I Need Help, Can You Help Me: Rock-Awn Does Tunisia

One of the things I find most valuable about travel is the way it sometimes allows and sometimes forces you to see the world, yourself and how you see yourself and the world in a different way. It can exacerbate what you’ve already been noticing, or force you to become aware of what you don’t quite yet see.

Prior to this latest trip, I’ve been reflecting on my ability to step out and try/do new things. I’m actually pretty good at that. I pride myself on it. But I’ve been noticing what is truly uncomfortable for me is asking for help. I’m fairly good at figuring things out largely on my own when I’m away. I may be a bit slower than most, as my process is to sit back, suss things out, ask only if I have to and then do the thing. That’s what I did during the first part of my latest adventures.

My good friend and travel bestie DawnO and I have done 5 trips together. We travel well together, we have the same travel style and by now we’ve fallen into a pretty good groove. For our 6th trip, we decided to go to Tunisia. As I fly stand-by we rarely arrive at a place together, so I set out a few days before her to figure out my way there. The route I ended up taking included a 21 hour overnight layover in Paris. Perfect!! I had never been there before! So, I arrived at noon, checked into my hotel by the airport, got to the train station and sussed things out before making my way into town. I LOVE travelling by public transport and had a shit eating grin as I rode into town, proud of the fact that I had once again figured it out.

My one and only goal was to see the Eiffel Tower. Everything else, including melt in your mouth chocolate croissants, was a bonus!!!

I got into Tunis, the capital of Tunisia, on the same day as DawnO, but as she arrived a lot later in the day, I had some time to explore on my own, once again suss-ing things out and only asking if I absolutely had to.

DawnO arrived late that night, we had a quick catch up, got some sleep, then hit the ground running the next day to wander, explore and figured out the lay of the land (or the lay of around Tunis anyways!)

Remember how I’ve been reflecting on how I do new things? How I suss things out to figure things out without asking unless I have to? Though that’s worked for me thus far in travel and in life, it’s become apparent to me recently that I need to stop trying to expect to figure it out all on my own. It’s become apparent to me in travels and in life that I need to ask for help. It’s something that comes so easy to some, but for me is so out of my comfort zone. But, I see B-Rod in action when we travel together (he’s good at asking for help right away when we’re not sure how to do things), and I got to see it in action with DawnO today when we had a big adventure of going an hour out of the city, with no public transportation back when it was time to come home.

We decided in the morning that we were going to test out the Louage (small van) system to get to a place called Dougga (a Unesco World Heritage Site and one of he best preserved Roman towns in Northern Africa) which is 110km from Tunis. What we learned is . . . . . it takes work to get out there (which on the plus side meant only a handful of other people there) AND . . . . the people in Tunisia are sooooo very friendly and are willing and happy to step in to help strangers out.

So in a nutshell, to get to Dougga, we had to take a taxi from La Marsa (the city where we’re staying), to get to Tunis to catch a Louage to a town just outside Dougga, then another taxi to Dougga and that same taxi would need to pick us up (there were so few people there that no other taxis would be available to pick up on the spot). Every step of the way, despite the language barrier, there were always people, sometimes groups, that gathered to help us out by doing things such as writing notes for the taxi and lounge drivers we’d encounter, to phoning taxis in another town ahead of time to pick us up, to just generally helping us feel looked out for and cared for.

When we finally arrived to Dougga, it was so worth it!

We made our way all by public transportation because that’s how we roll, and assumed we’d return the same way. Problem was . . . . we got back to the town around 4:15 and the last louage and last bus to Tunis had left around 4. The people DawnO asked just told her that there was a hotel in town. Determined to stay at our home base in La Marsa, DawnO spotted someone to ask for help. This person directed us to her husband who could speak fairly good English and he proceeded to talk to a taxi driver and a louage driver and haggled on our behalf to get a reasonable fare for these touristas to get back to the city. So very touched and extremely grateful we made our trek back to town.

Guess what we did when we got back to Tunis and still had to make our way to La Marsa? Take a taxi which would get us directly there? Of course not!! We took another train (where once again we had a man go out of his way to help us get to where we wanted to go simply because DawnO asked) which took us to a second train which dropped us off a few blocks from our place!

I love travel because I love to see and experience new things, but I also love travel for the opportunity to come into contact with good, kind and caring people. Our experience so far is that this country is full of them!

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*** to see more pics from this particular adventure and another perspective head over to DawnO’s blog post HERE