Kairouan and Takrouna

This Saturday's trip was to Kairouan. Before heading out to Kairouan, my roommates and I asked our host mom what we should expect. She explained to us that Kairouan was the fourth holiest city in Islam (following Mecca, Medina, and Jerusalem). It is the holiest city in all of North Africa. Apparently, Muhammed's hairdresser brought Islam to Kairouan and the religion spread outward across the region.


Our first stop were some Roman cisterns. These cisterns were quite boring... but made instantly cooler once you realized that they were constructed over 1000 years ago.


Next we stopped by the Great Mosque. Constructed (originally) in 670 AD and then rebuilt a little later on in the 9th century, I think this is one of the oldest, if not the oldest, mosques in North Africa and maybe even all of Africa. This is also the first mosque I've ever been inside. Tourists are allowed inside the courtyard if they are properly attired... if you aren't, you are handed a floor length robe to cover up. (Yes, mom, I dressed modestly enough that I didn't need one). The mosque was quite impressive, a huge courtyard, beautiful carving around the doors and hundreds upon hundreds of columns. As non-Muslims we were not allowed inside the part of the mosque where praying takes place, but we were allowed to peer in the doors and take pictures.


After we perused the mosque, my roommates and I dashed outside to find this pretty tiled thing (I can't explain it, see the picture) on the roof of a building nearby. It's on the cover of Alissa's Dorling Kindersley Tunisia Guide and it looks gorgeous. We were assured by our director that it was a tourist trap, but took off just the same. And yes, we were told by a man that we could find it inside a carpet shop and were then forced to admire 10-20 carpets before we managed to get out and go up the stairs on the roof... from which we could see this thing on a different roof. Alissa had promised to buy a rug from them, but they had gotten us and we knew it. We darted down the stairs and into the next rug shop which kindly let us in and up with no hassle at all. It was very pretty, but I'm sure that our directors are right when they say that it's a modern day creation done by the rug shop simply to attract tourists.


Following the mosque came the tomb of Muhammed's hairdresser. Our directors explained to us that there are several towns that claim to have the tomb of this hairdresser, so there is chance that the one we were visiting wasn't real. Regardless, the building was beautiful. While we were there we saw families that had come on pilgrimage to visit the tomb. We were told that families on pilgrimage are allowed to stay in the building for free and use the facilities of the building.


Our next stop was the rug museum filled with many old rugs from Kairouan and other parts of Tunisi. It was a short trip and soon we were off for a lunch and a dessert of Makroudh, which I can only describe as Tunisian fig newtons (though I'm not sure there are even figs in them).



Following this, we explored Kairouan's medina, which I really enjoyed. While Tunises medina is quite large with many small windy roads, Kairouan's medina has more or less one wide road with shops off of it. It was nice not to feel so hemmed in. We spent a significant amount of time in a rug shop in the medina where I ALMOST splurged and bought a rug. Kairouan is known for their rugs, if you haven't guessed by the fact that I've mentioned rugs at least three times so far. In addition, we saw the camel in the picture below. Before I left Tunis we asked my host mother what we should see. She told us that there is a camel in a cafe that walks around a well pulling up water day in and day out. Apparently someone told her that the camel is brought up there as a baby and is left there its entire life, just pulling up water. I confronted the camel handler about this and he said that it was just a story, the camel goes up and down each day. The camel was cool to see, especially after we knew that weren't seeing animal cruelty in action. We drank some of the water it pulled up, if you drink it you will return to Kairouan one day.


After the medina we headed back in the direction of Tunis. On the way, we stopped for tea in the Berber hill town of Takrouna. As you approach the town you see a craggy little mountain with houses clinging to its tip. Apparently many Berber towns are built on hills (for the obvious reasons). Getting up the tiny mountain in a minibus is no small task. Our driver burnt out the clutch as we jerked our way up the mountainside. I thought I was going to die, but, then again, I feel that every day on the streets of Tunis. I applaud our bus driver for his effort. Once at the top, we ooohed and awed and the beautiful scenery. From the top of this mountain you get a fantastic panoramic view of hills, feilds, mountains, goats, olive groves... and then a cement factory belching out smoke. If you ignore that cement factory, it's really a phenomenal view. The little houses at the top seemed very southwestern to me, especially with red peppers and rugs hanging all over them. I don't think anyone still lives at the top of the mountain (I could easily be wrong) but there are still several shops and a beautiful cafe that we spent some time at. I think I've liked Takrouna the best of all the places we've visited so far.



We made one last stop on the way home: the Water Palace. A set of roman ruins right next to a mountain where the aqueducts started that led to Carthage. Unfortunately, it was pitch black out and we couldn't really see anything, but we did have a nice time making shadow puppets on the walls of the palace. We also had a difficult time seeing the aqueducts along the road as we drove back, but from what I could see they were pretty impressive and quite complete in some places.

I took a lot of pictures this past weekend and I've posted many of them on My Flickr. I strongly suggest you stop by and check them out. I'm sorry this post was so long in coming, I had some blogger issues.

What?

Five minutes ago, I looked out the window and saw this:

Northern Tunisia

Yesterday we set off on another day long trip to discover Tunisia. This time we loaded into our minibus and headed north to visit Utica, Bizerte, and Ichkeul. Our first stop was at Utica.


Utica was once the first colony of the Phoenicians and a critical port town. Today, all that remains are ruins. The coastline has receded 15km as the nearby Medjerda River has caused the bay to fill in with sediment. At its prime, Utica was the capital of the Roman Province of Africa Nova. After the second Punic War Utica alligned itself with Rome instead of with Carthage (traitors), they were rewarded greatly for this after the third Punic War when they were named the capital of Rome's new African Province. Emperor Augustus switched the capital to Carthage after it was rebuilt but Utica remained a popular town. It was destroyed by the Arabs in 700 AD.


The ruins at Utica didn't impress me as much as the Dougga ruins, but there were some things I enjoyed. One was the beautiful mosaics, several of which still remained on the floors of buildings. Our guide brought with him a spray bottle of water. When we were shown mosaics, he spritzed the tiles with water so we could see the tiles shine. I was really impressed by some of the vivid colors that they used. It's not often that you see such brilliant turquoise in ancient mosaics.


The other interesting part of Utica was that our guide allowed us to look at some very recent excavations. We weren't allowed to take pictures, but we were allowed to take a peek. Even though the sea can't be seen from Utica of today, taking a look at these ruins proved that this town had once been right up on the edge of the water. The ruins were filled with sand and salty puddles and littered with chunks of three thousand year old coral.

Our next stop was lunch in Bizerte. We didn't really get to explore the town, we just had our lunch and headed to the port. Our walk through the port was quick-- less than 10 minutes I'd say. The port was quite beautiful, I loved the colorful boats and the fact that it jutted up right next to the Medina and Kasbah.


The final stop of the day was Ichkeul National Park. Thousands of birds migrate from Europe to Lake Ichkeul during the winter. Unfortunately, while several years ago around 200,000 birds migrated each winter now only 50,000 have been showing up. The freshwater lake is becoming increasingly more salinated, causing the ecosystem to shift dramatically. With less food for the birds, fewer birds migrate. We did have the opportunity to look through a telescope at a huge flock of beautiful pink flamingoes. Unfortunately, I don't have a camera strong enough to take detailed pictures of them.


Check out the rest of my pictures here.

Of Hijabs and Harassment

In the past few days I've read two excellent newspaper articles. The first is from the Seattle Times and was sent to be by my father and can be read here: Sexual Harassment Intensifies in Egypt. My friends and I have become increasingly frustrated with the sexual harassment we've been experiencing here in Tunis. Some of us have dealt with it better than others. Coming to Tunisia, I knew that as a white female I would stick out and would experience some harassment. I prepared myself for it mentally and did my best to bring clothes that wouldn't call attention to myself. What I didn't expect was that it would eventually get to me. Walking down the street I am always met by stares from males and females. Many males, mostly young males around my age, make catcalls, hissing noises, and do other generally obnoxious things. Sometimes boys follow us. Several times girls have had men in cars follow slowly behind them. I've been having a difficult time reconciling the fact that nearly every Tunisian I have spoken to has been kind, welcoming, and very enthusiastic to meet me with the outright rudeness of these men on the streets. As you consider sexual harassment in Tunis you need to remember that you are in a large city. While many people here are religious, being on the street in a busy city lends a certain amount of anonymity which in turn leads these men to conduct themselves with less respect for others. I'm sure that if these boys heard their sisters being talked to in this way they would be furious. This article about harassment in Egypt was very interesting and I think it helps justify a little of what goes on in Tunisia. The article asserts that the high unemployment level in Egypt creates a sense of desperation that manifests itself through sexual harassment. I need to say that after talking to people who have spent time in Egypt and reading this article I feel that they have a MUCH more serious problem than we do here. That being said, I can't wait to go down south to more rural communities where (I've been told) this doesn't happen frequently. It will be interesting to contrast the way I am treated in Tunis and in touristy areas like Hammamet with towns in the desert.

The second article that I read was from today's New York Times: Youthful Voice Stirs Challenge to Secular Turks. This article discusses one young woman's attempt to pass a law that would allow Turkish women to wear headscarves in universities. This hits very close to home. Every day when I enter my school I see a man in a suit standing in the entryway. This man corners women in headscarves and demands that they take them off. Some girls brush past him. Others protest. From what I've seen, the ones that he catches do remove their scarves, only to replace them as soon as they cross through the doorway. While headscarves are not banned in schools in Tunisia, students are dissuaded from wearing them. As far as I can tell, Tunisia and Turkey are the only two Muslim countries with a policy of this sort. It doesn't appear to me that this law is very strictly enforced. In fact, it appears like an even higher percentage of women in my school wear headscarves than I see on the street. A girl in my program asked one of our directors why this is. Her response "Well, if you were told not to do something, what would you do?"

Tunis vs. Seychelles

We were prepared for riots and crazy fans. One of the directors of the program told us that we needed to wear ugly clothes so we wouldn't attract any attention from men. We were told not to bring purses, not to wear anything that hung off of us, to wear closed toed shoes, etc. I was very, very excited. Apparently the year before when students in our program had went to a soccer game three boys had gotten into a fistfight with Tunisians when they tried to steal a girl's purse.

Well... the game we went to on Saturday was quite anticlimactic.


As you can see, very few people were at the game. This is because Seychelles is horrible. Yes, it was a world cup qualifier, but not a very exciting one. Tunisia won quite decisively, 5-0. In addition, the stadium looks extra empty because it is so huge. It is the largest in Africa (until the new one is built in South Africa for the World Cup). I can imagine that if it were filled to the brim it would be quite a crazy place, but for us, in the place of rowdy crowds there were families with small children. I feel as though I could have worn a dress and carried my laptop with me and wouldn't have been hassled.


The coolest thing I saw there were the vendors who sell everything from Turkish coffee to fish to nuts. I think that they are all just people who simply buy tickets to the game and then come in and sell things...it didn't really seem like they were affiliated with the stadium at all.


Tomorrow Tunisia is playing a friendly game against France in Paris, I'm sure it will be way more exciting than the one I went to!

I've been told that people have been having trouble commenting so I changed the commenting system around. Anyone should be able to comment now without a Blogger account.

Football!

One of my French teacher spends her free time running a therapeutic farm for disabled people. She has promised to bring us there later in the quarter to take a tour and volunteer a bit. I'm not really certain exactly what goes on there at this point. From what I can gather disabled (mostly mentally) people ages 6 and up spend time there during the day doing projects and such. It is on a farm with olive trees, a garden, some animals. I think the disabled people work with the animals. Like I said, I'll get a better grasp of all this later and explain it at that point. Today was a very special day at the farm, the Tunisian National Soccer Team was coming to give away signed merchandise and take pictures. My French teacher canceled our class today and invited us to stop by the farm if we liked. Of course, a group of girls in their early twenties would like nothing more than to spend a few hours in the presence of professional athletes, we accepted her offer readily. The farm was a zoo of media people. It's apparently ran by the Lion's Club of Tunis so many business people and other people affiliated with the farm stopped by as well, I'd say there were well over 100 people there. My group of girls spent most of the time wandering aimlessly around. There really wasn't much we could do but stand there. Obviously our teacher was far too busy being interviewed and running this circus without us getting in her way and asking to be shown around. So we stood and stared. Finally we managed to snag a soccer player to get a picture taken with-- our one and only desire. We ended up getting in a second picture with multiple players as well. This is the first time that I have seen anyone of the females in my group react positively to heckling from males. We are now used to being catcalled every second of the day. However, when a professional football player is saying "Pretty, I get number?" the reaction is much more positive than when the creepy boy on the corner throws out a common pick up line ("lovely bubbly," "sex machine," "Britney!," "How much?"). I think some of us might even have given it to him if it weren't for our French Professor standing by. We had a quite a fun day, if anything, it was exciting to say that we got to meet them. We also snagged free tickets to this Saturday's game against Seychelles! Sure to be a very exciting.

Whoever took this picture did a horrible job.

Today was also my first day of cross-cultural conversations class, a really interesting experience that I will definitely discuss in a further post.

Dougga

On Sunday we went to Dougga, about an hour and a half west of Tunis. After the Romans conquered North Africa they used the area around Dougga to supply the empire with wheat. Dougga became the administrative center of the wheat exportation system and was in important cog in the Roman empire. What is so fantastic about these ruins is that tourists are allowed free reign to explore the ruins. We can climb on them, crawl in tunnels, etc. I've been to many ruins in my day, I consider these some of the best. The fantastic view of the countryside really couldn't be beat.


Many many more pictures of Dougga here!

My Neighbor's Brother's Wife's Sister's Daughter's Wedding.

Last night my roommates and I were abruptly invited to a wedding by our next-door-neighbor, Malika. Of course, we said yes, we'd been whining about wanting to see a Tunisian wedding for the past two weeks. As I expected, it was a truly memorable and interesting experience.

First of all, I know you are going to want an explanation about my outfit, which you will see in pictures below. As soon as Malika and Souad heard that we were going to the wedding they announced that they would get some of Malika's daughter's dresses for us to wear. I was instantly relieved. I had no idea what Tunisians wore to weddings, I didn't want to wear something that was inappropriate. I was also excited because I assumed that this would mean that I'd get to wear some sort of exciting native Tunisian outfit. Wrong. I ended up in a skin tight mid-90s black dress that fell to my ankles. With sparkles. All over. I'm not really a sparkles kind of girl, but Souad and Malika oohed and ahhed over how pretty I was so I just let it go. Alissa got away with her own outfit and Megan ended up in a Chinese-inspired dress which was pretty cute on her. She felt a little uncomfortable because it was shorter than dresses most Tunisians would wear in public, but at least she didn't look like Miss America.


We started off the night at 9pm at the bride's home. The bride and groom met in Germany, where they both live. The groom has a Ph.D. in something and the bride is a Ph.D. candidate in Archeology. Since they are both Tunisian they are home for their wedding. When we walked to into the bride's home the men were all outdoors on the deck and the women were in the livingroom. We could hear music blasting in the living room and women trilling ululations. Malika opened the door and ululated at the woman in front of her who echoed back. These random outbreaks of ululations continued sporadically all night and are apparently a wedding tradition in Tunisia. Inside the room a CD of music was playing and women were dancing or sitting on couches as the bride sat in the center of the room with her dress spread out about her.

As the women danced Malika explained that the music that was being played was traditional Tunisian Jewish Bedouin wedding music, played at absolutely every wedding. Tunisia has been a melting pot of religions and cultures throughout its history and is extremely proud to say that it is one country where Jews and Muslims live side by side and even share some common traditions. I was forced off the couch to dance in front of the crowd. A very uncomfortable moment to say the least. I danced with one other woman, copying everything that she did and hoping that I didn't look like that much of an idiot. Maybe if I wasn't wearing a skin tight sparkly black dress I would have had a bit more confidence.

After a decent amount of dancing we headed out to the wedding hall. It was then that Malika learned that the groom was an Islamist and did not want to have a typical Tunisian wedding. Tunisian weddings are apparently very westernized... I wouldn't know, as this wedding was certainly not the norm. The groom prefered to have a traditional wedding where men celebrate in one room and women in the other. Malika explained that this was very unusual, she had never been to a wedding like this. Separating the bride and grrom is apparently the norm in other Muslim countries around the Middle East, just not in liberal Tunisa.


True to what Malika told us, once we got to the wedding hall the men went into one hall and the women went into the other. The groom helped the bride settle onto some sort of Greek inspired chaise lounge and left. An orchestra of women began to play and women began to dance. Of course, we were forced to dance. It was actually quite fun once we got into it, but I felt a little too awkward and uncomfortable to really let go.

After we danced a bit, the drinks and pasteries began to come. As we sipped our drinks we discussed Malika's heritage, Tunisia, weddings, and everything in between by writing notes on napkins. The music in the room was turned up very loud which made it difficult to hear each other. We waited and waited for the groom to come. Malika said that he certainly had to come and at least put a ring on the bride's finger... but he never did. That was it. The bride sat on her chair, danced a bit, and smiled a lot. No ceremony, no speeches, no groom. It was certainly quite different from any wedding I've been to. For me, a wedding focuses on the couple, not the bride and groom separately. My roommates and I felt that it was a little sad... the bride up there all alone, sitting and watching the crowd. To each her own. It was great experience and really a very good time.


This is Malika and I at our table.

Fame

Check out the home page of the Tunisian Embassy Website

I've also posted many new pictures on My Flickr from my trips to Sidi Bou Said, the American Cemetery, and Hammamet.

Eid Mabrouk!

This Wednesday and Thursday the Tunisians celebrated Eid, the end of Ramadan. During Eid, nearly everything is closed and everyone spends their time eating and celebrating with their families. Eleven of the students on the OSU program decided to take a mini-vacation to Hammamet, the best beach town in Tunisia. Hammamet is crowded with tourists from all over Europe, guaranteeing that at least some things in this area would be open.

Wednesday morning we caught a luage from Tunis to Hammamet. When the director of our program explained the luage system to us he used the English word “limo” interchangeably with “luage.” A luage is NOT an American-style limo, rather, it is a large, beat-up, white van that seats eight people. As you arrive at a busy luage station many drivers will pounce upon you yelling the name of different destinations. You choose a driver going to your destination, pay him a predetermined fee, and set off. I found the luages very easy to use and very cheap. It only cost me 4 dinars to make the hour-long journey. I was also fortunate enough to have the help of one of my host brothers in navigating the Tunis luage station.

Once we arrived in Hammamet we made our way to the Yasmine neighborhood. Yasmine is jammed with huge touristy resorts and miles of sun-drenched beaches. It is also home to Carthage Land and the newly opened Ali Baba Land. It is also known to be one of the areas in Tunisia with a vibrant nightlife… which wasn’t really active for us because our trip coincided with the holiday of Eid. Our hotel was a three star hotel a block from the beach that had been discovered and booked for us by one of my amazing host brothers. It had an indoor pool, outdoor pool, and fitness center and our 32.40 dinars a night also covered breakfast and dinner. Four of the students with us opted for a five star hotel further down the road, but Hotel Green Golf suited the rest of us just fine. And yes, before anyone thinks I spelled that wrong, it is Green Golf like golfing not like sea gulf… I’m not really sure why, I saw no golf course. Our hotel was located across the street from an ice skating rink that had a huge line of teenagers and pounding music from around 5-10pm. We weren’t sure if we would find a disco or an actual ice rink inside. It seemed to be the only club-like place open in the area.

Once we settled in we grabbed our belongings and met up with the five star kids at the beach. We ended up on a beach that didn’t belong to either of our hotels but to Hotel Mauradi. I think by the end of these two days the people that worked there just assumed (or didn’t care) that we weren’t actually paying for the beach.


We spent the rest of the afternoon lying on the beach and playing in the waves. One of the best parts of the beaches at Hammamet is that the sea actually has pretty large waves in it that you can bodysurf. The waves break close in to shore so I can’t imagine that actual surfing would be a possibility, but they certainly were fun to swim around in. It wasn’t very sunny out but we had some occasional sunbreaks and even though it was October we really weren’t too cold.



After dinner at our hotel we took taxis into the main part of Hammamet to an excellent café. The café, Café Sidi Bou Hdid was situated with the looming walls of the Kasbah on one side and the sea on the other. We sat on a terrace outside with water crashing on the rocks next to us and drank tons of tea, chatted with locals, and took many pictures. After this, most of the group continued on to a bar in Yasmine with music. I was feeling a bit dehydrated from my day at the beach so I called it an early night and headed back to the hotel to rest up.



This morning a majority of the group went back into Hammamet to explore the medina as I and three other students opted to spend the morning on the beach. We had a few hours of brilliant sun and spent most of the time thinking that the others had made a very bad choice. At around four we all caught luages back to Tunis.


It was a very short get away but we all had an excellent time. I figure this is probably one of the last times I’ll get to swim while I’m here as the days are getting colder and greyer so I was very happy to have some beach time. Now we’re back in Tunis, resting as Souad goes and visits her new grand daughter, Mariam (or Marian? Myriam?), who was born last night. We’ll get to see her tomorrow afternoon when she goes home from the hospital.

This is me with a fake elephant in front of Carthage Land.