Doomed to repeat

“Teachers are the most important people in our society. They need far more pay, obviously, but they need more encouragement. They need more respect. They need more appreciation from all of us. And we shouldn’t do anything to hinder them or to make their job harder.”

Such is the sentiment of famed historical author David McCullough, as expressed in an interview in the Wall Street Journal (http://online.wsj.com/article_email/SB10001424052702304432304576369421525987128-lMyQjAxMTAxMDEwODExNDgyWj.html)–some content may not be available for those who are not Wall Street Journal subscribers.

I must say, I could not agree much more with Mr. McCullough. The highest compliment that I, as a teacher, could give to any administration, is “They let me do my job. They do not hinder me or my efforts in doing what I believe to be right.”

Mr. McCullough also makes the valuable point that much of our youth’s historical illiteracy derives from parents, which is true, but he also mentions, in passing, the difficulty of having teachers who did not major in the subject which they teach. He goes on to mention that often teachers are forced to teach subjects which they are not familiar with. This lack of passion, Mr. McCullough states, is one reason for the state of our students’ poor historical knowledge.

Decidedly, students learn better from competent, passionate, knowledgeable teachers, than from confused drudges. However, under NCLB, all teachers are required to be “highly qualified” in the subject they teach before stepping foot in any classroom. Highly qualified is defined as a certain number of credit hours in a subject area, or having passed a state or national test confirming subject knowledge. So, at the very least, you have to have a certain knowledge of the subject which you teach. Yet, I must also admit that the state/national exams are ridiculously easy. Is the problem a lack of passion for subject matter on the teachers’ parts?

Doubtful. I exude such passion for my subject that my students find it incomprehensible, and I feel sure that my colleagues feel similarly. Yet, I do find it difficult to maintain in the face of my students’ abject apathy. So, am I doomed to repeat the mistakes of my students?

Closing schools leaves kids out in the rain

I just read an article about closing/overhauling/turning around (pick what you like) Denver public schools.

In this particular article, the focus was on one Montbello High School. This is a high school located in the northwest part of metro Denver. It serves thousands of students. The plan is to “phase-out” the school,which essentially means that for this upcoming school year, Montbello will not accept any incoming freshman. These students, who were otherwise slated to go to Montbello, will be directed to one of three other schools. Meaning, of course, that the students who entered Montbello as freshman during the 2010-2011 school year will be the only class present at the school in three years time.

Perhaps now is the moment to state my connection with the Montbello school closing. This past school year, I have been working towards getting my Alternative Teacher’s License. An Alternative License is different from a “standard” license because all of the necessary college course work to be a teacher occurs after the person has already obtained a bachelor’s degree. One part of this program was an Action Research Project. Everyone in my program, myself included, spent a great deal of time and energy working on our Research Projects, which we all presented at a “conference” in May.

One of the presentations I attended focused in the impact of a “closing school” on the teachers and students affected. Her school? Montbello. It’s very well and good to espouse the viewpoint that closing Montbello will make a world of difference for future students. What about the students there now? This article fails to mention that approximately 40% of Montbello’s students are in foster care, and their teachers and their school may represent some of the only stability in their lives.

I don’t believe that phasing out or closing schools is the answer. If the school is failing, why is it failing? Who’s to know that the same mistakes won’t be repeated again at the new schools? Not only will turning around schools embolden and empower teachers and students, but there won’t be the same number of students told “You are a lost cause.”

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/06/06/denver-schools-major-overhaul_n_872076.html

Good news teachers: we’re off the hook!

In a recently updated article from the Huffington Post, a poll of adults found that it’s parents, not teachers, who are most commonly blamed for the failings of the American educational system. One parent shares his “inspiring” story: “‘Nobody is too busy to raise a child for a successful future,’ said Wilfred Luise Vincent, 65, of Coppell, Texas. Vincent worked early or late shifts for Delta Airlines during most of his career so his two daughters would have a parent at home after school.”

Vincent’s daughters were truly fortunate. However, my experience teaching students from urban immigrant populations has taught me that there does, in fact, exist a point where one is too busy. Vincent was lucky to be able to have some say in his schedule; the majority of my students’ parents aren’t so lucky. They are limited by linguistic barriers, cultural barriers, educational barriers…these parents face difficulties that the average American can only wonder at.

Nevertheless, this is not to say that I don’t long to agree with this blanket statement: “parents deserve heavy blame for what’s wrong with the U.S. education system – more than teachers, school administrators, the government or teachers unions.” I have had far too much experience parenting my own students not to see the truth lying buried inside it.

One of my students is from Ethiopia. He only sees his mother for about an hour in the morning, and an hour in the evening. This is actually fortunate for him since his mother is verbally and sometimes physically abusive (never fear, I have exercised my teacherly responsibilities and reported this to the proper authorities). Though he is in high school, she forbids him from leaving the house after school, such that he has to lie to his mother about going to the library to do his homework. Have I mentioned that he’s only been living in the US for less than a year and he has all A’s and B’s? In this situation, he has found a way to thrive despite his parents.

On the other hand, I have one student ( wrote about in the previous post) who describes her mother as “relaxed.” This mother left Mexico when she was a teenager after having had two daughters. She brought the two daughters to America, where the older daughter also became a teenage daughter, and my student is 7 months away from motherhood. Her mother is currently spending the month in another state with her boyfriend, leaving her two teenage daughters at home alone. This student has all F’s. She’s already been in the legal system for truancy. Her life has no structure. For a time, I tried to give her structure, asking her to see me after school to talk about her homework, but she simply didn’t know how to function with structure.

So who’s right? Can I run back to my co-workers and rejoice that the heat might be moving in a different direction? Should we spend lunch time bemoaning our students’ inevitable failures or discussing how best to parent 120 children?

I didn’t realize when I started teaching how much parenting I would have to do. Truth be told, I’m happy to do it, but I’ll need some help.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/12/13/parents-blamed-education-failures_n_795882.html

A year of urban education

Today marks the official end of my first year of urban education. Last year was a whirlwind of privileged, bratty students and egoism–not only on their parts, but on mine as well. I find it astounding that I, who has only ever attended private schools, found teaching private school students to be unbearably monotonous and devoid of purpose. There will always be someone else to come along and take your place in a private school–which isn’t to devalue any of my own teachers, who were incredibly influential in my life.

Nevertheless, my “at-risk,” urban minority students, marginalized politically, economically, and socially, make me feel like a pillar of stability and calm (a change when I find myself to be incredibly neurotic and anxious). In a year of teaching on the outskirts of a major city in the Western United States, I have felt ten times more appreciated, useful, and necessary than my year of teaching in North Africa.

I suppose this stream of reflection was unclenched by a shock–one of my students is pregnant. She’s been absent on and off for weeks now, and though I tried to talk to her about it, she didn’t want to share, she said. Today, maybe because it was the last day of classes, maybe because it was right after the last class, the class she has with me, maybe because we were alone in the hallway, she told me. I told her I was sorry, so sorry, that it had to be hard, and she said “It’s my own fault.” Being a teacher in America is often difficult, and all I wanted to do was to take her in my arms and hug her. She looked small and lost–but we don’t touch the students.

This is a constant source of tension for me. Students in urban settings (accuse me of stereotyping if you will) often have physically and/or emotionally absent adults in their lives. This particular student’s father left before she can remember, her mother works all the time, her older sister in high school already has a child of her own, and now she will join their ranks. I constantly wear different hats–teacher, mother, police officer, counselor, cheerleader…the list goes on. Our students’ needs are not only academic, but often emotional. How close is too close? When does my teacherly duty go “too far?”

The student-teacher relationship is a tight-rope that I tread with caution, and have come near to falling off of before. I told this student I would be there for her, and I gave her my cell phone number–an unprecedented move! In the end, she intiated the hug, and I was glad of it.

Somehow, I can’t get her out of my mind,  so much so that I am writing in this blog for the first time in over a year and a half. I live the rollercoaster of American education and society every day, of which my students have taught me so much.

So, I ask, how close is too close? Where does emotionally supporting a student become grounds for litigation?

Tunisian time is taking over

24 January 2010

I realize that I haven’t been very good about keeping in touch. My inclination is to chalk it up to absorbing North African conceptions of time so completely as to override any Protestant work-ethic lingering at the back of my mind (how four months in Tunisia has utterly overcome some two-odd decades of WASP-y upbringing, I couldn’t tell you. That’s my story and I’m sticking with it).

In the interest of time, I shall briefly summarize what has been happening in my life since my last post (which was so long ago I don’t even want to think about it—coincidentally, how I feel about washing the dirty dishes in my sink).

1. Morocco

I went to Morocco for a week at the end of October. I saw the “Imperial Cities,” Casablanca, Meknes, Fes, and Marrakesh. It was really incredible to see how similar and yet how different Morocco is from Tunisia. Morocco has a much more “big city,” globalized feel. They have KFC and Pizza Hut there (both of which are absent in Tunisia). However, there were more women wearing the chador (full length dress and veil) and some even wearing hijab which only showed their eyes. In short, Moroccan women don’t seem to be as Occidentalized as Tunisian women. Morocco was beautiful and amazing—I particularly enjoyed Fes, where there are no motorized vehicles allowed in the medina (old Arab town), and everything has to be carried around by donkey.

1. H1N1 and Camels in the Sahara

My school was shut down for a week in preventative quarantine measure against H1N1 in  mid-November. Some of the students got it, and those classes were closed, and then the whole school was closed for a week. The first two days, the administration required all of the teachers to be at school during our working hours, even though we had no students (yet another example of Arab management—who cares if you’re not doing anything as long as you are present?). Really, it was just a stab at making the parents feel like they weren’t losing money. Unfortunately, these “parent reassuring measures” are still visible today. For example, in preschool the students have school 8-3:30 Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, and Friday. On Wednesdays they have half days. However, for the next couple of weeks, there will be extra hours of preschool to make up for time lost during the Swine Flu Week. In preschool! What did they miss in that week—calculus? Anything that they won’t be able to learn later? I think not.

On the other hand, after the teachers pitched a fit and the administration let us go as long as we posted courses online (which not of the students had access to, of course), I was free to go off on my own. I went to the south of Tunisia, to a town called Douz. Douz is known as “The Gateway to the Sahara.” A friend and I went out on a camel trek and spent the night in a Berber tent in the Sahara. It was really an incredible experience, spending time in the Sahara. Most amazing, however, was when I got up in the middle of the night to pee. I went outside, and the whole night was full of stars. The night was so big it was almost oppressive. I was nothing under that sky, and it felt amazing.

(To see pictures from my desert adventure and other pictures from the fall in Tunisia, follow this link: http://share.shutterfly.com/share/received/welcome.sfly?fid=7a9fc5b9f1ca3ec56cbbd47cbb382743&sid=0CcMWrlw5bsXyg).

1. Aid El-Kebir and Geneva

A week later was the Muslim holiday Aid El-Kebir. This is the “big” Aid, as opposed to that little Aid that celebrates the end of Ramadan (if you want to see pictures from Tunisia during Ramadan, follow this link: http://share.shutterfly.com/share/received/welcome.sfly?fid=74fdd6e31386d993c9f3edf1ebadc1fb&sid=0CcMWrlw5bsXvQ) . Aid El-Kebir celebrates Ibrahim’s (Abraham’s) submission to God in his willingness to kill his son Ishmael. As in the Bible story, Ibrahim is spared from having to sacrifice his son when a sheep suddenly appears. To commemorate this event, Tunisians slaughter their own sheep (yes, they actually take a sheep and slit its throat themselves). The week before Aid El-Kebir, our local supermarket had a huge tent full of live sheep in the parking lot for people to buy. Interestingly enough, Tunisians are apparently unique in this, because in other Muslim  countries a few families will share the sheep amongst themselves, but here each Tunisian family wants the sheep all to themselves.

Thanks to the three-day weekend that Aid El-Kebir created, I went to Geneva, Switzerland for the weekend. It was so wonderful to drink in the Christmas spirit for a while, in a place where it was actually cold, and where there were Christmas decorations and Christmas markets and special holiday drinks at Starbucks (yes, I went to Starbucks—I was a little homesick!). I saw a lot of amazing things, like the United Nations complex, the Philippe Patek watch museum, and the Reformation Museum. I even bought myself a Christmas tree at a flea market (probably only 3 ft. high, but still, it was something)!

1. Christmas here and there

Granted, there was something of a Christmas spirit here in Tunisia. Our local supermarket dedicated a whole section of the store to Christmas trees and decorations, in addition to dressing some of the personnel in elf costumes. It wasn’t just the ex-patriots looking at the decorations, either. Tunisians were buying things too, including some women wearing hijab. Even though, at the end of the day, Christmas is a Christian holiday, some Tunisians see it as an excuse to party (a notion which is highly encouraged by their children).

I did go back to the United States for Christmas, which was really a blessing. I’m afraid I went a little over-board on the Christmas spirit however, and played Christmas carols non-stop, baked cookies, and even made a graham cracker village with my family (nothing does the soul as much good as a graham cracker village).

New Year’s Eve was nothing special, as I spent it somewhere over the Atlantic Ocean. The pilot didn’t even bother telling us when we passed a time zone where it was midnight, so I officially lost the 2009-2010 changeover.

1. Roman coliseums and Islamic mosques

The first weekend after our first week back from school, I went down to El-Jem, Sousse, and Kairouan. El-Jem is the site of the third-largest Roman amphitheater in the world (yes, the Roman Empire was in North Africa. The Punic Wars, anyone?), and while it was less impressive in size than the one in Roman, it was a lot more fun because you could go into the underground tunnels and basically climb all over the place (a big no-no in Rome). Roman sites in Tunisia are just generally more interesting because they’re just as well preserved, but there is almost no one else there and there aren’t barriers or guards watching you all the time.

I also went to Sousse. On our way to the hotel, my boyfriend was aggressed by a severed cow’s head hanging on a hook outside a butcher’s shop. Fortunately, we separated them before things got ugly. In Sousse, we saw the old lighthouse on top of the Kasbah (old Islamic fort). The lighthouse, amazing enough, is operated exactly the same way now that it was in over a hundred years ago. The technology that was good then is still good now.

From Sousse we made our way over to Kairouan, which is the fourth-holiest Islamic city in the world, due to its lovely Mosque. The well in this mosque is said to be directly connected to another holy well in Mecca. I saw the “zaouia” (Islamic tomb) of the “Barber,” a companion of the Prophet Mohamed. I drank from a well powered by a camel (legend has it that I will return to Kairouan as a result of drinking this water) and ate makrouds (a pastry which is a Kairouan specialty). All in all, a fun weekend.

Hopefully, photographic illustrations of these adventures will follow shortly. Until then, enjoy!

A funny thing happened on the way to the Sahara…

This mysterious land offers up a number of curiosities, not the least of which is the influence of Western civilization.

The Tunisians watch our movies (American movies, that is…), listen to our songs, and digest our pop culture. In fact, most middle school or high school Tunisian students are obsessed with Michael Jackson, his music, the movie “This is It,” a phenomenon which I believe was brought about by his death this past summer.

 This dollop of Americana is only the icing on the cake which is Western influence. This cake, of course, is French culture. The majority of Tunisians can hold a simple conversations in French (though this becomes less likely the futher away from Tunis you go), and many are completely fluent. Most signs are written both in French and in Arabic. As the former colonizing power, France has signed a number of agreements with Tunisia which makes it easy for workers to move between the two countries. When you listen to Tunisians speaking in Arabic, they throw in French words in every other sentence. Tunisians can choose to do their shopping at local markets or at French-owned supermarkets.

Even the cities have a Western influence. The majority of cities in the Maghreb (which comprises Tunisia, Algeria, and Morocco) have two parts: a medina and a ville nouvelle. The medina is the Islamic part of the city. It’s usually encompassed by a huge circular wall, with many many tiny streets, medersas (Q’uranic schools), and mosques inside. It’s an impossible maze, but at the same time there’s little chance of getting lost, because you end up going in circles. This is completely different from the ville nouvelle. The villes nouvelles were built outside the medina by the French during their colonization of the Maghreb. There are grands boulevards, streets in a grid pattern, order, administrative buildings, praticality.

In this vein, I celebrated Halloween by going to a fabulous cabaret with 3 French people and 3 Tunisians. This cabaret could have been anywhere in the world, judging by the fashionable clothes, the high prices, the inordinant consumption of alcohol, women dancing in very small skirts…the only thing that marred this globalization fantasy was the musicians playing along to a woman singing Arabic songs. I had never encountered this Tunisia before, where the jet-set came to frolick and pretend for one night that they were rich and beautiful anywhere else in the planet. I just hadn’t expected to find a Tunisia that was so, well, Western.

Overall, I think this anecdote says it best. One of my seventh grade students asked me recently, “What does ‘Oh my effing god mean’?” Um…fortunately, another student jumped into my stunned silence. “It just means, ‘Oh my god!’” Yes, let’s go with that explanation.

Tunisians take Western culture as something that is cool and novel. However, ultimately to understand it, they have to remove what they don’t understand, or what might be offensive.

Censorship–an inevitable part of the Middle East?

26 September 2009

            Is censorship merely an inevitable part of living in the Middle East? Certainly, I would love to believe that Islam can be present without censorship. However, Islamic countries do have a strong tendency to be more conservative than Christian countries. To what extent this conservativism is linked to a lower standard of development, of course, remains to be seen. I would not find it out of place to discover that less developed Christian countries (such as those in Central and South America, for example) are just as conservative as some of the more liberal Islamic countries (such as Morocco, Turkey, Tunisia, Egypt, Indonesia, etc). Nevertheless, life in Tunisia requires a certain amount of censorship, which is part of a larger inclination to promote or enforce a certain kind of morality. More specifically, this morality is a Muslim morality (which I find only natural, seeing as 98% of the population is Muslim).

            Agreed, living in the US also imposes a certain kind of morality. Laws prohibit us from harming others, or from forcing our views onto other people. This in and of itself is a kind of –morality—we believe that it is immoral to hurt others. That seems fairly standard.

            Naturally, the government and the culture of Tunisia impose a different kind of morality than that found in the US. For example, there is a large French-chain supermarket about 10 minutes away from my apartment. As I mentioned earlier, you could not buy alcohol in this supermarket during Ramadan since Ramadan is a holy Islamic month and observant Muslims are not supposed to drink alcohol (interestingly enough, pork is also forbidden to observant Muslims, yet pork was still available for purchase during Ramadan). Now that Ramadan is over, the alcohol cellar is open again. Some other teachers went to this wine cellar yesterday to buy some wine (another teacher was having a house warming and French people simply cannot show up without wine of some sort). As yesterday was Friday (the Muslim holy day), there were guards standing outside the wine cellar checking IDs. Presumably, if you are Tunisian (and thus, likely Muslim), you are not allowed to buy wine on Fridays (though this is permitted every other day of the week). Interestingly enough, wine is made in Tunisia, but hard liquor is not. Thusly, wine is reasonably priced, while a liter of Absolut vodka goes for as much as 140 TD (approximately $108 USD). I sincerely doubt that it is that expensive to import vodka, and so must conclude that this is another attempt to enforce Muslim morality.

            Another example of this: you cannot access YouTube via the internet in Tunisia. That’s right, YouTube is banned (as are a number of different websites). Of course, this has not prevented the Tunisian youth from figuring out a way around this, but for the less technically savvy, YouTube is inaccessible.

            Similarly, I have heard that Tunisian movie theaters only show movies from the Arab world (however, having not been to a Tunisian movie theater myself, I cannot confirm this). I do know for a fact, however, that Hollywood movies are shown on television on Arabic channels. The movies are all dubbed into Arabic. It is perfectly alright to show people getting shot or violence or uncensored cursing (presumably because no Arabic people understand English curse words), but all kisses are completely cut from the movie. That’s right, you cannot see people kiss (even nice, sweet kisses) but you can see people die or hear the word f***. It makes the movie slightly more difficult to understand when it skips portions entirely.

            Lastly, as I mentioned in my previous post, the school has changed the photocopying policy for all of the teachers so that the Assistant Headmaster now sees all of our documents before we pass them out in class. The reason given for this is that the school hopes to improve organization and efficiency. Nevertheless, it would be fairly convenient to deny photocopies for a document which the Assistant Headmaster found offensive or inappropriate. Agreed, there are certain things which I do not think a teacher should bring up in a middle school or high school setting. But isn’t that my decision as a teacher?

            Censorship, of course, is simply a part of Tunisian life which cannot be avoided, and I myself am never harmed by the lack of certain things. I can certainly live without YouTube and other websites, kisses in films, and alcohol during Ramadan—it may be irritating or inconvenient, but I’m pretty sure I’ll live. More serious is the potential censorship of the documents which I think are necessary to learning.

My question is, at what point should I stop seeing the censorship as another facet of the culture or as something merely inconvenient, and start seeing it as morally wrong?

There’s a reason no one mentions Arabic bureaucracy

24 September 2009

            When I had to get my French visa, and then my Austrian visa, I thought that I had encountered the epitome of bureaucracy. Alas, it was not so. The wonders of European bureaucracy are unmatched by the tangled web which is Arabic management. For example, I, as a teacher, am not allowed to make my own photocopies for class. If I would like to print out a test for class, I have to email the test as an attachment to the man in charge of photocopies, with information about what class it’s for, and when you need it by. Of course, you are supposed to do this 24 hours in advance. Yet, even when you give more than 24 hours to complete the photocopies, the only way you can be sure that the copies are done is if you go see the photocopier and watch him make the copies. You are required to sign a record of each photocopy made for you, and keep a copy of everything you hand out in class. To add icing to the cake, this system has suddenly become more complicated. Where once we only had to send emails to the photocopier, now anything that we want to copy must be submitted to the Assistant Headmaster at least 48 hours in advance. After she signs off on it, then we have to resubmit the document to the photocopier. Ostensibly, this new system is supposed to lighten the workload for the man in charge of photocopies (while simultaneously creating more work for the Assistant Headmaster…not exactly efficient). Yet, nevertheless, the word “censorship” is being whispered in hushed tones at the teacher’s residence (a subject which I will delve into in a later post).

This is a great example of how things are prioritized in Arabic countries—relationally. Personal relationships are extremely important, and so if you want to get something done, you have to be nice and make friends with the person first. Personal relationships make the world go round; not the Protestant work ethic, not capitalism, and not the search for pleasure, but relationships.

            Here’s another good example. To find out how things happen at school, I hear about it through rumor, through other people. The only centralized system of information distribution is a cork board in the teachers’ room. All official notices are posted here, often with only 24 hours notice, and some of them are posted with the assumption that everyone knows what they concern. I have become especially adept at saying the French phrases “Qu’est-ce que ça veut dire?” (What does this mean?) and “Donc, je fais quoi exactement?” (So, I’m doing what now?). Information is passed along by word of mouth, so if you want to be in the loop, you have to make an effort to make friends with people in the know. For someone used to the impersonal yet efficient organization of the Occidental world, this can be infuriatingly frustrating and opaque. Of course, the Tunisian teachers and administrators see nothing out of the ordinary, and there’s nothing to be done but to calm down and realize: c’est comme ça (that’s the way it is).

A series of unfortunately bizarre events

13 September 2009

Recently, a great many things have occurred which I found curious or strange, as I know, dear reader, you will find them as well. For your amusement and cultural enlightenment, I have compiled a short list of interesting tidbits of the past week.

Lobster Escape

I went to a very chic, nice Italian restaurant specializing in seafood. When my friend and I were browsing through the menu, the waiter brought us a platter of fish. The idea behind this gesture was that we could select exactly which fish caught our fancy, and then have it prepared straight away. In the center of this scaly feast was a whole lobster. Just how fresh this lobster was exactly was proven while the waiter was taking our orders. Hearing that he was not to be our entrée, the lobster decided to make a run for safety, and proceeded to climb off of the platter. The waiter was not fazed a bit, and held the lobster in place with one hand while taking our orders down with the other. I, however, was slightly unnerved to discover that the lobster was still completely viable and attempting to run away.

Somewhere between apple juice and apple sauce

In the heat of the midday, I stopped in a café. Something cool and refreshing was in order, and apple juice seemed to fit the bill. I’m not certain, however, that what I was brought could be properly called “apple juice,” so much as “a whole apple which was liquefied in a blender.” I was actually unable to finish the apple juice because at the bottom were chunks of apple too big to fit into my straw, and I had no spoon.

Sorry, wrong number. But, would you like to get dinner?

Last week my Tunisian cell phone dialed incorrectly (or I did, perhaps), and I reached a person other than the one I was trying to contact. I said sorry, and hung up (standard wrong number operating procedure in the US). However, the man called me back and asked (in French), “Are you French?” “No,” I said, “Um…goodbye.” Approximately 5 days later, the same man called me back and said, “Oh, you called me a few days ago, and I was thinking, would you like to go out and get a tea together?” “Actually, no,” I said, “goodbye.” Such is the draw of the Occidental woman.

Two faces of Ramadan

4 September 2009

            Ramadan kareem! I’ve been in Tunisia for about a week and a half, and all I know is a Tunisia during Ramadan. Ramadan in Tunisia is really fascinating and wonderful. This is the month during which Allah revealed the Qu’ran to the Prophet Mohammed (a fact which I learned from watching a popular Tunisian TV show with my Tunisian neighbors). To honor this month, Muslims do not consume anything by mouth during daylight hours—so no food, drinks, or cigarettes from sun-up to sun-down. Normally Ramadan takes place later in the autumn, but since the Islamic calendar does not always correspond with the Gregorian calendar, this year it started on 21 August. As you might imagine, it’s HOT in Tunisia this time of the year. Very hot. This makes it even more difficult to go through the entire day without even having water. The Tunisian schools don’t even start classes this year until after Ramadan is over (19 September). Some of my Tunisian neighbors (they’re teenagers, mind you) deal with this by sleeping basically from sun-up to 6 pm, and then eating dinner at 7 pm when the sun goes down.

            Due to Ramadan, all store hours change (with the exception of the big French supermarket). Stores don’t open until 9 or 10, and then they close between 2 and 4. Alcohol is normally available here in Tunisia for all of the tourists and French ex-patriots, but during Ramadan many stores discontinue selling it (since alcohol is forbidden to observant Muslims). In fact, some people can be very strict about this. One of my colleagues, a teacher from France, just couldn’t go any longer without a bottle of wine. She had to search high and low before she found a store that was still selling it. The store owner wrapped the wine bottle in paper and then she put it in her big purse so no one could see it. However, in the cab on the way back to her apartment, the driver heard the glass bottle clicking. He asked what it was, and she lied and said it was olive oil, but I guess he knew better and he made her get out of the cab and find another taxi. Of course, this is an extreme case, and the majority of Tunisians understand that non-Muslims will be eating and drinking during the day. For the most part, restaurants and cafes close during the day, except for some in touristy areas.

            This is just during the day, however. After sunset, every night is like a party. Here, the sun sets around 7 pm, and people commence eating immediately. Good luck finding a taxi between 7 and 8, because everyone is home eating. Ramadan dinner always starts with a soup, chorba, which can take many variations depending on where it’s made. Here in Tunisia, it’s a chicken broth based soup with risotto and chicken. There’s also usually a roasted salad, made from roasted peppers, tomatoes, garlic, and olive oil—very spicy. There are also briks, which are pastries stuffed with egg, tuna, onions, and parsley (mmm…). There’s also Tunisian tajine, which is sort of like a casserole and an omlette, with eggs, cheese, a meat, and veggies. There is also usually pasta, or chicken made with lemon juice and olives. Of course couscous is also very popular. There are always desserts, such as baklava, cakes with dates, and hazelnut pudding.

            After filling themselves to the brim, the Tunisians will start to trickle out of their homes around 9. They go to cafes and smoke hookah, or drink Turkish coffee (highly sweetened coffee with very fine coffee grounds) and mint tea, which is usually served with pine nuts. All in all, Ramadan is a month constantly between two poles—fasting and feasting, malaise and conviviality.