Sunday, April 13, 2008 – DJERBA

Our hotel in Tatouine was beautiful on the outside and disappointing on the inside. In particular, the food was the worst we’ve encountered. The “highlight” of dinner was half-raw BBQ chicken. Everyone took a piece and everyone left it on their plates. Breakfast was leftover desserts from the night before.

The restaurant at Tatouine:



From Tatouine we drove to Djerba, an island on the Mediterranean. Our first stop was a pottery store. It reminded me of the pottery store that we stopped at in Trinidad, Cuba. It was a family business and the art of pottery had been passed down from generation to generation. I bought three pieces of pottery for myself and one for my potter friend Michael.

Views from the pottery shop:







Our next stop was the marketplace in Houmt Souk, the capital of Djerba. Mohamed took us to a reputable silver and gold store. Unfortunately nothing appealed to Mom or I, so we didn’t buy anything. We had lunch in Houmt Souk and then Mohamed unleashed us on the market – unsupervised! – for an hour.

Mom bought some small kilim from a vendor who spoke terrific German and was an expert salesman. I bought a supposedly silver bracelet from a jeweler who was very intent on copping a feel. Mom got harassed by a vendor who wanted to sell her a 5 dinar package of dates for 50 dinar. He literally followed her down the street for 30 feet until Mohamed told him to leave her alone.

From the souk we traveled by bus to a Jewish temple, the largest on Djerba. Apparently a lot of Jewish people moved here because of strife in other countries, but the majority left Djerba for France or Israel in the 1950s. They made us go through a security check, including scanning our bags, before granting us access to the temple. After I passed through the metal detector the guards were motioning me and saying things in French that I didn’t understand. One finally made it clear that he wanted to look in my purse. He searched it and pulled out my Swiss army knife, which I’d forgotten was in my purse. He agreed to hold it until I returned from the temple.

Inside the temple there were four men reading the Torah. It was beautiful. We covered our heads and took off our shoes as asked, and I told Mom to put some coins into the collection box. When we stepped into the next room, however, a man indicated that we had to pay additional money. I balked and pointed to the collection box, and the man responded with a barrage of Arabic that I didn’t understand but I could clearly interpret his body language. I refused to enter and walked away.

I heard later that he was quite upset that I left and that he yelled at me for a while as I walked away. I was really just interested in leaving. I didn’t object to paying entrance, but I did object to being insulted. A few women followed me and walked back to the guard post. The rest of our group returned shortly afterwards, and they said it was hardly worth the visit or the entry fee because no one explained the significance of the temple or the architecture.

From there we drove to our hotel. It’s the first time that Mohamed or Sharif have stayed at this hotel so we got lost and had to ask for directions. We finally found the hotel and checked in. We did some laundry, I checked my email, and then we went for dinner. Another day done in Tunisia.