Bisalaama Tunis!

My last few days in Tunis were a blur. On Friday, Akira, David and I made a solemn pilgrimage to our favorite sandwich shop for the Last Supper of our regular orders—for me, a tuna taboona (with a lot of harissa, of course) and a fruit smoothie “cocktail.” I absolutely rocked my Arabic oral a few hours later, and (much to the apparent surprise of the program director) scored an unbelievable “Advanced” level on the ACTFL scale. Considering my pretty basic level of competence, I’m sure that isn’t accurate and won’t be replicated in my coming phone interview (yuck) but it is flattering nonetheless. I think the key was just comprehension and circumlocution—my first impressive moment was when the testers asked me how long I had been studying Arabic before I came to Tunisia (an odd question considering they knew we were all beginners, and asked quickly and with a weird tense). When I answered right away, the tester turned to his colleague and quickly said something along the lines of “wow, she’s the first one to get that question—she understood,” to which I responded “of course!” After that, it was actually a lot of fun. I fulfilled my worst fear when I accidentally slid into French, and had to literally clap my hand over my mouth, but I was able to explain in Arabic “when you ask me about French literature, I want to talk in French. Can I have the next question?” without any problem. I even talked about DC and Obama, and when asked for my opinion of Michelle I was able to compensate for not knowing “intelligent” by saying “Michelle graduated from the same university as Obama but their teacher said that she was a better student than him.”

After the oral I headed immediately for celebratory gelato with the girls, a quick final hour of beach with Akira and Tyler, and then home to change for the banquet. Kate and I split a bottle of wine and chatted like true “ochette” (sisters) as we got ready; I wore her necklace, she wore my dress, and we made promises to visit each other fi Mustokbol (in the future). We arrived to the banquet on Tunisian time (read: an hour late) and sat at a table with one of our feminist lecturers, who had amusingly disgusted responses to Mustafa’s run-of-the mill misogynist comments. During dessert they showed a little retrospective video that included the performance of my harissa poem from Dougga and my bus acceptance speech, which got a great reception from all of the Tunisian tutors and parents that knew me who hadn’t seen it live. My own parents were shocked to hear that I could actually speak some Arabic (I never really tried at home, because they just made fun of us) and found my class nickname “fil-fil” (Pepper) to be equally hilarious.

I caught a taxi to Marsa Plage Saturday morning and browsed the little shops and open-air book market before getting the train into Tunis for some last-minute souk action. Over the course of 4 hours or so, I managed to speak French, Arabic and English and even Spanish, and by the time I left, my brain was so muddled with code switching that I could hardly communicate at all. It was gratifying how much Arabic I was able to understand, though, especially compared to my previous, jetlagged experience in the souks on the day of our arrival. My best adventure was a shopkeeper who, after trying to help me find Akira in the impossible maze of shops, lead me on a little tour through the shoe-maker’s souk before brining me back to his own perfume store, where he served me mint tea, gave me a perfume-making and testing demonstration, and insisted that I sample almost all of them before settling on a little vial of jasmine oil. That night, Kate and I had our final dinner with the family, which was appropriately delicious and even more awkward, then caught a cab out to the snazzy “Lac de Tunis” area for smoothies and shisha with some students and my teachers. I got home around 2:30am—just enough time to get two hours of sleep before we left for our flight. Sam’s host brother Eshem came to see us off and gave me a Tunisian soccer t-shirt as a parting gift, which was a much-appreciated gesture in light of my own family’s suckage.

Paris a few hours later was pretty chill—literally. After Tunisian heat, the 70-degree days felt almost like winter, and I spent the two days I was there wrapped up in jeans, tennis shoes and a jacket. With the flurry of finals during my last few days in Tunis I wasn’t successful in setting up appointments to see apartments, so I just relaxed and enjoyed the all-is-well-with-the-world feeling of being in France once again. I got a cheap hotel room with another boy from the program, Anthony, who is waiting to meet up with his sister for a backpacking Eurotrip. (Ah, the good ol’ days…). He doesn’t speak any French, and might have the worst sense of direction of anyone I’ve travelled with, so I felt very useful (Inch’allah his sister has a better internal compass than he does). He didn’t have to wait long to speak a language he knows, though—we were on the RER from the airport to the city when we had our first Arabic conversation, thanks to the t-shirt from Eshem that had a little Arabic on it. Our hotel was in an Arab part of Bastille, too, so we spent our evening browsing Arab butchers and bakeries, looking for telltale Tunisian foods as an invitation to try our “Asalaama. Le bess?” on for size.

We spent a good chunk of yesterday in the Centre Pompidou, Paris’ relatively new modern art museum, housed in a controversially odd building that has exposed, color-coded pipes on one side (blue for air, red for elevators, green for water, yellow for electricity) and six floors of inclining hamster tubes of escalators on the other. Somehow I had managed to never visit this particular museum, but after this trip it will always make my list. The hamster’s-eye view as you go to the top is a great panorama of Paris, and the two special exhibits were completely my style. The first was a Kandinsky collection, arranged by time and space to track the influences of his time spent in Germany, Paris and Russia on his work. Rufus Wainwright provided a great soundtrack as I freed my eyes to move along the dark lines between splotches of color—such happy paintings! I’m totally going to make a habit of music-and-painting visits when I’m living there…it’s like do-it-yourself Fantasia. The second exhibit was called “elles”—a Guerilla Girls-inspired exhibit that “might be taken as a manifesto: women artists are now numerous, and in their radical, complex and cross-disciplinary work they are writing a new history of art to challenge the old, tackling head-on the great issues of the day. Yet the new hang is neither female nor feminist in point of view, being primarily intended to show and to pay tribute to their work.” Bottom line? Super cool WGSXy heaven, organized into sections that celebrated/challenged the body, domestic space, domestic arts (sewing, cooking, interior design), etc. complimented by great feminist literary quotes on the walls. Highly recommended if you find yourself in Paris anytime soon (and if you’re reading this blog, you’ll have an excuse to come to Paris starting Sept. 7th. My couch calls…)

One test down, one to go

This last week has been tense and uneventful as far as material for blog entries goes. Monday was my Tunisian dialect oral proficiency test—I did pretty well, so I’m happy. I just finished my three-hour written Arabic final, which only leaves the 15-minute MSA oral interview tomorrow. I’m a little nervous about it because it’s with official Foreign Service testers (and I hate oral anything anyway) but I feel surprisingly proud of my Arabic regardless of how well I perform under pressure. Having the last few days to review everything we’ve done so far has really given me an appreciation for the range of my vocabulary and my ability to be inventive with the language. I have the basic tenses and grammar mostly down, and I’m able to talk in some detail about why I’m here and what I’m doing next year—pretty cool accomplishment in a language I couldn’t even read eight weeks ago.

Other things from the last week or so…

*I FINALLY hit up Tunisian bookstores. The books I got for my SMP last year had to be ordered from France at high cost, so tracking down a few hard-to-find Maghrebine novels has been on my to-do list since I got here. I picked up a few novels I’ve been wanting for a while, as well as a book of coming-of-age short stories by Tunisian writers, a book of the famous Tunisian poet Chebbi’s work (in Arabic!), and some bilingual French-Arabic children’s books that recount the adventures of “Petite Anne.” At the recommendation of my new friend the bookstore worker, I also got a book by Tahar Fazaa, who is apparently a very popular and hilarious local writer à la David Sedaris. Last but not least, I found a poster of Africa and the Middle East that featured the names of all of the countries in Arabic. Woohoo!
I was surprised to find out how expensive books were (not so bad when you translate the dinar into US$ or Euros, but relative to the cost of other items in Tunisia, pretty high) and I wonder how many typical Tunisians are actually able to afford books. I know that my host family has almost none, and none at all for their 5-year old daughter. There was a separate children’s section in both stores, but it seemed rather limited (and also very French-heavy…there were almost no children’s books in Arabic). I also found the Tunisian bookstores to be much smaller and less inviting than American bookstores. Without a couch to sit on while I browsed through books, I instead opted to crouch Indian-style on the floor, which seemed to surprise and amuse the bookstore employee I had been talking to. (Tunisians are really weird about the floor—sitting on it or putting anything on it earns you some weird looks, as does putting your feet up).

*I went to Hammamet (literally: the baths) with the group last weekend, which is pretty much a classier version of Ocean City, or, in my mind, a less-classy version of Nice. Definitely the most “touristical” (in the words of our adorable guide, Hatem) and less culture-rich of all the places we visited (complete with a theme park “Carthageland” which is basically a less-intimidating, non-bargaining version of a typical medina market…totally weird). It was good considering how burnt out we all were, though…I didn’t do much except lay around on the beach and enjoy my first wine in WEEKS. I’m glad I’m doing my graduate work in a wine-friendly country. I’m convinced this whole thing would be much less stressful if I were allowed to maintain my wine-and-whine working routine (which is much healthier than the tea and shisha routine here).

*After not doing laundry for more than two weeks, and not doing our whites for over a month, our host mother FINALLY did some yesterday. Granted, it was so shoved in the machine it probably hardly got clean and will have fun detergent spots all over it, AND I got scolded for my pink skirt bleeding on a white shirt (who washes bright pink with whites?) but at least it means that I might make it to Sunday without having to do any emergency sink washings, inch’allah

* We had our last pottery class this week. Overall, I kind of fail at pottery as an art form—especially on the wheel—but I liked the cool earthy feel and the metallic smell and the fact that it was pretty much the antithesis of studying Arabic (and I only thought about Ghost a teensy bit). I made some Tunisian-esque tiles, a bowl, and some failed pots that I probably won’t waste suitcase space on. Our teacher, a really cool Tunisian artist, gave us all a piece of his own work as a parting gift...I got a really cool crackle-glaze and gold bowl with a bird in the center that would probably go for a few hundred dinar if he chose to sell it.

*I’ve been taking the bus home lately and really enjoying it. Once I climb in and pay my 450 to the man in the back (a dinar is broken into 1000 cents here), I put on my iPod and enjoy the small amount of “alone time” I’m allowed in this program. The ride itself is somewhere between the crowded sweatiness of the Nice buses and the reckless downhill speeds and sharp turns of British buses (think the African version of the knight bus, all you HP fans). The Tunisians have some inherent ability to remain still, looking on nonchalantly as I stagger around with each turn.

*I have learned a lot about myself as a student and a person in this program. Conclusions: 1) I’m a very auditory learner, at least with languages, although I also do pretty well independently when it’s writing-related. Classroom reading and computer exercises do very little for me. 2) I have a strong need for alone time and the ability to dictate my own schedule to a small extent at least; not having either makes me cranky. 3) If I can be aware of being cranky, I can take conscious steps to be more positive. 4) And last: to make positive thinking successful, I need to surround myself with positive people. Fortunately, they have been in no short supply in this program.

Tomorrow night is our banquet, Saturday will be a Tunis day, and I fly out Sunday morning to Paris to apartment-hunt for two days before I meet Mom in Morocco! Yes, my life is awesome. I just need to get enough rest to appreciate that again.

A lit nerd in any language

The first stop on this past weekend’s trip to the Northwest was to Dougga, a roman town with what are probably Tunisia’s most impressive set of ruins (discounting the Colosseum we saw in El Jem, at least). The massive stone against the rolling country backdrop was impressive but HOT. Alhamdulillah I put on my 70spf sunscreen before we left the bus; I was one of the only non-lobsters by the time we left. We ended our time at Dougga with a talent show in the old roman amphitheater. I preformed a slow, chock-full of gestures poem that I wrote in Arabic entitled “Harissa, Ye Harissa” that ended up winning me first prize (Akira won 2nd for his Arabic rendition of “I’m a little teapot”). Here’s the English translation of what I wrote (it rhymed in Arabic…FYI: Harissa is a spicy chilli paste/garnish that they put in EVERYTHING here. It’s delicious, but it wreaks havoc on the bowels at times)

Harissa, O! Harissa:
I love you in the morning.
I want TWO sandwhiches
Because you’re so delicious.
I eat you every day
In this hot hot weather.

Harissa, O! Harissa:
I hate you in the evening
Too much spiciness in my stomach
I stay close to the bathroom.
Do I want more? No thank you!
Well…maybe tomorrow.

The poem isn't great, but I feel like it represents a milestone of sorts in my Arabic--an ability to play with the language, to make it my own...to create! It was playing little games like this in French--translating songs to myself, making little linguistic jokes--that kept me interested and progressing in the language all these years, so hopefully that means that Arabic will soon become a little more natural and fun.

After Tabarka we proceeded to drive through the mountains to the coast. This was a gorgeous stretch of road that really gave me an appreciation for the diverse topography of Tunisia—the lush pine and cork forests that carpeted the hills and the cool mountain air was such a contrast from the hot, dry heat in the arid south and the central plains that it was hard to believe we were still in the same country. West coast people commented that it reminded them a lot of California—if that’s the case, I’m putting CA on my “places I want to live someday” list. We stopped in a little town called Ain-Draham to appreciate the sunset over the trees and goat-dotted hills and browse the locally produced handicrafts. I bought several items carved from olivewood, and Sonia bought me a cork souvenir as the prize for my poem. I can’t get over how light the cork is—I’ve seen corks a thousand times, of course, but it’s weird making the connection between the material and a tree. Tunisia’s one of the world’s top cork producers (although the credit for their cork, which is processed in Portugal, is often claimed by the Portuguese…Tunisia also produces a lot of olive oil that is processed through Italy and Libya, so to all my Rachel Ray obsessed friends: you never know when your EVO might be Tunisian!)

We spent the night in a beachside town called Tabarka, in a five star hotel that had hallways as confusing and long as Hogwarts, but huge, luxurious rooms a fantastic buffet, a huge pool with an island, belly-dancing lessons (yes, I did), and a beach with actual waves! They weren’t huge waves, of course, but enough to body surf on and produce a descent rip tide (I saw a flailing burkini-ed woman get rescued by about 10 Tunisian men…those things may be a stylish solution to beach modesty but they’re not real practical for swimming.

On the way back we stopped at some interesting coastal rock formations called the “Needles” and then had dinner in another coastal town called Bizerte/Banzart known as “The Venice of the Maghreb” for its picturesque cafes along its central canal. Somewhere along the way I bought a handmade bowl from one of many old woman on the side of the road in the middle of the road who make and fire pottery in their homes to sell along the road to earn a living. For the first time, I witnessed traditional Tunisian female dress—a coarse red robe gathered together with a moon-shaped pin over many other draping layers of orange and black. It looked beautiful, but hot. As always, I felt grateful to be from a culture where women are free to be unveiled (and men to be un-gelled!).

"Sometimes it's just like that" : Tunisia's take on "Hakuna Matata"

So in spite of the many hiccups in our plan, last weekend was oddly one of the best I’ve had. (Note: the Zanzabarbarians title of the last post was a reference to a line in Muppet's Treasure Island that I say a lot...sorry if I got anyone confused into thinking I was in Tanzania.) Unfortunately, it has been followed by a particularly harrowing week that started with a bad midterm score and being a little behind on the hw (thanks to said fun weekend) and was complicated by the antics of incompetent state department travel agents, who have made trying to meet my mom in Morocco after Tunisia near impossible. It’s looking now like I’m going to be pulling a series of redeye flights to get home at the end—I'm sure it'll be worth it, though. Anyway, the result has been a shameful lack of blogging, because every time I start composing a post I guilt myself into working or stressing instead. No more, say I.


After Friday’s midterm, we (me, Akira, David the Berkeley photographer, and Brittney, who is going to do humanitarian work in Niger after this) hightailed it over to Tunis after class to catch a louage (8-passenger “taxi” service using vans). This was our first experience with the sometimes elaborately carpeted/curtained/doilyed, often smelly, non-air-conditioned, hope-you-like-the-driver’s-taste-in-music means of transportation, but by the end of the weekend we were experts and admirers. Louages are super cheap and the 8 dinar taxi ride to get around Tunis to the Louage “station” (read: strip of street packed with louages and their drivers beckoning and making their sale) was almost as much as the 9.700 we paid for the 3.5 hrs to Le Kef.

We got into Le Kef around 10:30, which I was thinking would be late until I remembered that Tunisians all stay up until after midnight—especially during the summer when everyone has off. Their logic is that it’s too hot to work, so even those who must work only do so in the mornings, sleep or beach-it in the afternoon, then stay up late into the night for a 10pm or so dinner and subsequent chatting over mint tea with pine nuts and shisha at cafes. (This includes children, who, like European kids, are often treated as mini-adults…bedtimes and even discipline are often in short supply). Before bed, we explored the Kasbah (castle) on the hilltop by night, enjoying the view of the town from above and befriending our first of many families on the walk back down. We picked a hotel that cost us 10 dinar a night ($8) each for the four-person “chambre de famille”—which was a fabulous room with three-century old Andalusian ornate plaster ceilings and hand-painted tile walls. That was about all that was fabulous, though…the shared bathroom had the option of a “Turkish” standing toilet or a rather sketchy, permanently brown regular one, there were bugs galore and the other rooms may have actually been smaller and less lit than prison cells. The only other patron we saw was a guy who sold fiber optic light up things on the sidewalk for a living (and yes, we bought one for night photography).

We awoke the next morning not quite as well rested as we’d hoped to catch a louage to Kalaat es-Senan. Half way through the 1hr ride through arid countryside, I felt a familiar traveler’s twinge in my stomach. When the louage dropped us Americans off at the National Guard post without consulting us and continued on to drop the regular passengers in town, I only had the stamina to argue with them for a few minutes in French before I had to beg for the bathroom. I spent nearly an hour negotiating in French (with intermittent bathroom breaks) with the National Guard, who seemed very alarmed at the sudden arrival of non-passport bearing Americans in their off-the-beaten path little village 6km from the Algerian border. Our original plan had been to sleep atop Jugurtha’s Table, but that was out right away; they wanted us to return immediately to El Kef for our protection. Every time I asked what was so dangerous I got a shudder at the accusatory word (this held true later on with other Tunisians, too): “There’s no danger. It’s just not safe for you. Sometimes it’s like that.” I finally convinced them to let us stay the day and at least hike the mountain, and managed to get us the freedom to wander through town without an escort if we agreed to use their driver to get to and from the base of the hill. They kept our stuff as leverage, and off we went to buy a mountaintop picnic. En route, we met a man sitting in the most pres-riffic building we had ever seen (the current Tunisian president’s picture is plastered everywhere) who did voter registration for a living. There’s a presidential election this winter, but apparently this guy (like many Tunisians, I’m sure) isn’t even registered in spite of his job. When we pressed him to explain why and express his opinion of his president, and whether or not he is dissatisfied with the fact that the government is pretty non-transparent and although it’s a “democracy” it’s pretty much impossible for anyone else to win, he said “Sometimes things are just like that.” That soon became the refrain of the trip—used to shrug off the National guard’s weirdness in Kalaat, the president, the repeated pulling over of our return Louage to demand passports (and sometimes bribes)…

We tried to grab some tea at a café, but I had only had a few sips before I had to check out the café’s bathroom (a standing style port-a-pot) and opted instead to return to the National Guard poste with Brittney. The boys joined us a half hour and an Imodium later for our drive to the mountain, in a bumbling paddy-wagon whose vent looked to me like an American flag—which I took, along with my newfound appreciation for American democracy and individual rights—to be my fourth of July present from Tunisia. It was overcast and raining ever so slightly as we began our ascent, Alhamdulillah—it would have been dying hot otherwise. About halfway up the stairs that have been carved into the rock and worn down by centuries of roman soldiers, cave-dwelling Berbers and sheep/goat herders, we ran into two guides summoned by the National Guard (sigh) to accompany us around the mountain and assure we left it when we were supposed to. Luckily they were pretty chill—humble peasants from the “village” at the foot of the hill who pointed out medicinal herbs and poisonous snakes and spiders and explained the mountain’s history (including a myth that the Islamic equivalent of Noah’s ark landed atop the plateau—cool!) as I interpreted from French to English with surprising ease (who knew I could say poultice, or kidney stones). The top of the plateau was dotted with caves that Berber dwellers used to live in during the harsh, snowy winter, pools used to collect rainwater, a shrine, and about a hundred small white snail shells per square foot (apparently their main predator, wild boars, can’t make it up so high).

We stopped around 3 for a picnic lunch of fresh bread, cheese, wine, and watermelon. Between the four of us and the two guides we ate a whole melon. David and Akira carved a face into the other one and Sharpied on a love note to the National Guard that we all signed. We then very ceremoniously threw the melon from the top of the cliff to create our own 4th o’ July fireworks at the bottom, much to the bewildered amusement of the guides.

It was about 6pm when we finally made it back to the National Guard post—an hour later than we had been told to get back to catch the last louage, and it was clear that the officers weren’t pleased. They chartered a special louage for us to get us the hell out of their hair and back to Le Kef. We got a slightly cleaner hostel room that night, which was apparently unbearably hot, but after a month of sleeping in my sauna of a room at “home” I was immune. Again, we spent our evening meeting and talking to random Tunisians, who all invited us home for couscous (we politely refused) and who kept us out at cafes until the wee hours.

All-in-all, awesome weekend, and the first chance I’ve really had to talk at length to “real” Tunisians and practice my Arabic. I’ve got a few more entries to catch up on—my life outpaces this blog by quite a bit—so stay tuned.

Linguistic reflections

Test #2 was Friday. I got the exact same score I did last week, not best, not bad, so I’m still feeling okay. Almost all the points I got off were for the writing section, though, so I’m supposed to talk to the program coordinator on Monday about how to improve my spelling. Judging by people that didn’t do so hot last week, I think that probably translates to a private spelling tutor, which, although it just means MORE work, should be very helpful considering my current frustrations with class time.

I have two teachers each day. One is incredible—enthusiastic, jolly, and great at not getting exasperated at incompetent Americans. The other—not so much. I don’t think she’s had much teaching experience, which doesn’t help, but she also just doesn’t seem to have a good concept of the efficient use of class time, or pace, and her version of “helping” is to rewrite your sentence for you or impatiently supply you with the word you’re in the process of sounding out. It’s frustrating, and in a program like this where speed and intensity are the name of the game, it feels like a major handicap. I’ve tried to refrain from snapping at her, but I have very little patience for bad teachers (or anyone wasting my time, really), especially because St. Mary’s really spoiled me in the teacher department.

It has been a lot more difficult than I imagined to learn Tunisian and FosHa side by side. In case anyone doesn’t know, Arabic takes very different forms in the different countries it’s spoken in. FosHa, or Modern Standard, is the “universal” form that is supposedly understood by all (it’s the language of academics, printing, news, etc) but spoken by none. The way I visualize the structure of Arabic in my head is like the dinosaur DNA in Jurassic Park—the basic structure, taken from the mosquitoes in amber, was dino, but they filled in the gaps with amphibian. FosHa acts as this ancient structure, but local dialects fill in the holes to create new and individual languages. With Tunisian, French filled a good number of those holes and so did Italian (ex. Pen= “steeloo”, like the French “stylo”; OK=“dack-wher-doo” like Italian “Dacuerdo”). Tunisians appropriate French so naturally that half the time they can’t remember the Arabic word for some things that they’re used to referring to in French. The longer I’m here, the more I just want to learn Tunisian, as it’s more the talking to people than the grammar that inspires me. Unfortunately, we only get about 30 mins of Tunisian a day, compared to 4 hours of FosHa.

Arabic itself is a mix of familiar and unfamiliar elements, and although the completely foreign writing system and sounds and lack of cognates make it harder to absorb/retain, the structure is actually much simpler than the languages I’m used to in many ways. Like romance languages, there are masculine and feminine nouns, although like Spanish (and unlike French) it is usually relatively easy to tell which is which from the sound/appearance of the word. There is no subject for formal address like the French “vous” or the Spanish “usted,” thank God, so it’s not quite so easy to offend someone by using the wrong one (although, interestingly enough, the Spanish “usted” comes from Arabic, where it is a title of respect for a teacher). Verbs are conjugated from BOTH sides, with a first person, second person and third person prefix and a suffix for plural. THERE ARE ONLY THREE IRREGULAR VERBS(!) (come, eat, and take) but there are oddly no infinitives—the base form is the imperative. Nouns are altered with suffixes to allow possession (walidy = mother, walidity = my mother) and, like romance languages, usually precede their adjectives.

I had a great lazy Saturday yesterday, but I’ll save that until later, because I need to use my precious café Internet to do my homework. Until then, here are the explanations for this post's pictures of the less touristy, less glamorous sides of where I’m living. Tunisia is like the Where’s Waldo of stray cats—they are literally everywhere, and if you stand still long enough you can usually spot several lurking under cars, in trash cans, etc. They’re fairly clean and tame, though, as many families leave out scraps for them (because they’re preferable to rats). Also, Tunis is a very littered city, with new apartment buildings next to piles of rubble and discarded trash, especially as you move into the more middle class areas. Last: the vendors who sell to tourists often use their children to try and boost sales, which is both cute and a little sad. Here are two boys who posed for me, who are selling little bouquets of Full and Jasmine--two wonderful smelling flowers that grow everywhere here, and whose aromas will forever after remind me of Tunisia. These little handmade bouquets are sold on every street corner here for about half a dinar, and are purchased primarily by men (either old men, who wear them behind their ears, or young men, who buy them for their lady friends).

Last but not least: I don't know if he reads this, but if so, here's wishing a very happy Father's Day to the best Dad I know.

I have clean underpants again!

Officially back from my first weekend excursion, which was a lot of fun. Pictures and details will be forthcoming as I have time this week. Returning home last night felt surprisingly comfortable, and it was nice to hear Lubna say that she missed having women in the house this weekend. I also have clean clothes again--Lubna finally got to our laundry while I was gone, with the exception of my underwear and bra, which I hand-washed at the hotel in Monastir (it's extremely offensive in Tunisia to have other people touch your soiled undergarments--apparently this goes for socks, too, which Lubna left untouched in the hamper). Feeling well rested for the first time since I got here, I was able to get up early enough to make my own tea this morning to avoid more of the disgusting whole-milk-and-Nescafé (instant coffee-like drink) that has been forced on me every morning so far, and even managed to avoid insulting my host parents with the (completely made up) explanation of how growing up in a Commonwealth country made me partial to tea. Here's hoping they take the hint.

Every Monday we have to turn in something called "Critical Incident Reports" detailing moments of revelation, culture shock, etc that we've had in Tunisia. Rather than give a full blog entry today, I thought I'd share what I'm turning in:

Mistaken cat calls

During the halftime at a Tunisian National futbol game I went up to the concession stand to buy a bottle of water. Rather than the many large, bright windows of overpriced hot dogs and beers that I would find in the States, this was a small, dark hole in the cement surrounded by a crowd of men shoving for their orders. Taking a deep breath, I dove into the chaotic crowd. After a few seconds, I started hearing the familiar harassing “Hey! You! English? Girl? Hey!” I did my best to ignore the calls, keeping my eye on the window, until I felt a hand shake my shoulder. I turned around, to see a man pointing at my butt, saying “watch, watch!” Uncomfortable, I pushed away, but he was near me again in a second, shaking and pointing: “watch it! Watch it!” Finally he found the word he needed: “money! Watch it!” I looked down and saw what the man had seen—not my butt, in fact, but a colored piece of newspaper sticking out of my pocket that looked an awful lot like a Tunisian bill. He motioned that I should tuck it in further, using “bad people” as his explanation as he motioned towards the crowd around us. I laughed, pulling the paper from my pocket to show him what it really was—the article from the daily paper saying that women could get in free to the game. He laughed too. I used the little bit of Arabic I could muster (this was only a few days in to the program) to introduce myself, before switching into French to thank him properly for his kindness.


My first big “whoops” and my first big “whoa!” in the same five minutes

One night, when I stayed after hours at SIT, a friend called me over to help him communicate with the cleaning lady (I’m fairly fluent in French, so I’ve been filling in where our developing Arabic isn’t yet sufficient). Confident, I repeated what the friend had asked me to say (“did you find my shirt in here last night?”) in French to the woman, who stared at me blankly. “Je ne parle pas français” she said.
I felt suddenly helpless—more than I had been anywhere since our arrival—and I realized how much I had been using my French as a crutch. After mangling Arabic trying to get the question across, I tried to excuse my inability to communicate with “Sorry, [my] Arabic is not good”—unfortunately it came out as “Sorry, Arabs are not good,” a pretty severe faux-pas if you ask me. Luckily, she was quick to understand that racism wasn’t my intention, and after an apology and another minute or so of gesturing, we were able to get the point across. My friend thanked the woman for the shirt, which she returned to him with a string of Arabic. “What was that?” he asked. “She says you left it out on the balcony yesterday,” I said. It took me a minute to realize that I had somehow understood her perfectly, but that she had been speaking Arabic. “How did you know what she said?” my friend asked. I’m still not sure, but what I do know is that it felt pretty amazing.

Cab ride revelation

I noticed the difference in license plates on my first day here—longer than ours, with some Arabic letters squished in between numbers. Not knowing how to read the letters, I assumed that they were, as ours are, randomly selected to create a wide range of possible combinations. On the cab ride home last night, after our first week of classes, I was staring absently at the car in front of us when my eyes fell on the suddenly meaningful letters: Tunis!

One week down...

I'm sure everyone has heard about the Egyptian method of preserving bodies by shoving a red hot poker up a corpse's nose, scrambling the brains, and pulling them back out in a melty mess. My Tunisian education thus far feels pretty similar (Egypt's only one country over, after all...). This week has been outright exhausting. I wake up at about 6:30 to get ready and get to school, which starts at 8:30. We have two two-hour sessions of class, a one-hour dialect lesson, and then hours of homework. However, what with the need for lunch in there somewhere and at least a little bit of down time, plus all of the activities we've had planned in the evenings, I never finish. I inevitably get home around 9, help set up for/clean up dinner, eat, and talk with the family, and by then it's about 10:30 and I have an hour or so to do what work I have the energy left for and get to bed.

We had our first test today, which I totally bombed (due to the time limit and not my Arabic ability). I'm not too concerned--I'm not getting graded after all. I feel pretty good about my progress thus far, regardless of testing. I can now read and write every letter, although I still have problems spelling, obviously, and I read at the pace of an electric company video from Sesame Street (Cuh----Aaaah----Tuhhh....Cuh--Aah--Tuh....CuhAhTuh....CAT!). I can also introduce myself, talk about my family, count money, order food, ask about the bathroom...pretty much do anything I would absolutely NEED to do. I'm also beginning to pick up words here and there in the conversation at home, which makes me sound rather like an idiot when I suddenly interject during dinner to parrot back the words I know (table! chicken! She doesn't want!). My host parents react as encouragingly as real parents would, smiling and repeating it back to me along with a string of other words I don't understand. Lina's five-year-old intellect has finally wrapped itself around the idea that my muteness is due to incomprehension, and she is now on a mission to correct everything I say, not that her choice of vocabulary is always helpful (she spent five minutes last night trying to get me to say something like Gahr-Gah Bool Zed...which turned out to be Dragon Ball Z, her favorite TV show). Asking her "shoowa hedda" (what's this) also has mixed results...I asked about a Tunisian flag and she said "aller aller!" (French for "let's go, let's go") and then started singing a Tunisian futbol chant. Ma'lesh. (Oh well).

Arabic itself is as fascinating as it is frustrating. I'm looking forward to next week, when we will progress beyond the alphabet and learn more about conjugating verbs and such. Not being able to string together sentences is killing me, as it's always the creative and structural aspects and actual conversation that I'm good at, not the memorization. As per usual, though, I'm still able to find ways to amuse myself, whether by the semi-orgasmic noises that emerge when a room full of students is practicing their "Huhhhh" (mine's getting pretty good, by the way), the fact that "sup?" translates into Tunisian as "penis," or that the Tunisian word for 15 is "mustache."

On the homefront: things are better, slightly. Kate and I are getting better about establishing our boundaries with Lina, and since we've been getting home around 9 we don't spend a whole lot of time with the family. Mustafa's brought up politics a few more times--apparently it's not just America and the Jews he hates, but also the French, the Chinese, the British... I slowly but insistently counter his opinions with "actually"s (actually, in America I have Chinese friends and....actually, I lived in Britain for a semester and...) Even if he's intolerant, he's at least giving me a little space to express myself--I just need to watch what I say, and not be the one to bring things up. On the other hand, I had a perfectly lovely (and long) conversation with Lubna last night about Islam--she was surprised to find out how much I new about her religion, and also surprised to find out that a lot of the Quaranic stories are also in the Bible and Torah. I'd love to pick her brain a little more...she's such a puzzle in my mind (educated and intelligent, but submissive, modern, but religiously traditional). I'm really looking forward to seeing where this friendship goes.

We leave at 8am tomorrow for our first weekend excursion to the Sahel--a central region on the coast. I'll check in again next week with pictures and a summary of how it goes!

The honeymoon had to end sometime

So the homestay is going to get harder before it gets easier, it seems. Lina is cute, but spoiled, and her brattiness is getting old quickly. She seems to think she has the right to anything she sees (translation: anything I'm holding) and has no problem going into my/her room to explore my belongings or even grabbing them right from my hand. If I refuse or take them away from her she starts tantruming. I'm learning some Arabic phrases today to discourage her...if her parents won't set the limits, I will, and I've already noticed that the Arabic "leh" has more effect than "no" so maybe broaching the linguistic barrier will help. We also got a hateful tirade from our host father last night about politics--how naïve we Americans are, how we believe Muslim stereotypes of terrorism that are ignorant, how the Jews are behind all of our politics, and are responsible for 9/11 and the war in Iraq...etc. Near the beginning I tried to divert him, but it became pretty clear that he was looking for an audience, not a discussion partner, and the fact that he was citing propaganda as truth made me realize that there was probably little I could do to change his opinions. The experience left me uncomfortable and Kate even moreso. We brought it up to the program leaders today, who have instructed us that next time we should just end the conversation when it starts, and gave us a number to call after hours if that doesn't work.

I'm determined to view this as a challenge, though, and an opportunity to let myself and my actions speak louder than the media when it comes to impressions of Americans. Inch'allah, maybe I can change some minds in the two months that I'll be here. Also, aside from political lectures, the family has been extremely hospitable, and the food is great--last night's dinner was a great Tunisian pepper salad called Mushiwya on bread, and a chicken and pea dish that reminded me of subsaharan african cuisine. Tonight is going to be some sort of Tunisian speciality involving spinach...mmmm!

And now, for the promised futbol summary:

After learning from a Mozambiquian guy from DC (small world, ain't it?) about the futbol match, me and a group of nine other CLS students climbed into our first Tunisian taxi (which was, like all others I have ridden in since then, a seatbelt-less, crappy-radioed, thrilling experience) and headed to the outskirts of town for the national Tunisia vs. Mozambique game. Women got in free--a little sexist, perhaps, but I was happy enough to save the five dinar. We decked out in headbands and Tunisian flags and did our best to follow along in the foreign chants, much to the delight of the Tunisians around us, who offered us commentary, snacks, and--in my case--phone numbers (from the taxi driver, then the widowed dad behind the cute Tunisian boy in this photo--I need to figure out an action plan for these sorts of situations.) It was cool to see Tunisian women and children cheering alongside the men (I see them much less frequently then men in public here), and curious to see tea and bread vendors instead of beer and hotdogs. Overall, a ton of fun, and I think we're going to try and make the next game in a few weeks.

Hedda Ohrkti

Hedda Ohrkti: this is my sister. Heya esm ha Lina: her name is Lina. This is about the extent of my Arabic at this point, although being only 5, Lina has yet to realize that I don't understand her constant babbling, so I've been enjoying pleasant (if rather one-sided) conversation. I've discovered that if I speak French to her, she understands me about half of the time but responds only in Tunisan (although French is widely heard here, most Tunisians speak Tunisian in the house and begin to learn French formally when they start school). She calls me ta-ta (auntie) and drags me around everywhere by my forearm (eeejuh! eejuh! shoof!) (come, come, look!). This picture was taken when she discovered my laptop and was insistant on playing with it...rather than have her mess up my documents I opened up photobooth and....voila! Instant distraction.

Also in my family: my father, Mustafa, my mother Lubna, and a three-month-old brother, Amenallah. So far, Mustafa speaks to me of politics in bursts of beginner's English, Lubna speaks of religion, education, and womenhood in French (when her husband is not around), and Amenallah...well...he gurgles in universal baby. I share my family with another girl in the program, Kate, although seeing as how she speaks no French and our parents speak very limited English, communication is largely up to me. The house is small, but clean and sufficient. I'm sleeping in what was clearly Lina's room (and which we still sort of share...it still contains all her toys and we each have a half of the closet) and Kate sleeps in what used to be the study and still holds the family computer (and many sci-fi posters...Mustafa is a self-proclaimed sci-fi fanatic and is seemingly obsessed with Jodie Foster).

The family is traditional Muslim, which is the exception rather than the rule in present-day Tunisia and makes me a little more worried about what is expected of me, but it should be an interesting cultural experience nonetheless. Lubna dons a full veil and robe everytime she leaves the house, as well as each of the five times per day that she lays out her mat for her prayers. I've already had a few enlightening conversations with her...but more to come on that later. It's a little awkward right now as we work out the family schedule and negotiate cultural differences (particularly surrounding meals, and when they should be eaten, and how much we're expected to eat), but I'm sure things will feel more comfortable as we settle in.

Today was also our first day of classes. We have Modern Standard Arabic from 8:30 to 1:00, then lunch, then a few hours of "free" time to take advantage of the school's internet as we do our homework. 5pm is Tunisian dialect lessons every day this week, although they'll drop off in frequency in the coming weeks to be replaced with different "cultural excursions" (I have my fingers crossed for a hammam) and culture clubs (I'm in pottery club).

Off to class again! More to come soon, as well as photos and commentary from the national futbol game I got to see on Saturday night....

Behi behi barsha

Asslema!

Here is my first official blog from o'er the Atlantic. So far, Tunisia has been "behi behi barsha," or very very good, which is a phrase I picked up over lunch at a cafe today (except at that point I was talking about my pasta--I'm still not sure exactly what was in it, but it was barsha nonetheless).

Our schedule has been hectic to say the least. I've yet to get a full eight hours of sleep since I arrived (and at this rate, I won't tonight, either) so I'm still a little jet-lagged. The unflagging enthusiasm of all involved sustains me, however, as does my inexplicably strong love of this country. Really, I absolutely adore it. Never in my travels have I ever felt so immediately taken with and comfortable in a country as I do here. Tunisians are incredibly warm, friendly people, all of my preconceived notions about the limitations of life in an Islamic country have been shattered, and I'm in linguistic heaven. Although I'm soon going to make an effort to avoid using it as I learn more Arabic, my French has been serving me well, and I am more comfortable striking up a conversation in French with a stranger here than I have ever been in France. Arabic is an intriguing and I'm playing with the few phrases I know to begin piecing it together (our formal classes start Monday). In the back of my mind, I'm already plotting ways to get back to the Maghreb after this summer is over...Peace Corps? Fullbright?....

And now, to cheat and use bullet points, because I'm tired.

Things I've done in the last not-quite-three days:
-been lost (and then found) in the bazaar-style marketplace (souks)
-been surprised at how much the main street Avenue Bourgiba and the view of the mediterannean reminds me of Nice
-toured the city extensively and loved my Tevas in the process--until today, when I started hating their still-faint-but-probably-going-to-get-worse-quickly smell
-seen many, many more women without veils than with them. My favorite so far is an elderly mother, completely covered, accompanied by her preteen daughter in booty shorts and a skin-tight, gold-lettered spaghetti strap shirt.
-eaten any authentic Tunisian food I can get my hands(mouth?) on, including an eggy pastry called a Brik El Medina, Harissa (a spicy red pepper garnish), Mechouia (spicy pepper/onion/tomato appetizer), Couscous, Schwarma, and, of course, loads of delicious mint tea
-visited the intensely fortified American embassy and resisted attempts to be recruited for the Foreign Service or the State Deparment
-attended a dressy reception at the ambassador's house and gotten my first glimpse of the GOREGOUS neighborhood I'm soon be living in
-had at least one quadralingual conversation (Arabic, English, French and Spanish)
-played a gambling game with some Tunisian teenagers in an alley near our school, using a combination of gestures and bad Arabic to understand the rules
-been laughed at by the ten-year-old son of a shopkeeper for my butchering of "bu Kaddesh" (how much) due to my inability to pronounce the throaty "K" sound (as well as about 5 others...*sigh*)
-exchanged Arabic for English phrases with one of the restaurant workers at the hotel...and made a "date" to do the same tomorrow
-been grateful to the shopkeepers who have helped me count their unfamiliar currency from my outstretched hand--and slightly irked by the few who have already scammed me into paying a few dinar more than I should through whatever tourist trap method (just you WAIT 'enry 'iggens...I'm learning your language and I'll be BACK for revenge)

That's all for now. I'm moving into my homestay on Sunday and am excited to meet the awesome family, inch'allah (god willing), that I'll be living with for the next two months...