“I expressed a verbal appreciation of the fascinatingly first class highways in my passable high school French. Abdel responded with a hint of a gloat that the country was as good as anything in the West of Europe. which the locals compensate for by working until the early evening. The restaurant we visited was in an area that resembled Fifth Avenue New York with various perfume and clothing stores and the big apple feel was compounded by the numerous yellow cabs that patrol the town. We took a drive that evening to a part of the town called La Medina and dined at a restaurant known as the Dar el Jeld. Our table was close to an
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old man playing a very discrete tune on a stringed instrument known as the kanoun. No sooner had we made our orders than an array of various starters was placed on the table; it was explained to me that this was customary in most fancy restaurants. I enjoyed another sea-sourced culinary delight while admiring the ancient Arabic architecture. As we departed, I followed my hosts lead in proffering their palms to the doorman for him to sprinkle perfume
on their hands on the way out; another common theme in all the restaurants we would visit in the few days I was in the country. Three days of relentless paperwork passed with us repeating the long lunch-fancy dinner routine of the first day. Dark Africans are as common in Tunisia as Mongolians in Mangaung so I was very pleased to meet, on my last night, a fellow Kenyan to whom I had been