Greetings again from Tunis, and my charming hotel room on the rue de Palestine:
The conference went ok. I wish I could give you more detail, but
the last two days I got a terrible case of, er, travellers illness, and I
definitely don't remember much of Friday, which was a haze of
exhaustion and multiple medications. Jeff said I could stay at the
hotel, but I felt like that would be being too much of a pansy so I
manned up, got myself some crackers and water, and pulled it together. I
honestly will miss some of our participants: Hajer and Faouzia were so
excited about me learning Arabic that they specifically spoke as Fus-ha
as possible around me and made an effort to include me, and Moez who
shared his pictures of his daughters with me...I even have a soft spot
for Lotfi, who totally cheated me as much as
he could but who has a wonderful smile. And the man whose name I don't know, who mumbled in
Arabic about the pause-cafe and somehow we made it work in putting
things together for the participants. What I have found is that
Tunisians are just like Angelenos: half of them are amazing and nice and
wonderful and the best people you'll ever meet, and the other half will
manipulate you any way they have to to get what they want.
Saturday night, we had dinner at Liliane and her husband's house
after she took us shopping in the souqs of the medina. I bought
myself a present for having made it through the week - a lovely wool Berber
blanket. I am excited for the cats to roll all over it and cover it in
black fur!
Today I decided I would be no Dido, and throw away Carthage just because of a male (or in my case the hordes of them and trying to avoid them). So while my coworkers stayed in Tunis, I made my way to the TGM station and took the train out through La Goulette (if you look on a map, the train runs along the spit of land outside of Tunis and then up north along the coast, it's cool!) and out to Carthage. Carthage is a very wealthy suburb of Tunis now, beautiful along the lines of Nice or Cannes or Beverly Hills: rich white stucco houses surrounded by lush bougainvillea, palm, lime trees along hillsides overlooking in this case the gulf of Tunis. Most of the ruins of Carthage are under protection, but I imagine some houses overlaid the ancient Punic city. I walked up to the Byrsa hill where the Carthage museum is, tooled around, and then came back down the hill and across the train tracks to the Punic ports musem (1 room) and the Sanctuary of Tophet. At Tophet, I met Salah, a very knowledgable guide to the site. He showed me around, and interestingly enough, claimed the site was a graveyard of children. When the children died, the people believed they should sacrifice a small animal to Ashtarte/Ishtar (goddess of fertility) so that the next child would be healthy. So when archaeologists uncovered the site, they found children and animal remains. His story was interesting (he was actually very cool, and we had a very good conversation) but the Lonely Planet's explanation was slightly...different. LP claims that this site was a child sacrifice site - hmmm...either way, it is actually a beautiful site and one of the best, most ...laid back and pressureless conversations I have had here.
Tomorrow, we head out to Dougga. My coworker says it's only an hour and a
half drive, but I have been in the car with him back and forth from
Mahdia, and he has been working in Tunisia long enough that he now
drives like it (that is to say, the rules are - there ARE no rules!) so I
think with my boss in pursuit in a second car, it will take us a bit
longer. But anyhow, we are to meet the French who work there, as well
as seeing our colleagues and participants who were at our workshop who work at Dougga, so it should
be a good day. Keep your fingers crossed for me that I get on my flight
to LA ok on Tuesday -- Air France picked a fantastic time to strike!
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