First sunrise in Africa found me headed for the ruins of ancient Carthage. Those familiar with ancient history will remember that the Romans "left not one stone upon another", and plowed salt into the fields when they finally conquered rival Carthage. Seems that must be literally what happened, because there are NO above-ground remains to be seen. The existing excavated structures are the sewer systems, and the fancy vaulted steam heating tunnels from below the Carthaginian public baths.
But there are also the ancient cemeteries. One called the
"Tophet" in particular chilled my soul. The principal deity
of the Carthaginian culture was Baal, a bloodthirsty god
who demanded the sacrifice of each couple's firstborn
child as an offering. And the Carthaginians really did
sacrifice thousands and thousands of their infants, burning
the tiny corpses and putting the remains in little clay pots
which were then buried in ground sanctified to Baal. The
display area at the Tophet had EIGHT LAYERS DEEP
little tiny pots, over thousands of square feet !! The
remains of tens of thousands of sacrificed babies were
there, stacked one upon another. The latest burials
showed that the Carthaginians had gotten a little less
religiously pure. Many of the top layer pots had been
found to contain the charred remains of animals,
apparently sacrificed in place of the firstborn children.
After three interesting days in and around Tunis, I hitch- hiked easily 60 miles south along the coast to the city of Sousse, and bought a dormitory bed at the youth hostel ("alberge de jeunesse") there. Sousse was comfortable but not too interesting, being mostly a coast resort area for European tourists, and mostly shut down for the season.
The second morning in Sousse I accompanied some of the folks from the Youth Hostel to the bus station, to send them off to the west, their ultimate destination being Morocco. Busses in Tunisia all had large welded steel luggage racks on the roof, this being necessary because traveling Tunisians carry heaps of worldly goods with them. Loading the luggage is a time-consuming chore, and it was going on as we arrived at the bus depot. Three Tunisian men were handling the loading, and it was standard practice to tip the loaders for taking care of your personal luggage. Therefore there was one guy handing the luggage up onto the top of the bus, one guy up there packing it in the luggage rack, and one guy standing at the bottom accepting luggage for loading, and collecting the tips.
There are plenty of tourist-specific scams in North Africa, all designed to part the tourist from as much of his money as possible. Many of them seem to involve pointlessly hassling a tourist until he simply disgorges money, just to avoid the hassles. Others involve making sure that tourists pay much more for any simple service or product than the locals pay. The little scam we witnessed that morning was a combination of the two.
As the loading was progressing, Martin, one of two Australian vagabonds tipped the Tunisian guy for loading their backpacks. The busman demanded a larger tip from the Australian, although the tip was the same amount he had been accepting from all the locals. Martin ignored him. Then the guy on the top of the bus held the Aussie's backpack out over the side of the bus, threatening to drop it off if the tip were not increased. Martin steadfastly ignored him, too. The loader on top of the bus shouted aggressively at the tourist, and shook his pack out over empty space, threatening again to drop it unless the tip was increased. At this point the lanky, travel-worn, longhaired guy from down under made a rude finger gesture to the loader, who promptly followed though on his threat, and dropped the backpack. It hit the pavement with a nasty noise, breaking the welds on the aluminum frame.
Dozens of people stopped and watched to see what Martin would do. He didn't look perturbed at all, but walked calmly to the rear of the bus and started climbing the ladder to the roof. Things were getting pretty interesting !! The loader at street level was hollering at him, and tugging at his pant leg to try to deter him from climbing, and the loader up on the luggage rack hollered even louder with threatening-sounding bombast. Our vagabond hero reached the bus roof, and began calmly stepping over luggage in the rack towards the backpedaling loader. Everyone caught their breath as the loader pulled a wicked-looking long folding knife out of his pocket and opened it, holding it in his right hand, while continuing to shout threats and imprecations. The Aussie vagabond never broke stride, continuing to advance casually while bringing a small clasp knife out of his own pocket and opening it, never taking his eyes off of the retreating busman.
Just as blood was about to flow, the nerve of the bluffing loader snapped. He scuttled down over the windshield and hood of the bus, hitting the pavement running, and promptly disappearing out of sight around a corner. Everyone started to breathe again, whereupon Martin pocketed his knife, and called down to me, "D'ja giv'us a hand here, mayt ?" . The three of us proceeded to load all of the other Tunisians' luggage up onto the roof gratis, no more tips were necessary.
I'm willing to bet that the bus luggage crew in Sousse never jettisoned another vagabond's pack. Down-under Martin had won the tense confrontation without ever speaking a word or changing his mildly annoyed expression.
When I had explored Sousse sufficiently, I went hitching south towards the Libyan border along the main highway. Hitch-hiking was ok, not wonderful, and I got several short rides with nice, French speaking Tunisians. In the late morning an old, faded Citroen passenger vehicle piloted by an elderly redheaded Parisian-born woman who had lived in Tunisia for almost 30 years pulled over. Driving south we had a good chat, and she explained that she was leaving the main road and driving out to a village on the coast called Mahtma, where she lived. I checked my little road map and found a road coming back from Mahtma to a point farther south on the main road, so I went along. She let me down in wonderful blazing sunshine with a salty sea breeze in front of a strange little carpentry-cum-junk shop. It displayed for sale, cheap, two actual ancient amphorae. You know, the old jars with two curving handles for carrying. They were mostly covered with barnacles, so it seemed that they had probably been netted by the local fishermen, and ended up there. I regretted that they were so heavy, as I would have loved to have purchased them. This find indicated to me that I was probably not on the beaten tourist path there at Mahtma. Inside the shop were a few more relics, a derelict, tinny blunderbuss, a rusty saber with the tip broken off, and a German second-world-war ammunition pouch. Aha ! That reminded me of my quest for war relics.
Before I left California I had been asked by Mark, my younger brother, to search out for him a genuine WWII German leather battle harness, from which the Deutche soldiers suspended their gear. Mark had done the research, and informed me that in German it would be called "Wermacht Strumpfhalter". Therefore, when I had found myself in southern Germany, I had visited antiquity/military stores, and faithfully asked the proprietors if they had any Wermacht strumpfhalter. The answer was always "Nein", but I thought they were looking at me a little funny. Finally one nice German shopowner, who spoke English, figured out what I really wanted, and took pity on me. The true objects of my search were called "Wermacht Hosentrager", which is to say, "suspenders". What I had been asking for were actually "German Army Garter Belts" !!
The carpenter's relic shop was only attended by a little girl of about four years who spoke exclusively Arabic, so I waited there for 45 minutes until the proprietor returned. Nope, no battle harness, but that had been a real long shot anyway.
Next time: Mahmoud the Tunisian fisherman