We were on the buses at 6:45 to leave for Tunisia. I did not know whatI was in for. We got our sack lunches, and loaded our aggressively overfilled backpacks under the bus. At the airport we waited in a typically long Italian line for our boarding passes, and made our way through security to wait 2 hours for our flight. Oh to be early. Much espresso and nutella bombe later we were on the way, only to be in Tunisia an hour later.
When we got off the plane we went through customs got our bags and were greeted by our buses and your guides we would have for the week.Surprised by the amazingly warm and sunny weather, we made our way to the American Embassy. When we went there 5 different people talked to us, first the Ambassador to Tunisia gave us a quick intro before heading off to a meeting and then we heard from the press secretary for the embassy. He talked about the differences in the press since after the revolution in January 2011. The censorship ofmedia was so complete, and how that impacted his job of liaising with Tunisian press. He also told us how the revolution in Tunisia was the start of the Arab spring of revolutions such as those in Libya,Syria, and Egypt. He also said that the mission of American diplomacy in Tunisia is to support them in developing their democracies. Just a week before we were in Tunisia, they hosted the "Friends of Syria" conference as a show of support for their ongoing issues. Hilary Clinton came in for it, and the event was a great success.
Thirdly an odd political specialist spoke to us, not much of which we could understand or comprehend. The fourth person we spoke to was immensely interesting. He is a Tunisian who was involved with the revolution, using underground blogs and video sharing websites to spread their messages before and during the revolution. He now works with the American embassy to help them with cultural affairs.
Some interesting notes from him were that no one person can be attributed for the revolution except for 3 individuals who told Ben Ali to leave. Additionally the revolution was long time coming. The revolution was not caused because of joblessness and poor conditions in Tunisia, but it was because of a lack of dignity and being knowingly lied to by their government.
After that man spoke to us, we were supposed to leave the embassy, but we could not. Our bus was parked in the middle of a demonstration that had started in front of the Embassy. Let's just say I left that out of my "Yay got to Tunisia Safe" email I sent my family that night. So we went to hang out in the multipurpose room of the embassy to wait out the protest. There we hear the man in charge of cultural affairs of the embassy talk about what he does. They do things like bring in documentary filmmakers, hip hop artists, and graffiti artists to LYASE with the Tunisian people.
It really hit me, as I knew little about the Tunisian revolution how crazy the change had been. Only just over a year ago, people of this country couldnt speak their minds, they were constantly followed by both secret and normal police. Over 10 percent of the population were police. It is so unthinkable to me that this was possible to go on so shortly ago, and that it still goes on today in other places.
As the day ended we stopped at the hotel and had dinner and then went up into a small mountain town to smoke sheesha and have traditional mint tea. It was a really unique and traditional time, our group almost took over the mountain top establishment, but there were still enough Tunisians to give us knowing glances as we tried to walk leaving after smoking sheesha.
Day 2.
On the second day we woke up and had a lecture more about the history of Tunisia. It was really interesting. Only being freed from the control of France in 1956 there were only two presidents before the revolution. The interesting thing that I didn't know (how stupid and ethnocentric I am has been a main theme of of time in Tunisia) is that Tunisia has always been a secular state, and it actually had and has very liberal views towards women. When we later asked Tunisian women if they ever felt marginalized or not equal to men they emphatically said no. That is something that I'm sure would not be said by Americanwomen.
We then took our buses (Bus 1 was where the party was at with Sander and Ramsey the driver) into Tunis to have lunch in a 15th century palace (of course #LoyolaLunches) and met with a group of 40 Tunisian students who are studying constitutional law. There were three Tunisian women at our table Yusk Sahid and Ikram who we talked to about their perspective on the revolution, and American culture. They said some very interesting things about their identity, Tunisians in general haw a very well defined view of national pride something I didn't know. They also don't relate to the Arab world at all, they instead identify with North Africa and the Mediterranean.
After lunch we went through the medina with our new Tunisian friends and did some serious shopping, while still having more and more discussions about Tunisian culture. Sahid told us that she was in the demonstration the morning that Ben ali fled. We walked out of the medina and down into a catholic cathedral, which was really simple and beautiful. We walked past the square where the Ministry of the Interior is where a lot of the demonstrations took place last year. We then went back to the hotel for the amazing Tunisian dinner and some drinks. Along with some light raging at the discotheque attachedto our hotel with some vintage Destiny's Child and fishbowl drinks.
That was only the first 2 of 10 days. Strap in blog buddies, strap in.
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