Princess Dinners

The world over, the close of the Gregorian calendar brings an array of end-of-year parties, annual lunches and farewell dinners, and things are no different here in Tunis. In addition, I have recently moved teams at work and so I have had the added excitement of a leaving-lunch in my honour, which I had yesterday, and which will be the main content of today's story. But, before that, I must tell you about a few other restaurants which I've been lucky enough to visit in the last week:

1. Dar el Jeld

I had heard about this restaurant almost on arrival to Tunis and ever since then I have been hoping to pay a visit. Set in a renovated traditional Tunisian Villa right in the heart of the Tunis Medina, this restaurant boasts the highest quality Tunisian food (and the highest prices to match).

With a former classmate in town, my friend Jung set about getting a table with military-endurance and saint-like patience, and it certainly paid off. The restaurant is full to capacity every night and those tables are like gold dust.

With an enthusiastic music team and candles reflecting off of the floor to ceiling tiles, this place had ambience by the bucket load. Our waiter proudly gave us a tour of the house before dinner, which was a bit weird, as people were eating in the other rooms, but you couldn't blame him for wanting to show the place off. It was truly beautiful.

 Banging Decor

I had Couscous et Poisson (Sea Bass) which was completely divine, and was served with roasted apple (but controversial - perhaps Heston Blumenthal had paid them a visit?). Really beautiful food.

 Couscous et Poisson

For dessert, I had Crème Tunisienne, which was delicious.

2. Le Cap

Our Young Professional Christmas dinner was at Le Cap this year. Le Cap is a group of Restaurants and Bars in Gammarth which serve French/Lebanese/Libyan Fusion food. I had an incredible steak, but everything is superb there, even the little olive croissants that they serve with the starters.

I had been having wild chocolate cravings all day so I sated myself with a big fat Moelleux au Chocolat for puds... incroyable!

 The fruit was nothing to do with me

3. Circolo Italiano

My new team's Christmas lunch was held at the Italian Club, which is a strange little building close to the zoo, where, once you step inside, you are in Italy. The waiters only speak Italian, they serve real pork (be still my heart) and the TVs are somehow all showing Italian football. The food was exquisite, as always. I had Ravioli, as always. And they had darling Christmas Tree in the foyer, covered in gingerbread men and dried oranges.

Which brings me to yesterday's Princess Dinner:

4. Restaurant El Walima

So yesterday for lunch, my former team surprised me with lunch at Restaurant El Walima. Amazing. Let's take a break from all this food, for a history lesson:

When Tunisia was part of the Ottoman Empire in 1705, a royal family was installed, who ruled under the title of "Bey". The title was hereditary and was passed along the male line through the generations, even after Tunisia became a protectorate of France.

 

At the independence of Tunisia on 20th March (my birthday!) 1956, the Bey at that time, Muhammad VIII al-Amin, became King of Tunisia. A year later, the Prime Minister, Habib Bourguiba, declared Tunisia a Republic and the Bey dynasty came to an end. His daughter, the princess, opened a restaurant in downtown Tunis and now wears a traditional royal gown to serve diners a delicious Tunisian feast, Monday to Saturday

.

Little display for the Dey Dynasty on the wall - no, that is not the princess!

So while I didn't take a picture of the princess, here is the traditional Tunisian fare that we were served:

Starters: Clockwise from top left, 1. Lablabi, a spicy (with harissa) tomato soup with chickpeas, 2. Mloukhia, a bay leaf stew with okra and beef, 3. Noicer Pasta, which is little squares of pasta made from semolina, cooked in cinnamon  4. Mechouia Salad, salad made with boiled egg, tuna, sweet peppers and oil. And this, naturally was served with hot French bread.

Inbetweenies: Brik - which you have seen before, so I won't show you here.

Entree: There was lots of choice, but I had the prawns, which came with some mixed shell fish, salads and some chippies

Dessert: A fruit salad, which I won't show you here, because everyone knows what a fruit salad looks like - this one had lots of pineapple in.

Tea: The tea course was a mint tea with pinenuts and a Pistachio Tunisian Creme.

Afterwards I went back to my office and promptly fell into a coma.

Other things that are happening:

• I paid off my credit card bill, so my finances are finally looking healthy and lovely for the first time since buying my house. Promptly afterwards I sent a friend a long email about how we should go to Toulouse in January... so it seems that I may not have learnt my lesson...
• I ran 10km this morning. Very exciting - it was probably all that Princess Fuel. In less than an hour too, 59:05mins. Not all good though, as I did forget to bring my bra in my change of clothes - so I'm going to have to wear my sweaty sports bra all day... mmm...
• Anna Karenina... not happening....yet.

Tunisie doth protest too much, methinks

Oh Tunisia! 

A huge national strike that was planned for tomorrow (13th December), and that we had basically planned our whole lives around this week, has just been cancelled, but let me tell you, Tunisia loves to strike.

Friday afternoons are the favourite, just after the Friday prayers. There a huge Mosque behind my office and as the prayers end, the chanting often starts. I took the picture below from my office the other day. It's rarely violent, usually pre-advertised and always loud.
Of course Tunisia was at the epi-centre of the Arab spring in late 2010 and early 2011. The government here was overthrown on 14th January 2011, an event we now celebrate with a public holiday.

 View from my office window last Friday

I love protests. I love standing up for what you believe in. I hate violence. I hate mob culture.

 

Protest prep behind my office

Some may argue that this tendency to strike is a throwback to Tunisia's close history with France, but this has always been a country where people have stood up for what they believe in, a land where people confront opposition and fight oppression... and so, the story of Felicity and Perpetua.

Felicity and Perpetua

So, strangely, Jung and I somehow found ourselves on a tour of all the Christian sites of Carthage earlier this year, and part of this tour was to visit the supposed execution site of Felicity and Perpetua, the famous female, Tunisian, Christian martyrs, from the third century. Perpetua was a noble woman who was put to dead for being a Christian along with her slave, Felicity. We have a nice stained-glass window to commemorate them at my church.

Her father pleaded with her to denounce her faith many times before her eventual execution, but she stood fast, despite the assurance of certain death. According to surviving texts, which are written in the first person, they both seemed to want to martyred - Felicity, who was pregnant when arrested, was relieved to give birth before the execution, as she would have missed out - as pregnant women could not be executed at that time.

The accounts of their deaths are pretty brutal, first set upon by wild animals, then impaled with swords. At the Amphitheatre in Carthage, it's not difficult to imagine the jeering Romans and the bears and leopards being released from the holding areas (all of the underground tunnels remain and exploration is, naturally, essential).

With such a strong history of defiance, no matter what the consequences, Tunisians continue to stand up for their beliefs and their values, and it's unlikely that this society will ever allow itself to be suppressed again.

An Aside

Also this week, I was invited to the Ambassador's Residence - I guess he had heard about my great singing voice!

The house was completely beautiful - and they had a huge, real (?!?) Christmas tree. There was a very lively rendition of Good King Wenslaslas at the close, which I wasn't really expecting, but I guess it's a bit of a party piece for the Embassy! 

Here's a picture of the Queen and I, having a ball:

P.S. I swear, I have been staring at my advent calendar for the past half an hour, and there really is no number 12 door.

How to Run a Marathon...

Ladies and Gentlemen, it seems I may have bitten off more than I can chew. I may not be a runner.

So, since I have started working on achieving my 30before30 goals, on my 27.5th birthday, I have been running 7km every single Wednesday, without fail. Even if I have been travelling, or unwell, or tired, or grumpy. The first one was awful. I thought I was going to die. But since then they have gradually got better, and a little quicker - not much, but a little. I have now started doing a 5km on Mondays too and I always do cardio on Fridays, either my kick-boxing class, or if I'm travelling, another 5km.

But progress is slow... and maybe I should tell you my big secret. I don't really like running.

I remember watching Eddie Izzard, the British comedian, on the Jonathan Ross Show a few years ago, when he was doing Ultra-marathons and back-to-back marathons for Sports Relief. Jonathan Ross said to hims something like,
"So, you really must like running then?"
And his response was,
"Not at all, I actually hate it, I really like the stopping"

I do get this though, I feel the same. The stopping is great - the sense of achievement, all those endorphins, the "champion" feeling, the after-exercise glow that stays with you for the rest of the day... This is what makes it so hard to just keep running- the temptation to stop.

When I was in Mozambique, I was working with a new member of staff who had just joined our team and we were having a good bonding session over breakfast. I told her that I was planning to run a marathon and she became all excited and exclaimed that she had run three! Surprised does not even cover it, as this lady was no lean whippet. Nor had I seen her at the gym at all during our stay at the hotel. I think that my face must have betrayed my disbelief because she went on to tell me all about how she had just undergone chemotherapy and had gained 30kg. It all got a bit awkward, and I really began to focus on my bread and bananas.

This aside, she gave me loads of great tips. She told me all about the techniques she used to avoid injury, including the Fartlek technique, which is where you do a bit of gentle jogging with some mad sprints in between. Sounded like a lot of fun. I'm definitely gonna try it. She also told me that the original length of a marathon was defined by a Greek legend of a messenger called Pheidippides who ran that distance, keeled over, and died. Great. I looked it up, and it seems he had been running the day before (Note to self - no running on day before Marathon).

So the Marathon that I want is in September, and it will take about 6 months of heavy training (6 days per week). Before starting that I should get up to at least 4 runs per week and at least 20km per week... oh man! No one ever said that it would be easy.

The other thing is where to run?  I need to get out on the road, but the nights are drawing in and the gym is so warm and they have nice soft towels...

Maputo, Mozambique

Did you miss me? Did you think I wasn't coming back? Have faith people. I am here and I am staying. So sorry for the delay, I have been in Mozambique this week and although I initially thought I could have sent you a little mid-mission review, it was sadly impossible as work was insanely busy and I had hardly any downtime.

Anyways, I hope all is forgiven now, and that you enjoy my account below, of an incredible country that I couldn't possibly try to understand in the 6 short days that I was there, but still left a lasting impression on me.

The Journey
So the first thing to note was the journey. It was my first time flying long-haul business class and I stumbled through the process like a wide-eyed baby, pretending to be impressed by nothing, while secretly noting everything! The flight was quite roundabout, from Tunis to Frankfurt to Johannesburg to Maputo. The 10-hour flight from Frankfurt to Jo'burg was on the Airbus a380 and I squealed with delight as we were led upstairs! 

We had the fully reclining beds like on the adverts and they served us a three course meal - including Classically Roasted Goose for main course! It was my first time to have goose, so I didn't really mind if it was classically roasted or in a curry, I was excited. To top off the brilliance, I even managed to sneak a pair of wooden knitting needles on to the flight (don't panic people, I did have some more in my check-in luggage in case they had been confiscated). Only slightly less exciting than the flight itself, are the business lounges, where you can while away the hours, while enjoying free refreshments, wifi and shower facilities (not all at the same time).

I had a bit of a 'moment' landing in Johannesburg. It was my first time back in Sub-Saharan Africa since starting my new job, this trip was the final step in a year's worth of work for a report I had written, and it was exactly the same departure lounge that I had nervously sat in in 2006 on my first trip in Africa, as I awaited my transfer to Zambia. In these 6 years it's so hard to believe how much my life has changed, how fortunate I have been and how much love and support I've had from my friends and family, all of which have helped my to touch my dreams. At that moment, I just felt so happy and loved and blessed and fortunate, and it was really nice.

First Impressions

Maputo has a big new airport, everything was a breeze (facilitated by my diplomatic passport) and it didn't take long before we were zooming through the city to the hotel. And I mean 'zooming'. There is no traffic in Maputo. It's the first African capital that I have been to where the traffic level never really got up to much. You could regularly spend 3 hours in Kampala, just sitting in the same place (I used to keep a book in the glove compartment) and the work I did in Accra was all about how to manage the unbearable peak-traffic flows. But in Maputo, vehicles seemed in very good condition and there were not too many of them.

I was staying at a beautiful hotel on the Ocean, called the Serena Polena Hotel. I've been so fortunate to stay at a Serena hotel before in Stone Town, and I used to also have dinner at the Serena Kampala (in the Indiana Jones Restaurant!) so I've had a bit of experience with these hotels, which are part of the Aga Khan Development Network. I like the way they do things. They often take a old colonial building and vamp it up nicely. This is exactly how it was in Maputo. Our meeting were all in the hotel, so it's a good job that it was a nice one - and I saw ALOT of it!

Food

The food!! oh the food! I took an extremely gung-ho approach to prawn consumption and for the first couple of days had prawns at every single meal. This was not my best idea. I developed crippling stomach pains and things all became a bit... fluid. It was terrible. I instantly blamed the prawns - especially the ones from the buffet (Who eats buffet prawns... what was I thinking??). On the third night, I organised a big group exodus from the hotel to a local Portuguese restaurant and rather than 'go easy' on the food. I went a bit mental, as it all tasted so good, and I considered that given the state of my gastric system, this was all pretty much free-calories anyway. I was punished severely for this mentality and spend the rest of the trip eating dry toast and bananas.

The Glorious Prawns

I think I should take a moment to defend the prawns. The beautiful, delicious, fresh, pink prawns. You see, when I was in Uganda, I had become a bit of a Maverick. My colleagues who were still working from the UK office used to call me "Our girl in Africa", and I always aspired to be worthy of the title. I would brush my teeth in the tap water, my stomach had adapted to the Malarone, and I never gave second thought to having ice-cubes in my drink. I have to accept that I have become a pansy. I am not as strong or resilient as I was. So maybe it wasn't the prawns after all, although, they probably didn't help much!

Right at the end of the week on my free half-day, I did manage to try some really good traditional local food. The disk was called Matapa and it was basically a Crab, Peanut and Casava curry served with Rice (this is the stuff that my Dad's nightmares are made of).

Crab Matapa

I don't really know why it was green. But it was completely delicious. It was a bit bland, but then you get a dish of chillies in oil to spice it up with. Otherwise, fresh bread is a big thing in Mozambique, which is a contrast to East Africa, and of course, all seafood. I had a dynamite fish and chips on my last night. I was all euphoric because the work was all done, but so sad to be leaving after hardly seeing anything - business trips are weird.

 Fish & Chippies, be still my heart

Other things

• So Mozambique made a solid attempt at communism, and the evidence of this still exists with huge, sad, residential, high-rises in the middle of the city. They're a bit of an eye-sore now, but give the city a really southern European feel.

• Even though they were part of Portuguese East Africa, they drive on the left, because they know what's important.

• My Portuguese was terrible, I just about managed to say "good morning" to people. I learnt on the last day that "obrigado"/"obrigada" are gender sensitive to the person saying thank-you, not the recipient. So I had made a lot of mistakes there.

Some More Photos?

Yep, you know you want them!

Art sellers in Parque dos Continuadores

 

Chilli Vendor

Traditional Dancers

Throwing caution to the wind with a Portuguese Kebab

In car shopping on Julius Nyerere Road, tax disk holders and canaries

African Sunrise over the Indian Ocean

 Nice Menu Translation!

In other news I am starting Anna Karenina today. The translation I have is 850 pages long - which is 100 pages longer than Nelson Mandela's 'Long Walk to Freedom'...oh man... I think I'm going to do a targeted strategy: If I read 25 pages a day... I'll finish it in the UK and be able to watch the new film at the cinema. I just finished another translated book by a Russian author, so I feel well prepped. Here is goes.