Tunisian Vibe

Three days in Tunisia and I’ve already travelled half-way across the country: from the capital Tunis in the North-East to Tozeur near the Western border in central Tunisia.

Exceptionally I am travelling for the first nine or so days of this trip in the company of another seasoned solo traveller. My fellow traveller is Eva from Denmark, whom I first met some five years ago in Marrakesh. I was trying to ask the ladies who served breakfast at my guest house, where I could find a genuine local hammam (as opposed to an aromatherapy tourist spa) in Marrakesh. Eva joined the conversation, joined me in the hammam and then we decided to join forces for the remaining few days of our trip. Now we are reunited and conquering Tunis.

So far we’ve spent one day in Tunis - of which I will write at some later date, as I’m returning to that city during this trip and will spend more time there.

After Tunis we’ve spent a day on the road in a louage - an integral part of public transport in Tunisia. A louage is a shared minivan, which starts from the louage station after all the eight seats are occupied. So one could end up waiting ten minutes or three hours to start off. We got lucky and only had to wait around half an hour for our roadtrip to begin.

And now we’re happily settled in Tozeur. There is much to love here.

It turns out my superpower, if any, on this trip is speaking French. 
To clarify, I don’t actually speak French. But somewhere as a 7-11 year old in a preparatory school in England I was taught the French for ”the garden of my uncles is bigger than the ink pen of my aunt”. And whereas I have so far had disappointingly few discussions involving ink pens or aunts, a vague childhood grasp of the French language seems to take one an unexpectedly long way towards communication. Add to this a dash of miscellanious lines from classic French films and a solid use of message enforcing hand gestures and I am pracially native. 

On the first day in Tunis I managed to order pomegranate juice in fluent French (pomegranates are in season and it’s worth taking a trip to Tunisia for this juice alone) and discuss the possibility of hogging the front seat in the louage on the forthcoming seven hour ride to Tozeur, since I suffer from a bad case of motion sickness in all things moving. Admittedly in the latter case I did rely heavily on pantomime to describe what could ensue should I not get the coveted front seat.

On the second day I had expanded my repertoire to talking with fellow travellers at the louage station about road maintenance in Tunisia and the political situation in central Africa - at least that’s what I think we were discussing.

At this rate I should be near native by the end of the month.

If communicating in French is my superpower, then the superpower of the many Tunisians we’ve met so far is being really friendly!

We haven’t hit any really touristy regions yet, but at least in places less travelled, people are incredibly friendly and helpful. This makes a most promising foundation for any trip. 

Yet we’ve been told that the events of the 2011 Arab spring have hit tourism hard here. Western tourists especially have steered clear of the country. I’ve often wondered, why many westerners seem afraid to travel to a country like Tunisia, which, a few border regions aside, is just about as safe as houses. Yet these same people will happily go off to cities such as Memphis or Baltimore, which have much higher crime rates and certainly much higher probability of running into unsavoury characters who own a gun. 

This year, apparently, the tourists are gradually starting to return. However, I certainly can’t complain that there are too many western tourists here. In fact we’ve seen hardly any. 

I suppose they haven’t heard it’s pomegranate season.