A Night (or five) in Tunisia Part 1

Orientations are always odious things full of awkward "get-to-know-you" games and nametags, especially when they involve early morning travel to a gigantic 2nd world city known as Marseille. But they are unavoidable and often yield welcome encounters.

Waking up early one September morning I was in no state to travel but more in a condition to hug the toilet. Missing my appointments with French immigration authorities, however, would be to risk Sisyphean mountains of bureaucracy, so I did my best to hold myself together and limp to Marseille powered by naught but apple juice.

Thankfully, my flu didn't bar me from a passing grade on my medical exam and with a fresh tuberculosis-free x-ray in hand, I met up with Annette and a slew of newly arrived Americans for some time with our hostess of honor: the consulate general of the United States. After some minutes of introduction to being an American in France we piled into a bus and headed over to her (well, on loan to her from the State Department) fabulous mansion on the Corniche of Marseille to enjoy some "Provençal specialties" and drink Napa Valley wine. Feasting on taxpayer dollars and drinking the sunset of Fitzgerald's opulent French Riviera, I noticed that Annette had disappeared and I went to seek her out. As I had expected, she was interrogating the consulate about her life in the Foreign Service, the conversation was going something like this when I arrived:

"Well, I'm not allowed to say if I've met them but let me tell you that Brad and Angelina are small potatoes compared to Saudi princes and their wives."
"Wow, how often do you have parties like that?"
"Well it's not always champagne and parties, much of my work has to do with helping travelers who have run into legal problems where I have to mediate communications between the states. Though, I do feel like they gave me this post to make up for two tours in Haiti and time in Saudi Arabia."
"Ooh! What's it like to be a woman working in a Muslim nation?"
"It's different, it depends on which nation it is, sometimes its a dress code, sometimes its how you communicate with the people you have, but it never really got in the way of me doing my job because I mostly worked with Americans anyway."
"Interesting. Tell me, I want to go to Tunisia, have you been there?"
Where is Tunisia, I caught myself thinking. Let's play a little random association: Tunisia, Indonesia, Polynesia, Micronesia, ooh, tropical islands!
"I have. If I were you I'd go to Morocco. Tunisia's like 'Arab-lite'."

Who knew? Tunisia is part of North Africa.

Fast forward about three weeks and one of many French holidays. Annette has a former professor in Tunisia who was willing to welcome us and although "Arab-lite" was its prognosis, we to the trip across the Med.

One word of advice: Don't take the ferry from Marsille to Tunis. If you do, bring toilet paper with you.

We arrived four hours late of a twenty hour trip on our 1980's pleasure cruise after snacking for dinner and lunch and sleeping on four seat cushions in a room the stank powerfully of feet and cigarette smoke. We made it through customs (despite having possibly cheated the rules of our French residency applications) and were met by Annette's professor Laura and her husband Karim, always excited to share the littlest slice of his country.

They took us to the Avenue Bourguiba, an interpretation of the Champs-Elysées, for mint tea with pine nuts floating in the mixture. Sitting there among the vestiges of a French colonial government, watching the people promenade down the boulevard, I felt like I had been launched into the future, global warming now an artifact of history, the economy of the world now changed, and the people still living to impress each other as they strut down the street. Paris sidewalks 75 years from now, "Have a little care exhaust and Islam with your coffee?"

After an excellent sleep, we went the next day to the Musée du Bardo in the former palace of the Bey (king) of Tunisia. The place looks like a bunker from the outside but the guilded and arabesque interiors are so spectacular that much of museum is the building itself. The true focus of the museum, however, is on the mosaics from the African reaches of the Roman empire. The expressions and subtle tones that are created from such an unweildy medium as squares of stone are truly amazing. A million little rocks put together in the right way take on a beauty far beyond the individual parts. The example here, intended for the Tunisisan villa of a wealthy Roman provincial, spent a millenium at the bottom of the sea.

I'll write the rest of the trip later, but for now take a look at this clip I found of a song that brings me back to my high school jazz band days and a close friend. It was playing through my head all through the week.