|
Last
Monday was a whirlwind of traveling, as I covered between 150 and 200
kilometers on public transportation, seeing some of the most highly
regarded sites in all of Tunisia.
My
first leg of the journey was by train from Sousse to El Jem, site of the
remains of a Roman coliseum that was built to support a crowd of 30,000
spectators. This building is the third largest of its kind in the world and
was amazing to see and traipse through, up and down the stone steps,
getting glimpses of the beautiful arches. Also in El Jem is a magnificent
small museum with many restored mosaic floors, all beautifully displayed,
depicting a wide variety of subjects, including sea life, important people
of the time, and various Roman gods.
From
El Jem to Mahdia I made my debut on the very practical form of public transportation
that is ubiquitous in Tunisia; it is called the louage (pronounced
lwahj, with the last consonant sounding like the "s" in
"pleasure"). There are louage stations in cities and towns
of every size. The process is easy: just let somebody know where you are
going, and you will be directed to the next vehicle headed there, from
among all the vehicles in the garage (sometimes it is more like a parking
lot). The larger stations have signs to indicate destinations; at the
smaller stations, the workers there know which drivers are going where.
The
louages are large vans with seating for seven people. Like other
places in Africa, they leave the stations only when they are full. Unlike
other places, however, the definition of "full" means seven
people for seven seats, not ten or more. Additionally, they filled up very
quickly. During the entire day, I took five louage rides and never
had to wait more than eleven minutes for a departure.
In
Mahdia, the louage station was on the outskirts of town, which meant
that I needed to take a taxi in order to see the medina. This meant yet
another effective form of transport - taxi collectif, which is a
shared taxi in which each passenger pays only a portion of the total fare.
Mahdia didn't have much to see - just another old medina in a seaside
setting, but it was pleasant just the same, a relatively quiet town without
a lot of tourist activity.
After
Mahdia, I went to Monastir, also on the coast, famous for its beaches as well
as two spectacular structures: the seaside old fort that resembles a sand
castle and the mausoleum of former President Habib Ibn Ali Bourguiba and
his family. Monastir was the birthplace of this beloved president who
served from 1957 to 1987. Every city in the country has a major street
named after him. The mausoleum itself is richly appointed, with domes and
towers, gold leaf, marble, and rich woods.
The
cost of my transport for the whole day was a very reasonable 10.350 dinars,
about $8.28.
From
Monastir, it was back to Sousse so that I could spend my last night with my
host Gaby. We went to dinner at a restaurant which features its own
brewery. It's located in a city adjacent to Sousse - a new community, Port
El Kantaoui, that was completed about eight years ago and has spacious
plazas, cobble stoned streets, and architecture that reminded me of the
California Mission style, with its emphasis on whitewashed stucco and
balconies.
On
Tuesday morning I was off by train to Tunis, a two-hour ride, and had
decided before I left there that for my last two nights I would upgrade
myself to a nicer hotel. The hotel, the Golf Royal, is done up in a golfing
theme, complete with golf clubs that serve as door handles at the main
entry.
I
had two main activities in Tunis: stocking up on souvenirs to bring back to
Mauritania and a visit to the Bardo Museum. It's always hard for me to know
exactly what people will appreciate. I also don't want to load myself down
with heavy and bulky items. I find that it is not easy to find items that
meet all my criteria; they must be lightweight, useful, attractive, small,
unbreakable, and reasonably priced. I made do with keychains, refrigerator
magnets, small copper dishes, and halvah.
On
Thursday morning, just when I was making my last rounds of
souvenir-shopping before going to lunch and the airport, I ran into Lisa,
just back from Malta, who decided to head into town to walk around, rather
than spend the day at the airport waiting for her connecting flight (as she
had said she would do). She had a wonderful visit to Malta, and from the
photos that I saw, I would love to go there.
One
of our PC medical officers is Tunisian and asked Lisa and me if we would be
willing to bring packages for her from the old country. We arranged with
her friend to meet us at the airport to give us the boxes. I was especially
happy to do this because there have been so many people transporting things
for me and I have not had any chance to try and balance out the equation.
When
I went through the security check, the x-ray machine detected some articles
that the guard wanted to confiscate: a small pair of scissors, cuticle
cutters, the metal fork that is part of a travel cutlery set, and a
corkscrew. I didn't care about the corkscrew, but did not want to give up
the other items, so I went back to the registration counter to check the
bag. It appears that traveling exclusively with carry-on luggage is going
to be history for me now!
Right
after checking in for my flight, I received a parting gift from Tunisia: an
attack of diarrhea. Other than that, I have been feeling fine, and I very
much enjoyed my trip. It's hard to believe that Tunisia is on the same
continent as the four other African countries I have seen! I don't foresee
myself living here for any reason, but if I did have to choose a country in
which to live in Africa, Tunisia is the only one that I would consider.
*****
Re-entry to
life at "home" was fairly easy - including a heavy new dose of
getting used to the way things (don't) work around here, as everything
continues to be run on West Africa International Time ("WAIT").
My first stop from the airport was the ATM at the bank, where I had to
withdraw enough money to pay my rent - something that I could not do before
I left because the new deposits of our Peace Corps living allowances had
not yet been made into our accounts. That should have been an easy task,
except for the fact that the ATM didn't have any money in it, and it was
the beginning of a weekend, so I had to wait until the bank opened on
Sunday.
Lisa
was anxious to get back to Nouadhibou, and was planning to take a flight on
Saturday, but the airline that flies on Saturday has only one plane, and it
was out of service. The other airline flies on Sunday, but those flights
were full, which meant having to get a ticket for Monday. But when she went
to the travel agent to do that, the computers were not working, which
necessitated a trip to the airline office itself.
On
Sunday morning, as we headed to the bank and the various places to try to
get Lisa's ticket, I was hopeful that the ATM would be in working order,
but it wasn't yet. People at the bank normally don't wait in orderly lines
here, so it meant waiting behind a cluster of more than twenty men at the
teller's window - something I wanted to avoid by getting my ATM card in the
first place.
Good
thing Lisa was with me, though, as women are not expected to wait for
service here. I tore up the check that I had written to myself and rewrote
one to her. She took it, politely made her way through the mass, and had
the money in just a few minutes.
We
have a new Fulbright scholar here who asked Lisa how long it takes to get
to Nouadhibou. I had to laugh at her reply: "Four days,
apparently."
Over
the weekend, PCV Janine came back to Mauritania after her visit to the USA,
and made her debut as an overnight guest at Château Jay. Her mom, Donna, is
a regular reader of my weekly website postings and sent Janine back here
with some kosher vegetarian food - quite unexpected, as well as
appreciated! It's so nice to be experiencing the support of the families of
other Volunteers!
*****
As I left for
the trip, I finished reading The Road Unseen by Peter and
Barbara Jenkins. Several years ago, I read Peter's first book, A Walk
Across America, and enjoyed it. The focus of this later book,
writing about the "unseen" road, is the faith that the Jenkins
experienced, not only during their walk but in their religious, family and
home life that followed when the trip was over.
I was happy to see on a map before I left that there was a used bookstore
in Tunis. That being the case, I didn't bring a lot of reading material
with me, choosing instead to have faith that I would find something of
interest. It was a very small "store" - more like a walk-in
closet posing as a store front - and they had only about a hundred or so
books written in English. Not only did I find two books that I wanted to
read, but these volumes were curiously related to each other, the topics
being two men whose names are synonymous with "hotel" in both the
United States and internationally: Hilton and Marriott. (What are the odds
that both books would be in the same used book store?)
Be
My Guest is the autobiography of Conrad Hilton. I found it
fascinating to read how his business life unfolded, from taking over the
management of a hotel, onward to renovating faded hotels, building new
ones, and expanding from his original sites in Texas.
Marriott:
The J. Willard Marriott Story by Robert O'Brien traces a parallel
evolution during roughly the same period of time as Hilton, including the
Depression and World Wars, from the Marriott family's original nine-stool
root beer stand in Washington, D.C. to the current international enterprise
as it exists today.
Both
Hilton and Marriott believed in hard work, had strong religious beliefs,
expressed concern about the proper training and treatment of their
employees, and wanted to give good value and service to the American
people.
The
Four Agreements by don Miguel Ruiz was a book that I reread in
Tunisia. I had read it for the first time last year on Yom Kippur and
brought it with me so that I could do the same this year - not only for the
sage advice that it offers but because it was a gift from my loving sister-in-law
Anne and, therefore, a wonderful connection to family.
|
