Please: No Religion, No Politics.

I come from a country where it is not considered polite or proper to talk about politics, or religion in company. Africa is different (the rest of the world may be different, but as I have only lived outside my country in Africa, allow me to draw on my experience). Here you can throw politics, or religion, or ethnicity into any conversation, and that's okay.

I was in Zambia for the 2006 elections and surprised when women from a farmers' group spoke to me openly about who they had voted for. And it was not unanimous, many had voted for different candidates, but they spoke openly and proudly about their chosen candidate. Allow me to find some pictures from my trip to Zambia...

Wow... looking through those old pictures from Zambia made me miss living in Sub-Sahara Africa so much! Hopefully I am going on a trip there in a month (Nigeria), otherwise, my relocation next year (although the country is still to be decided... ) cannot come soon enough!

The top picture is from the school that I was working at. Some of the classrooms were turned into polling stations, and your little finger nail on your left hand was painted once you had voted. One bottle of nail polish remover could topple a democracy. The second picture shows the moment the winner was announced.  We were in a car going home, but in the end we were stuck in traffic for hours as a huge street party broke out.

In Uganda for the 2011 elections, it was the same, people talked about the issues. Really talked. Office debates every lunchtime and long discussions. Perhaps is the African culture of talking a problem out and convincing each other of the solution, rather than the western way of taking a vote and disgruntedly going with the consensus. 

Tunisia is the same, we can talk and talk and talk about politics. To strangers, to shop keepers, to children and young people. Every taxi driver is a political scientist and every citizen knows the proposed constitution by heart - especially the wording on the legal status of women, which thankfully was revised from original edit last August:

"The State guarantees the protection of women rights and the promotion of their gains, as a real partner of men in the mission of the homeland building, and the roles of both should complement each other within the household ..."

"Complement..." Sheesh!! Don't worry, they changed it!

Does the UK even have a constitution? How do I, a seemingly educated adult with three post-graduate certificates have to even ask this?... I just looked it up. We don't have one. Not a written one anyway. So there.

Anyway, I'm rambling, sorry. On Monday night last week I was invited to an Iftar dinner at Ishrack's house, the colleague of my friend Lucy. The conversation was awash with politics, everyone was patiently waiting to see if enough MPs would step down to force a re-election and excitedly discussing how they had been at Bardo the night before, handing out food to the protesters. We were a party of about twenty, with a number of over-sugared children running around on push bikes and other ride on toys. I noticed that all children are the same the world over as their mother kept shouting at them to partagez! partegez! (share) and jouez gentiment! (play nicely). Cultural note - these were high society Tunisians, and so spoke French at home, luckily for me.

The sun set and the eating began. All the usual dishes, but this time homemade with special touches. The couscous especially was superb, I asked Ishrack how she made it and she told me that it was all ground by hand my her belle-mère (I love this phrase for mother-in-law, literally "beautiful mother"). Ishrack's belle-mère was a real character. She came late with a sullen face and as she entered everyone leapt up to give her the best seat at the table. She smiled at no-one, spoke to no-one. Later, I asked Ishrack whether something was wrong, fearing that us strangers at the table had annoyed her? But Ishrack explained that her father-in-law, the old lady's husband had died two years ago. The old lady had cried so much that she had ruined both of her tear ducts. She had just undergone an extremely painful operation on one of them to help relieve the sinus pressure in her head, and so her quietness and lack of conversation should be forgiven. I think it's one of the saddest things I ever heard.

After dinner, I was delighted to see GIANT Ouedhnines el Khadhi - I just cannot get enough of these!

Then we played with the children on the terrasse, something like "Simon Says" and Lucy spoke to Ishrack about schooling and challenges with different education systems. Some people smoked shisha and digested, and just relaxed.

Some of the group were inside watching the news and let out a cry and called us to go in. Eight Tunisian soldiers had been shot and killed during an ambush in the Chaambi mountain region in Western Tunisia. Their bodies had been mutilated. We all went inside, (even the children who were quickly ushered out again) and tried to understand what was going on. The footage had got back to the crowds who were protesting at Bardo and they turned their volume up a notch. Then the President spoke live and said their was no plan to dissolve the government.

Our companions hugged each other in fear for the future. We had some birthday cake and went home.

It's hard to understand what it is to be Tunisian at the moment. To have such an intense national pride for being the first Arab countries to stand up against a dictatorship two years' ago and trigger something spectacular. To be considered the most forward thinking Maghreb nation in terms of women's rights and the state of Israel in the 1950s. Tunisia was a trailblaizer.

Now I hear people saying:

"I don't recognise my own country"

"I am frightened for the future"

"Things were better before" (pre-Revolution)

But whatever the future holds, it is fundamentally important, that we never stop talking about this.