Greetings all,

Well, I’m still here in Sunny Sfax with no sign of an imminent escape. The count down clock has stalled and my leave has been cancelled due to continuing problems offshore. At this rate, there is a very real danger I’ll be going straight to Cairo from Tunis.

Oh, did I mention that? Yes, my next adventure is going to in Egypt. Home of the famous Giza pyramids and the mighty river Nile. Should be fun. But before that, I have to escape from here.

It has been a very frustrating week. There has been the odd break in the tedium. The highlites were a vist to a local SOS orphange to present a cheque and being mugged in a car by a flock of goats.

Maharas

Around 10 KMs from the plant, is a little seaside town called Mahares. It’s a kind of Tunisian Blackpool, but with three towers not one. Admittantly, the towers are actually Communications masts, but they are quite big and look more impressive given the very flat nature of the land all around. Like most places in Tunisia, Maharas will be nice once its finished.

I suspect the place was once smaller and nicer and quite prosperous, well relatively speaking. Nowadays, it looks a tad sad, run down, messy and is full of half finished buildings. There is also a section of the “prom” dedicated to some weird sculptures. A giant wire framed horse, a wooden man, a representation of a man shaped like a doughnut, I think. There are lots of others, somewhat hard to describe and which have to be seen to be believed. Damian Hurst would be right at home, however. 

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Eggs and Chips

Maharas also boasts the finest, not to mention the only, egg and chips emporium, this side of the Mediterranean. Over the course of the Project, some of the guys, longing for the simple fare of dear old blighty, have trained a local café, ‘The Festival Café’, to produce egg and chips. This was not as simple as it sounds. As we all know, egg and chips should be a simple dish, consisting of, well, eggs and chipped potatoes really. Some may like to add a smigeon of ketchup or even a slice of bread. However, our Tunisian cousins seemed determined to embellish this simple dish. Mixed salad, olives, harrisa, olive oil, mechouia, tomatoes carved into the shape of a palm tree. They haven been known to throw some tuna fish on for good measure.

Instruction Cards

In the end, a series of picture cards were produced to help take the café owner through the preparation process. I kid you not. My commisioning manager, a large tatooed glaswegian called Bill, made a series of cards with a picture of a potato, the potato being peeled and chopped into chips. The chips being fried. An egg, the egg being broken into a frying pan and then a big card showing the steaming hot chips, a big “+” and two fried eggs sunny side up. My favorite touch however was a colour photo of a plate of steaming egg and chips, illustrating the “proper” presentation. It took time, around 6 weeks in fact, but eventually, they got it right. Well nearly. The chips are always a bit soggy and cold and the eggs are either undercooked with runny whites or hard and rubbery, but its probably as good as you are going to get here and we enjoyed it regardless.

The Embelishments

Of course, you have to  allow a little leeway for Tunisian cullinary creativity. Hence, whilst we now get egg, chips and nothing else on the plate other than egg and chips, there is always a great deal of accompanying bits and pieces. After the strips of grease proof paper are laid on the formica table, for this is a quality establishment, bowls of olives, harrisa and tuna appear. This is accompanied by old coke bottles filled with olive oil and baskets of sliced french bread and most weirdly of all, a large bowl of what looks like cold tomato soup. I’m not talking about gispatcho here, I am talking heinz with a dollop of harissa. Now and then it arrives tepid rather than cold, ( for some reason piping hot and food are not a combination the Tunisians seem to understand) but it definitely tastes like heinz. We assume its there to dip the bread in. At least that’s what we do and no-one has ever looked horrified or laughed.

The SOS Orphanage

Anyway, the reason for the proccupation with Maharas, other than its obvious charms, is that Maharas is also the location of an SOS Orphanage. Unusually for this neck of the woods, the Orpahange seems to be a well built, cheerful and inviting place. So many Tunisian institutions such as hospitals, schools and BG camps look and feel more like maximum security detention centres. The Orphange has been open for around 5 years now and looks after 80 kids. Some of the guys on the Project told me about the place and we had visited, taking a few toys and sweets for the children. We were so impressed and touched by what they saw there that we persuaded the Project to “adopt” the place as our good cause to sponsor.

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Since then, there have been charity 5-a-side footbll matches, raffles, collections after “free” croissant meetings and lots of other little schemes to extract the odd dinar out of the project team. Periodically the money collected is taken to the orphanage and handed over.  As we are coming to the end of the project now I had a big push the last week to get more funds. So, as people were de-mobbing, the lucky escapee was asked to donate their excess dinars to the cause. We had a Pool contest with the proceeds also going to the orphanage.

The Visit

Finally, yesterday, I had the pleasure of visiting with a couple of the guys to hand over a cheque for just over $3000. I also had the opportunity to have a good look around the place and meet some of the kids.

The SOS orphanages were started by a German bloke just after the second world war, around 1947. ( The head of the centre explained all this to me yesterday and I’m translating it from French, so whilst I hope I get it right , I may be completely off the mark). Anyway, as you can imagine, after WW2, there were lots of orphans world wide and so the SOS centrs were started to help out and have become an international  operation. In Tunisia there are three centres. The one in Maharas is the biggest and serves the centre and south of the country. There are two others to the North. One near Tunis and one to the North West, near the Algerian border. There are other state run orphanages in Tunisia, but I am quite certain that the SOS centres are certainly very good.

The ‘Families’

The organisation of the place is fantastic, but there are some tough criteria. Kids are only accepted upto 5 yrs of age but can stay until 16yrs or longer depending on the individual circumstances.

The youngest kid in Maharas was taken in at 27 days old. He’s 2 now. The place is organised into families with 8 kids to a “family” looked after by a surrogate “mother”. These mothers are full time and are recruited locally. Again there is a tight criteria. The Mums must be single and be over 30yrs old. They look after their charges as a real mum would. They buy the shopping, cook the meals, wash, clean, discipline, guide and care for the 8 kids of their adoptive family. To give the mum’s a break, there are 4 relief “aunties” who can stand in on their behalf. In total, there are 10 families.

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The Houses

I had a poke in one of the houses and it was pretty basic, but very clean. There are 4 bedrooms, one of which is the mum’s. There is a small comunal area with a TV and PC. A small kitchen with a cooker, a very old washing machine, a huge fridge and a small dining table. And finally, a bathroom with a single shower and thats it. All on one floor. It isn’t big, but its better than the streets. Moreover, it did feel homely. The kids bedrooms are a bit sparse. There were no play stations, home computers, TV’s or hundreds of neglected toys like in my kids bedrooms. I looked in a room that belonged to a little girl of about 10 yrs old, with big round eyes and a sunny smile. Here, there was an old but well loved dolly, a poster of some American girl group, a desk with a couple of books on it and some crayons and drawing paper. Toys are luxuries and often home made. I saw a Connect 4 type game which had been home made and obviously well used.

All of the family units are much the same and all contain 8 kids and their mum. The unit I looked in was unusual in that 6 of the kids are from the same real family. Mum had died during child birth of the 6th and dad couldn’t cope. Its unusual as the eldest 2 were both well over 5, but it was decided not to break the family up and so all 6 were accepted at the centre.

The Kindergarten

Elsewhere, there is a Kindergarden for the under 5’s and local kids from the town are encouraged to come and mix. As its free, its also very popular and the mixing helps avoid any stigma that could be attached to the orphange kids. My first thoughts when looking around the kindergarden was again the lack of toys, books, or frills of any kind. But that’s looking with western eyes. 

The largest building is the club house. This boasts a computer room with some old but fun PC games, I watched a little boy of around 8 yrs “virtually” driving an old taxi cab around the streets of London. Kids over here would have been most unimpressed, but the throng surrounding him, cheering him on, me included, thought it was great fun. He can drive a lot better than most London cabbies I’ve met too.

The Kids

The club also had a ping pong table which was very popular if a little old and battered. Its obviously given good service. There was a shadow puppet theatre and the kids are encouraged to design their own puppets and make up plays of their own. There is also a library with some well thumbed books and a section for craft works. I was shown where they have been making little bottles full of coloured sands arranged in pleasing patterns. I saw lots of photo’s of the kids on various outings from the centres, all proudly displayed on big notice boards. Picnics in the oasis, trips to a zoo, an outing to local caves. There were large nature posters depicting the local Flora and Fauna as the kids are taught about Tunisia and what they are going to encounter when they go on their trips. It was all very good.

Sorry if I sound a bit disparageing about the resources. I really don’t mean to be. I think it’s fantastic what is being done here. To us it all looks a bit basic. But these kids are lucky. They may not have all the luxuries that kids in the UK take for granted, but their carers and teachers obviously do care a great deal about them. And its obviously reciprocated by the kids. All of the pictures showed big smiling faces and when I met the kindergarden class, there were lots and lots of big round brown eyes and huge grins. The kids look happy and are probably more content with an old doll than ours might be with the latest computerised whiz bang toy, so perhaps they are actually quite lucky.

Worthy Cause

As you might have gathered, I enjoyed my visit and found it amazing to see something like this in a run down village in Tunisia. I also found it quite humbling to see the kids so happy with so little. I’d certainly encourage anyone who gets the chance to visit one of these SOS centres and see for themselves. It amazing just how easily a kids life can be turned around and how little it takes to get a kid off the street. For my part I am now pushing quite hard to get the Company to carry on what the Project has started. It’s a very worthwhile charity which is literally on their doorstep and which is also very tangible. Both the kids and the carers love to have visitors and even donating a little time to go and see them is appreciated. I know Ill be going again before I leave here.

Of Goats and Men

Assuming I survive that long. I mentioned something about goats earlier in this epic. Well, you often see lots of goats and sheep grazing by the side of the roads on the drive home. The Locals have never heard of fences, so the grazers are usually in the company of at least one, but more likely, two sheperds. I am not talking about vast herds here, its usually only  a dozen or so beasts. But our intrepid shepherds spend a lot of time prone on the ground, dozing, contemplating the infinite – who knows. Its probably not the most stuimulating of passtimes, watching flossy and her mates, scrubbing about for what liitle foliage can survive in the crap soil.

However, I did think that one of the prime functions of a Shepherd/goatherd would be to make sure the sheep/goats etc didn’t stray. Especially onto the road. Most cant go far as they are usually hobbled. The sheep that is, not the shepherds, although you do wonder sometimes. Anyway, imagine my surprise today when I actually saw two brightly garbed ladies in Tunisian dress standing by the side of the road. Yes, standing and not only that, moving. It became apparent that they wanted to cross the road. Now this particular road isn’t exactly busy. Perhaps 2 or 3 cars an hour. Which made what followed more surprising. To me at least.

The Procession

As I approached, they watched me all the way. When I was almost upto them, I decided to slow down. I was deeply suspicious by this stage. And rightly so it seems. As I got close, they started waving their arms, making ullulating sounds and beating the sheep and goats, forcing them out into the road in front of me. Fortunately I managed to stop without hitting anything, but was suddenly surrounded by every Welshmans dream. Prancing, excited sheep, bouncing around the car, in front of it, behind me and one or two more energetic and exciteable ones even went over the flaming bonnet.

Do T Cut do a product for removing hoof prints?? The Sherpherdess’s made a very slow almost regal progress behind their charges. They watched and grinned at me the whole way across the road. Once across, they disappeard into the olive grove.

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I took a moment, checked my rear view mirror, just to make sure that the 1389 kms of straight road behind me was still empty.

It was. So, pausing only to remove an errant goat dropping off the hood, I carried on to work.

Until next time, have fun and hopefully see you all soon, in Egypt.

You know I’m going to miss this place. Not a lot, but I am going to miss it.

Graham

If you want to make a donation or sponsor a child at the SOS Children’s Villages, click HERE.

Or go to https://www.sos-childrensvillages.org/sponsor-or-donate