I had a long and very exciting dream last night that I had been invited to return to Tunisia for another two weeks. I'd only been home for a few days but my family (here) and I figured it was a great idea. Something like half of the SIT group had decided to stay in Tunis as well and had gotten some great deal renting out an entire apartment building with a big kitchen. I was initially thinking (in this dream) that it would cost a fortune to go back especially since I have just flown home, but the prospect of free housing and food for two weeks seemed like too good an opportunity to pass up. Well, I ended up going and my Mom there was so happy to see me again! I was all stressed out when I arrived though because I hadn't arranged for a flight to get home ever. She reassured me though, and told me we'd worry about it "fi'l spe'h," "in the morning, in the morning" she kept telling me.
Believe it or not, this morning was the first time I woke up sure that there was Arabic spoken in my dream. For whatever reason, the phrase I've got on loop in my head right now and for the past few days is 'ki met heb," something my Mom said at least a dozen times a day, "as you like."
Well, it is beautiful outside today in Storrs, Connecticut and I am enjoying our screen porch and working diligently on my honors proposal for school. It makes me excited just thinking about Tunisian music and Tunisian musicians again.
Well, n'harik zine (have a good day!) and in'shallah lebes (I hope God wills you are well).
Sunday, May 31, 2009
Thursday, May 21, 2009
A quick apology is in order.
As probably many of you are more than well aware, my spelling has always left something to be desired. I've just now had the time to go back and sicked the spell check hound on some previous entries. Sorry for any pain that any formerly horrendously spelled words may have brought upon you, the reader. I swear, believe it or not I used to be far worse.
Home
Well.
I arrived home in one piece just two days ago. The experience of returning to my family, my house, my town, my country has been really more than a bit mind boggling. Not only is it strange not to hear to call to prayer five times a day, it is far stranger simply to hear so many people speaking English, and so fluently too, without Tunisian accents! To see couples kissing in public, to eat meals with forks instead of spoons and pieces of baguette as utensils, to watch crime shows instead of ninja turtles, Saudi televangelists, or Tom and Jerry dubbed in modern standard Arabic is a big change. Truly reliable supplies of toilet paper and upright showers with shower curtains are something to get used to again as well. Everything here is so clean, so green, beautified in a really different way. It was something else to eat my Dad's curry again and drive to my high school this evening to see my brother's final orchestra concert. I had been so excited about non-processed this and that, cheese, pickles, apples, and salad. There are all here in my refrigerator. No one if forcing food at me "Koul! Koul! mush benin? Behe, behe!" and it is acceptable for me to retreat into my room to read or type or just look out the window at the rhododendrons that are just starting to burst open their buds.
The only way I can describe this is that everything is familiar, yet somehow very changed. I have returned from so many trips before, even from longer ones (I lived in Australia with my family for six months when I was 13), but I have never felt so...well...bamboozled.
For old times sake, here are some of the things I left in Tunisia but could never forget...
The president's mosque from just near one of the Carthage TGM (train) stops.
My nephew (Skander) and my cousin (Amina).
Our SIT family of darbukas (mine made it safely back to Storrs, Connecticticut.
The unbelievable roses that overflowed over my neighbor's fence. There were white ones as well that had intertwined with these pink ones.
This is hopefully by no means the end of this blog. I'd love to keep writing here whensoever I am moved to talk about Tunisia-related things. In all likelihood I will be continuing my Independent study project, ("Fusion" music in Tunisian Identity in the Age of Global Stereo) next year as the basis for an honor's project / thesis this coming year upon my return to Oberlin. I am sure I will test the waters on this blog as well as you've all been listening to me ramble about Tunisia for this long already.
Signing off for now...
I arrived home in one piece just two days ago. The experience of returning to my family, my house, my town, my country has been really more than a bit mind boggling. Not only is it strange not to hear to call to prayer five times a day, it is far stranger simply to hear so many people speaking English, and so fluently too, without Tunisian accents! To see couples kissing in public, to eat meals with forks instead of spoons and pieces of baguette as utensils, to watch crime shows instead of ninja turtles, Saudi televangelists, or Tom and Jerry dubbed in modern standard Arabic is a big change. Truly reliable supplies of toilet paper and upright showers with shower curtains are something to get used to again as well. Everything here is so clean, so green, beautified in a really different way. It was something else to eat my Dad's curry again and drive to my high school this evening to see my brother's final orchestra concert. I had been so excited about non-processed this and that, cheese, pickles, apples, and salad. There are all here in my refrigerator. No one if forcing food at me "Koul! Koul! mush benin? Behe, behe!" and it is acceptable for me to retreat into my room to read or type or just look out the window at the rhododendrons that are just starting to burst open their buds.
The only way I can describe this is that everything is familiar, yet somehow very changed. I have returned from so many trips before, even from longer ones (I lived in Australia with my family for six months when I was 13), but I have never felt so...well...bamboozled.
For old times sake, here are some of the things I left in Tunisia but could never forget...
The president's mosque from just near one of the Carthage TGM (train) stops.
My nephew (Skander) and my cousin (Amina).
Our SIT family of darbukas (mine made it safely back to Storrs, Connecticticut.
The unbelievable roses that overflowed over my neighbor's fence. There were white ones as well that had intertwined with these pink ones.
This is hopefully by no means the end of this blog. I'd love to keep writing here whensoever I am moved to talk about Tunisia-related things. In all likelihood I will be continuing my Independent study project, ("Fusion" music in Tunisian Identity in the Age of Global Stereo) next year as the basis for an honor's project / thesis this coming year upon my return to Oberlin. I am sure I will test the waters on this blog as well as you've all been listening to me ramble about Tunisia for this long already.
Signing off for now...
Thursday, April 23, 2009
Throw back to Northern Excursion
Here are some miscellaneous pictures from our northern excursion several weeks ago.
It is becoming spring. This is somewhere along the road where we stopped to eat...
...mishweey, wonderful grilled lamb along-side freshly baked bread thrown on the grill for a bit accompanied by olive oil and slata mishweya (grilled pepper salad)
You place your order (ours was for 16 or 17 people) and you can stand and watch them carve up the entire lamb carcass in a few well-exacted strokes of a very sharp knife. Not something for the faint vegetarians or feint-of-heart meat eaters.
mmm...the end product. Greasy, smokey, and delicious.
Ghar el Melh, an absolutely spectacular coast line walk we took at the very tip of Tunisia quite close to the northern-most point of Africa. The main goal of the walk along the cliffs was to reach...
This shrine to the patron saint of the region. There are two care-takers now, a couple, one of whom (the wife) is said to be a direct descendant. They were extremely generous and friendly and invited us in to look around, sit and rest for a while and drink, of course, a cup of mint tea with them. It is common practice to bring a small gift so we came bearing a box of sugar cubes. The woman told us, in an extremely poetic explanation about the place and the saint who never performed any miracles, by who never did a single thing of evil in his life.
Some of the decorations and tributes inside the shrine which is also a home. This is Toney who is listening to a story attentively and cooling off from the trek there which took over an hour.
I know this photo is over-exposed in parts, but boy does it capture the essence of this place and these people who welcomed us into their home and into their lives. Risking sounding a little hoaky, the place really did have a calm restfulness to it. It was hard to leave.
Beautiful hills of the north. This was across the road from a huge field of fava beans.
Karen petting a five-day-old goat at a pottery workshop / home in Sejnen. Again, we were welcomed in and invited to watch an expert make a perfectly symmetrical put by hand in about two minutes. I was fascinated and fixated on her dexterity which was utterly fascinating to watch. Years of repetition.
The "fingers" at Tabarka in the 6:00 light.
The cork forests between Tabarka and Le Kef (near the Algerian border). A lot of honey in this region as well sold in jars along the road in tiny stands.
An un-identified building at the ancient Roman marble quarries of Chemtou (I don't think this building dates back nearly that far). Some of the best marble in the country for many of the Roman monuments still standing came from this region.
They had some very picturesque donkeys as well and nice views from the top of the cliff.
The almost sleepy town of Le Kef were the tea is strong and people really want to chat you up in the street. We happened to arrive just before the beginning of a 24 hr. theater, dance, and music festival which was a lucky coincidence—I heard a fabulous Oud and Qanuun concert.
The Ottoman Kasba in Le Kef.
Top of the Kasba with a great view of the medina and newer part of town below.
Le Kef and Djerba are historically the the two main Jewish centers in Tunisia, at least until 1967 when most Jews left the country. There is still a some-what sizable community in Djerba still, but I was told that the last Jew left Le Kef a few decades ago.
I just love this picture and the light. There was more graffiti (some great stuff) in Le Kef than anywhere else we've been in Tunisia so far.
Jupiter's temple at Douga, one of the best preserved Roman towns in Tunisia and in the world. The name "Douga" came from the Berber/numid word "Thouga." The town is not laid out like a typical Roman town (with the two main cross streets) because the Romans took what was left by the Indigenous people and made the most of it. Also, the topography (it's along a big a hill) really dictated how it was set up in the first place.
These were once latrines...now a good place for a sit-down.
Ok, enough procrastinating. Onward and forward to work on my project and English tutoring this afternoon. A friend and I have been teaching English at a little non-profit organization in a low-income neighborhood about 20 minutes away.
It is becoming spring. This is somewhere along the road where we stopped to eat...
...mishweey, wonderful grilled lamb along-side freshly baked bread thrown on the grill for a bit accompanied by olive oil and slata mishweya (grilled pepper salad)
You place your order (ours was for 16 or 17 people) and you can stand and watch them carve up the entire lamb carcass in a few well-exacted strokes of a very sharp knife. Not something for the faint vegetarians or feint-of-heart meat eaters.
mmm...the end product. Greasy, smokey, and delicious.
Ghar el Melh, an absolutely spectacular coast line walk we took at the very tip of Tunisia quite close to the northern-most point of Africa. The main goal of the walk along the cliffs was to reach...
This shrine to the patron saint of the region. There are two care-takers now, a couple, one of whom (the wife) is said to be a direct descendant. They were extremely generous and friendly and invited us in to look around, sit and rest for a while and drink, of course, a cup of mint tea with them. It is common practice to bring a small gift so we came bearing a box of sugar cubes. The woman told us, in an extremely poetic explanation about the place and the saint who never performed any miracles, by who never did a single thing of evil in his life.
Some of the decorations and tributes inside the shrine which is also a home. This is Toney who is listening to a story attentively and cooling off from the trek there which took over an hour.
I know this photo is over-exposed in parts, but boy does it capture the essence of this place and these people who welcomed us into their home and into their lives. Risking sounding a little hoaky, the place really did have a calm restfulness to it. It was hard to leave.
Beautiful hills of the north. This was across the road from a huge field of fava beans.
Karen petting a five-day-old goat at a pottery workshop / home in Sejnen. Again, we were welcomed in and invited to watch an expert make a perfectly symmetrical put by hand in about two minutes. I was fascinated and fixated on her dexterity which was utterly fascinating to watch. Years of repetition.
The "fingers" at Tabarka in the 6:00 light.
The cork forests between Tabarka and Le Kef (near the Algerian border). A lot of honey in this region as well sold in jars along the road in tiny stands.
An un-identified building at the ancient Roman marble quarries of Chemtou (I don't think this building dates back nearly that far). Some of the best marble in the country for many of the Roman monuments still standing came from this region.
They had some very picturesque donkeys as well and nice views from the top of the cliff.
The almost sleepy town of Le Kef were the tea is strong and people really want to chat you up in the street. We happened to arrive just before the beginning of a 24 hr. theater, dance, and music festival which was a lucky coincidence—I heard a fabulous Oud and Qanuun concert.
The Ottoman Kasba in Le Kef.
Top of the Kasba with a great view of the medina and newer part of town below.
Le Kef and Djerba are historically the the two main Jewish centers in Tunisia, at least until 1967 when most Jews left the country. There is still a some-what sizable community in Djerba still, but I was told that the last Jew left Le Kef a few decades ago.
I just love this picture and the light. There was more graffiti (some great stuff) in Le Kef than anywhere else we've been in Tunisia so far.
Jupiter's temple at Douga, one of the best preserved Roman towns in Tunisia and in the world. The name "Douga" came from the Berber/numid word "Thouga." The town is not laid out like a typical Roman town (with the two main cross streets) because the Romans took what was left by the Indigenous people and made the most of it. Also, the topography (it's along a big a hill) really dictated how it was set up in the first place.
These were once latrines...now a good place for a sit-down.
Ok, enough procrastinating. Onward and forward to work on my project and English tutoring this afternoon. A friend and I have been teaching English at a little non-profit organization in a low-income neighborhood about 20 minutes away.
Tuesday, April 21, 2009
Research time...getting hectic
Thank goodness my internet is still working correctly (insh'Allah nothing ever fouls it up again!).
This week I have really started throwing myself into my independent research here which got off to a bit of a slow start last week due to a combination of circumstances (particularly our academic director not speaking with us about our proposals until last Friday...). Anyway, the past two days have been exhilarating, exhausting, exciting, and...well...I'll admit it, more than a little intimidating. The people I've worked with so far have been extremely helpful, open about their opinions, and generous with their time, but just the idea of calling people (some of whom speak more English than others) to make appointments or looking at a list of names of musicians, government-affiliated officials, and music-enthusiast friends of my adviser to be interviewed in the future can be utterly daunting. I am doing my best to just tackle everything head-on (I am two days into that plan and things seem to be going well).
Yesterday I finally got to meet with my personal adviser for my Independent project, Hatem, who is a good friend of Mounir's (our academic director at SIT) and whom I'd met at the very beginning of our stay here for an in-depth tour of the medina (old arab city) of Tunis. he is a writer, playwrite, and poet (among a seemingly endless list of other things). He is an artist.
I met him yesterday at Hotel Africa in the European quarter and went back with him to his "office." He pulled up on his bike, dismounted, and introducted himself. I can't possible describe this man, but he's got to be one of the coolest guys I've met. It been windy and raining that morning and he had a green winter hat (complete with yellow pompom on the top) and a real bounce in his step. Back at his "office," which was a single paint-spattered black table in the open space between rows of seats in a movie theater in the center for culture, we talked over my project. He was really excited that I was interested in what I suppose I will call "fusion music" and simply laid out the broad sweeps of the history of fusion in Tunisia and listed the most influential and interesting artists. Then...he took out his phone and wrote down phone numbers for the majority of the musicians. I am completely blown away by how connected this man is! I'd been fretting that I hadn't been able to talk to Anouar Brahem after the concert a few weeks ago, but now I have his number along with about ten other musicians and directors of various institutions.
This morning I walked just up the hill to the Center for Arab and Mediterranean Music, an institution established in 1992 by the current president both the preservation of Tunisian music and the propotion of new Tunisian music and musicians. The center is located at the historic palace of Baron d'Erlanger (called "Ennejma Ezzahra" or the "Star of Venus"), one of the most prominant musicologists and promotor of the arts from the early 20th century. I was lucky enough to have an hour-long interview with the assistant director who was a great contact. I commented on a really cool instrument hanging on his wall (a chordiphone with a sea turtle shell as its body) and he got really excited and walked me down to the instrument workshop where I met the master craftsman and got to see several Ouds and rebabs under construction. They (the musicologists and crafts men) also aim to re-create instruments that are no longer used today (some of them sub-saharan) from old photographs that are hanging in the shop and in the assistant director's office. What a fascinating job. Can I do that when I grow up? I was reminded of Professor Knight's various organological passions.
Tomorrow I have an interview with the director of a small "off-mainstream" theater in Tunis where they apparently sometimes have fusion music concerts. Hatim will facilitate and translate for me which I hope goes well.
More soon hopefully!
Please post a comment if you are reading here—I'd love to hear how everyone is doing and what is new!
This week I have really started throwing myself into my independent research here which got off to a bit of a slow start last week due to a combination of circumstances (particularly our academic director not speaking with us about our proposals until last Friday...). Anyway, the past two days have been exhilarating, exhausting, exciting, and...well...I'll admit it, more than a little intimidating. The people I've worked with so far have been extremely helpful, open about their opinions, and generous with their time, but just the idea of calling people (some of whom speak more English than others) to make appointments or looking at a list of names of musicians, government-affiliated officials, and music-enthusiast friends of my adviser to be interviewed in the future can be utterly daunting. I am doing my best to just tackle everything head-on (I am two days into that plan and things seem to be going well).
Yesterday I finally got to meet with my personal adviser for my Independent project, Hatem, who is a good friend of Mounir's (our academic director at SIT) and whom I'd met at the very beginning of our stay here for an in-depth tour of the medina (old arab city) of Tunis. he is a writer, playwrite, and poet (among a seemingly endless list of other things). He is an artist.
I met him yesterday at Hotel Africa in the European quarter and went back with him to his "office." He pulled up on his bike, dismounted, and introducted himself. I can't possible describe this man, but he's got to be one of the coolest guys I've met. It been windy and raining that morning and he had a green winter hat (complete with yellow pompom on the top) and a real bounce in his step. Back at his "office," which was a single paint-spattered black table in the open space between rows of seats in a movie theater in the center for culture, we talked over my project. He was really excited that I was interested in what I suppose I will call "fusion music" and simply laid out the broad sweeps of the history of fusion in Tunisia and listed the most influential and interesting artists. Then...he took out his phone and wrote down phone numbers for the majority of the musicians. I am completely blown away by how connected this man is! I'd been fretting that I hadn't been able to talk to Anouar Brahem after the concert a few weeks ago, but now I have his number along with about ten other musicians and directors of various institutions.
This morning I walked just up the hill to the Center for Arab and Mediterranean Music, an institution established in 1992 by the current president both the preservation of Tunisian music and the propotion of new Tunisian music and musicians. The center is located at the historic palace of Baron d'Erlanger (called "Ennejma Ezzahra" or the "Star of Venus"), one of the most prominant musicologists and promotor of the arts from the early 20th century. I was lucky enough to have an hour-long interview with the assistant director who was a great contact. I commented on a really cool instrument hanging on his wall (a chordiphone with a sea turtle shell as its body) and he got really excited and walked me down to the instrument workshop where I met the master craftsman and got to see several Ouds and rebabs under construction. They (the musicologists and crafts men) also aim to re-create instruments that are no longer used today (some of them sub-saharan) from old photographs that are hanging in the shop and in the assistant director's office. What a fascinating job. Can I do that when I grow up? I was reminded of Professor Knight's various organological passions.
Tomorrow I have an interview with the director of a small "off-mainstream" theater in Tunis where they apparently sometimes have fusion music concerts. Hatim will facilitate and translate for me which I hope goes well.
More soon hopefully!
Please post a comment if you are reading here—I'd love to hear how everyone is doing and what is new!
Wednesday, April 15, 2009
Long time no post...
This is just to say that I am doing well and have not vanished from the face of the earth which could have been suggested by my mysterious vanishing from this blog. Simply enough (and a much better reason for not blogging than vanishing from the face of the earth) my internet has been fouled up for the past week and a half or so.
Life is great. My Arabic classes have concluded (we had a final exam this past Wednesday) as have my Field Study Seminar and Thematic Seminar (we're done with lectures). This mean's we've got all sorts of free time not only to complete our independent research project, but to do things like throw lavish birthday parties and have an extensive passover seder for the entire SIT crew hosted by myself and my good friend Ryan who attends Brandeis and is a Jew-iphyle. It was wonderfully haphazard and involved us visiting the jewish quarter in La Gulette, meeting the rabbi, and picking up 14 portions of a combination of tuna and brisket in the most delicious sauce I have ever had the pleasure of consuming...oh, and a box of French Matzah as well. The entire seder was in English, of course, and included a multi-denominational silent prayer and ad-lib tellings of the passover story, etc, and the ritual four glasses of wine. One of the best days I have had, full of shopping, cooking, sharing, questioning, and eating with good friends.
This past weekend I got to go to an absolutely fabulous concert: Anouar Brahem (who grew up in Tunis) and a new quartet (A Lebanese, a Sweed, and a German (I believe)). Anouar Brahem combined Tunisian (Arab / Andalusian) Oud music with Jazz influences mainly, as well as some Indian and specifically Iranian influences. Really interesting stuff that certainly be one of the main componants of my Independent Study Project. The title of my paper will be "Fusion" musics and Tunisian Identity in an Age of Global Stereo.
Speaking of which, today I found out who my advisor is for my project—a scholoar and historian from Tunis who gave us our first tour of the medina and who apparently knows a lot about Tunisian music. I am excited to meet him and get to planning some interviews. He speaks good English which is a G-d-sent.
Today we spent a long time making some great grilled cheese sandwiches (quite a delicacy here where quality cheeses are rare and a bit pricy) with tomatos (4 or 5) that I bought for around 40 cents from a man at the central market who had to hold the 50 milleem coins right up to his eye to see its value.
The internet looks like it might be waning. I'll check in again soon, in sh'Allah (If God permits).
I hope everyone is well.
Rudbelik (look out and take care) (accompanied by pointing at one's eyes, one and then the other, with a single index finger)
Life is great. My Arabic classes have concluded (we had a final exam this past Wednesday) as have my Field Study Seminar and Thematic Seminar (we're done with lectures). This mean's we've got all sorts of free time not only to complete our independent research project, but to do things like throw lavish birthday parties and have an extensive passover seder for the entire SIT crew hosted by myself and my good friend Ryan who attends Brandeis and is a Jew-iphyle. It was wonderfully haphazard and involved us visiting the jewish quarter in La Gulette, meeting the rabbi, and picking up 14 portions of a combination of tuna and brisket in the most delicious sauce I have ever had the pleasure of consuming...oh, and a box of French Matzah as well. The entire seder was in English, of course, and included a multi-denominational silent prayer and ad-lib tellings of the passover story, etc, and the ritual four glasses of wine. One of the best days I have had, full of shopping, cooking, sharing, questioning, and eating with good friends.
This past weekend I got to go to an absolutely fabulous concert: Anouar Brahem (who grew up in Tunis) and a new quartet (A Lebanese, a Sweed, and a German (I believe)). Anouar Brahem combined Tunisian (Arab / Andalusian) Oud music with Jazz influences mainly, as well as some Indian and specifically Iranian influences. Really interesting stuff that certainly be one of the main componants of my Independent Study Project. The title of my paper will be "Fusion" musics and Tunisian Identity in an Age of Global Stereo.
Speaking of which, today I found out who my advisor is for my project—a scholoar and historian from Tunis who gave us our first tour of the medina and who apparently knows a lot about Tunisian music. I am excited to meet him and get to planning some interviews. He speaks good English which is a G-d-sent.
Today we spent a long time making some great grilled cheese sandwiches (quite a delicacy here where quality cheeses are rare and a bit pricy) with tomatos (4 or 5) that I bought for around 40 cents from a man at the central market who had to hold the 50 milleem coins right up to his eye to see its value.
The internet looks like it might be waning. I'll check in again soon, in sh'Allah (If God permits).
I hope everyone is well.
Rudbelik (look out and take care) (accompanied by pointing at one's eyes, one and then the other, with a single index finger)
Thursday, March 19, 2009
Some more pictures from the wedding
My host mother and sister, Kalthoum and Lamyan
My mother and me. Yeah, I know, I am wearing make-up. My sister insists on flipping my hair just like in this picture. I borrowed her make-up and put more and more on as she ordered. I borrowed a jacket and shawl as well which I am wearing in the next picture.
Here I am back at home. My mom has a lot of trouble figuring out my camera, but this one came out pretty ok. I am standing in the corner of the room where she prays (she picked this area as the backdrop for the picture because it always looks nice). By the time this picture was taken, it was pushing 2 am and I was so ready to curl up in my warm bed. Did I mention I have a queen-sized bed here with a great comforter? It really beats my squeaky bunked single in Noah, I have to say, though I really miss Anna's company and late-night rambling chats.
The Wedding this week
This week has been another exhausting one (surprise, surprise) and tomorrow is Independence day so we have no class. What a blessing. I am coming down with a touch of something and have definitely not slept enough this week between going out bowling with my cousin on Saturday until 2 am, the pre-wedding party on Sunday night, wedding ceremony and party on Tuesday night, and staying up late to write a paper for class last night.
The wedding was wonderful. The bride is a friend of my mother's from about 30 years back at Tunis Air. Both the party on Sunday and the ceremony (which was really mostly a party) on Tuesday were chock-a-block full of music. Just a side bar, I have recently started using weird phrases like "chock-a-block" for no apparent reason besides that I am struggling to speak and write in English correctly these days). The group on Tuesday night was an all women's ma'luf ensemble led by the 'ud player. They were having such a good time playing and played beautifully together: keyboard player (with micro-tones of course, violinist, kanuun, 'ud, two drums, darbuka, and various singers. I am still learning how to attach video to this blog, so I will post a video when I figure it out...
Our role at the wedding was strictly to sit and gorge ourselves on hoarderves, fruit juices, and tiny tasty sweets. Candied almonds are a wedding and baby shower specialty here. As soon as I'd told my mom I was too full, she'd find sometime else to put on my plate and insist "qoul, qoul!" (eat it! eat it!). We visited with the bride's nuclear famility, particularly her mother, and watched the bride and her new husband sit in the spotlight on their silver sofa. I wont try to describe it; I'll just put in a few pictures. My mom told me that before the wedding, the bride's mother covers her daughter in warm / hot sugar with lemon used to remove all of the hair on her body like a hot wax (besides on her head). Traditionally, brides are kept indoors for a month at least and fed only sweet and fatty foods to keep them as plump and pale as possible (this is attractive). The ceremony of signing the vows is short and not celebrated in the same fassion as in the US. It's treated more as business. As soon as that's done, some religious man reads a sura from the Qur'an. Everyone joined in towards the end and recited some sort of prayer of good wishes. What followed? Of course, more music, dancing, and eatting.
Here are some photos of the wedding:
The bride and groom seated on their silver couch. They were on display int he spotlight in the front of the reception hall for almost the entire evening (they took a short dancing break). Most guests make a short visit some time during the evening, typically just before they leave, to give the couple their best wishes.
Just a sampling of some of our tasty treats. Lots of sugar, almonds, and pistachio. Wonderful baklava as well.
The wedding was wonderful. The bride is a friend of my mother's from about 30 years back at Tunis Air. Both the party on Sunday and the ceremony (which was really mostly a party) on Tuesday were chock-a-block full of music. Just a side bar, I have recently started using weird phrases like "chock-a-block" for no apparent reason besides that I am struggling to speak and write in English correctly these days). The group on Tuesday night was an all women's ma'luf ensemble led by the 'ud player. They were having such a good time playing and played beautifully together: keyboard player (with micro-tones of course, violinist, kanuun, 'ud, two drums, darbuka, and various singers. I am still learning how to attach video to this blog, so I will post a video when I figure it out...
Our role at the wedding was strictly to sit and gorge ourselves on hoarderves, fruit juices, and tiny tasty sweets. Candied almonds are a wedding and baby shower specialty here. As soon as I'd told my mom I was too full, she'd find sometime else to put on my plate and insist "qoul, qoul!" (eat it! eat it!). We visited with the bride's nuclear famility, particularly her mother, and watched the bride and her new husband sit in the spotlight on their silver sofa. I wont try to describe it; I'll just put in a few pictures. My mom told me that before the wedding, the bride's mother covers her daughter in warm / hot sugar with lemon used to remove all of the hair on her body like a hot wax (besides on her head). Traditionally, brides are kept indoors for a month at least and fed only sweet and fatty foods to keep them as plump and pale as possible (this is attractive). The ceremony of signing the vows is short and not celebrated in the same fassion as in the US. It's treated more as business. As soon as that's done, some religious man reads a sura from the Qur'an. Everyone joined in towards the end and recited some sort of prayer of good wishes. What followed? Of course, more music, dancing, and eatting.
Here are some photos of the wedding:
The bride and groom seated on their silver couch. They were on display int he spotlight in the front of the reception hall for almost the entire evening (they took a short dancing break). Most guests make a short visit some time during the evening, typically just before they leave, to give the couple their best wishes.
Just a sampling of some of our tasty treats. Lots of sugar, almonds, and pistachio. Wonderful baklava as well.
Tuesday, March 17, 2009
Some Weekend Musics
This weekend was full of musical adventures.
Friday I went to hear "Balti," a famous Tunisian hip hop artist here in Tunis. He gave a concert that was attended by a really interesting group of people: lots of young boys (some under ten!) and teenagers as well as middle-aged men and the fathers and mothers of the younger boys. The show was complete with an opening act put on by a Tunisian break-dancing group, "Upper underground," and extensive sampling from some pretty old-school American hip hop and rap as well as some more recent stuff. The place got pretty crazy; full of smoke and the entire audience teetering (and rocking out) standing on the backs of their seats and on the arm rests. One man just behind me and my friends caught Balti's hat and lost his balance pulling four of five men down onto the ground with him. A good time, but I'm not sure I'd do it again...
Saturday I have my second Ma'luf lesson and was invited to join an "orchestra" rehearsal just as I was leaving. I obliged and joined 7 or 8 little kids who were seated in violin I and II sections in white lawn-chairs in the interior cour yard of the conservatory here in Sidi Bou Said. What did me play? An arrangement of "Angeline the Baker," the American fiddle tune (Appalachian I believe) for two violin sections and double base. Utterly bizarre. My Darbuka teacher walked pas as we were playing and joined in as well, bringing the strange factor up even further. It was great just to play with people no matter what we were doing; I hadn't realized the extent to which I was desperately missing that. I talked to the director afterwards and he invited me to return next weekend at 4:00—I'll be there. When prompted about "Angeline the Baker," he told me he did a "project on Arab and Appalachian music" what ever the heck that means! And traveled around the US giving some performances including one at the Kennedy center (if I understood his broken English correctly). This has got to be looked into; really cool stuff!
Sunday morning and early afternoon was spent perusing through the used clothes at the weekly souk in La Marsa with Colleen and Gabi and a good chat on the beach at La Cornice. The weather is getting to be fabulous. In the evening I went with my mom to one of the wedding parties for one of her colleagues 30 years ago with Tunis Air. I got to meet some of her friends, but basically sat there and just got to people watch. The music was great as well; a lot of Ma'luf-style styuff but with synthesized keyboard riffs meant to sound like kanuun and 'ud and drum-pad synthesized drum kit and darbuka right along side a violin and ney with pick-ups and a live darbuka. Strange and fasinating. We return tonight at 7:00 for another part of the wedding. I'm not totally sure what's going on all the time but it's nice just to people-watch.
That's all for now.
Just a heads-up, I will be on a Northern Excursion starting this coming monday (23rd) morning and returning on the evening of Sunday the 29th. Sweet! I am ready to mix up the routine a bit.
Friday I went to hear "Balti," a famous Tunisian hip hop artist here in Tunis. He gave a concert that was attended by a really interesting group of people: lots of young boys (some under ten!) and teenagers as well as middle-aged men and the fathers and mothers of the younger boys. The show was complete with an opening act put on by a Tunisian break-dancing group, "Upper underground," and extensive sampling from some pretty old-school American hip hop and rap as well as some more recent stuff. The place got pretty crazy; full of smoke and the entire audience teetering (and rocking out) standing on the backs of their seats and on the arm rests. One man just behind me and my friends caught Balti's hat and lost his balance pulling four of five men down onto the ground with him. A good time, but I'm not sure I'd do it again...
Saturday I have my second Ma'luf lesson and was invited to join an "orchestra" rehearsal just as I was leaving. I obliged and joined 7 or 8 little kids who were seated in violin I and II sections in white lawn-chairs in the interior cour yard of the conservatory here in Sidi Bou Said. What did me play? An arrangement of "Angeline the Baker," the American fiddle tune (Appalachian I believe) for two violin sections and double base. Utterly bizarre. My Darbuka teacher walked pas as we were playing and joined in as well, bringing the strange factor up even further. It was great just to play with people no matter what we were doing; I hadn't realized the extent to which I was desperately missing that. I talked to the director afterwards and he invited me to return next weekend at 4:00—I'll be there. When prompted about "Angeline the Baker," he told me he did a "project on Arab and Appalachian music" what ever the heck that means! And traveled around the US giving some performances including one at the Kennedy center (if I understood his broken English correctly). This has got to be looked into; really cool stuff!
Sunday morning and early afternoon was spent perusing through the used clothes at the weekly souk in La Marsa with Colleen and Gabi and a good chat on the beach at La Cornice. The weather is getting to be fabulous. In the evening I went with my mom to one of the wedding parties for one of her colleagues 30 years ago with Tunis Air. I got to meet some of her friends, but basically sat there and just got to people watch. The music was great as well; a lot of Ma'luf-style styuff but with synthesized keyboard riffs meant to sound like kanuun and 'ud and drum-pad synthesized drum kit and darbuka right along side a violin and ney with pick-ups and a live darbuka. Strange and fasinating. We return tonight at 7:00 for another part of the wedding. I'm not totally sure what's going on all the time but it's nice just to people-watch.
That's all for now.
Just a heads-up, I will be on a Northern Excursion starting this coming monday (23rd) morning and returning on the evening of Sunday the 29th. Sweet! I am ready to mix up the routine a bit.
Thursday, March 12, 2009
An Assignment for class...
This was the first assignment for my field seminar course, to type up one of our journal entries.
Please feel free to read it. Sorry for references you might not get to Tunisian cinema...
I didn’t set my alarm last night because I wanted to take advantage of the holiday and grab a little extra sleep when I had the chance. I woke up to music, birds, dogs barking, roosters, and the sound of my neighbor washing his car; much of this has become standard fare for a weekend morning in La Marsa. The music was something new though and when I hurried to unlatch the window and shutters, I was greeted by a burst of fresh air and sunlight. It was already getting hot outside. I instinctively grabbed for my audio recorder that I keep on my nightstand right next to the window, turned it on, and placed it carefully on the windowsill. I wanted to capture the soundscape all around me; the pre-recorded Tunisian music blasting from someone’s house up the street near the park, my neighbor washing his car, the blackbirds singing to each other and to the morning in the trees next to our car port and the kids at the end of the street that play soccer in the road between the pot holes that fill with fresh murky water and trash by every evening. I wanted to “take it all in.” Outside, my nephew, Skander, and two other neighbor’s kids who are half French, one quarter Italian, and one quarter Tunisian scuttled around in circles on their bikes with training wheels squealing as they plowed straight through the potholes, racing each other. I stood there soaking up the sun for ten minutes or so, staring at the women in the park hanging their laundry up to dry amongst the trash, chickens, and sheep and my neighbor washing his red car, while lost in my own thoughts.
It took me those ten minutes, and my other neighbor coming out of her house to check on the newborn puppies sheltered under an overhang in the front corner of her house for me to realize what I was doing. I could have waved to her and greeter her successfully, I could have, but I didn’t. All of a sudden I shut one of the shudders and reached to turn off my recorder. I peeked through the chinks of the shudders to try to establish whether or not I have been discovered. All of a sudden I was overcome by a sense of guilt, self-consciousness, completely ashamed of my fascination in the everyday goings on in other people’s lives. I had caught myself in the act of peeking, peeping; I was the voyeur. I was just standing there capturing images, if even in my head, (note the violence inherent to all verbs associated with photography) and documenting the every sound of the morning with my tiny machine. Was it mine for the taking in the first place? I those few moments I questioned my role here, my “right” to be here in a Tunisian’s home, and on a greater scale, the place of anthropology and the ethnographer. The example of this morning might seem extreme, people watching is a popular hobby of mine back home in the states, but somehow being here I don’t feel justified in the same way. Oh course, students who study anthropology are curious people, they are immensely interested in the complexity of the ways people live and think, but does this give them the right be voyeurs? The lines between “participation” and “disturbance,” “observation” and “voyeurism” are elusive and, for me, pose a question not only of “scientific method,” but also of my own sense of morality and ethics.
This morning’s experience reminded me also of my experiences recently on public bus 52 that I take every morning from La Marsa to the SIT office in Sidi Bou Said. Over the past week or so I have started wearing my sunglasses more regularly to the bus stop and all the while on the bus. Yes, the weather is getting warmed and the sun is brighter, but the main reason I’ve started wearing them is that men seem to have a harder time following my eyes and subsequently (I think, at least) notice and hassle me less. The sunglasses not only help to manage looks from others, but, admittedly, allow me to watch other people without necessarily their knowing. With the mediation of my sunglasses I feel safer observing differences between how men and women of different ages behave in the small space of the bus, I look over the shoulders of students punching numbers into the calculators on their cell phones and studying for math exams. I know that the lenses I am wearing are multi-purpose for me, but I wear them all the same. I let myself be a voyeur because, I think, at this point at least, I am still too shy to be a true “participant observer.” Also, I have found that though participatory experiences are almost always rewarding experiences, observation from a distanced seems always to be a devilishly tempting, safe, guarded possibility. This, I believe is the draw to the voyeur.
I can’t help but think also of Halfouine, Summer in La Goulette, and some of the issues raised by the discussion we had just yesterday with Fareed, the screenwriter and director of the two films. Themes of voyeurism, concealment, and revelation run through both films where peeping toms more than once catch glimpses of nude female bodies, an image concealed to the extreme in much of Islamic thought and practice. Fareed explained that he sees this voyeurism as analogous to the role of the filmmaker and the artist, to steal glimpses into the lives of others (even if they are created by the writer) to develop the narrative and endow the characters with a sort of truth or honesty. He stressed also the importance of avoiding self-censorship and that the artist should stay honest to his characters and to his audience; he or she should write from life, not simply quote from previous films. It seems hard to find a way for both to exist, honesty and voyeurism as one implies openness and the other, secrecy. Where do the anthropologist and ethnographer work her way into this equation, and how does she relate to Fareed’s image of the artist? Where is the poet? Like me and me peers, anthropologists have one foot in and one foot out so to speak, they occupy a space between voyeur and local. In getting accustomed to living with our families and finding ways to move in the spaces we negotiate every day (public buses, trains, the street and side walk, and even our “own” bedrooms that are by no means private by American standards) we are constantly recreating our relation to Tunisia as tourists, anthropologists, voyeurs, locals, peeping toms and family.
Please feel free to read it. Sorry for references you might not get to Tunisian cinema...
I didn’t set my alarm last night because I wanted to take advantage of the holiday and grab a little extra sleep when I had the chance. I woke up to music, birds, dogs barking, roosters, and the sound of my neighbor washing his car; much of this has become standard fare for a weekend morning in La Marsa. The music was something new though and when I hurried to unlatch the window and shutters, I was greeted by a burst of fresh air and sunlight. It was already getting hot outside. I instinctively grabbed for my audio recorder that I keep on my nightstand right next to the window, turned it on, and placed it carefully on the windowsill. I wanted to capture the soundscape all around me; the pre-recorded Tunisian music blasting from someone’s house up the street near the park, my neighbor washing his car, the blackbirds singing to each other and to the morning in the trees next to our car port and the kids at the end of the street that play soccer in the road between the pot holes that fill with fresh murky water and trash by every evening. I wanted to “take it all in.” Outside, my nephew, Skander, and two other neighbor’s kids who are half French, one quarter Italian, and one quarter Tunisian scuttled around in circles on their bikes with training wheels squealing as they plowed straight through the potholes, racing each other. I stood there soaking up the sun for ten minutes or so, staring at the women in the park hanging their laundry up to dry amongst the trash, chickens, and sheep and my neighbor washing his red car, while lost in my own thoughts.
It took me those ten minutes, and my other neighbor coming out of her house to check on the newborn puppies sheltered under an overhang in the front corner of her house for me to realize what I was doing. I could have waved to her and greeter her successfully, I could have, but I didn’t. All of a sudden I shut one of the shudders and reached to turn off my recorder. I peeked through the chinks of the shudders to try to establish whether or not I have been discovered. All of a sudden I was overcome by a sense of guilt, self-consciousness, completely ashamed of my fascination in the everyday goings on in other people’s lives. I had caught myself in the act of peeking, peeping; I was the voyeur. I was just standing there capturing images, if even in my head, (note the violence inherent to all verbs associated with photography) and documenting the every sound of the morning with my tiny machine. Was it mine for the taking in the first place? I those few moments I questioned my role here, my “right” to be here in a Tunisian’s home, and on a greater scale, the place of anthropology and the ethnographer. The example of this morning might seem extreme, people watching is a popular hobby of mine back home in the states, but somehow being here I don’t feel justified in the same way. Oh course, students who study anthropology are curious people, they are immensely interested in the complexity of the ways people live and think, but does this give them the right be voyeurs? The lines between “participation” and “disturbance,” “observation” and “voyeurism” are elusive and, for me, pose a question not only of “scientific method,” but also of my own sense of morality and ethics.
This morning’s experience reminded me also of my experiences recently on public bus 52 that I take every morning from La Marsa to the SIT office in Sidi Bou Said. Over the past week or so I have started wearing my sunglasses more regularly to the bus stop and all the while on the bus. Yes, the weather is getting warmed and the sun is brighter, but the main reason I’ve started wearing them is that men seem to have a harder time following my eyes and subsequently (I think, at least) notice and hassle me less. The sunglasses not only help to manage looks from others, but, admittedly, allow me to watch other people without necessarily their knowing. With the mediation of my sunglasses I feel safer observing differences between how men and women of different ages behave in the small space of the bus, I look over the shoulders of students punching numbers into the calculators on their cell phones and studying for math exams. I know that the lenses I am wearing are multi-purpose for me, but I wear them all the same. I let myself be a voyeur because, I think, at this point at least, I am still too shy to be a true “participant observer.” Also, I have found that though participatory experiences are almost always rewarding experiences, observation from a distanced seems always to be a devilishly tempting, safe, guarded possibility. This, I believe is the draw to the voyeur.
I can’t help but think also of Halfouine, Summer in La Goulette, and some of the issues raised by the discussion we had just yesterday with Fareed, the screenwriter and director of the two films. Themes of voyeurism, concealment, and revelation run through both films where peeping toms more than once catch glimpses of nude female bodies, an image concealed to the extreme in much of Islamic thought and practice. Fareed explained that he sees this voyeurism as analogous to the role of the filmmaker and the artist, to steal glimpses into the lives of others (even if they are created by the writer) to develop the narrative and endow the characters with a sort of truth or honesty. He stressed also the importance of avoiding self-censorship and that the artist should stay honest to his characters and to his audience; he or she should write from life, not simply quote from previous films. It seems hard to find a way for both to exist, honesty and voyeurism as one implies openness and the other, secrecy. Where do the anthropologist and ethnographer work her way into this equation, and how does she relate to Fareed’s image of the artist? Where is the poet? Like me and me peers, anthropologists have one foot in and one foot out so to speak, they occupy a space between voyeur and local. In getting accustomed to living with our families and finding ways to move in the spaces we negotiate every day (public buses, trains, the street and side walk, and even our “own” bedrooms that are by no means private by American standards) we are constantly recreating our relation to Tunisia as tourists, anthropologists, voyeurs, locals, peeping toms and family.
This week
This week has been an a-typical one, but then again, the typical has yet to be established here thanks to excursions, and day visits to Tunis to the CEMAT office.
Mou'led Mabrouk! (Happy holidays!) Monday was the Prophet's birthday (the Mou'led) so we had school off to spend with our families. There wasn't all that much going on in La Marsa (or in Tunis, I heard later), but the popular things to do are make music (as I heard around my neighborhood), visit with extended family, and eat a particular sweet dessert called Assida Zagougou which comes in several variations and is a type of pudding with a creamy topping and ground-up nuts as a garnish. Making assida in my family was quite an ordeal and took over 10 hours. My mom was exhausted from sitting next to the stove (gas) and stirring it every ten minutes or so. In the afternoon my mother burned two types of loose incense in an ornate goblet-shaped incense holder with a coal. She put it on the marble steps and opened the door and the whole house still smells beautiful. My brother, sister in law and neice came over and then later we all went to visit my grandmother, great aunt, and two other aunts. I got to try 5 or 6 different types of assida that each of the guests had brought to share. This is a mou'led tradition for sure. The stuff is so sweet, a real treat.
I am not sure if there has been a wedding or just continued mu'led celebration down the street, but there has been music (zurna, darbuka, and singing, and wonderful ululations) down the street in the evenings until midnight every night. Awesome.
On friday I am going to a Tunisian hip hop / rap concert. The artist is called Balti and has gotten mixed reviews from the people I've asked around here. One of the SIT students is thinking about studying Tunisian hip hop for her individual project so this is a must.
The arabic today was a lot; six hours again. Tonight I rest and practice my ma'luf for my lesson on Saturday. The stuff is super hard. It's so hard to get my hands to produce the sounds that my brain wants. my ear just says WRONG no matter how much I try to make b 1/3rds flats and b 2/3rds flat. More on Ma'luf once I really get started on it.
Me and my nefew, Skander. My mom told me the other day that he wants to marry me when he grows up.
He likes to kiss and hug me a lot which is great. I need more hugging in my life here. I miss greeting people by hugging like we do without knowing it at Oberlin or even at home.
Mou'led Mabrouk! (Happy holidays!) Monday was the Prophet's birthday (the Mou'led) so we had school off to spend with our families. There wasn't all that much going on in La Marsa (or in Tunis, I heard later), but the popular things to do are make music (as I heard around my neighborhood), visit with extended family, and eat a particular sweet dessert called Assida Zagougou which comes in several variations and is a type of pudding with a creamy topping and ground-up nuts as a garnish. Making assida in my family was quite an ordeal and took over 10 hours. My mom was exhausted from sitting next to the stove (gas) and stirring it every ten minutes or so. In the afternoon my mother burned two types of loose incense in an ornate goblet-shaped incense holder with a coal. She put it on the marble steps and opened the door and the whole house still smells beautiful. My brother, sister in law and neice came over and then later we all went to visit my grandmother, great aunt, and two other aunts. I got to try 5 or 6 different types of assida that each of the guests had brought to share. This is a mou'led tradition for sure. The stuff is so sweet, a real treat.
I am not sure if there has been a wedding or just continued mu'led celebration down the street, but there has been music (zurna, darbuka, and singing, and wonderful ululations) down the street in the evenings until midnight every night. Awesome.
On friday I am going to a Tunisian hip hop / rap concert. The artist is called Balti and has gotten mixed reviews from the people I've asked around here. One of the SIT students is thinking about studying Tunisian hip hop for her individual project so this is a must.
The arabic today was a lot; six hours again. Tonight I rest and practice my ma'luf for my lesson on Saturday. The stuff is super hard. It's so hard to get my hands to produce the sounds that my brain wants. my ear just says WRONG no matter how much I try to make b 1/3rds flats and b 2/3rds flat. More on Ma'luf once I really get started on it.
Me and my nefew, Skander. My mom told me the other day that he wants to marry me when he grows up.
He likes to kiss and hug me a lot which is great. I need more hugging in my life here. I miss greeting people by hugging like we do without knowing it at Oberlin or even at home.
Tuesday, March 3, 2009
Quick check-in
I have returned from a week-long excursion to the south and the Sahara and am getting back into the swing of things with my family and the students and professors at SIT. I've been out of contact with the world beyond our bus, our camels, and our four-wheel drive cars for a a good while so it's hard to know what to say just now. I think I'll type up an entry at home and post tomorrow.
I am doing quite well besides an allergic reaction to some henna (called harkus here) on my right hand and some gut issues that I think has been resolved thanks to the miracle drug - Cipro. Enough on that...
Also, I've just arranged this afternoon to start violin lessons (in Ma'luf) this Saturday at the music conservatory in Sidi Bou Said right down the street from the SIT office and a 20 minute bus ride from my house in La Marsa.
More on music and my reflections from my southern excursion soon!
I am doing quite well besides an allergic reaction to some henna (called harkus here) on my right hand and some gut issues that I think has been resolved thanks to the miracle drug - Cipro. Enough on that...
Also, I've just arranged this afternoon to start violin lessons (in Ma'luf) this Saturday at the music conservatory in Sidi Bou Said right down the street from the SIT office and a 20 minute bus ride from my house in La Marsa.
More on music and my reflections from my southern excursion soon!
Wednesday, February 18, 2009
Just a few more pictures
Leblebi (as described in a previous entry). Perfect for a cold, rainy day.
A camel we discovered right near the beach. His legs are tried loosely so he can't get too far. We figured this started because tying a camel to anything in the desert would prove tricky.
The view from the beach at La Marsa. It's really a bummer that I don't live within walking distance. Still, it's a buck's taxi ride from my door... I can't wait till its warm out! The day I took this picture was reasonably warm, but still sweater and scarf weather.
A colorful scene down the road from my house.
Another view from La Marsa near to Cafe Journal, a very posh spot for amazing hot chocolate (and many other tasty things). Down the street from here is the weekly second-hand clothes souk (market) every Sunday.
The view outside of my window at home. That is neighbor's car outside and the park to the left.
The park / open space behind the glass-covered wall behind my house. I think this area is for lower-income families (though this is simply observation). The kids, chickens, and sheep run around together in the broken tiles, mud, and general trash. Also, as you can see, it's also a popular place to hang wet laundry out to dry. We have a rack in my house instead . It's strangely satisfying to hang wet laundry.
...more pictures to come soon.
...speak in Arabic!
It’s been hard to get another entry up here because I have so much class during the days I am in school at Sidi Bou Said. I have decided to take both the beginning standard Arabic class (beginning Fuus’ha) as well as sit in on as much of the colloquial Tunisian Arabic (called Derja, not to be confused with the island of Djerba). That means that on Mondays I have upwards of our hours of Arabic straight, another four on Wednesday, and six hours on Thursday. I guess we’ll see how long I can possibly keep this up. I simply can’t choose because it is so important that I improve my Derja so I can communicate more than “how are you,” “this is delicious,” and “I am going to school” to my family here. On the other hand though, it is equally important that I start Fuus’ha because I really would like to continue Arabic when I return to the United States; it would be a shame to have to leave everything I learn here and hope to meet Tunisians back home to talk with. I couldn’t talk to Algerians, Egyptians, or Moroccans (definitely not!) with Tunisian Arabic. Oh course the two, colloquial and standard, share much in common but pronunciations, common usages, and idioms are sometimes quite different. Not to mention very place and age-specific slang! You can get pretty far here with a few basic terms. After almost two weeks, I think I am qualified to teach just a few of the basics you hear everywhere. It’s always exciting to start hearing the words you are learning as soon as you walk out of the classroom and onto the street or the crowded bus.
The first words — Asalama (pronounced a salema) and Bisalama (pronounced bi salema)
Meaning hello and good bye, these two are used for all ages and most times of day although a dozen variations of good morning are common place and one for good night.
The next most important — Shwaya-shway(a) (pronounced as written)
This word is incredibly flexible and can be used in practically all situations. It can mean everything from slower, slowly, and slow down to small, a little bit, and little by little. The word gets thrown around a lot in my house, typically in reference to my little six-yea-old nefew, Skander, for whom shway or shwaya-shwaya means “chill out!” Today on this bus the man on the bus who stamps tickets urges us to move towards the front “swaya shwaya!” It’s perfect for explaining that I am learning Arabic little-by-little or that I only know a bit so far.
Shwaya-shwaya fits nicely in a language that seems replete with words that repeat.
Just a few I know so far:
mushmush — “apricot” (not to be confused with mush mushkla which means “no problem” and “your welcome”)
tool tool — “straight” as in “go straight ahead”
kif kif — “the same” or “either way”
There are a bunch more I’ve heard. I’ve been sort of collecting them.
Barsha, Barsha is good too, but we are getting there.
The next makes you sound cool no matter how little Arabic you know — mush normal (pronounced as written)
Mush normal is another wonderful all-purpose word that is just as flexible as shwaya-shwaya. It literally means “not normal” but takes on specific meaning through inflection, tone of voice, hand gestures, and facial expressions, which are extremely important in speaking Arabic in general. If you say your day was mush normal in an exasperated tone, you had a horrible day. If you say your day was mush normal in an upbeat voice, you had an extraordinarily wonderful day. A weird looking, person or fruit might be mush normal, strikingly gorgeous or rotting in the refrigerator. This word needs further exploration I think to see if I can exhaust the possibilities.
Another really important one is Barsha or Barsha Barsha.
Barsha simply means "a lot" but is used all the time in Tunisian dialect. No one uses Barsha besides the Tunisians so it's appreciated when Americans learn and use it. Most commonly I use it as an intenisfier for "benina" (delicious).
That was Tunisian Arabic 101 there. I will add more great words as they come.
My host mom has been really good so far at explaining things super slowly (shwaya-shwaya) for me and pointing at lots of things in the house and telling me their Arabic, and sometimes French, names.
This evening I helped her get started on some sort of fruit drink that we are bringing to Toney and Sarah’s house tomorrow night in celebration of the birth of Sarah’s new baby sister. She was born just three days ago! I am not sure I have ever seen a baby that young before! Sarah was so excite to hear that her mother was about to give birth just a week after she moved in; she is glad to have the baby around and absolutely loves little kids. Anyway, to make this fruit drink we cooked peaches (Khookh), strawberries (fraise), fresh and frozen lemon juice, and sugar in several pots on the stove. Everything came out of frozen bags from the ice chest upstairs. My mom was also heating fresh milk, not from the box, which I think we are adding tomorrow. I sometimes get a little worried about how food seems to sit around here, but I have yet to get sick so I guess all is well. My family keeps most things in Tupperware in the fridge for easy re-heating, but often things are left without lids like pieces of cooked chicken and sometimes salads. The students were originally told not to eat cheeses and fresh fruit but I’ve been eating both since the day we got here and have been fine. I have avoided things I can’t peel and fresh milk so far.
Some day soon my mom is going to teach me how to make Leblebi (another word on repeat) and harissa, which she is overjoyed that I love.
The first words — Asalama (pronounced a salema) and Bisalama (pronounced bi salema)
Meaning hello and good bye, these two are used for all ages and most times of day although a dozen variations of good morning are common place and one for good night.
The next most important — Shwaya-shway(a) (pronounced as written)
This word is incredibly flexible and can be used in practically all situations. It can mean everything from slower, slowly, and slow down to small, a little bit, and little by little. The word gets thrown around a lot in my house, typically in reference to my little six-yea-old nefew, Skander, for whom shway or shwaya-shwaya means “chill out!” Today on this bus the man on the bus who stamps tickets urges us to move towards the front “swaya shwaya!” It’s perfect for explaining that I am learning Arabic little-by-little or that I only know a bit so far.
Shwaya-shwaya fits nicely in a language that seems replete with words that repeat.
Just a few I know so far:
mushmush — “apricot” (not to be confused with mush mushkla which means “no problem” and “your welcome”)
tool tool — “straight” as in “go straight ahead”
kif kif — “the same” or “either way”
There are a bunch more I’ve heard. I’ve been sort of collecting them.
Barsha, Barsha is good too, but we are getting there.
The next makes you sound cool no matter how little Arabic you know — mush normal (pronounced as written)
Mush normal is another wonderful all-purpose word that is just as flexible as shwaya-shwaya. It literally means “not normal” but takes on specific meaning through inflection, tone of voice, hand gestures, and facial expressions, which are extremely important in speaking Arabic in general. If you say your day was mush normal in an exasperated tone, you had a horrible day. If you say your day was mush normal in an upbeat voice, you had an extraordinarily wonderful day. A weird looking, person or fruit might be mush normal, strikingly gorgeous or rotting in the refrigerator. This word needs further exploration I think to see if I can exhaust the possibilities.
Another really important one is Barsha or Barsha Barsha.
Barsha simply means "a lot" but is used all the time in Tunisian dialect. No one uses Barsha besides the Tunisians so it's appreciated when Americans learn and use it. Most commonly I use it as an intenisfier for "benina" (delicious).
That was Tunisian Arabic 101 there. I will add more great words as they come.
My host mom has been really good so far at explaining things super slowly (shwaya-shwaya) for me and pointing at lots of things in the house and telling me their Arabic, and sometimes French, names.
This evening I helped her get started on some sort of fruit drink that we are bringing to Toney and Sarah’s house tomorrow night in celebration of the birth of Sarah’s new baby sister. She was born just three days ago! I am not sure I have ever seen a baby that young before! Sarah was so excite to hear that her mother was about to give birth just a week after she moved in; she is glad to have the baby around and absolutely loves little kids. Anyway, to make this fruit drink we cooked peaches (Khookh), strawberries (fraise), fresh and frozen lemon juice, and sugar in several pots on the stove. Everything came out of frozen bags from the ice chest upstairs. My mom was also heating fresh milk, not from the box, which I think we are adding tomorrow. I sometimes get a little worried about how food seems to sit around here, but I have yet to get sick so I guess all is well. My family keeps most things in Tupperware in the fridge for easy re-heating, but often things are left without lids like pieces of cooked chicken and sometimes salads. The students were originally told not to eat cheeses and fresh fruit but I’ve been eating both since the day we got here and have been fine. I have avoided things I can’t peel and fresh milk so far.
Some day soon my mom is going to teach me how to make Leblebi (another word on repeat) and harissa, which she is overjoyed that I love.
Wednesday, February 11, 2009
Just a few pictures for now
I am still learning how to post images to this blog. Work with me here...
A street vender making Shapti for us as we watch. The egg goes inside the bread with a good spread of Harissa - stupendus. Apparently this is the favorite food of construction workers.
A typical decoratied door in the Medina. Another section has mainly yellow doors. The six-pointed star is a common motif as well as the crescent moon, an interesting juxtaposition.
Part of the Roman baths in Carthage.
Two head stones from sacrificial victims in Phoenecian / Punic Cathage. The symbol on the left is a woman symbol, and important one in Carthage to be sure. The "losange" to the left is also a common one though the meaning has been a bit lost in translation (and a few millenia).
A street vender making Shapti for us as we watch. The egg goes inside the bread with a good spread of Harissa - stupendus. Apparently this is the favorite food of construction workers.
A typical decoratied door in the Medina. Another section has mainly yellow doors. The six-pointed star is a common motif as well as the crescent moon, an interesting juxtaposition.
Part of the Roman baths in Carthage.
Two head stones from sacrificial victims in Phoenecian / Punic Cathage. The symbol on the left is a woman symbol, and important one in Carthage to be sure. The "losange" to the left is also a common one though the meaning has been a bit lost in translation (and a few millenia).
Leblebi, My home stay, and a Birthday Party
Yesterday was the most beautiful day. In the morning I walk about ten minutes from my house (dar) to the bus stop. I pass two tiny coffee shops on the corner, several fruit souks (shops), a mechanical repair shop with twenty or thirty year-old cars dusty and contorted in the corners, and a construction site on the main drag that stretched from Sidi Bou Said all the way to Tunis. The bus stop is just across the street from the construction site and I get to watch closely as I wait for the bus to Sidi Bou where my classes are at the SIT office. This morning I watched three men and boys, were they boys or where they men, sitting in the claws of a bulldozer being lifted from level to level after the man in the cab had dumped his load of red-orange dirt beside the structure. All of the words for construction and building of any kind are in Italian because most immigrants from Italy came as cheap laborers. When I pass below them, all bundled up in a jacket borrowed from my home-stay sister and wool scarf and sunglasses, I get stares from thirty feet up. It’s taken a week to even start to get used to the constant staring and the changes in socially acceptable physical distance (proxemics). On the bus, I feel like eyes are glued to me. Mounir, our academic director and teacher has assured us that this looking and “scrutinizing” is perfectly normal and that Tunisians do it to each other all the time. We are simply a little more interesting.
Yesterday was a lot of firsts. We had some free time in the afternoon so many of us went into Tunis for lunch. We were advised by Mounir to try Leblebi, a Tunisian specialty during the winter. We ignored the fact that it was the warmest, sunniest day since the day we arrived and headed towards the restaurant. The place turned out to be a hole-in-the-wall sort of place, very popular with the locals, and already crowed when the eight of us arrived. We crowded in and got in line where we were first handed a hand-made clay bowl with a fist-sized piece of baguette and pushed towards the another man who put a ladle of chickpeas and sauce, a smaller spoon of harissa-rich sauce, and a pinch of cumin in. Next, another man on the other side of the room put a dash of olive oil and cracked an egg into the bowl and added some other miscellaneous ingredients. Everything was really quick and pretty much cooked in the bowl. We did as the locals and mixed everything into a delicious mush. It really did warm me up to my core and “stuck to my bones.” I felt like I’d be full for days but walking around the city for the next hour assured me I’d eventually be hungry by dinnertime.
Last night was one of the most enjoyable evenings so far. Lots of the families hosting students in La Marsa (my neighborhood) are related or good friends and seem to spend a fair bit of time together. Yesterday was Bradley Toney’s birthday so his family decided to throw him a sort of surprise party and invite five or six of the other students who were living nearby. I was surprised when I got home to hear from my mother that she knew there was a party going on and that she wanted us to go. We ate a quick dinner, picked up my host sister (Lemya), and went over to Colleen’s house where she was putting the finishing touches on a birthday cake for Toney. Back in North Carolina, Colleen works in a cake shop and gets to work on creative masterpieces like hamburger-shaped cakes, etc. Her frosting job was excellent given the tools she had to work with. Colleen’s family speaks excellent French, as does Colleen, so they seem to be getting along nicely. Eventually we all hopped in the car again and went over the Toney’s where there were already many people to greet and kiss (two or four times). We hung around together chatting and catching up while other families and students arrived. Toney was so appreciative of gifts and good wishes he was receiving. After a few minutes, Toney’s family cranked up the radio full blast in the hall with hip hop from the US. They seem to think that we all love pop music from the US and we suspect that they associate Toney, who is African American with hip hop and rap. Anyway, it was pretty hilarious because Toney started dancing to make them happy and his host grandmother got up and started doing the twist. It was probably one of the most hilarious experiences thus far and was well documented in pictures.
The mix of people was really interesting linguistically and ethnically speaking. My host mother looks very Arab while some of the other host families, many of whom are related as I mentioned, are definitely of African ancestry and seem to speak more French (just a preliminary observation). A tiny electronic plastic candle that played happy birthday in obnoxious shrill pitches was placed in the middle of Colleen’s cake and a few more candles were lit while the group sang a haphazard happy birthday in Arabic complete with clapping. I was able to make an audio recording though it’s hard to tell what was really going on because it was so loud. We drank soda in what we’d call wine glasses (they must simply have a different name here) and later, mint tea in tiny delicate glasses. I have never felt so comfortable laughing and joking with friends I have know for a week, and families that I have only met a few days ago. They have all been so welcoming, considerate, and caring. Toney opened his gifts from the families, mostly various decorative things to put on stands or hang, and thanked them profusely. So far, I’ve found that more things don’t warrant a “thank you” Yaishek in Tunisia. One of my friends got laughed at for thanking her mother for a banana. Most of my thankyou’s that seem to spill from my mouth, especially when other words just aren’t there, are never met with a response of mush mushkla (no problem).
Well, It’s almost time for lunch and my Arabic class (I’ve got three hours this afternoon). Our goal is to learn and start to master the alphabet this week, which seems a daunting task especially since so far we have only gotten through four letters and six vowels. At least we have all of the vowels out of the way.
I will try to write again soon!
Yesterday was a lot of firsts. We had some free time in the afternoon so many of us went into Tunis for lunch. We were advised by Mounir to try Leblebi, a Tunisian specialty during the winter. We ignored the fact that it was the warmest, sunniest day since the day we arrived and headed towards the restaurant. The place turned out to be a hole-in-the-wall sort of place, very popular with the locals, and already crowed when the eight of us arrived. We crowded in and got in line where we were first handed a hand-made clay bowl with a fist-sized piece of baguette and pushed towards the another man who put a ladle of chickpeas and sauce, a smaller spoon of harissa-rich sauce, and a pinch of cumin in. Next, another man on the other side of the room put a dash of olive oil and cracked an egg into the bowl and added some other miscellaneous ingredients. Everything was really quick and pretty much cooked in the bowl. We did as the locals and mixed everything into a delicious mush. It really did warm me up to my core and “stuck to my bones.” I felt like I’d be full for days but walking around the city for the next hour assured me I’d eventually be hungry by dinnertime.
Last night was one of the most enjoyable evenings so far. Lots of the families hosting students in La Marsa (my neighborhood) are related or good friends and seem to spend a fair bit of time together. Yesterday was Bradley Toney’s birthday so his family decided to throw him a sort of surprise party and invite five or six of the other students who were living nearby. I was surprised when I got home to hear from my mother that she knew there was a party going on and that she wanted us to go. We ate a quick dinner, picked up my host sister (Lemya), and went over to Colleen’s house where she was putting the finishing touches on a birthday cake for Toney. Back in North Carolina, Colleen works in a cake shop and gets to work on creative masterpieces like hamburger-shaped cakes, etc. Her frosting job was excellent given the tools she had to work with. Colleen’s family speaks excellent French, as does Colleen, so they seem to be getting along nicely. Eventually we all hopped in the car again and went over the Toney’s where there were already many people to greet and kiss (two or four times). We hung around together chatting and catching up while other families and students arrived. Toney was so appreciative of gifts and good wishes he was receiving. After a few minutes, Toney’s family cranked up the radio full blast in the hall with hip hop from the US. They seem to think that we all love pop music from the US and we suspect that they associate Toney, who is African American with hip hop and rap. Anyway, it was pretty hilarious because Toney started dancing to make them happy and his host grandmother got up and started doing the twist. It was probably one of the most hilarious experiences thus far and was well documented in pictures.
The mix of people was really interesting linguistically and ethnically speaking. My host mother looks very Arab while some of the other host families, many of whom are related as I mentioned, are definitely of African ancestry and seem to speak more French (just a preliminary observation). A tiny electronic plastic candle that played happy birthday in obnoxious shrill pitches was placed in the middle of Colleen’s cake and a few more candles were lit while the group sang a haphazard happy birthday in Arabic complete with clapping. I was able to make an audio recording though it’s hard to tell what was really going on because it was so loud. We drank soda in what we’d call wine glasses (they must simply have a different name here) and later, mint tea in tiny delicate glasses. I have never felt so comfortable laughing and joking with friends I have know for a week, and families that I have only met a few days ago. They have all been so welcoming, considerate, and caring. Toney opened his gifts from the families, mostly various decorative things to put on stands or hang, and thanked them profusely. So far, I’ve found that more things don’t warrant a “thank you” Yaishek in Tunisia. One of my friends got laughed at for thanking her mother for a banana. Most of my thankyou’s that seem to spill from my mouth, especially when other words just aren’t there, are never met with a response of mush mushkla (no problem).
Well, It’s almost time for lunch and my Arabic class (I’ve got three hours this afternoon). Our goal is to learn and start to master the alphabet this week, which seems a daunting task especially since so far we have only gotten through four letters and six vowels. At least we have all of the vowels out of the way.
I will try to write again soon!
Sunday, February 8, 2009
A’salama!—Orientation
To risk the cliché, the past few days have been an absolute whirlwind of new people, sounds, smells, tastes, and language. It’s been utterly overwhelming but that was to be assumed. I have met and spent a great deal of time already with the 15 other students and this trip promises to be wonderful much thanks to their diversity in academic background and focus and regional backgrounds in the US. We represent 16 different colleges and universities, which is really quite remarkable.
This first post will have to be brief because we’ve got a light dinner in just a few minutes. We get internet access at both our regular classroom in Sidi Bou Said, a small suburb north of the city of Tunis, and at the CEMAT office where we will be having classes on Fridays near the border of the modern (European) quarter of Tunis and the Medina (the old Arab city, literally “the city”). I might even have internet at my home-stay family where I will be staying for the majority of the semester. Speaking of my family, I met them last night at a casual light dinner at the SIT office here in Sidi Bou Said quite close to the hotel where we are staying during orientation (this first 4 or 5 days). My host mother lives in La Marsa, another northern suburb about 20 minutes away from SIT in Sidi Bou Said. She has a 6 and a half year-old daughter and was so excited to meet me. She presented me with a rose and I had my first opportunity to kiss a Tunisian on the cheeks. Tunisians kiss upwards of four times, left-right-left-right. I was really nervous to meet her with my three of four phrases in Arabic and was hoping, hoping that we would have any way of communicating whatsoever. As it turns out, she speaks very little English, but enough that we managed to introduce ourselves and ask a few questions of each other. I am the first American students she has welcomed into her home and seemed quite surprised that after I told her I did not speak very much Arabic at all, that I did not speak French either. I felt a lot like I had let her down and hadn’t matched her expectations (though I am sure she never would want me to have felt that way). I promised her that I would just have to do my best and that I was working very hard in my Arabic language class which was no lie. We’ve only had two sessions of “survival Arabic” and I have retained quite a bit I figure. She is so nice and I am thrilled to get to know her in what ever capacity I can.
We’ve been kept busy these first few days starting when we arrived at 11:00 am on Tuesday. We got to see the SIT office, had some meetings, went on a driving tour of some of the northern suburbs, and ate dinner at a fabulous pizza place. Yesterday we were up early to visit briefly some of the historic sites of both Punic (Phoenician) Carthage and Roman Carthage. Boy was my Latin-geek side showing! I went nuts. All I could think about was Virgil and the Aeneid—Queen Alyssa (Dido) is on one of the bills as well. We visited old temples, cemeteries, crypts, baths, aqueducts and cisterns, and old Phoenician homes that were buried in dirt by the Roman who cut the entire top of a mountain off to cover the old Phoenician town below. We ate lunch at a corner restaurant in La Marsa closer to the bay and had some delicious fish (Bryn in Arabic) and some small bass (longish and skinny-ish), a fried egg with pureed veggies on top (sort of juevos rancheros style) and fries. As a follow-up to an earlier post, Coke is everywhere though in Arabic most of the time. The glass bottles are wonderful to hold (and drink out of after a long walk). We spent the afternoon in class and the evening with out families chatting it up (or trying to) with our families.
This morning we were up even earlier for a venture finally into the heart of Tunis. We went from the Cathedral in the European quarter to wander the streets of the Medina that radiate in circles out from the central mosque. I don’t feel like I’ve had the time to process even a quarter of what I’ve seen or heard yet. The colors of the rugs, silver plates, yellow and blue decorated doors, minarets, spices, and three-foot-tall barrels and barrels of a dozen kinds of olives (Charlie you would go nuts here!) are still working their way into my brain. We ate couscous and fish near leather and metal shops in the Medina, a classical Tunis dish. Indescribably delicious and surprisingly one of the only things I’ve eaten without harissa. Harissa deserves a blog entry all to itself and an entire Independent Study Project (I will leave that to my friend Lee who is hoping to study street food and harissa for a month). We visited CEMAT, an organization that facilitates research in Tunisia and affiliated with SIT, and got to speak with several helpful folks there. They have a wonderful English language library of work done in Tunisia and the Maghreb (Arab North Africa). I got a letter already! Thank you so much Hannah, I was as excited, or maybe more, as you imagined me. This afternoon we also had the pleasure of meet the Ambassador in the American Embassy. We met his most important employees (who each had about a ten word title) and learned a bit about Tunisian - American relations and some basic political and economic information about Tunisia. It was also a good opportunity to ask questions about everything from safety to blogging.
How do I feel about all of this? Exhausted and excited, nervous and full of ideas. I want to write and talk non-stop but I need to work in time for sleeping and eating (I’d say bummer to the first of those, but thumbs up so far to the second). For now, I am taking everything moment-by-moment, word-by-word, and day-by-day. Give me a few weeks and a routine and I feel Ill be able to make a lot more sense of all of this.
Hope everyone is well
Bi’salama from Sidi Bou Said for now!
This first post will have to be brief because we’ve got a light dinner in just a few minutes. We get internet access at both our regular classroom in Sidi Bou Said, a small suburb north of the city of Tunis, and at the CEMAT office where we will be having classes on Fridays near the border of the modern (European) quarter of Tunis and the Medina (the old Arab city, literally “the city”). I might even have internet at my home-stay family where I will be staying for the majority of the semester. Speaking of my family, I met them last night at a casual light dinner at the SIT office here in Sidi Bou Said quite close to the hotel where we are staying during orientation (this first 4 or 5 days). My host mother lives in La Marsa, another northern suburb about 20 minutes away from SIT in Sidi Bou Said. She has a 6 and a half year-old daughter and was so excited to meet me. She presented me with a rose and I had my first opportunity to kiss a Tunisian on the cheeks. Tunisians kiss upwards of four times, left-right-left-right. I was really nervous to meet her with my three of four phrases in Arabic and was hoping, hoping that we would have any way of communicating whatsoever. As it turns out, she speaks very little English, but enough that we managed to introduce ourselves and ask a few questions of each other. I am the first American students she has welcomed into her home and seemed quite surprised that after I told her I did not speak very much Arabic at all, that I did not speak French either. I felt a lot like I had let her down and hadn’t matched her expectations (though I am sure she never would want me to have felt that way). I promised her that I would just have to do my best and that I was working very hard in my Arabic language class which was no lie. We’ve only had two sessions of “survival Arabic” and I have retained quite a bit I figure. She is so nice and I am thrilled to get to know her in what ever capacity I can.
We’ve been kept busy these first few days starting when we arrived at 11:00 am on Tuesday. We got to see the SIT office, had some meetings, went on a driving tour of some of the northern suburbs, and ate dinner at a fabulous pizza place. Yesterday we were up early to visit briefly some of the historic sites of both Punic (Phoenician) Carthage and Roman Carthage. Boy was my Latin-geek side showing! I went nuts. All I could think about was Virgil and the Aeneid—Queen Alyssa (Dido) is on one of the bills as well. We visited old temples, cemeteries, crypts, baths, aqueducts and cisterns, and old Phoenician homes that were buried in dirt by the Roman who cut the entire top of a mountain off to cover the old Phoenician town below. We ate lunch at a corner restaurant in La Marsa closer to the bay and had some delicious fish (Bryn in Arabic) and some small bass (longish and skinny-ish), a fried egg with pureed veggies on top (sort of juevos rancheros style) and fries. As a follow-up to an earlier post, Coke is everywhere though in Arabic most of the time. The glass bottles are wonderful to hold (and drink out of after a long walk). We spent the afternoon in class and the evening with out families chatting it up (or trying to) with our families.
This morning we were up even earlier for a venture finally into the heart of Tunis. We went from the Cathedral in the European quarter to wander the streets of the Medina that radiate in circles out from the central mosque. I don’t feel like I’ve had the time to process even a quarter of what I’ve seen or heard yet. The colors of the rugs, silver plates, yellow and blue decorated doors, minarets, spices, and three-foot-tall barrels and barrels of a dozen kinds of olives (Charlie you would go nuts here!) are still working their way into my brain. We ate couscous and fish near leather and metal shops in the Medina, a classical Tunis dish. Indescribably delicious and surprisingly one of the only things I’ve eaten without harissa. Harissa deserves a blog entry all to itself and an entire Independent Study Project (I will leave that to my friend Lee who is hoping to study street food and harissa for a month). We visited CEMAT, an organization that facilitates research in Tunisia and affiliated with SIT, and got to speak with several helpful folks there. They have a wonderful English language library of work done in Tunisia and the Maghreb (Arab North Africa). I got a letter already! Thank you so much Hannah, I was as excited, or maybe more, as you imagined me. This afternoon we also had the pleasure of meet the Ambassador in the American Embassy. We met his most important employees (who each had about a ten word title) and learned a bit about Tunisian - American relations and some basic political and economic information about Tunisia. It was also a good opportunity to ask questions about everything from safety to blogging.
How do I feel about all of this? Exhausted and excited, nervous and full of ideas. I want to write and talk non-stop but I need to work in time for sleeping and eating (I’d say bummer to the first of those, but thumbs up so far to the second). For now, I am taking everything moment-by-moment, word-by-word, and day-by-day. Give me a few weeks and a routine and I feel Ill be able to make a lot more sense of all of this.
Hope everyone is well
Bi’salama from Sidi Bou Said for now!
Wednesday, January 28, 2009
Updates
First and foremost, a completely unrelated-to-Tunisia announcement must be made...
As of yesterday afternoon, my Brother, Charlie, has been officially accepted to Oberlin Conservatory and Oberlin College for the five-year "double degree program." He intends to study Biology and Cello performance. I am so excited for him and can't wait to continue watching him fall deeply in love with a place that has taken my own heart by storm. That was pushing the acceptable level of cheese for a blog, but I'll let that one slide.
And now on a completely Tunisia-related note...
I always know that the departure date of a trip is fast approaching when my travel nightmares start getting stranger and more complex. Last night I dreamed that I was still back at school waiting for my Mom to drive me to airport to fly home (this would have been easier than what I really did, drag all of my luggage on my own through the snow to the bus stop). Just before she arrived though, I discovering all of these things that I had neglected to store away in boxes including an entire bookshelf chock-full of books and several lamps that don't belong in Oberlin at all, but have always stayed in my childhood room here in Connecticut. I also recall needed to run around to several Overlin dining coops and look for the memory card for my camera that had gone missing. Wow.
Thank goodness life isn't really that stressful now at all. I have been doing several hours of reading a day for my seminar in Tunisia and still have another book to get through, but the material is really interesting to me so it's not such a task. Yesterday, after trying and failing to check a book out of the UConn music library about Mal'uf (Andalusian Arab Classical music) with my Dad's UConn ID, I got an email from the program coordinator in Tunisia with a list of required texts for my Arabic class. I couldn't believe that they expected us to be able to find and puchase these books in the week remaining before we leave. I really hope this sort of last-minute wish-washiness isn't characteristic of SIT. Luckily enough for myself, I live in a college town and was able to find exactly what I needed about half an hour later at the UConn Coop Bookstore. What are kids going to do that simply can't get the books fast enough?
As of yesterday afternoon, my Brother, Charlie, has been officially accepted to Oberlin Conservatory and Oberlin College for the five-year "double degree program." He intends to study Biology and Cello performance. I am so excited for him and can't wait to continue watching him fall deeply in love with a place that has taken my own heart by storm. That was pushing the acceptable level of cheese for a blog, but I'll let that one slide.
And now on a completely Tunisia-related note...
I always know that the departure date of a trip is fast approaching when my travel nightmares start getting stranger and more complex. Last night I dreamed that I was still back at school waiting for my Mom to drive me to airport to fly home (this would have been easier than what I really did, drag all of my luggage on my own through the snow to the bus stop). Just before she arrived though, I discovering all of these things that I had neglected to store away in boxes including an entire bookshelf chock-full of books and several lamps that don't belong in Oberlin at all, but have always stayed in my childhood room here in Connecticut. I also recall needed to run around to several Overlin dining coops and look for the memory card for my camera that had gone missing. Wow.
Thank goodness life isn't really that stressful now at all. I have been doing several hours of reading a day for my seminar in Tunisia and still have another book to get through, but the material is really interesting to me so it's not such a task. Yesterday, after trying and failing to check a book out of the UConn music library about Mal'uf (Andalusian Arab Classical music) with my Dad's UConn ID, I got an email from the program coordinator in Tunisia with a list of required texts for my Arabic class. I couldn't believe that they expected us to be able to find and puchase these books in the week remaining before we leave. I really hope this sort of last-minute wish-washiness isn't characteristic of SIT. Luckily enough for myself, I live in a college town and was able to find exactly what I needed about half an hour later at the UConn Coop Bookstore. What are kids going to do that simply can't get the books fast enough?
Monday, January 26, 2009
Islamic soft drinks
For some reason I've remembered just this evening that my friend Clayton and I got to talking about Arab soda while trying to cross Tappan Square in a foot and a half of snow about a week ago. That afternoon Clayton asked me excitedly if "Zamzam Cola" was popular in Tunisia. I'd never heard of the stuff but the name "Zamzam" sure range a bell. In fact, I wrote a short paper for my Intro to the Qur'an course last spring about "Kumm" and related Saudi Arabian place names and couldn't avoid bringing up the much more liturgically significant well just outside of Mecca, Zamzam, that had startling capacity to “water and feed the pilgrims” and a became a “means of subsistence for the people" (Ibn Ishaq in The Life of Muhammad, 65). Since Muhammad's time, the well of Zamzam has been a stop along the Hajj, the chiefly important Islamic pilgrimage to the holy city of Mecca. It seems appropriate then that, according to Wikipedia, Zamzam cola was "officially dubbed the soft drink of the Hajj" in 2002 following Suadi Arabias boycott of Coca-Cola.
Well, I've done a bit of research since my walk with Clayton and while I have yet to find out if Zamzam is sold in Tunis (I guess I'll have to wait and see), I have discovered a wealth of knowledge on Wikipedia regarding a variety of "Islmic sodas." Zamzam Cola, originally an outreach of Pepsi founded in 1954, became its own independent enterprise in 1979 following the Islamic revolution in Iran. Parsi cola, deriving its name from the same root as "Farsi" is also an Iranian drink and Zamzam's main competitor. Both brands still circulate their product in re-usable glass bottles. Parsi has certainly got a nice ring to it and rolls off the tongue as easily as "Pepsi;" is it juts a coincidence that they sound so alike? Boycotts of Western brands Coke and Pepsi are widespread throughout the Gulf and seemingly across the Arab world. I can't say if the same is true in Tunisia; first hand observation will tell soon enough.
Soft drink names like "Zamzam" and "Mecca Cola," a recent French spin-off of the original Zamzam, make a clear statement about what they should and shouldn't be used for. Mecca Cola encourages you to "Shake your conscience" on the side of the bottle and reminds all consumers that the soda should not be mixed with any alcoholic beverages. Drinking is taboo in most Islamic countries and is explicitly forbidden in the Qur'an.Mecca Cola has pledged that 10% of their proceeds will go to funding schools in Palestine and another 10% will go to charities within the countries where the product is sold. According to website, charities who receive funds from Mecca Cola are the types of "associations who work towards peace in the world and especially for peace in the conflict between Palestinians and fascist Zionist Apartheid." Quite a statement in a soft drink.
I have never thought so profoundly about the religious ethics and political agenda behind what I drink. American corporate big-business boycotts somehow seems to pale in comparison at this point.
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