TUNISIA TOO

Still in Tozeur, our third and last night here. The guest house is really lovely, only four rooms. They surround a courtyard, and there is a swimming pool. I went in yesterday, but only briefly. Loring has been in both days to swim a few laps. There is a family staying here, although we can’t figure out just how they are related. There are two little girls, and three women. One seems of an age to be their mother, and another might be the grandmother. There is a third woman, older still and dressed traditionally. Possibly the great grandmother? She was wearing a two piece embroidered outfit today, with a matching hat, not a hijab. She went in the water dressed in all of that. Not unusual, I have seen Arab women fully clothed in the ocean in Israel. Yesterday afternoon we went on a walking tour of the town and a date farm accompanied by our guide for here, Marouan. It was a lot of walking, partly because our guest house is on the edge of the town rather than the middle. It’s the only drawback to this place. We prefer to be in or near the center of town. The old town, or medina, was interesting as they always seem to be. The architecture here is different from the other places we’ve been. The buildings are all decorated with bricks in various patterns, very appealing. Marouan told us that each brick design has a name. He pointed out one that was the camel pattern, because it resembled a procession of camels. I could see it. We eventually came to a large orchard with many gated sections. In one section a gardener was working. He invited us in and he and Marouan told us a lot about date farming and harvesting. Each tree is climbed, quite high, not just to harvest the dates, but also to polinate them. The polinate themselves, but this process increases the amount of polination. They tie ribbons of the female part around the male parts, or maybe it’s the other way around. It wasn’t the harvest season, but beneath our feet were many dates, some looking only a bit dried up. I was tempted to pick one up, but refrained. The gardner suddenly scurried up one of the date palms, quite agiley. He wasn’t a young person. After he came down he told Marouan, who translated for us, that some years ago, he had fallen about 15 feet from a tree. He was taken to the hospital in Tunis, where he spent three months. Then he pulled up his shirt to show us a band wrapped tightly around his waist. I assume he wore that all the time. And still scooted up a tree easily. Marouan said he was a sharecropper. He maintained the place and could keep a fifth of the produce. On the way back to town we went to a small date museum. It explained a lot about the long history of date farming, and also, of course, sold date products. Marouan brought out a platter in the shape of Fatima’s hand, each finger holding a different type of date product. There were dates with cinnamon, with ginger, with orange, and with almonds. We chose a jar of date almond jam. I hope we don’t have a problem getting it back through customs. We’ve had trouble in the past with smoked Spanish ham, even though it was entirely sealed. We suspect the customs officers just wanted it for themselves. They had a whole room where they processed the dates, interesting to see although they weren’t working at the time. On our drive here from El Kef, every inch of the terrain was covered with orchards and various planted crops. The great majority were date palms and olive trees. But there were also lemon and orange trees, pomegranates, almonds, and probably others I can’t recall. Speaking of food products, I haven’t mentioned the town we stopped at on the way from Tunis to Dougga and El Kef. It is apparently is well known for its cheese. Mohsen, our driver, bought some bread from a boy on the street, and then took us to a cheese store. The merchant gave us a sliver of aged cheese to try, and then some fresh, which Mohsen bought for us. If I understood right, the cheese doesn’t have a name, just fresh, or aged. We’ve had the fresh cheese as part of our breakfasts, too, and it is delicious. It’s similar to farmer cheese. Back to Tozeur, where we are now. We spent most of the day, leaving the hotel around 9am, to tour the surrounding desert. First stop, the place where they filmed several of the Star Wars films. It is not a real village, but one constructed by George Lucas and company for the film. It’s fairly low key for a tourist destination, and there weren’t many people there when we arrived. But several groups arrived while we were there. There are a couple of men wanting to have you pose with their camels. And a large piece of fur or maybe synthetic material clearly meant to evoke Chewbacca and have you pose with it with your head above the fur. Loring tried to get me to do so, which I declined, but he willingly posed with it so I guess I’m allowed to post it. This is the second silly tourist post he posed for. Maybe I already mentioned this. There are many headless statues around the ruins in Carthage, Dougga, and Bella Reggia. The guides explained that the ancients would just replace the heads when there was a new ruler. I would think the rulers wouldn’t be happy with that, but apparently it was the thing to do. And now the thing to do is for us to pose with them. Loring wasn’t the first in the group we were with. That brings up another glitch in our itinerary. We were supposed to have a private guide in Bella Reggia, but that somehow didn’t happen. We waited while Mohsen talked with Sokal at Wildyness, and then apparentlly we were supposed to join up with a group of Americans, which I wasn’t thrilled about. In the end we wound up with a small group of Tunisian and French visitors, and it was fine. The other miscommunication we’ve encountered was when we arrived here in Tozeur a couple of days ago. The guest house in our itinerary, which Mohsen also had in his, didn’t have a reservation or any room for us. They did have a room for the second and third day, which we asked them to hold temporarily while we were brought to the place we are at now. Turns out the place hadn’t had room for us in the first place, and the reservation had been changed to here. But it had never been changed in our itinerary. It all worked out fine in the end, but was somewhat disconcerting to find out the first place had no reservation nor any place for us. On the other hand, Wildyness has been following us day to day through Whatssup, telling us about each day’s plan, and also checking in with Mohsen. We are all on a Whattsup group together, us, Mohsen, Sokal and Akshar. It can get a little confusing but is mostly working out well. Back to food (of course.) There is no way we can eat all we are served, or even three meals a day at all. Breakfast and dinner seems to work well, although the quantity is still overwhelming. Today, when we realized we were going to have a big lunch after visiting the sites, we asked Marouan if we could cancel the dinner we had already ordered here for tonite, it it was not too late. He called and they said it was fine. We asked for just some salad and fruit, which I guess we will be served fairly soon, as it is approaching 7pm. Last night they asked if we wanted to eat indoors, in the dining room, where we’ve had breakfast, or outdoors. When we chose outdoors, they set up a table for us in the center of the courtyard. Our meal was an order of camel and one of chicken. ( partly in case we didn’t like the camel.) But was actually delicious, kind of a cross between lamb and beef. With it were two kinds of salad , large bowls of couscous which we couldn ‘t finish, a light dessert of chopped oranges and dates. The chicken was cooked in a crockery jar that was sealed closed with what we think was a flour paste, in a fire, and then unsealed to serve. For drinks we have been served water with lemon and mint, and also what they have called lemon juice, which is lemonade. And also fresh orange juice at some locations.