Tunis: The Glitters of a North African Tourist Resort

Talking about traveling with the whole family, I have done it again, to the utmost surprise and consternation of a southern friend. You know, the first time I took the whole family on vacation to Saudi Arabia via Istanbul, on the same flight, some friends said how can you do that? What of if something […]

Talking about traveling with the whole family, I have done it again, to the utmost surprise and consternation of a southern friend. You know, the first time I took the whole family on vacation to Saudi Arabia via Istanbul, on the same flight, some friends said how can you do that? What of if something [God forbid] happens? Yet, there were others that said, ‘in that case nobody has to mourn within the immediate nuclear family, in case that something [which nobody wanted to mention] happens, God forbid’. I have an Igbo friend who never travels on the same flight with his wife and children together. He does sometimes with his wife or children, but never with all on the same flight, along the lines of never putting one’s eggs in one basket, or more appropriately, one giant coffin, within the context of what we are discussing.

Back to Joffe, I called to inform him of our decision and he immediately sent a request for tourist visas on our behalf to the Tunisian embassy, in addition to calling the Charge de Affairs to put in a word. I went to the embassy confidently with our passports thinking that it was going to be a one day affair, only to be given the visa forms to fill by a friendly Nigerian staff who photocopied and returned my passports and said he would call me when approval for the visas come from Tunis.

my first disappointment

I left disappointed and thinking, may be it did happen that way because we were many, children inclusive, or maybe they assumed no Nigerian would just travel to Tunisia as a tourist, because most visa applications were for official seminars or conferences. After about a week without receiving any call I decided to check the embassy again. I was told the Charge de Affairs was on vacation and that he left the country a day or two after we submitted our applications, but that the accountant was there to issue the visas when the approval was sent. I relayed this message to Joffe. At that point I was positively determined to go to that Tunis. I even gave them a copy of my Istanbul travelogue, just to convince them we are indeed going for tourism. By the end of the second week I went back again, and was told to wait. Eventually my passports were collected and the visas issued.

the journey begins

We flew Egypt Air because they conveniently fly out of Abuja now. Unfortunately, there were no seats from Abuja on the day we intended to fly, so we had to go through Kano. Though this gave us an opportunity to bid farewell to family and friends, it otherwise proved to be a costly decision. We reached Kano airport in a group of 14, my Tunisian friend’s wife and two children inclusive and met Hajiya Binta, [Bashir el-Rufais wife] with some of their teenage children [who happen to be mates and friends with my daughters] going to Cairo and it became like a convention [chit-chat galore]. Because a friend, Alhaji Hassan Abdulhamid, who works in the airport was there to help us out with check-in, we decided to do big-man Nigerian style by standing aside[there weren’t enough seats for the women and children, talk less of others anyway] while our luggage was being checked in. Another costly mistake.

Not that we were or wanted to be big-men, no, we couldn’t help it in that helpless, hopeless, disorderly and chaotic situation. I decided to stay back because the lights were taken out in the middle of that chaos almost four times. I figured if I didn’t, our guzuri could disappear, and Kano airport could be the end of our journey. We were told by a staff of the airport that the power wasn’t enough to take both the terminal building and tarmacs at the same time, that’s why the terminals had to be taken when needed in the tarmac and vice- versa. Difficult to believe or imagine KO? How ingenious. How they do this still baffles me till today.

The continuous power interruption while luggage was being tagged was what eventually caused one of our bags to be swapped with someone else’s, which caused untold anxiety and hardship to, not only me, but others on an otherwise fantastic vacation. Will give you the details of how the drama eventually played out later. See why I told you going through Kano and doing that big-man thing was a mistake? Word of advice, whenever you find yourself going through Kano, or rather in a similar situation anywhere, just leave your guzuri with a trusted person, roll up your sleeves and manoeuver your way in there to cross-check the tags on your baggage. Now don’t get me wrong, Kanawa, I hail from Kano, with lots of claim to Jigawa. Confusing? Well, just take it like that. We have to tell ourselves the bitter truth. Our airport is in a serious state of disrepair on all fronts, something urgently needs to be done to bring it to an acceptable level or even at par with other Nigerian airports, and it’s only the Kanawas that can bring the issue to the front burner.

Eventually around midnight we crossed those entire yellow cards [imagine being accosted for yellow cards while queueing to board your flight out of the country] and other hurdles to board the flight. We arrived Cairo early morning, bid Hajiya Binta and her children who were going into town farewell, not knowing that our paths would cross again [you will soon know why, as you read on] and went through transit. At the transit desk, Umar Abbas brought my attention to a Nigerian holding out my name boldly written on a piece of paper. I went over to him and introduced myself. He collected our passports and told us to wait before our transit visas and hotel were arranged. Our connecting flight to Tunis was at night, so we had an almost 12 hour transit and that’s why unknown to the group, I arranged for an airport pick-up from the Nigerian embassy and a tour of the pyramids for the children that hadn’t been to Cairo before, courtesy one of my endless supply of friends at the foreign ministry, Ahmed Umar.

waiting for transit in cairo

The wait for the transit visa was unnecessarily long, partly because that’s when most flights come in with lots of transit passengers, and the new terminal 3 was also unnecessarily cold. I, sometimes, wondered why they don’t regulate temperatures at airports. Whilst waiting, the place became more and more crammed as flights kept coming in, and that’s when the Abuja flight that we initially wanted to take came in with the chairman of Media Trust Limited and his family on board. I went over to greet, told him I was headed for Tunis and he said they would expect this travelogue, which was late in coming due to my laziness.

About 90 minutes later, our transit visas were ready. We were taken to the Fairmont Hotel, not too far away from the airport. I called the ambassador at the hotel to express my gratitude and he graciously offered to arrange for the bus that arrived in the afternoon and took us round the city. We disembarked at the airport for our connecting flight. The aircraft that took us to Tunis was newer and cleaner than the one we flew from Kano, which made me begin to wonder if the aircraft were allocated according to the cities they flew in or out from. We landed in Tunis about two hours later and proceeded to the well-decorated and clean terminal building. I said to myself, first impression, excellent. Inside the expectedly cold terminal, I was a bit uneasy because of the dry cough I had been battling with, aggravated by the equally cold aircraft and my stubborn little resistance to cold water. After successfully passing through the device that picks body temperature I heaved a sigh of relief.

I thought the cold had caused a rise in my temperature. I battled to suppress the dry cough at immigration point to guard against any swine flu suspicion [which I surely didn’t have]. Seeing Joffe and his wife waving from inside, caused another sigh of relief. I knew with him there, the worst that could have happened was, for me to be given a shot of the vaccine. In the end, we all had a smooth entry. We went to collect our luggage after exchange of pleasantries. There was one missing. It contained my wife and children’s clothes. We called the attention of a staff close by, who collected the tags and walked over to a lone bag that wasn’t claimed. He came back and said, ‘that’s your bag’. We said ‘no, its not’, he said, ‘but it’s tagged to you’. That’s when it dawned on us the mix up must have been from Kano because they were checked-in directly to Tunis from there.

Knowing that our missing bag contained only clothes, we wondered at who the owner of that lone bag was and what was in it. We left the bag at the missing luggage section, filed a complaint and left. Outside the airport, we bid farewell to Kiri’s family and drove directly to Hotel Nationale. Prior to our departure, I had requested Joffe to book a three bedroom serviced apartment for two weeks, plus two rooms for Umar Abbas in a hotel close to the apartments for convenience. In the end, we only got a two bedroom because of the difficulty in getting apartments on short notice at the height of summer which was their peak tourism season. The apartment, on the 6th floor, was very nice, but you couldn’t really say the same thing about the hotel next door which surprisingly was under the same ownership. Furnished with  settees, beds, TV, fridge, cooker, washing machine, central air-conditioning and, to cap it all, Nafisa [Jafar’s wife] had stocked the kitchen and fridge with assorted food items, drinks and all the family may require for breakfast, lunch or dinner in the apartment.

Besides, my friend said everything [rent inclusive] had been taken care of; I didn’t have to pay a dime. Now tell me, what more could you ask for from a friend? We escorted Umar, his wife and son Abbas to the hotel next door where two rooms had already been booked. With everybody gone, we [I and my wife] re-assessed the situation and decided to join Abbas at the hotel since it’s just next door, anyway. We figured our three teenage daughters were big enough to take care of the two young ones who are 7 and 5 year old. This turned out to be another big mistake, will tell you why a little later. That decided, I went down to book for the room, the man at the counter said, ‘fully booked’, without so much of an expression on his face, as if the hotel is hot cake. I left without any plea and went round the corner to Hotel Diplomat, which luckily had only one room left and for one day only.

I said I would take it. The room was clean and really very nice, much. We than the ‘fully booked’ Nationale. I went back to the apartment to pick my wife and our baby [Asmau] and left. In the morning, I went down to the mezzanine floor forbreakfast in order to go shop for another hotel within the vicinity early. By then, Abbas had also made up his mind about leaving the Nationale. When I told Joffe of our decision, he made arrangements for three rooms at an Internationally Standard Hotel close to the ‘fully booked’ Nationale called El-Mishtel, at an unbelievably discounted rate. Talk of ‘da dan gari akanci gari’. At this point, let’s address the mistakes I referred to. That of going through Kano was the baggage swap. It was much later, while speaking to Bashir on the phone that I came to learn his wife was also missing a bag containing their clothes. He gave me her number and I called to compare notes. After descriptions we knew we had each others bags, so we heaved a sigh of relief and decided to call both airports baggage sections to request for a swap. We did, but that swap couldn’t be done up to the day we left Tunis. We had to arrange to put her bag on the flight I left Tunis with. I told her to meet me at Cairo airport missing baggage section to sort out the problem once and for all, but, the problem was only half solved.

the mistakes we made

I got mine with a lot of assistance from her and inconsideration that bordered on rudeness from the airline staff. Hers was delivered to their hotel a few days before they left. Imagine the inconvenience of having to shop for clothes not budgeted for. The second mistake was that of leaving the smaller children with their sisters at the apartments. The sisters just couldn’t control those kids, they usually do here, but there, they couldn’t spare enough time. They were busy doing their own things, trying to make the best use of their vacation. The kids were so noisy in the otherwise quite apartments that by the 6th day, the residents filed a complaint with the care takers. And you know who complained? Some Southern Sudan complexioned looking girls from Cote De Voire.

They shouldn’t be blamed though. They were students probably close to exams then or bitten by the French bug. In any case, the bulk of the blame should and went to their sisters.  To cut a long story short, we had to move three of the kids to joffe’s apartment on the 7th day, and got an additional room at the Mishtel for Fatima and Maryam, who by the way, didn’t deserve such a nice room. This turned out to be perfect and convenient for everybody and probably what we should have done in the first place with the benefit of hindsight. First, the house was big enough for not only three, but all the kids. Second, the ones moved to the house all had age mates whom they could relate with in the house. Travel tip. Stay with the small ones when you travel, you can control them better. By the second day, Nafisa had drawn an all inclusive programme for our wives and children. Visits to the parks, zoo, malls and markets were all taken care of, while I, Ja’afaru, Umar and Abubakar Gabi [a very nice and friendly staff of the embassy] drew up our own programme that, sometimes, over-lapped with theirs. On our third day, Ja’afaru took us to a nice traditionally decorated restaurant called Africana. From the name, I thought they would serve our exciting traditional swallow, but no, the food was North African.

what i discovered about africa

I reprimanded myself for thinking that only the rest of black Africa reserve the right to name its things African. But come to think of it, most people think this way, the moment Africa is mentioned people tend to think black. The provision of traditional Arabian raised couches for the relaxation of customers was the most exciting part of the meal for me. The location of the restaurant, close to the airport, almost at the beginning of the runway is not for the faint hearted, though. Landing aircraft really come dangerously close; all the same it’s worth experiencing when you find yourself in Tunis. Like I mentioned at the beginning, it was on our fifth day, after visiting Hammamet along with Ja’afaru and Umar, that I fully grasped what Col Yakasai was talking about. Hammamet which is not more than an hour’s drive from Tunis, is a complete tourist town. The scenery, farms and traditional farm houses along the road were beautiful to just set eyes on as we drove by.

Lying along the coast at the edge of the deep blue Mediterranean Sea, lined with luxurious modern hotels and palaces [almost all major chains are represented], Hammamet is a dream holiday paradise. One can choose to stay in any of the beautiful hotels or traditionally decorated Tunisian residences or palaces fit for stories from the book; one thousand and one nights [dare dubu da daya]. The wide streets and avenues, walkways, golden sandy beaches, Venetian street lights are all truly magnificent. The cafes and beach clubs line-up as far as the eyes can see on a 1.5km stretch. Our mission to Hammamet that day was an exploratory one, to arrange for a much longer one with the whole family. We arranged and made advance payment for a subsequent visit with the whole family that included a Mediterranean cruise in a pirate ship at a café along the beach after a nice fishy lunch.

meeting numerous tourists

That day, I couldn’t believe the number of tourists, almost all from Europe, that I saw. There are lots of available leisure activities provided at Hammamet, from golf courses, skating arenas, casinos, water sports, shops, children’s parks, kai, whatever your interests are, it’s provided, but unfortunately to pray, you had to take a ride down to the Medina. To date, I can’t remember seeing anywhere, in any African country, probably minus South Africa, which is out of Africa anyway, where so much resource has been invested in tourism. We really have to buckle up, and down, if there is anything like that. On the seventh day, we hired a bus, big enough to carry the 17 of us, Ja’afarus family inclusive. Our plan was to take off at 10am, arrive in good time for the children to do some rides, have lunch and join the afternoon cruise, but alas, we were late for the first two. We were just on time for our cruise appointment which was 1.30pm.

We were rushed to the Marina by the organizers but couldn’t meet up, so they took us back to the beach, gave us complementary lunch while we waited for the next one, which also gave the family an opportunity to tour the grounds. The cruise took about three to four hours in an old rickety wooden pirate ship, with some young chaps dressed as pirates dancing to loud Arabian [mostly Lebanese] music. About an hour into the trip we stopped for lunch in the middle of the sea, served on the smelly lower deck of the ship, and for interested passengers to take a dive inside. It was interesting seeing young men and women taking that plunge into the sea without any fear [as in the titanic]. Lots of them swam to their hearts desire before we continued along the coast of the Medina [old city]. We anchored back ashore just about sunset, came down, took a group souvenir photo, taken by an excited young man who told Umar that it was that swim at the Mediterranean that took him to Hammamet.

Talk about ‘kowa da abinda ya dameshi’. Sorry for not translating these Hausa quotes, they are like old Swahili proverbs, difficult to translate by the not-so-elderly. It was, indeed a day well spent, everybody, especially the kids were excited by that cruise. There were so many other tourist attractions in Tunis which we couldn’t go to but are worth visiting, some of which are; Sousse, a town rich in ruins, a thousand-year-old fortress and weather beaten monuments. Oases, a magical spot in the south-western part of the country, dotted with orchards and date palm trees in the middle of a rocky desert as the name suggests. Tabarka, a charming marina, with long sandy beaches facing a rocky sea beaten coast. Monastir, a city full of mosques, mausoleum, and museum, goldsmiths and carpet dealers is also home to the first president of independent Tunisia [Mr. Habeeb Bourguiba]. All these should be in your sight should you plan for a long stay in Tunisia.

A visit to the old city

On the eight day, the three of us [like musketeers] went to the old city. The taxi dropped us by the French embassy and we walked the rest of the way into Medina. The narrow streets of the markets are like Kantin Kwari in Kano, except for the cobbled streets. We bought some souvenirs and came back to walk that beautiful avenue named after the first president that was surely designed and intended to resemble the streets of Paris.

The large clock always visible from atop the bridge whenever we passed the area remindedusof the Big Ben in London. It’s about time we had a city monument in Abuja, at least, if not in all major cities. I would have really missed something if I hadn’t been to that avenue for coffee by the roadside, I told myself.

To cap the visit, we gave ourselves a treat at a fantastic restaurant called La Falaise at the tip of the Meditteranean Sea. The cliff at which it hangs gives a feeling of being at the end of the world, or at least, Africa. The fish we ordered was wonderful and the waiter named Tarhouni was the most professionally friendly I had ever met. In the course of the meal, Ja’afaru said ‘you know, this is Mansur Mukhtars [the current finance minister’s] favourite restaurant while he was here working for the ADB’. The food really deserved it, I thought. I will not conclude without mentioning that the downside to Tunis is they never wash their cars, why that is so, I never asked because it wasn’t my business anyway. In any case, forget the dirty cars when you visit, there is so much more to see in Tunis.