Time for Tunisia

Enjoying Sidi Bou Said

It was time for a break from the red city, so we headed for our North African neighbor, Tunisia, the country of white and blue. We left behind the dust of Marrakech and found cool Mediterranean blues waiting for us on our arrival in Tunis. 

The vacation gods were smiling on us as we breezed through customs, were handed a free SIM card for our phones, and found a kind lady with a rental car waiting for us just outside the airport.  The hoops that we have gotten used to jumping through when traveling around Morocco, seemed to have vanished into thin air. We sighed and smiled a little at the prospect of finding a relaxed vibe on this adventure. 

After a few minor bumps (like not having a map, having to wait through a small skirmish at the telecom booth to load data onto our phone, and discovering that the door handle in the car was hanging from a thread), we pointed the car in the direction of Sidi Bou Said.  An artists' hub in the north of Tunis with a blue and white bohemian vibe, Sidi Bou overlooks a perfect blue Mediterranean Sea. It’s white buildings glimmer in the sun. We immediately embraced the laid-back spirit of the town. We reclined in a tea room/shisha lounge for lunch before setting out to explore the quaint streets and venture down the steep path to the marina. The views, sunshine, and hot oily donuts we found on the street made for a perfect start to our vacation.

Waffles, bananas, and socks

From Sidi Bou we had every intention of heading to Carthage to tour the ruins. We were right there after all, and it seemed like sacrilege to not make the effort. Alas, our 3:00 a.m. departure from Marrakech was catching up with us. After a few wrong turns, the discovery that the ruins are spread out among various sites, and an overall apathy on the part of all, we decided to skip the historical tour and head for our hotel on the beach.  We found our way to the highway and watched the Tunisian countryside speed by as we headed south to Mahdia.

Poppies!

The red and pink towns of Morocco with their angular mosques had given way to small white villages with ornate, rounded minarets (often decorated with tile) pointing to the sky. Olive trees still dominated the landscape. It was flat as far as our eyes could see. There were fewer donkeys but lots and lots of sheep. Camels munched grass by the road (and sadly their necks and heads hung from hooks in the butcher shops too). It all felt familiar yet different at the same time.

Mahdia turned out to be a small seaside community with a strip of tourist hotels in different states of repair and disrepair. We enjoyed beautiful views from our room of a sparkling (but glacial) pool. The ocean waves lapped at the beach, but the water was too cold for swimming. We bundled up and enjoyed the sun and occasionally stripped down to bathing suits for a few minutes just to remind our pasty skin what the sun felt like. Our limbs very rarely see the light of day in Morocco, so we took advantage of the more relaxed attitude toward visible flesh at the hotel.

Mahdia Moments

Ooooh! This is what I need!

Mahdia's medina was quiet and residential. We explored the shoreline, spied on fishermen, and climbed on rocks. Twice we ventured out to see a little slice of Tunisia. The Roman Amphitheatre at El Djem was a highlight. Second in size only to the Roman Colosseum, the Amphitheatre is well-preserved, and it was completely empty the day we visited (which may have had something to do with the pouring rain).  We staged our own imaginary gladiator games among the ruins. 

Kairouan, a city known as a center for Islamic scholarship, was on my list of places to visit. Kairouan's Great Mosque is considered to be one of the most important monuments of Islamic civilization. Making seven pilgrimages to this mosque is said to be the equivalent of making one pilgrimage to Mecca. However, since we cannot go inside of mosques, Kairouan's highlight for me was a visit to Bir Barouta, where an unlucky camel spends his days attached to a pulley system that runs a water wheel - drawing holy water from a well below that, according to legend, is connected by an underground channel to the Zemzem spring in Mecca.

The magic camel

The Mosque of Three Doors

Fresh air, dirt roads (occasionally lost), ocean breeze, too many games of hotel pool, bright red poppies carpeting olive orchards, and blue and white buildings will be my memories of Tunisia. A break from the constant hum of Marrakech was most welcome. When we returned to Marrakech late at night, I prepared myself to shift back into Moroccan mode. Then, we found ourselves whisked from the airport back to our apartment by a friendly taxi driver without the slightest squabble over the fare, and I smiled. The vacation gods were still smiling on us and transitioning us back gently. We were home.

Dust in the WInd

Cotton Candy Smiles on the Street

Where has the time gone? Somehow two weeks have disappeared since I last blogged. As we watch Vermont dig out from a massive snowstorm from afar, we are fighting our own kind of storm in Marrakech.  I have mentioned before that we have been living next to a construction zone all year. An apartment building came down the first week we arrived, and they started rebuilding right away. We have grown accustomed to the wake-up routine: Call to prayer shortly after 5:00 a.m. Go back to sleep. Construction begins at exactly 7:30 a.m. Depending on the stage of the building process, the noise rotates from jack hammers to buzz saws to cement mixers. The whole scene unfolds in an enormous cloud of dust. 

This week, the stage we had been dreading arrived. The new building reached the fifth floor, which means that the pounding is directly on the other side of our bedroom and bathroom walls. We find ourselves closely analyzing the plaster for new cracks in hopes of discovering a clue about whether we should run for safety. In the shower, I have nightmares about the entire bathroom wall collapsing - leaving me exposed to a gaggle of construction workers hovering high above the street.

Then, it got better. As the temperature hit 90 degrees this week, someone decided it was time to knock down the apartment building across the street too. The jack hammers and excavators returned. The building crumbled. The dust cloud took over our lives. We have sealed ourselves into our apartment, yet the dust still coats every surface. We watched in amusement as a backhoe and a donkey tag-teamed to get the debris out of the now empty lot. And, now, a new building is going up.

The good news is that our apartment pool was filled with water (since being drained for the winter) last week. The bad news is that the water is dingy brown from the dust cloud, and construction debris from the site next door floats down from above and lands in it. We've got our fingers crossed that one day, before it gets really hot, someone will turn on a filter and give it a good cleaning.

Bri's newly acquired
henna skills on display

Apart from the construction woes, life in Marrakech is still good. The busy tourist season has arrived, and the main square is packed every night. Pasty legs and sunburns are regular sights on the streets again. Work and school are keeping us out of trouble most of the time. Our March highlight, though, was a visit from friends from England. Originally connected by a rental car in Namibia two decades and five children ago, we reconnected with these kindred traveling souls at the opposite end of Africa this week. We got the chance to share a little piece of our Marrakech adventure and reminisce about travels from the past. Their visit injected an extra dose of sunshine into our already very-sunny world. It's truly amazing how distance and time are irrelevant when you find yourself bonded by wanderlust. 

Marrakech Reunion

Hannah and Brianna display their ball-handling
skills at Project Soar.

As we head toward April, we are hoping that March sticks to the "in like a lion and out like a lamb" wisdom. It feels as though our Marrakech March came in like a Tasmanian Devil - a whirling dervish of dust. We are anxious for it to go quietly on its way. I'm nearly 100% certain that April showers will not be arriving here, but a nice peaceful (dust-free) transition to summer would be most welcome. Insha’Allah.

Heading to Setti Fatma for a mountain adventure

Signs of Spring in Marrakech

I returned from Bahrain to find that Marrakech has fully embraced spring (and even summer). We enjoyed a few days that would have qualified as "crisp," where the sky was blue and the air felt sort of fresh and cool early in the morning. Occasionally we even caught a whiff of Vermont.  We flung open the windows and welcomed the new season with open arms. Then a bird swooped into the kitchen while we were making dinner. Brianna calmly said, "That's a bird," as it shot past our heads and landed on the floor behind Andy at his computer. It started flopping around. Nolan said, "That's a bat." Brianna, Nolan, and I took that as a cue to run shrieking into the bedroom and slam the door. No sound from Andy. We cracked the door and asked it he wanted to join us. He reported that the bird (not bat) had flown into the bathroom and was now trapped there. We concluded that we would need to temper our enthusiasm about flinging the windows open.

Apart from the occasional rogue bird, other signs of spring have been less adrenaline-inducing but still notable. The orange trees are overloaded with fruit, and we have watched city workers knocking off the oranges into giant piles at the base of trees. When my Vermont-girl brain imagines the cost of a fresh glass of orange juice at home, I cringe to see these giant piles of sunshine going to waste. Then I remind myself of what I look like in an apple orchard in September - taking one bite of a McIntosh and tossing the apple into the grass, taking a bite of a Cortland before launching it at an imaginary target in another tree, all the while twisting my ankles on the dropped-apples littering the ground. I have to remind myself to adjust my brain. We are living in a country where oranges and pomegranate are like apples in Vermont. Fresh juice on every corner is the trade-off for the scarcity of apple cider and maple syrup. I can work with that.

A litter of seven puppies appeared in a vacant lot down the street - another sign of spring. And every cat lurking in the shadows is fat with kittens. I anticipate the next month will be filled with kitten sightings at every turn. The free-range chickens are back outside playing on the sidewalk at the market. As Nolan and I walked past yesterday, I wondered where my favorite feather-footed chicken had gone. Nolan, ever the compassionate soul, said, "He's probably dead. It's a chicken market." He was stating the obvious, I suppose, but I didn't need it clarified quite so clearly. We continued on past three mangy-looking chickens who were intently pecking at the skeletal remains of another chicken on the sidewalk.

The flowers are bursting on the bushes and trees. The fountains come to life with water more often, and the main square is packed with tourists again. The beautiful season has definitely arrived in Marrakech. The mountains are still snow-covered and looming in the distance, while the mid-day temperatures are hovering in the high 80's in the city.

And then there is the construction. The building project that began the week after we arrived in Marrakech (with the knocking down of the apartment building next door), is about to reach the stage we have been dreading all year. We have watched with interest as the new building has gone up step by step over the last few months - marveling at the construction process from the street and from the roof of our building overlooking the scene. Six days a week the hammering and grinding of metal begins at 7:00 a.m. Sunday is a day of silence. This week, the new building reached the fourth floor. Next week they should move on to the fifth. This will put the daily pounding just on the other side of our bedroom wall. Thankfully it is spring in Marrakech, and we will take our offices and classrooms outside to the park for a few weeks until the din dies down.

Top right window - that's us! Bring on the noise.

And, yes, there is that whole work and school thing that has been going on for us against this backdrop of seasonal change. I turned in my grades from last semester and learned that 125 of the students who took the original final exam (and failed) will have the opportunity to take it again in a few weeks. I will have the opportunity to correct 125 more exams three months after the course ended. I think that will finally be the end of the process, but I am learning to expect the unexpected.  I was due to start teaching my new courses this past week with lesson plans for the semester laid out and ready to go. Mid-week I learned that my courses would perhaps be changing. I have shifted into Moroccan mindful meditation mode - reminding myself that this is a beautiful time to be in Marrakech with an undetermined path for next week. I will enjoy the sunshine and practice deep breathing until I hear the new plan.

This is P.E. Marrakech-style.

In the meantime, Brianna and Nolan have been taking full advantage of the "homeschooling" routine. Nolan is learning to code and is launching a movie-making club at the American Language Center. Brianna has, at last, started working on that "fine arts" credit she needs to graduate from high school. She's doing an internship at the Henna Art Cafe in the medina. This week she came home with cool sketches and did her first practice with a henna syringe.  Andy has two weeks left in the TEFL certificate course that has left him shaking his head over the challenges of English grammar.

Art class at the electronics store

So, life in Marrakech goes on. This week we'll let the sun stream in while trying to keep flying objects out. We'll dance to the din of construction, and we'll remind each other to take life one day at time. Planning is overrated. Breathe.