Greetings All,

Yes, its Sfaxian Expat Tales time again, this time with extra added olives. It’s been sunny this week, if a little chilly. Still, given the crappy weather in the UK over the last week or so I reckon I’ve been quite lucky. I will find out just how lucky this coming week.  For the next 10 days or so, I am on a grand working tour of Britain. But first, welcome to Sfaxian Tales, The Olive Edition.

Today should see the start of my rotational leave.  Instead, I am flying to Aberdeen tomorrow, London on Wednesday, Reading on the following Monday, London on Tuesday, Belfast on Wednesday and back to Tunisia on Friday. A great leave its going to be. Still its better than getting bored!

And boredom isn’t likely here. After an intense week of problem solving, re-scheduling and umpteen meetings, I was  re-introduced to the delights of poultry purchase, yet more mind boggling driving and old school Olive Harvesting. 

Food Thoughts from Abroad

We are generally well catered for out here, with our heavily coded sandwich selection for lunch. (I thought I had the code cracked, ie request chicken and get cheese, request beef to get tuna, request cheese to get ham etc.  But  the buggers went and cheated, introducing a salami and a prawn option!!! Back to the old enigma machine).

Anyway, other than our lucky dip sandwiches, a hot food dish is always available at the residents club in Stalag Guebiba, the BG accomodation camp. Ben the local chef does amazing things with the limited ingredients he has available, but eating in the club does have its drawbacks.

 

The Guebiba Restaurant

Bear in mind we all work together. We also we together. So when we eat together, its impossible to avoid work, which is bad news.  To soften the pain, there is a bar in the club. As a result, eating in the club usually entails drinking large quantities of the local wine or beer. Some strong willed people can go there, eat, have a coca cola and leave. I on the other hand have the will power of a wet lettuce leaf.  I go there fully intending to have my meal and leave. What usually happens however,  is I arrive and have a sociable glass of red plonk, then another, then another, then perhaps one more for the road. That’s usually when we start buying it by the bottle rather than the glass. Not good, although fun at the time!! It’s a common problem as can be witnesed by the distended livers prevalent on the Project. I have encountered a second prolem which is even worse.

Chilli Poisoning

I’m sure some of you will have experienced this situation.  You innocently say, for example, “ooooh I really love your rice pudding”. Consequence,

You live on rice pudding for the next 3 years! Sound familiar? Well, I said to Ben the chef that I like Harrisa and spicy food. As a result, every meal I get is now so loaded with harrissa and chilies, I can barely eat it.   Of course being of stout British heritage, (and getting stouter by the day),  I’m far too polite to say anything to him, so I suffer. The alcohol helps to an extent, but earlier this week found me sorting out chunks of chilli peppers from my meal and hiding them in my napkin for later disposal!!!

 

The Poultry Guide

All this is a roundabout way of getting to the fact that I am becoming more and more self sufficent and have been attempting to cook for myself. Last Sunday, I attempted roast a chicken. Sounds simple doesn’t it. Well the roasting part is, but buying a chicken here isn’t. Oh no. Nothing like popping into Sainsburys at home. So here I present, ‘ My  Pocket Guide to Buying Poultry in Sfax.’

1. Select your chicken. These are usually scrabling around at your feet by the side of the road as opposed to residing in a plastic wrapper in a

fridge! I recommend the one that the guy cant catch  – Sfaxian racing chickens are usually well meated.

2. Ask for your, by now very unhappy chicken to be prepared for you. Especially important is to insist on it being “vide”

3. Unless you are particularly blood thirsty, avert eyes whilst your dinners neck is being wrung.

4. Un-avert your eyes and gaze in amazement as still twitching chicken is thrown into a machine resembling a tumble dryer and little poultry man cranks the handle in a blur.

5. Take a step backwards as poultry man disappears in a cloud of feathers coming out of machine.

6 . Refuse to take bald twitching until it is “vide”. At all costs do not proffer money at this point.

7. Go back to averting eyes as poulty man inserts hand up your dinners nether regions and pulls odd faces – the man not the chicken.

8. Accept still warm, twitching chicken, complete with feet and head from man. Smile, but avoid shaking his proffered hand.

9. Exit asap for a cheese sandwich.

I guess you see my point. Thank goodness for supermarkets.

The Olive Harvest

The TV out here is crap! The BG camp has about five sattelite dishes the size of Jodrell Bank.  Yet we only get 8 or 9 channels of absolute rubbish. We are so lucky at home, getting hundreds of channels of rubbish.  As such, it was pleasant to have a little light distraction this week.

A goodly percentage of Tunisia is covered in Olive Trees. The BG camp is built in the middle of an olive grove. Within the boundries of the camp, there are a lot of olive trees kicking about, together with orange trees, lemon trees and big cacti. I have an olive tree in my front garden. It’s covered with little black olives.  This week saw the start of the camp olive harvest and it was fascinating to watch.

I don’t really like olives, except for their oil which I use loads. Hence, I don’t really spend much time wondering how the olives get from the tree into my olive oil bottle. Coming from the UK, I suppose I assumed there would be some clever machine that does all the work. Especially with the thousands and thousands of acres of olive trees there are out here. Wrong!

Tunisia operates on a semi feudal system. Families are allocated chunks of the olive groves to farm and to manage. They live there, get to farm their own little crops but have to tend the olive harvest. The olives belong to the state, but the families working them, live rent free on the land and get a percentage of the revenue from the harvest. All of these families are very rural and oldy worldy with the ladies wearing brightly coloured dresses and headscarves that you might expect in Tunisia.

It’s the womens job to harvest the olives and so a squad of them arrived outside my bungalow and surrounded my tree. A “blanket was placed

around the base of the tree – its only around 8 ft high, so its not huge. Once the blanket was in place, the “chief” olive picker started wellying the tree with a big stick, knocking all the olives and most of the leaves onto the blanket. The “junior ” olive pickers then go in and sort out the good olives from the bad olives and tree litter and stick them into the baskets they carry on their back. The whole operation is very labour intensive, not to mention time consuming.  

It was, however, absolutely fascinating. Especially when the alternative is Basketball on NSPN or CNN news, or even Tunisiana channel 7 arab soaps. Well actually, they are quite good in a what on earth is going on kind of way!

More Road Shenanigans

Finally, my favorite topic, driving. In poarticular, left hand turns. Obviously, because they drive on the “wrong” side of the road out here, a left turn is the equivalent of a right turn in the UK. If you know what I mean. The Tunisians seem to struggle hugely with left hand turns. From a Brits point of view, probably the most disconcerting aspect is the turn preparation.

When someone wants to turn left, they invariably aim at you. There’s non of this indicating then waiting until the road is clear nonsense. No, the first indication you have that they want to turn left is when they suddenly move over onto your side of the road and drive at you, head on. To let you know not to worry, they will  flash their lights. Of course, to the innocent Brit abroad, this has the opposite effect. Flashing light don’t mean, “ don’t worry, just about to turn”. They mean, “ GET OUT OF THE WAY OR YOU WILL DIE”. It seems to be obligatory to do this at least 100m before the actual turning point. Just as you wonder if you really are about to die horribly, they suddenly disappear down a hidden sidestreet to their left you hadn’t seen.

Still all part of the fun!!!

Right that’s that for now. I’ll be away in the UK next week so stay tuned for more adventures in a few weeks time.

Graham