two hours into the Sahara and then come straight back out, we needed to find someone with the right connections. Someone who could get us off of the tourist track. Our friend Wifak has a sister whose boyfriend has a friend that works in tourism. (that's how things work here!) So she promised to set us up with something non-tourist. The only condition was that we wouldn't know what the plan was until Wednesday night because this friend was a busy guy and couldn't get the scheduling done right away.

So we packed our bags and lunch for the next day, checked out how much a rental car was going to cost us, and waited for our phone call. It came at around 8PM, and we were surprised to hear that the friend had been REALLY busy and hadn't managed to arainge anything. It looked like the order of the day would be to improvise, so we shrugged our shoulders and decided to play it by ear.

We woke fairly early the next day. At least, Loren and I did. We woke Jason up and tried to mobilize him, but he had been up late the night before working on some report that he had to finish, and we couldn't seem to get him going. When he and Loren were finally ready to leave for the airport it must have been about 10AM. Loren and I were on the verge of calling the thing off, but Jason seemed confident that things would run smoothly. He didn't know what we know about Tunisian bureaucracy. Nothing happens as quickly here as it does in the first world. Nothing.

Jason replied that he only needed to pick up the car, pick up the bags and then go. Since it was only 6 hours to Tozeur (prounouced tou-zer) there shouldn't be a problem. I started packing a lunch, and then I washed all the dishes, and then I swept the floor and then I washed the bathroom before Loren called. It was 11:15. They had the car, but Jason had wanted to change his ticket with AirItalia. It might be italian, but the system was Tunisian, and it took him an hour to find out he couldn't. They were on the road. I had the floor mopped too by the time they made it home, then we packed up and hit the road.

I could tell you all about the road trip, how Loren got us a bit lost on the way out of town, about the great scenery, the forests of olive trees, the candied peanuts and roasted lamb by the side of the road, the horrible public washrooms and the passport checks at roundabouts, but it would take much too long to get it all down.

Our first major stop was in Karouan. We had made a point of stopping there on purpose as it is considered the fourth holiest city in the Islamic faith and today was the Prophet's birthday. All the roads were closed when we arrived and the city was teeming with people. There were police everywhere, and we were tempted to leave without seeing anything just to avoid the throngs of people.

I have to admit we were a little lost when a couple of young men/boys on a scooter pulled up next to us and started gesturing dramatically. We rolled down the window and asked them what the problem was. They told us we were headed out of the city and that most of the roads were closed but they could show us the way to free parking if we were interested. We were, so we followed them. They took us to the walls of the original city with the first minaret built in Tunisia standing massive and proud at its centre. We were in awe of this 14th century construction, still standing and still home. We got out of the car and thanked the young man who stayed behind to talk to us.

He pointed at the buildings and started telling us about the history and where to go to find the market and medina. I smiled, figuring he would want a tip, but I was happy with his tourism gig, so I didn't mind following when he started off, still telling us about the city. He took us through a park and down on to the road below the old city and directly into a rug shop.

I was a bit anoyed that I had been hooked so easily, but I did want to see the looms, and he showed us how the looms work and how the wool is threaded together. Then a relative, someone I hadn't seen in the room took over and led us into a show room. We looked at each other, wondering if we should really stay, but the rugs were so interesting, we couldn't help it. They told us to take a seat on the bench, proffered mint tea and began telling us about the different rugs in the room.

All the rugs were rolled up and propped against one another on the wall. There were hundreds of them and they showed them to us by snatching roll after roll from the wall and unfurling them with a flick across the floor. We were truly in awe. It wasn't even something that could be concealed. There were fine weave rugs and thick weave rugs, camel hair and lamb's wool and pure silk rugs, in berber patterns and arab patterns and bedouin patterns too. Any colour, any size, any thickness, any pattern you wanted was there. They were all hand made and they must have rolled out about 80 of them before they called a stop to the unrolling.

The we played a game. We learned two words in arabic (they escape me now) one meaning "roll it" and the other meaning "put it aside" and we sorted through the pile systematically. We got down to about three rugs each and then we got down to about two each and then we just had our favorites left. Jason wanted two silk rugs "magic carpets" as our sales man told us. Loren and I fell in love with a berber patterned, earth coloured rug. Then it was a matter of prices.

First, I should say, I liked this salesman. He obviously loves what he does and loves what he sells, and he never really pushes you. He just seems to know that in this magical place full of the most amazing handmade crafts there is something for everyone and if you let them dig long enough they'll find what they are after.

The rug was priced at 350 Euros, but that, he told us is a tourist price. Resident price, which is what we often get when people find out I work in Ettadhamen doing social work, was that price in Tunisian Dinars. That sounded very reasonable. It was still out of our price range. We weren't really sure what to do. We had been talking about getting rugs since we had arrived and we had always intended to take a trip to Kairouan for that express purpose, and now, here we were, but we just couldn't justify buying a RUG for 350 dinars.

I really wanted it. I really did. The guy was great, he asked what the problem was and we told him we just couldn't afford it. We didn't have a tunisian bank account so we couldn't just make automatic payments on it either. But we REALLY wanted it. I was ready to leave it, but I was ready to cry about it too. He shrugged and made one last suggestion. "If you promise to buy your other rugs from me, and if you bring your friends and family my way when they want rugs, then I can bring it down a little." This is the line you get when they are almost giving it away. You will rarely hear it. It is how they justify giving something at a low price. They ask for your loyalty instead of a regular profit margin. I had never heard it until this point. "I'll give it to you for 250." It was a deal. It meant that things would be really tight for a while, that there wouldn't be any money for treats and pop and things like that, but 250 we could do.

By the time we left the store, we had been there ogling rugs for over an hour. We had just enough time to swing past the entrance of the Medina before we headed out of town. We hadn't seen much of the city, but we had seen one of the things the city was famous for. And we were pretty damn happy that we had.

Back in Business

2005-04-19T18:14:00.000+01:00

The hotel is full again!

Jason arrived on Friday and we've been re-exploring the city with him, enjoying the sites and all. We've taken him to Melody on the avenue des cafes for REAL hot chocolate, and he's even joining us at the gym for a workout, chocolate croissants in hand!

I haven't broken my promise, I swear! The internet connection has been disabled in most of Tunisia these past few days and I haven't been able to get online.

I'm online now, however. Hooray! And I promise more interesting stories for you tomorrow, including the follow up to the Carte de Sejour.

Thanks for sticking with us, folks. You have no idea how good it makes us feel to know that our people are interested in our lives and adventures.

Missing you all!

a moment...

2005-04-14T13:05:00.000+01:00

Today I saw a little boy standing outside of our appartment bloc. He must have been all of six years old, if that. He had a tiny backpack, he stood maybe two and a half feet high, and he was leaning back on his heels looking up at the apartments.

Strange. For a moment I looked at him, freckled pale face, curly red hair, blocky stature, and he seemed as foreign to this place as me. He called out, then, "mom!" Insistent as only a little kid can be - voice laced with indignation, demand, pleading and frustration all at once. I paused at the bottom of the stairs...

A string of unintelligible arabic followed. What a crazy little world. I hadn't really expected any different, but for some unknown reason I had hoped.

Fifty Cent Signature

2005-04-14T12:19:00.000+01:00

Remember the story about heading to the Police office for our Carte de Sejour? Remeber he said we could go back and get it on Wednesday? Well the story continues.

Wednesday we arrived nice and early to meet with the officer in charge of our portfolio. We arrived earlier, in fact, than he did. It was about a 15 minute wait so we strolled around for a while and returned to find him working and attended by a small line up of foreigners, from where we couldn't guess.

Once we made it in to his office, he flipped through his stack of files and pulled out ours. Mine was fine and he said "ca va, ca va". Loren's however, had a little note attached to it.

Here I have to interrupt with a little background. When we applied for the cartes we only had my work contract, and since one person working is enough to get the procedure done, we didn't bother to bring in Loren's contract, we just stated that I would be taking care of both our financial responsibility. That was an adventure in itself. It took them a good five minutes of cross questioning to understand that Loren had come here with me, and that he, like most spouses moving to an African nation, would not necessarily be working. They kept asking "Mais qu'est-ce que tu fais?" But what do you do? Loren and I both laughed at how patriarchal the Tunisian authorities were. And, in the end, it wasn't a problem, once they adjusted their paradigms.

What we forgot, was that there are several levels of buraucracy and they didn't all get a paradigm adjustment.

That little note on Loren's paper said that they wanted tangible proof that this man would be supported by his wife, a concept I'm sure they had a very hard time understanding.

"You'll have to write a letter that says you'll "prendre en charge" (a term meaning: take under your care or manage) your husband." That means they want a letter that says I wont leave him in the street bumming for change. "You have to get it signed at the municipality and bring me the original and a photocopy." We contemplated just turning in Loren's contract with AMIDEast, but in light of all the signatures and attestations that we have to have signed, we decided it would just be faster to write the letter and have it signed. I couldn't do it then because I had a meeting to attend at work, so I determined to do it the next day.

Let me explain what it means to have a document "signed". You see, I write the letter, by hand because we don't have a working printer at the office, and I leave a space for me to sign and write the date. I travel in a taxi the 10 minutes to the Municiapal Office, where even at 8:30 in the morning there is a line-up. I take a number and sit there for about an hour and a half. Lots of time for meditation and new insight into the Tunisian system.

When my number is called I go up to the glass both, hand the administrator my handwritten letter. He reads it and asks for my and Loren's passports to make sure I got the number right. He passes it back to me and asks me to sign it. I sign it. He takes it makes a stamp on it and he signs it (proof that he saw me sign it). He then takes out a ledger, writes my name in it passes it to me to initial, and charges me 500 millimes.

For what? FOR WHAT? I paid 500 millimes to wait an hour and a half so he could officially watch me sign my own handwritten letter! I paid 500 millimes for a stamp and a recipt that says I paid.

I meditated on patience in the cab to the police station.

There was a line at the station too. I talked with a nice young student from Gabon in Africa, who was experiencing the same problems as me.

"Why don't they just give you a list at the beginning? Why don't they post a list on the wall? I've never seen a system like this. Not even in Gabon!"

He entered before me and left. He was told he had to make another photocopy, again.

I entered, handed in my certified handwritten letter and a photocopy. He frowned at my choice of words, and asked me if I couldn't have made it a little more clear. I was not NOT going back to the municipality to pay another 500 millimes and to wait to have the cashier watch me sign another letter, so I haggled with him. Finally he accepted it, and told me with a grunt "ca va".

"Now what?" I asked him.

He shrugged. "Come back in two or three days." And he ushered in the next person and ushered me out.

A Storm in Ettadhamen

2005-04-13T13:07:00.000+01:00

Yesterday I left work a little late, close to 18:30, and it was raining outside. The few times that this has happened in the past, it has been a sure sign that I will have to wait a long while for a taxi.

I decided with the bit of time that that would afford me, that I could brave the rain drops and head for the fruit stands to buy some groceries. Maybe, I though, the rain would let up by then.

The fruit vendor that I usually visit was not there today. He is young, about the same age as me, and works with his brother, or maybe cousin. His booth is one of the closest to the traffic circle and to the metro station, so it gets a lot of traffic. I know that the fruit he sells will always be fresh because he sells out most days. But, alas, the boy who replaced him didn't speak enough french and didn't know enough about his wares to be able to point out the Thompson oranges to me, so I thanked him and decided to look elsewhere.

The fruit stands are located between the traffic circle, the metro station (terminus) and the bus station. There is always traffic there and always a lot of people. Moving between stands is taxing when it's busy, as you have a lot to think about. You need to keep one hand on your wallet, one ear tuned in for busses, an arm over your bag and an eye open for traffic of all kinds around you. And through all this you need to find fruit that looks good enough to buy.

I stopped at the nearest vendor with a wide variety of oranges, made my formal hello and asked for Thompsons, 1 kilo. I took him a minute to get to it, as the rain was starting to come down harder and he needed to cover the back part of his stand. I didn't mind waiting.

As I waited I noticed a group of people converging in the street behind the bus station. There must have been 50 people collected together, moving like a flock of birds, all shifting direction this way and that, but not moving very far in any one direction. Then, out of the mass of people, two figures broke away, wrestling with each other. They were young, and it appeared to be a fight.

People here don't fight well. I'm sure there are some martial arts and boxing clubs, but for the most part fighting is strictly forbiden. Participating in a street fight can get you heavily fined and jailed, so it's not something that people are often willing to risk. These two men had a good hold on each other and were throwing each other around and shaking each other. I don't think they ever got their fists free. It seemed more like a wrestling match than a street fight.

I paid for my oranges and moved away, closer to the traffic circle and further from the fight. I had no interest in being around a mob of poor, frustrated Tunisians when the fight broke-up or was disolved by the police. Foreigners can move around in relative safety in high-traffic areas, but I wouldn't want to push my luck.

I waited just North of the circle and waived my hand at every cab that came along. The were all full.

It started to pour.

I didn't have an umbrella and the few buildings with overhang were too far from the road for me to be able to hail a taxi. I figured I might be there a while, but the rain wasn't too cold so I didn't mind. I was hungry however.

I jogged over to a candy vendor who was finishing a batch of candied peanuts and I paid him 200 millimes for a small bag. Then I moved back into the rain, happily eating my candy and getting soaked under the grey-blue twilight clouds. I must have been quite a site in my salmon rain coat snacking on candy. But a taxi stopped soon, and I was on the highway home in no time, with my empty bag of candy and a kilo of oranges. Wet but content.