FOUR DECADES OF CHANGE IN TUNISIA

 Larry Michalak, Peace Corps/Tunisia 1964-69

Tunisia is rarely in the news. The daily newspapers where I live (in the San Francisco Bay area) average about one article on Tunisia every ten years. They briefly reported when Zine El Abidine Ben All became President in 1987.  Habib Bourguiba’s death last year rated a short obituary on a back page. Other than that,  nothing. Newspapers prefer crises and disasters, so I suppose that Tunisia is lucky not to be in the news. Yet there have been tremendous changes in Tunisia since I first went there as a Peace Corps Volunteer English teacher in 1964. The changes have been gradual, but nonetheless profound. I was in Tunisia for my first extended stay in summer 2000, and I offer here some thoughts about the changes I have noticed. My remarks are intended not as sociological analysis, but more as personal impressions.

Relations between Men and Women. I have always liked sitting in cafés and watching Tunisia’s lively’ Street life.  in the l960s one saw men holding hands and women holding hands, but men and women did not hold hands with each other, nor did they express affection publicly. People on the street in the 1960s were mostly same-sex couples and groups, except for the occasional family. Nowadays. however, everybody seems to hold hands with everybody else. Boys and girls walk and talk together in mixed groups. A typical Street scene: Tunisian girl is waiting outside a shop. Tunisian boy arrives. Girl points at her watch and (playfully) hits the boy in the arm, presumably’ for being late. Boy’ (playfully) feigns arm injury. Then they walk off together holding hands. A Tunisian friend suggests that the main reason for this change is coeducation. Indeed, I recall that when I was a teacher in the I 960s there were no girls in my classes at College Sadiki and no boy’s in my classes at the Lycée de Jeunes Filles de Montfleury. Mlixité at the pre-university level was limited to a few experimental classes in the Secondary schools, and none of the primary’ schools were mixed. This is no longer the case. All the schools in Tunisia at every level are now mixed, and this undoubtedly contributes to the more relaxed relations between boys and girls and men and women.

Population. There are now nearly 10 million Tunisians, which is three times as many as in the mnid-1960s and four times as many as at independence--in spite of a gradual slowing of rate of population increase. Tunisia definitely feels more crowded, especially in the cities, which have grown upward and outward, Tunis is gigantic, with endless suburbs, including a new shopping and residential quarter built on land reclaimed from the Lake of Tunis. Some of the suburbs—Marsa Les Pins, El Manar, Cite Olympique, and Menzahs I through V are very’ nice—and others are basic public housing. Sousse is almost unrecognizable. In 1964 when I taught in Msaken the only luxury hotel in Sousse was the Boujafar, but now there is an almost unbroken chain of hotels stretching from Hammam Sousse to Monastir.

Transportation. In the mid-1960s there were few cars in Tunisia and the road system was not very extensive. In downtown Tunis you could find parking easily--even on the main streets. But Tunisia in the year 2000 has lots of cars. Parking places in Tunis are hard to find and there are traffic jams at rush hours. The highway between Tunis and La Marsa has been widened several times. Each time the road is widened, the traffic speeds up for a few months, but then it starts slowing down again as more cars—an estimated 50,000 per year—are added to Tunisia’s roads. The authorities work hard at improving the transportation infrastructure to keep up with the traffic. Tunis has both an elevated highway and a peripheral highway, and there is a modern auto route stretching south almost to Sfax. Rural roads that used to be dirt are now paved, and the old paved roads have been widened. Public transportation has also changed. I remember how much Tunisians used to hate the busses. There were long waits, at the end of which people were packed into the busses like sardines. Women complained of men rubbing up against them. It was significant that, during the riots in January 1978, people burned busses. But today public transportation has dramatically improved. Tunis in particular has an extensive and efficient metro leger system that extends even to the distant suburbs. How Tunisians drive is another matter. Drivers are aggressive, ignore traffic lanes, cut you off, tailgate, speed, run red lights and stop signs, go the wrong way on one way streets, and pass on blind curves. In Jendouba this summer a Tunisian pulled alongside me at high speed, then veered suddenly to the right, smashing in the driver’s side of my rented car. “I wanted to pass you,” he explained, “but it’s hot and so my tires didn’t hold the road very well.” “And besides,” he added, “you should have been going faster.”

Communications. In the 1960s only relatively wealthy’ people and businesses had telephones. It sometimes took years to get a phone installed, and half the time when you dialed you got a wrong number anyway’. Now even modest families have phones, and there are cell phones everywhere. People talk into their cell phones as they’ walk down the street, shout into them in crowded restaurants, and they ring all the time with annoying little tunes—just like in the U.S. Even in small towns there are taviphone shops with air-conditioned booths and attendants to give you change for your dinars so that you can keep pumping coins into the phone to talk to your friends. The telephone service is excellent, and you can direct dial anywhere in the world. Also, Tunisia now has the internet and email (it costs about TD25 0/$ 180 per year).

The Economy. Tunisia is clearly much more prosperous than when I was a Peace Corps volunteer. About a third of the population lived below the poverty line in the l960s. Back then there were shantytowns around Tunis—such as Jebel Akhdar and Melassine--and driving through the North one could see people living in gourbis—huts made of straw and mud. Today the poverty rate has been drastically reduced. The majority of Tunisians own their own housing. The former shantytowns now have electricity, sewers, paved streets and respectable cement and stucco houses. In rural Tunisia there are no more gourbis. The economic indicators—infant mortality, life expectancy, per capita income—are all spectacularly positive. Another healthy change is that many of the tourists in the hotels and restaurants are Tunisians rather than foreigners—Tunisian emigrants vacationing from Europe, plus Tunisians from Tunisia taking family vacations.

Middle Class? This has led some observers to speak of Tunisia as a country which is no longer part of the Third World, but has moved closer to Europe both  economically and socially, and is now marked by a large and stable middle class. An article in Middle East Insight last summer estimated that 700o of Tunisians are “middle class.” I suspect, however, that “middle class” is more a European than a Tunisian way of looking at society. Tunisians are more likely to think of themselves not so much as “middle class” but rather as “no longer poor.” Their focus is more on gradations of wealth. They may own their own homes and cars, but they’ want better ones. Many live in modest public housing, and not all neighborhoods are as nice as the ones I stayed in. And, according to the Tunisian magazine Réalités, 5800 of Tunisia’s cars are over ten years old. The rural merchants in the weekly markets that I visited for my summer research project all want to trade up from old Peugeot 404 pickup trucks to new Isuzus.

Credit. Despite Tunisia’s relative prosperity I detected a lot of economic insecurity. Perhaps this comes from memories of agricultural unpredictability in a society that still includes an important rural component. Another contributing factor may be the growing practice of buying on credit, and the consequent rise of consumer debt in Tunisia. There is a popular Tunisian chain of stores called BATAM, founded by a pair of brothers from Sfax, where you can buy a wide array of high quality consumer goods—appliances, clothes, toys, satellite dishes, computers, overseas vacations, etc—at quite reasonable prices. A taxi driver remarked to me as we drove past the new BATAM store by the Lake of Tunis, “you can buy your sheep for the Aid from BATAM, and have it delivered to your house.” However, according to an article in Réalités, 70% of the purchases at BATAM are on credit and only 30% for cash. Monthly payments are automatically deducted from your salary. BATAM is now expanding to 15 countries, beginning with Morocco, Algeria and Libya. Since most of the merchandise sold at BATAM is made in Tunisia, this will boost Tunisian exports, but the growing consumer debt is a source of worry for some.

Visiting Tunisia. Because of the strong dollar this is a great time to visit for both old and new Friends of Tunisia. A delicious meal at the Cosmos (rue lbn Khaldun in Tunis), with three courses and wine, costs about ten dinars. Since the dinar is worth $0.75, that’s only $7.50. For white wine, the Muscat see de Kehibia is as good as ever (smells sweet, tastes dry); for red, try Vieux Magon. Full pension at the hotel Les Mimosas in Tabarka, with its pine-shaded swimming pool, mansard roofs and a spectacular view from the terrace, is only TD 49 ($38 night) in high season.  Instead of visiting Tunisia in the Summer I suggest the Fall or Spring, when the weather is cooler, the prices lower, and the country less crowded

Continuity and Change. I have written here about change, but it struck me this summer that the basic things in Tunisia have not really changed. Tunisians are still very egalitarian and entrepreneurial. They still aspire to wealth but tend to suspect that all wealth is ill-gotten. They adamantly reject any comparisons with Algeria and Libya: And they are still extremely generous and hospitable. I stayed for several days with the oldest brother from the family I had lived with in Tunis in the 1960s. When I complimented him on his shirt, he took it off on the spot and insisted that I take it. I had forgotten that you have to be careful about admiring anything in Tunisia, because people might insist that you take it. Tunisia today may look a little different. It’s more crowded and more prosperous and more hectic. At a deeper level, though, perhaps there hasn’t been that much change after all.