Ghar el Melh 10km

Whoa there! Guess what I got up to yesterday? Only went and ran my socks off, in the most gorgeous venue that Tunisia has to offer.

If Bizerte is a sleepy fishing town... then poor Ghar el Melh is in a long term coma. The half-marathon and 10km races that are organised in the town by a local entrepreneur and encourage participants from overseas (mainly via a French package trip) and from the Tunisian running community seem to be the main event of the year. The town turned out in force to support us, cheer us on, or just gaze in complete wonder.

 
The 10km route was all along the coast, around a little port and then back again. It was quite flat and really beautiful. On the way we passed plenty of tiny seaside shacks where local fisherman were all too happy to cook up their daily catch for you to feast on in their sandy gardens. The smell of sea salt, and the strong coastal wind took me right home.

Look at this snazzy map that my watch made! Clever, clever watch!

 
So how did we do? well, my running gang and I came in 1st, 2nd, 3rd and 4th for the ladies race... yep, not many ladies entered, but I still think that we can be very proud - especially as there were lots of little girls watching and waving from their porches, so maybe we inspired them for the future. I achieved my personal goal of completeing on the road in less than an hour - something I have never managed in training, I made it in 58:40, very happy considering the wind, how hot it was and the fact that there was no water provided en route!

On the way home, we got stuck in some bad traffic, and we were in my friend Lucy's car, so I cracked out her Tunisia travel guide and (to everyone's delight) we all learnt lots about Ghar el Melh and its history with the UK. It turns out that Ghar el Melh used to be a pirate base and was destroyed in Sir Francis Drake in 1654. Ghar el Melh means "cave of salt"... explains the smell then. In the village there are three Ottoman forts... yep, Dad, THREE! Whack it on the list for next time!

There were no medals, as this was a real 'local' race - no frills whatsoever. But last week I did finally buy the Berber necklace that I promised myself during the last half-marathon in La Marsa. I wore it with pride last night.

Until next time - oh crikey... it's next week! eek!

What the Halwa...?

Oh, you think I talk about food a lot? Well don't get me wrong, I'm not a foodie, I'm just straight up greedy.

Firstly respect to me, because I just walked around the supermarket taking pictures and everyone thought I was a bit mental, but I think you'll agree, it's worth it.

So the diet here is pretty Mediterranean, maybe French Mediterranean meets Africa. And like France - people know about their yogurts. I knew I had settled in here, and I really felt like Tunisia was home, when I went home home and was in Safeways with my Mum and proclaimed loudly in the chilled section "This is all you've got?!? In Tunisia, we have aisles and aisles of yogurts!!" and it's true, it the 'Big Carrefour' there are 5 aisles of yogurts. Five. You walk down them and there are yogurts on either side. You cannot believe he flavours; pistachio, apple and vanilla, biscuit, date, peach, fig, prune, almond and all your regulars like strawberry, chocolate, vanilla, lemon...
The yogurt department at my local supermarket is a lot smaller, but it still represents, this is the Danone section:

So Harissa, the glorious chilli and tomato paste is another Tunisian culinary delight that gets a lot of floor space in the supermarket. I actually saw some in a supermarket in the UK when I was last home, in the 'world food' section, but here Harissa gets a section all of its own, floor to ceiling:

You can buy it in tins, jars, tubes... you can even buy it in bags from the fresh counter. Just make sure you have it, it's a diet staple.

So another thing that had attracted my curiosity was a product called Halwa. I had seen the laden shelves of tubs, tins and packets and had absolutely no idea what it was. I asked everyone, but everyone didn't know either. No one served it at there house, no one gave it to me... I couldn't get to grips with what it was, and why is got so much space in the supermarket.

 

So I never bought any and I just went on wondering and wondering. Until the La Marsa half marathon, where we were given a little tin in our post-race bags. The other night I sat down and tucked-in... oh my.

Firstly, how cute is the little deer on the tin? doesn't it just whet your appetite?

So the Halwa itself was like a really soft nougat, made from sesame paste. It has a bizarre texture, it's really crumbly - not just in a melt-in-your mouth way... more like a oh-this-is-a-bit-weird way...

The other types in the supermarket come with almonds or pistachios or dried fruit - I think this would be a bit more exciting, but I still can't work out quite how it's served. The other tubs are much too big for one person at once - are you supposed to just eat it straight out of the tin or tub? Or spread it on to something? Or cut it into cubes?

Guys, for you I will continue to look into this. My work here is not yet done. The adventure continues...

Getting Fed, while they get Wed

I'm becoming a bit of a pro at Tunisian Weddings. And it's a jolly good thing too because they are a huge social focal point for most Tunisians, especially women. They are a prime husband hunting ground for young ladies who tend to spend most of their time cooped up at home, and are also a good opportunity to get dressed up in a spectacular fashion and dance to some of the craziest music you have ever heard.

My wool shop of choice is in the haberdashery zone of Tunis so I often get to walk past and admire all of the spectacular wedding dresses on display in the windows. You need sunglasses on for these bad boys, they are proper blinged to the max

 

Typically, wedding dresses are hired for the wedding and also for the engagement party. Unsuspecting guests can be a little confused at first if they are not familiar with the custom of wearing a giant meringue for the engagement party. 

My friend got engaged last year, and there's a rumour that after the official party and the fiancee had gone home, leaving her dress to be returned to the hire-shop, I put it on and danced around.  

Without photographs, it's unclear to me whether this could have possibly happened, she smiled.

But the real minefield at wedding is the food and drink. Typically no alcohol is served at functions like this and so my natural approach is to drink A LOT before you go (this is my culture, I'll thank you not to judge). With food, it's a complete game of roulette. Sometimes you will get a full, delicious buffet, sometimes just a small plate of Tunisian pastries and some wedding cake. You just never know, and the invitation doesn't help either. I've been to two similar weddings both starting at 9pm, one you got a full dinner, the other, just strawberry juice and pastries.

You can understand my extreme concerns when attending my colleagues wedding last Saturday then... and although my stomach can happily eat two dinners, to ensure social graces, I had selected a dress that really only had space for one. My colleague is Austrian so they went for the buffet option - fortunately I had not eaten, so I was ready to pack some good food away.

Do not be fooled by the leaves and salmon on my plate - that was the salad course. Tunisian buffets are all about the five courses, and if you don't handle them all, people look at you like you're crazy; pastry starters (lots of filo, egg and tuna arranged in different ways), salad (voila!), mains (cous cous, lamb, fish), pâtisserie (where you'll find me) and fruits (dates, oranges and the peaches are just coming in).

It seems that love is in the air in Tunis at the moment, as another one of my friends had a whole table of us cooing as he told the story of how he proposed to his new fiancee just last week - lots of lovely planning, pretending that there were no flights left to Lyon on Friday night so that she would have to fly the next morning and he had time to go ahead to the restaurant and get everyone organised... and they say romance is dead?

They are having an engagement party this Saturday - I wonder what dress she'll wear? 

Here is last week's happy couple, I won't name them, just in case they google themselves and get a surprise. But what a beautiful dress and happy smiles!

 

Mabrouk!!

Doin' Dougga

Mon Dieu! (which is probably my favourite things to exclaim in French - the language learning really isn't going so well...) Dougga is extraordinary.

This is the final post that I'll do to catch up from my Parents' trip here - we took a day trip to Dougga, and I must say, it was without-doubt my favourite day. In fact, I'm gonna put it out there and say that it was my favourite day in Tunisia so far, followed in close second and third by My Birthday and last Saturday (where I did all that running, had a 5-course lunch at El Walima, went to the zoo, and then to a wedding - which I'm gonna tell you about in a hot minute - and then a nightclub and danced until 4am. Sometimes you've just got to dig deep) respectively.

When you ask people about Dougga, they go all glassy eyed and say, "Uhh, it's UrrrMAY-ZING!" and I didn't really believe them, because, other that the great one-word reviews, I had heard little about it.

But it blew me away. Completely

So let me give you some blurb - Dougga is an Roman City, about two hours from Tunis by car. The Roman buildings are largely excavated, although sadly, many of the mosaics and statues, have been removed and placed in the national museum (Or the British Museum... hmm... Sorry Tunisia... but at least study of the stolen plaque from the Punic-Lybian Mausoleum has made it possible to decode the early Berber language - Silver linings?). The attitude to preservation here has been to put things back where they belong and to rebuild and restore. The effect is breath-taking. You can walk down the Roman streets and actually imagine what it was like to live there, to be a Roman, living in North Africa, it all feels so real.

In Dougga, there are nine impressive and gigantic temples, but my I liked the Theatre best. Standing out on the stage, looking out to the tiered seating, you feel like a complete Thesp' and you can just imagine a huge crowd sitting and watching you, in their togas. The design intricacies in the theatre are flawless, there are even prompt boxes either side of the stage and under the stage there are a series of hollow pipes for acoustic dampening of the stage area (oh, did I tell you I have a Master's Degree in Physics and love all this stuff?) 

 

I took a picture that does not do it justice at all, but at least you can see my Dad's hat in there. What a hat. He wore it constantly. With pride. I kid you not.

The temples really were something. These people were sinners, or religious, or something... but they certainly felt that they needed a lot of temples. There are temples to the deities Mercury (god of travellers, traders, messengers and writers), Minerva (goddess of wisdom and arts), Pluto (god of riches), Saturn (god of time) and Juno Caelestis (goddess of protection and council), and others like the Temple of Caracalla's Victory in Germany which is dedicated to the Imperial Cult at Dougga (like a Roman "royal family"), August Piety, Massinissa (a local king) and The Capitol (which I liked because it reminded me of the Hunger Games), and which is pictured here:

Roman mythology is so interesting, I've got to get on that. As well as a deep history of Roman dominance, Tunisia also gets some good features in Roman fiction, for example in Homer's The Odyssey, the island of Lotus-Eaters refers to the Island of Djerba, the largest island off the coast of Tunisia. I clearly have some studying to do.

There's also a really interesting structure called the Trifolium Villa ('Trifolium' means 'Clover' and there's a Clover shaped room - isn't learning fun?). I loved this because it's surrounded in a cloak of mystery. No-one knows what such a large villa (seriously, huge, and it was two-stories) was up to in such a small town, or who it belonged to. Some people say it was a brothel, others a hotel... it's clear there were plenty of bedrooms and it had it own private bathhouse - pretty fancy pants! I love it when historians just don't know the answer. I like our ancestors to be able to keep a few secrets from us, just to keep us wondering. Here's the courtyard of the Trifolium Villa:

The history and the buildings aside, the thing that make Dougga so lovely is the deathly silence. The pure, eerie quiet when you can just hear the birds and the wind. It's everything that Stonehenge should be. It's magical. It's my favourite place in Tunisia.

As this is my last post about the recent good family times, I suppose I'll use this opportunity to thank my Super Brilliant Mummy and Daddy for coming to visit me. We had fun, huh? You are welcome back any old time, You Krazy Katz- However, let's all work on our timekeeping next time, shall we? Because being last on the coach at every single stop, is not my idea of a good time... And taking pictures of me, while I get narked off and shout at you to "hurry up"... not cool...

Otherwise - I love you millions x

Well, it's certainly not a sprint...

Marathon training is long. And I don't even mean long like 26.2 miles. I mean 'long' like British slang for tiresome, tedious, is it really worth it? long. But, of course it is, and I am very glad that I haven't given up up to now... even though I am quite sure that the worst is yet to come.

My long run is getting longer (now we are talking distance... do try to keep up!). This weekend, I tore through 23.5km. I run so slowly, sometimes I think it's a bit of a liberal interpretation to even be saying 'run'. But for now, I suppose I just need to work on building up the distance.

Here's my watch, isn't she lovely? I got her for my birthday and she does all sorts of things that you couldn't imagine and I am yet to discover.

I'm still running without music, and lately I've been running without company too as my running buddies have been injured or on missions (yup, they actually call it that in my job, it never gets old). It's not too boring though, Tunisia keeps me busy, early in the morning there are stray dogs to avoid, then as people start to wake up there's lots of honking and, what shall we call it?, verbal encouragement. The cars that take their time to loop the next roundabout and drive past you again to make sure you heard their helpful jeers - they are the ones that really spur you on. But sometimes (rarely) I'm impressed. Yesterday, a big car of girls drove past me and one shouted out:

Prends un taxi, Madame!!

Thanks Tunisia, I like. She got a little smile.

Also keeping me busy is the ill-maintained pavement and the narrow pedestrian walkways. I took a little tumble this week, not too bad, but it really taught me the importance of running with a phone and money, just in case. I cut all the palms of my hands, which has been very troublesome, as it's been a week of professional success, and I keep eagerly high-fiving people before remembering the hard way about the damage to my hands. This is also hindering my handstand practice.

I also cut my elbow and arm quite badly, and it's amusingly disgusting. The other day the blood/puss combo saturated the plaster on my arm and even seeped through my coat lining making a visible blood stain on the outside of my beige coat. Incredible. The silver lining to this cloud, of course, is that in a weeks time I'll have some fantastic scab-picking to get on with. The anticipation killing me, but I think we all know that if you go at a scab too early, you only regret it.

And that, boys and girls, is me done for the night. xx

La Guerre des étoiles en Tunisie

Legend has it that on driving through the salt desert of Matmata in Central Tunisia, on a tourist trip to visit the Berbers, George Lucas felt so inspired by the landscape that he decided to use it as the backdrop for his glorious Star Wars series.

Here's a little sidenote: the French title for the saga is: La Guerre des étoiles, the war of the stars... one war, many stars. Whereas in English: one star, many wars. Read into that what you will...

So there are several sites you can visit, but we went to two, Lar's Homestead in Matmata and Ong Jemel in the desert, close to Tozeur.

Lar's Homestead

Lar's Homestead is in Matmata which is prime Berber country. The Berbers are a semi-nomadic ethnic group indigenous to Tunisia and Algeria. Their rich culture has grown and developed with the spread of Islam and with the global technological developments, for example, although many chose to live in cave dwellings, they commonly have a plumbed toilet, electricity and television satellite.

Lar's Homestead was filmed in one of these such structures, and although much of the set remains, it is in an 'interesting' state of repair, many of the parts having been repainted (in different colours?) since my visit last year. Still, it's pretty exciting and fun, and most tours that are passing through here stop at the set (which has now been made into a hotel) for a traditional Tunisian lunch (which my fussy-eater Dad did manage to eat, after confirming that nothing on his plate had figs in it).

Ong Jemel

Ong Jemel literally means 'Camel Neck' (or 'dromedary neck'?) and refers to a large sandy camel-necked shaped hill nearby. It's accessed via a 4x4 joy-ride over the desert from Tozeur and is literally in the middle of a sand filled abyss. I had done the 4x4 joy-ride thing before, so if you are organising this, you need to make sure that your tour goes through Ong Jemel as some cover other parts of the desert.

The Tunisian tourist board has wildly underestimated how exciting this location is. You will be surprised not to find a gift shop, tour guides, or even a person dressed up as Chewbacca for the photo ops. But then, there is no French word for entrepreneur...

 

You should also note that I rocked an incredible headstyle for this touristic exercise - facilitated by Easter gifts from my sister, Kat. When you also understand that we had to be on the tour bus at 5am that morning (oh yes, "5 o'clock in the morning... conversation got boring", when Lily Allen is just creeping up to your bedroom, I was climbing those coach steps) and we got our wake up call at 3:40am in order to have breakfast first. Who wants to have breakfast at that time? (who am I kidding? I ate two doughnuts!). Anyway, when you consider that, then my hairstyle is nothing short of spectacular.

... And she knows it...

Holy Zeus! In Sousse!

I've been so busy! First my parents visited and then I had a two week training course, which sounds like fun, except that you have to attend lectures all day, complete assignments and coursework and also continue to keep up to date with your day job... lest your return workload will rise up and crush you... This is what awaits me as I return to the office tomorrow - pray for me.

In addition, the new beautiful and amazing GPS watch which I received for my birthday has encouraged a competitive demon within me, and him aside, I have been really enjoying racking up the mileage of my runs and did a total of 40.9 miles last week (and yes, I'm taking that .9 thank you very much, because I deserve credit for every footstep). More on running later.

Anyway, sorry for taking 150 years to get back to you with this one - and please all stop your moaning, especially you, Dad, because, let's be honest, you already know what happened on our great trip to central Tunisia, and all of your comments about my blog not being updated are born out of a desire for stardom. He's your moment to shine. Granting me some liberal artistic license. Naturally.

When you live overseas and you spend a great deal of time on skype calls coaxing your family back home to send you biscuits and Anglophone magazines, it's difficult to know how to play it when they visit. On the one hand you need to show them that you are safe, comfortable and happy, but you really don't want to let life look too luxurious so that they stop sending the care packages... or even stop caring. It took me a few iterations to get this right. My first visitors to Uganda, my darling, Western sisters, were left weeping in terror as we arrived at most of the accommodation that I had booked for our safari. So when my parents came, it all went a bit far the other way, and the spectacular resorts that I had booked left my parents declaring that they had eaten some of the best food of their lives in Uganda and could they come back on holiday again next year?. As luck would have it, I actually left Uganda soon after that, and so didn't get to do the sun-creamed, insect repellant-ed, AC to AC tango again... but it's something I look forward to in my next sub-Sahara posting.

Messing aside, it really is great to have family to visit (even if they bring over bags of dry-roasted peanuts that they scoff while you are sleeping) as it also gives you the opportunity to be a tourist in your host country, learn formally about the rich culture and history, and see her as she wishes to be shown off. With my guests wanting good access to Star Wars sites, we decided to travel down to Sousse, and pick up a desert tour from there - I'm going to do another post about visiting the Star Wars filming sites, because when I was researching online, it was hard to get much information, so I think it would be helpful to do a full informative post about how to do it.

Juicy Sousse-y

Sousse is a destination in its own right, to the extent that many flights come in from Europe straight to Enfidha airport, full of pasty, package-holiday patrons. While many of then will stay in their resorts, Sousse does have a massive Fort, Ribat and Mosque, if you're feeling adventurous. Luckily, I was born adventurous, to adventurous parents, so we hit the city at the earliest opportunity.

In Sousse, I experienced some moments of extreme discomfort as a result of touristic cultural pollution (which may or may not be a real term, but just exploded out of my brain). Walking through the Medina, you're subjected to lots of invitations to look into souks, of varying levels of aggression, from gentle coaxing, right up to rudeness, cat-calling and crude gestures and language, that make you stop and wonder - what is this person really trying to achieve? Some of the things that are called out in this market place really aren't designed to get you to browse the souks, but rather to get your attention, and to maybe get a rise from you. Let's face it, it's a boring job, and one up-sale to a unseasoned tourist will probably cover the day's wage... the rest of the time can be used for the shop keepers own amusement.

So none of this actually bothers me, I bartered for every single tomato at Nakawa market in Kampala during my two years there, I'm used to the trading spirit. I'm also used to bear-faced aggression in the face of desperation, I was in Zimbabwe in 2006. But the disturbing thing about the traders in Sousse, was much more unsettling:

Some of the traders, on discovering that we were British, would shout out, plays on famous British advertising: "Cheaper than Tescos", "We have Asda price", or up the ante with some British slang "c'mon 'av a shufty", "c'mon 'av a butcher's" (both of which mean "come and have a look" in British Arabic slang and Cockney rhyming slang respectively). This got a smile from us, as the vendors would adopt a funny, playful British Accent.

Then they called out "cheaper than a ... shop" and used the racist word that is wildly un-PC and often used to define a cornershop. You know the one, guys, I'm not going to type it out. 

To hear that word shouted in the street naturally grates on me and burns my face and throat with anger, but the uncomfortable realisation that the regional specificness of that word and all the other phrases, means that they have been taught all of this by British tourists, passing through, spreading the dregs and the filth of our embarrassing sub-culture... well that's pretty hard to bear.

Onwards and upwards - people, go to Sousse, you can see Tunisia at its best (good restaurant service, nice museums and clean beaches) and my culture at its worst.

A Jem in the Desert

Just three hours from Sousse (ish, I wasn't really counting) is the Roman Amphitheatre at El Jem. I had been once before for the International Symphonic Music Festival, where you go at night and the whole Amphitheatre is lit up, and you can take a picnic, and cushions. We forgot the cushions. Never again.

Anyway, it was super to finally visit in the daylight. The El Jem amphitheatre is huge and beautiful, the biggest in Africa, and was digitally remastered for the Gladiator film. Like all Tunisian monuments, it was gloriously quiet and hardly anyone was visiting. We ran around pretending to be lions, Christians and Russell Crowes.

We also hit the desert hard and took a cheeky camel ride down at Tozeur. You hear "Camel, camel" everywhere in Tunisia, but let's be honest - they're dromedaries. They have just one hump and long, long legs. Even the traffic signs know it, the word is right in French, but mis-translated to 'camels' in English. 

Maybe a dromedary is a type of camel. I'm no expert. Neither is my mother, who, while aboard, asked me if camels eat meat. This woman is the "Head of Science" at her primary school. 

Britain has no chance.