It’s been more than a month since the end of my Tunisia trip and I haven’t been able to write about it yet. So many other things to think about.
The trip started out badly. I had a 7 hour delay leaving JFK, missed connecting flight to Tunis out of Rome which resulted in an 8 hour wait until the next flight (only two a day). I arrived in Tunis at 10:30 p.m. and should have arrived at 9:30 that morning. I was met by three young Arab men holding a sign with the tour company’s name. We proceeded to the car park and then it became funny. They couldn’t agree on where they had parked the car. It wasn’t a company vehicle. It was a private, small car. We found it, put my luggage in the trunk, all squeezed in and headed off, hopefully to my hotel. At that point I wondered if I had lost my senses tooling through the streets of a foreign country late at night with three men I had never laid eyes on before!
During the rest of the Tunisia trip we visited many ancient ruins, many village markets, had an hour meeting with an imam, rode a camel, interviewed a belly dancer, swatted at a lot of flies, ate two home hosted meals, saw the sets for Star Wars and the English Patient, and spent hours riding across the Sahara in a 4-wheel drive vehicle to spend a night in a desert tent camp. Here’s the skinny.
Ruins are surprisingly sophisticated with evidence of heated floors, fountains, indoor bathrooms and beautiful mosaic “carpets”.
In the butcher section of the markets you could tell what’s the special for the day because the animal’s head (rabbit, cow, goat, camel) was on display. Lucky for you, I’m not adding a picture here.
The imam was a professor and we could ask him anything we wanted. I’m not sure what he thought about most of the questions being asked by the women in our group. I threw care to the wind and asked him to define jihad. He explained it as a crusade for a belief, or a personal struggle to attain religious discipline. He said it could be a holy war on behalf of Islam but assured us it did not result in death or harm to anyone! He said extremists are using Islam to justify their actions.
This was my third camel ride and I have yet to meet a camel I like. They are mean, spit, hiss and try to bite. We rode in full Bedouin garb for one hour starting right before noon. These people obviously never heard Noel Coward’s song Mad Dogs and Englishmen Go Out in the Noon Day Sun! Okay, here’s the place where you fall over laughing! Now don’t I look like I’m having fun?
The belly dancer performed after a dinner and then joined us to be interviewed. She said she loves dancing but can’t dance in her own city because of the social stigma. Her parents do not accept what she does. She would like to marry and would quit dancing if she married. Our guide explained that it will be very difficult for her to find a man to marry her since what she does is considered a form of prostitution.
The film sets were in the middle of nowhere in the desert but the minute we got out of the Jeeps, kids selling trinkets appeared on motor bikes from out of the blue. The sleepless night in the tent by myself was terrifying. My tent was on one end in a line of tents that did not open into the camp but opened on the far side into the vastness of the Sahara. Tents creek at night when the wind blows. Every noise made me wonder if a mouse (there was one in the dining tent earlier), a scorpion, a snake or some crazed Arab would appear. My tent is the last one on the left in the picture.
The population is 98% Muslim. The people were very friendly and I never felt threatened (except for the night in the tent). Tunisia was a French protectorate and most of the people we met spoke French, even the children would greet you with “Bon jour”. People use tiles, rugs, marble and mosaics extensively in decorating and the only wallpaper I saw was in hotels. I took lots of pictures and some of them reminded me of home, Casart wallcovering designs, or possibilities for future designs.
Here is an iron butterfly on a door that reminded me of our butterflies. Lindsey just posted on butterflies Wednesday. Often I find that my daughters and I will be on the same wave length!
There was a Bacchus mosaic encircled with Della Robbia and I thought of our Casart Della Robbia removable wallpaper design.
– Lorre Lei
On this 88th day since the BP oil spill I feel the need to add some humor to my post (in addition to the camel ride picture). So I will let the cartoon in Wednesday’s Times Picayune speak for itself.
The print isn’t very clear but the man is saying, “BP will now perform an “integrity check” on the well.” The woman asks, ” Isn’t that like Lindsay Lohan giving it a sobriety test?”
There is something to laugh about today. BP reported they were able to stop the leak yesterday. Now follows a few days of watching the pressure to see if it holds and doesn’t decrease indicating that there is a leak somewhere else under the Gulf floor. Let’s all keep our fingers crossed and hope it will hold!
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