Tunisia – Page 42 – Not Your Average Engineer

November 10, 2004November 15, 2021

Ain Draham

Moving on from Tabarka, we wound our way up into the northwestern mountains of Tunisia. Known as the Kroumirie Mountains, its one of the few areas in Tunisia to get significant rainfall and, occasionally, snow! We stopped off at Ain Draham, the mountain station of Tunisia. The town sits at about 1000 meters nestled at the top of the pass on the road between Tabarka and Jendouba. Between Ain Draham and Tabarka, the road winds its way within about 500 meters of the border with Algeria. In Ain Draham, you can gaze across the valley to Algeria.

The entire region is filled with cork forests. We spied several trees that had been freshly harvested. To harvest the cork bark off of a cork tree, one makes a circular cut at the top and bottom of the trunk and one slit all the way down the length of the tree. Be sure to be careful not to cut all the way through the bark, as the inner layers transport nutrients up and down the trunk. I’m told that a cork tree can be harvested once every ten years or so.

In Ain Draham, our main goal was to see the women’s carpet cooperative that one of our guide books talked about. After some hiking around, we finally found it. The place mainly handles traditional Berber carpets with a few more modern designs. In the end, I bought a carpet and a bunch of carpet squares. Giovanna bought two carpets, some carpet squares, some knitted sweaters and gloves and hats and whatnot, and maybe a few other things. Heather bought some carpet squares and some knitted goods. We packaged all of the carpets together into a huge roll that just barely fit into a burlap feed sack. I lashed the roll under my backpack. Since we were taking louages everywhere, we had to be mobile. Looking back on it, we were rather insane. Those carpets must have weighed 20 kilos!

The carpet cooperative.

I worked with the women for a while. They seemed pretty happy that a foreign guy would be interested in how they make carpets.

Me examining the carpets. I chose the smaller one. It now resides on my floor.

What a great place to sit and stay a while.

November 10, 2004November 15, 2021

Tabarka

Arrr! Thar be pirates in Tabarka! These pirate galleons are used to take tourists out in the summer on the water for some recreational activities.

Part of the Tunisian fishing fleet designed for the open seas.

Looking across to the small Zone Touristique. Tabarka is trying to imitate the supposed success of places such as Hammamet and Sousse. The water is a chocolate brown from all of the erosion. Every time it rains, the water turns brown.

Walking along the access road on the landward side of the island a few hundred meters off the coast from Tabarka. Well, actually the French built a causeway out to the island just after World War II.

Looking back toward the causeway and Tabarka.

Giovanna wanted a picture with some Genoese ruins. She had to do a bit of work to get that shot.

The island is covered with old ruins from the former owners. The main attraction on the island is the Genoese fort. It was occupied by the Genoese from 1542 when Dragut, the famed and feared Muslim corsair, was captured and ransomed. His cohort, Khaired-Din Barbarossa, gave up the island to get his buddy back. The Genoese also secured the coral diving and harvesting rites to northern Tunisia. The Genoese mainly concerned themselves with coral and with acting as agents for ransoming slaves from Tunis. Back then, there was a healthy slave trade both coming up from Sub-Saharan Africa and from the northern shores of the Mediterranean Sea. In 1741, the Genoese found themselves in need of agents when the island was finally taken by the Bey of Tunis. The old Genoese names still survive in the Tunis Medina today.

The door to the fort was unfortunately locked. Its supposed to be converted into a museum but it appears to still be some sort of a police station or military base.

Those guys are fishing for something.

The Needles, as they’re known locally. The promenade between Tabarka proper and the amphitheater where the international jazz festival is held every summer tunnels through the rocks to make it around the corner.

We decided to go out to the Zone Touristique to relax a bit and sit on the beach. Of course the beach was icy cold!

The beach was covered with winged black ants along the surf line.

looking out from the inside of the hotel we spent some time at.

Hotel Montana and Disco Montana. Not exactly what you’d expect to see in downtown Tabarka!

The view from our hotel room window. We stayed at the Hotel Novelty in downtown Tabarka. We made the trip during Ramadan so by this point we were very hungry!

Getting ready to go in the morning.

There are lots of unfinished buildings in Tabarka. There was a big push a few years back to tear down the old buildings and build new and “modern” ones. Tabarka is slowly losing its charm. For some reason, a lot of the construction looks to have stalled out back in 2001 or 2002.

This used to be a Roman cistern which was later modified and converted into a little fort which was used by Christian traders in the 12th century.

November 5, 2004November 15, 2021

Election Night

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.