There
aren’t many holiday destinations where you can walk along a nice sandy beach
and step in camel shit. The Sentido Resort on the Djerba Peninsula in Tunisia
is one of them and in fact, not only camels but horses ply the waterline,
transporting jaded middle-class – i.e: retarded - tourists. It can be hard to
tell the difference between the two types of ordure. Until it becomes a status
symbol it’s still socially unacceptable to walk into the dining room with brown
knobs of the stuff
clenched between your toes.
The
animals themselves seem well cared-for although they get to walk up and down
the beach all day carrying Germans. This is not my idea of a good time but it
might be the epitome of excitement for the beasts. At this Resort, which is
genuinely well-organised and of four-star quality, you can buy an all-inclusive
package. Our Schengen imperative conflicts with our desire to see Tunisia; the
costs of these side trips was unexpended and is major, but going to
exotic destinations like Turkey, Croatia and Tunisia without actually seeing
anything of the countries is very frustrating. Nevertheless it gives us a
chance to decide whether we will return in the future.
A
report of our conclusions is being mentally prepared by our Executive
Committee, Judi, who is downing a fresh cocktail at my side. While languishing
with a beer or wine or cocktail (included, unlimited quantity) on your beach
towel (included) laid on your deckchair (included), you have a great opportunity
for tourist-watching. In many ways the
Germans are the most fascinating.
Resort
policy prevents you having alcohol in your room, so you can’t bring in your
own; room cleaning and maintenance is so efficient you’ll be detected. And
because Tunisia is a Muslim state, alcohol is frowned upon. Although tolerated
for tourists, all alcoholic drinks are not only ‘watered down’ but use
locally-made spirits. We do not want to know how these spirits are made or from
what. Some kinds of knowledge are not helpful. The end result of an evening
drinking Tunisian wine is multiple trips to the toilet. It seems impossible to
get drunk – but the Germans have worked out a way to do it.
They
order shot glasses of Sambucca (?), the power of which the Tunisian bartenders
seem unaware, then send their cohorts into the bar to get a bunch of cocktails,
then combine the two in severely dangerous ‘medicine’ as they call it. Groups
of Germans roar with laughter and slump in chairs on the beach terrace. The
chairs are within staggering distance of the bar, and they keep the bartenders
lubricated with Tunisian Dinars. Germans are fun-loving and noisy revellers;
trouble is they can go too far. No jokes could warrant their air-raid siren
volume of laughter. They ask us to join in and being cowardly and diplomatic at
the same time, we do. After two ‘bucca-laced cocktails (Sentido cocktail: a
very light splash of faux-Vodka, orange juice, lemon juice, crushed ice,
included) the brain begins reeling. One German woman in the group tells us it’s
OK to drink three, but have four and
you’re in trouble. She lurches away to sleep in mid-afternoon.
They
increase the drinking pace, including us in the flow. “Think of me as your
Doctor,” laughs one guy with a Kaiser moustache, “and ‘bucca as your medicine.” Lucky for us their bodies give up, their
brains relapse into their primordial state and they stagger away into the
dining room or to the pool where they annexe deckchairs as if they are marching
into Austria. But enough prejudice;
let’s move on to another culture.
The
25km drive from to the Airport shows how superficial the Djerba tourist
development is. The area is known as the Djerba Tourist Zone and is a narrow strip
on both sides of a made road around the shore of the Djerba peninsula. If you
are cynical you might interpret the Zone as a prison camp for tourists. The
roadscape is disturbing only because we’ve seen the same thing on TV from Iraq
and Libya – the garbage and wreck-strewn verges dotted with plastic bottles,
burned rubbish dumpsters, burst plastic bags and the mean detritus of poverty.
TV has taught me to expect threats from this kind of environment.
Tunisia
was the first and the only remaining participant in the “Arab Spring” uprisings
that has a parliamentary democracy. That’s the problem with preconceptions… it
takes a lot to erase them. You’re tempted to lump all Arabic people in one
basket and paint them with the same brush. We have experienced or witnessed
absolutely no negative emotions here. Although the Tunisians we deal with are
obviously trained to interact with tourists, but they smile, they respond,
they’re positive, they’re motivated and they want to be liked; therefore they
become likable. There’s no fundamental resentment here.
Routine soon settles
upon you and the days are spent in a predictable series of events. Eating is
perhaps the primary regulator, as for beef cattle in a feedlot. They try hard
to vary the menu, but the size of their eating audience (I estimate about 300
people) means the inevitability of everything being drowned in sauces. The
names along the buffet counter are attractive: chicken, steak, fish, rabbit,
quail, turkey, kebabs, pizza, steak & kidney and so on.
Some dishes require
some courage to put on your plate – for example, the Fricasee of Cuttlefish
where you stir an unidentifiable brown mush in the hope that something
recognisable will rise to the surface. The Tunisian chefs do try but sauce has
taken control of their minds. Sauce is the great leveller. It can make
Sturgeon’s eggs taste exactly like battered Corn Flakes and vice versa; sauce
flattens elite food into chewy cotton. But let’s not talk about that, let’s
move on to another subject.
Judi and I had a
‘Hammam’ today, which is a traditional steam bath and massage. We saw a Hammam
in Istanbul which claimed to be founded in 1442 A.D, but this one was newer. I
saw Midnight Express as a young man
and vowed never to have a steam bath in Turkey and so far I have succeeded, but
Tunisia may be different. Putting my cowardice briefly to one side, I enter the
Hammam.
Of course I have been in a sauna and enjoyed it, but
the steam room in the Sentido Resort is designed to strip one’s skeleton bare
of flesh in five minutes. Your lungs are seared, your eyeballs actually sweat
and your groin dissolves. When they call “time’s up” and you don’t emerge
immediately you can hear an edge of panic in their voices when they call again.
With most of me melted into an unpleasant puddle on the floor, I manage to
struggle up marble stairs into the hands of a masseuse.
As I lay my pale
moistness on a massage table, she attacks me with big nomadic hands, a neutral
expression and a white dress with a white headpiece. She looks like a sperm
from Woody Allen’s movie All You Wanted
to Know About Sex, but I don’t remark on this because there may be an
extremist with a scimitar behind the curtain. Perhaps I am delirious from the
heat. The massage is blissful and I relax until I’m crosseyed. I have no
thoughts of the ‘happy ending’ so beloved of my friend Keith, whose big mistake
was once to be massaged by two Thai girls.
Judi’s experience of the massage may have been slightly different
from mine but she says she enjoyed it, so we plan to do this again soon. But
enough mild satire; let’s move on to another culture. Another sudden segue
to come , dear reader.
