We went carpet shopping in Kairouan.
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We spent the night in Tabarka with Kellen and Melibe’s family in the hotel/timeshare complex that overlooks the partially finished marina. The next morning, we went up to the fort and around town a bit.
I think these are the same fish that they offered to Giovanna, Heather, and me when we were there back in November!
My hommie in Tabarka. He’s always at the Hotel Novelty or in the bar/tea salon downstairs. You’ll know him when you see him. He speaks four or five languages fluently and is really into herbal supplements.
Our combined families.
Up at the fort.
This dude was putting out a gill net next to the island that the fort sits on.
I arrived at the Djerba airport late at night after a long 36 hours of travel from Los Angeles. I had to take a taxi in from the airport to Houmt Souq. It was a good little drive that ended up costing me 8 dinar. Only much later did I find out I was taken the long way around on the new road rather than the short way on the old road. No matter though, I had a good conversation with the taxi driver.
The other students hadn’t arrived yet on the bus. They were still in Gabes eating dinner. I moved into one of the hotel rooms in an old Funduq hotel. Funduqs are hotels from the days of the camel caravans when both person and beast would rent out hotel rooms. The livestock and pack animals would stay on the bottom floor and the people would stay up above. Djerba used to be littered with these places but only a few now still survive. I got my pick of rooms as we had a good chunk of the hotel rented out and the rest of the group wasn’t there yet.
Much to the bewilderment of the receptionist, I came down to the front desk at 10pm and sat next to the phone. Right at 10pm, Karim called and asked for me. They were just crossing on the ferry from the mainland. Djerba is an island just off the coast of Tunisia. The ferry crossing takes all of twenty minutes. There is also a causeway at the opposite end of Djerba from the ferry that takes motorists off the island. It was originally built by the Romans to make access to the island easier. Later, the pirate Dragut, being trapped in the bay created by the causeway by a fleet of Spanish warships intent on his destruction, dug through the causeway at low tide, deep enough, that at high tide, he sailed all of his ships through the breach and caught the Spanish off guard, destroying a good portion of the Spanish fleet. No one bothered to repair the causeway as access was still possible at low tide until the French came along and decided it was necessary to have 24 hour access.
Looking out from the roof of the hotel while I waited for Karim to call.
I brought back several newspapers from the USA with me. The other students hungrily snatched them up. There was much rejoicing for English-language content, especially the comics.
The interior of the Funduq.
A couple of shots from inside one of the many shops in the Souq next to the hotel.
Inside the El-Ghriba Synagogue. This is the oldest continuously occupied Synagogue site in the world, dating back to 586BC. The current building was built in the 20th century but, nonetheless, maintains its charm. This was also the site of the 2002 Al Qaeda bombing that wiped out 21 people including 14 German tourists, six Tunisians, and a French tourist as well as injuring another 30.
We wore head coverings to show respect to the Synagogue. Behind Kellen sits one of the few remaining Jews on Djerba. The communities of Jews all over Tunisia were much larger until Israel was formed. Now they’ve all but disappeared.
The route the truck bomb took.
The day before, the bus had a collision with a Roman aqueduct arch in the Gabes oasis. Mike and I tried to bend it back but we weren’t as strong as the Roman arch was. The parking lot where the bus was parked held the tour bus that was blown up by the truck bomb. The incident is referred to as “Le Catastrophe” by the locals. Tourism dropped off for a number of years and has never fully recovered.
When we visited, security was quite tight at the site. Everyone was required to go through a metal detector and X-Ray to assure no bombs were present. They didn’t allow knives in either or, for that matter, shifty looking characters. Of course, there’s not much you can do about the parking lot. If someone really wanted to, they could still drive a car up next to a bus, just like they did in 2002. I guess that would make this site an “adventure travel” site? The Jews and Muslims of Djerba get along quite well though, as all of them are quick to point out. It would be very bad for tourism if they didn’t!
After the sobering visit to the Synagogue, our next stop was the town of Guellala which is famous for its pottery. There are many subterranean workshops and galleries scattered all throughout town. We went into a couple to check them out and look at their wares.
Our first camel of the south. The thing was rather sorry looking as it was chained up in a yard next to someones house. No doubt, in the summer it plies the beaches next to the tourist resorts offering tourists rides up and down the coast.
Crossing the causeway. There are several water pipelines on the causeway which bring most of the fresh water onto Djerba. The local water table is sufficiently brackish and contaminated with fecal matter (it’s a high water table) that it isn’t potable. Thus, everything must be imported. One would think that such a vital pipeline would be more protected.
Tags: Djerba, El-Ghriba Synagogue, Funduq, Guellala, Homut Souq, Isle of Djerba, Kellen
The US embassy in Tunisia threw a gala event to celebrate election night 2004. It was at the Sheraton Hotel, the nicest hotel in town. The party went from about 8pm until 8am. Anne and I stayed until the bloody end.
The ballroom was packed all night long. There were about 400 people in the room at any one time. Several thousand came through during the course of the night. The party was open to anyone willing to pass through the metal detector. Tunisians outnumbered Americans by about four to one.
There was free wireless internet access. Kellen and I took full advantage of this fact.
This evening was my first meeting of Xiyun. Originally, she had tried to contact me over Livejournal but due to highly limited internet access in Tunisia, this was our first actual meeting. She was in Tunisia studying French on leave from Brown University. She also was using the free wireless to the full extent of its capability. Later during my stay in Tunisia, we found ourselves on many an adventure.
This was also the first night I met Noam, the guy with the bright red hair to the left of Kellen. We would run into each other several more times in my extended stay in Tunisia.
Nice place for a sticker, Heather!
One of the handful of Bush/Cheney supporters that I spotted during the evening.
As dawn broke across Tunis, Anne and I trudged home through a gray drizzle back to my apartment several kilometers away. Neither we nor the traffic jam on the 7th of November highway were feeling particularly celebratory.
Tags: 2004 Presidential Election, Anne, Heather, Kellen, Tunis, Tunisia, US Embassy, Xiyun
Dr. Nelson, a professor at OSU, came over to Tunisia for a few weeks to give presentations on sustainability and ISO14001 to several Tunisian universities. Here are some photos of one of his presentations Kellen and I attended.
Tags: Kellen, Pete Nelson, Tunisia
As the name of the ruin, Dougga, suggests, this city was founded long before Rome’s takeover of Tunisia. The city was situated high up on a hillside above the valleys, yet another indication of non-Roman origin. From my readings, it appears Romans liked having their cities on flatter ground to allow for the standard Roman town plan. The Romans adapted to the inclined townsite quite well. As early as the fourth century BCE, people were describing Dougga as being “of impressive size.” During the second century BC, it had become the seat of the Numidian king Massinissa, whose support of Rome during the Third Punic War gained the town much importance. From the second century CE, under Roman administration, it enjoyed a period of great prosperity. At the town’s peak, ten thousand people called Dougga home. As an indication of Dougga’s importance, aerial photography has revealed no less than ten additional town sites within a ring of just six square kilometers of Dougga.
Later on, the Byzantines built huge fortifications, still very evident, around the town. After their departure, the town fell into ruin but the local inhabitants continued to live among the fallen arcades and decaying buildings until the end of the nineteenth century when excavating archeologists forced them down the hill into the purpose-built down of Nouvelle Dougga. Since excavation stopped, a few people have moved back into the ruins. They are mostly vultures who wait to pick off tourists for an expensive trip around the ruins. We did encounter one woman though who lived just outside the main ruins who had lived there for maybe 70 years. She told Karim how she wasn’t married and didn’t want to be even at 76 years because guys were stinky and whatnot. She talked his ear off with many comical stories. Karim gave her the gift of a couple of Gabes pomegranates. she seemed quite pleased.
The theater is a very impressive and well preserved complex as can be seen from my pictures. We never found the perfect resonance point. Instead, it appears the place was designed so the sound would be about equal all the way across the stage. It certainly wasn’t a place to give a play in a whisper, but with only a slightly elevated voice, the entire theater could easily hear the production. At one point, the entire structure was covered by a wooden and, most likely, cloth roof, as is made evident through large anchor points in the floor of the theater. it appears that it would have been quite the impressive structure at its height. even now, it’d be a great place for a concert or a play.
The gymnasium complex. There were hot, cold, steam, massage, and other such rooms, along with the typical roman physical fitness equipment. To get into the gymnasium, we had to walk through some tunnels running under the ruins of some houses.
One of the guards of Dougga. We gave him a couple of dinar so we could take his picture. He seemed very shocked with the idea that someone would give him money. Karim told him who we were and what we were doing. The kid seemed very happy.
A Libico-Punic mausoleum.
Kellen in front of some cacti. The fruit is very tasty, however, very sharp. Lucas still had a thorn in his hand a month after getting stabbed by a sticker. It took him another month before he cut it out of his palm.
Tags: Dougga, Karim, Kellen, Roman Ruins, Tunisia
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