Tunisians Love Americans, Too

We obviously can’t make a blanket statement about all Tunisians loving all Americans, but if we extrapolate the data from the Tunisians we’ve met, it appears that 100% of them have a good-to-excellent opinion of Americans.

At worst, they pity us for our lack of education in the Arabic and French languages. Those folks are the ones who often just give up on communicating with us and usher us along in a sort of “okay, you poor dummies, you can just go in for free because you’re too simple-minded to know you have to pay” way.

Any that do speak even a tiny bit of English are always very happy to be able to use it with us. They welcome us into their shops or restaurants with big smiles. Ridiculously, they apologize to us for not speaking better English. Dude, you’re fluent in at least Arabic and French and live nowhere near an English-speaking country. Go ahead and ask me how much Arabic I know. Please don’t apologize!

As hard as we try to not immediately show our American-ness, everyone figures us out. We understand when they hear us talking, and we get that we don’t pass for locals. But we haven’t yet figured out how they pinpoint “America” just from a quick glance. Is it the bald eagles perched on the shoulders of our stars-n-stripes t-shirts? Whatever it is, they almost always get it right. (We think one of our taxi drivers misunderstood us saying we speak some Spanish to mean we were from Spain - and therefore really into “futbol” - but as we established in a prior post, he was a bit nutty.)

The good news is that the reactions to us being American are happy and adorable. Ridha, from our first AirBnB, outright told us how much he loves America and Americans. He’s the one who bought us groceries and dinner and carted us around our first night in town.

In our second AirBnB (where we are as I write this), it’s been similar. The hosts here deserve their own post, but for now the short version is that they have also been over-the-top helpful and friendly. I would think they just want extremely good reviews in those cases, but just walking down the street is the same.

One guy we strolled past opened his car door and popped his head out to say “Welcome to Tunisia!” We think he first said, “Welcome to hell” which could have been a mean thing to say, but when it was quickly followed with the second part and a big smile, we could tell he was being funny.

Yesterday we got a full dose of The Welcoming when we spent the afternoon in the souk and Tunis city centre.

Tourists in general are more common there than in the AirBnB neighborhoods we’ve been in, but Americans are still a rare novelty. We’ve learned that American military folks stationed in Europe do come here for vacations sometimes, but that’s about it for visitors from the U.S.

We didn’t even make it into the souk before a guy started telling us all excitedly about how we were there on a special holiday celebrating the Berber women who make the beautiful rugs (I think? He was talking very fast.) And he walked us to this perfume salesman who could show us where we could see it. And the perfume salesman continued on about the special day and about a museum with rugs that we could go into for free and go on the roof and see the whole city from above and….

Struggling to keep up? Welcome to our world. But we weren’t just reading it. We were being walked along through crowded corridors, trying to keep Story from stopping to pet every cat, and trying to understand exactly what was happening.

Now, if you’re like me, you’re thinking, “Duh, they were trying to sell you stuff.” And you’re sort of right, but only a little. I’m not a negative person, but for all my positivity, I’m a skeptic at heart. So during this whole experience, I was clutching my backpack tightly and bracing for the high pressure sales pitch I knew was imminent.

The thing is, it never came. I mean, certainly we were encouraged to check out their wares and make a purchase. But unlike in many other places we’ve visited with a similar “overly friendly” vibe, Tunisians make a point of telling you that it isn’t about money, and they mean it. Every single time we’ve had an interaction that felt too nice to be real, it’s ended well. The skeptic in me still struggles to accept it, but it’s true.

Tunisians are aware that most of the world doesn’t think or know much about them (and what little we do know seems unfamiliar and maybe even scary), but they really want to change that. Multiple people we talked to in the city centre joked about wanting us to give them “good publicity.” But they weren’t really joking. They want Americans to know that they are here, and they’re good people in a good country.

I’m here to give them that good publicity, to my huge fanbase out there. (Haha.) I won’t lie and say that you’ll come to Tunisia, and everything will be as smooth and comfortable as if you were in a fancy resort in the Bahamas. It’s dirty here and dusty. The sidewalks are a hot mess of trash and cats and random piles of dirt and bricks. There’s no McDonald’s or Starbucks or Trader Joe’s (though there are a surprising number of Papa John’s restaurants here - super weird). The driving is insane, and most intersections are just a total free-for-all.

But the people are wonderful. The food is great. The costs are amazingly low. We have functioning wifi and air-conditioning. We feel totally safe in all the places we’ve been. The whole country smells better than Barcelona (sorry, Barcelona!), with honeysuckle and jasmine and spices wafting in the air on every block. With only about ten words of French and zero of Arabic in our vocabulary, we’ve been able to get around just fine (eventually). Oh, and the trash cats that are everywhere? Our whole family agrees they’re nicer than most housecats we’ve met in the U.S. (Also sorry, cat people, but it’s true.)

Cats are E-V-E-R-Y-W-H-E-R-E. They are the pigeons and squirrels of Tunisia. In fact, they might eat the pigeons and squirrels (and rats) of Tunisia, because pretty much the only animals we saw there were cats. If Story made it out of there without catching some strange cat disease, I’ll be amazed.

I’d highly recommend that more tourists come here. While it may not be our favorite stop on this trip in every category, the two weeks here have given us exactly the kinds of experiences we’d hoped to find for our kids along this journey. We all have a renewed appreciation for what we have in the States, while simultaneously discovering/remembering that different people and different places can be so lovely and shouldn’t be ignored. I feel confident that the new relationships we’ve formed in these past two weeks will last for a long time to come, which isn’t something I can say about most (any?) of the previous cities along the way. I’m grateful for that for myself and even more so for the kids.

This picture says it all:

And in case that picture didn’t say it all, here are a billion more from our time in and around the souk yesterday. I couldn’t decide which ones to share, so you’re just gonna get all of them. Enjoy!

Story also managed to find a dog friend or two along the way.

This couscous was the best meal we had in Tunis, at a cafe just outside the souk.