Tunis Tales

Before I came to Tunisia, I had it in my head that Tunisia would be incredibly similar to Morocco. It would be at least similar in the set-up, organization, and people. I was incredibly wrong…

Similarities
Some of the mosques have a similar style: Because both Morocco and Tunisia were part of the same empire, both have a square minaret style of mosque. However, Tunisia was later controlled by the Ottomans, so many of the more ‘modern’ mosques have a rounded minaret style.

Both speak a similar style of Arabic: Moroccan arabic is understandable (generally) here, although there are a good number of words which do not transfer over in the same way. Tunisians say “barsha” to mean a lot, whereas Moroccans say “bizzaf”. There are a number of other examples, but it is generally similar.

However, other than both have nice people and both have a history as French protectorates, there aren’t a whole lot of other similarities. Tunisia is a democracy* (see below), whereas Morocco is a Monarchy.

Tunis has a super modern infrastructure system. With tree lined avenues, tall buildings, and a highway which was like the Gardener/Lakeshore in Toronto (A downtown highway where the top level was a flythrough, and you exit to the bottom level to get to a specific part of town). right on the water. This blew my mind! The highway system through the city of Tunis was unbelievable.

One thing I found especially interesting was that while the revolution had clearly happened, people did not seem to be content with it. In the downtown core, there was immense security. And by immense, I mean tanks, bunkers, and barbed wire all over the downtown core. Cops and soldiers directing traffic and cordoning off streets, but people seemed to just go with it. While there were small protests here and there, people just went about their day to day lives as though this was normal.

I was lucky enough to stay with an incredible family in Tunis, who spoke good english and loved to talk about politics. They told me stories about life during the revolution- having to patrol their neighbourhood streets at night to protect from thugs and thieves, how enormous the protests were and the number of people who were involved in them, and how life had not really changed much since. I found this fascinating! In the West, there is a general perception of Tunisia as a model of an emerging democracy and of a total transformation of government and society while this simply is not the case. To quote a friend, “the leader has changed, the system has not”.

However, in spite of all the political changes (and lack thereof) happening, I still managed to have a wicked time. From hitting the beach in Sousse to watching Barca win (as usual) to trying new drinks (tea with nuts IN it) to just hanging out, it was an incredible week.