Troglodyte 2

Hi Cherlyn,

I've enjoyed viewing your Tunisia portfolio. You've got some great images, particularly the Matamata images. The troglodytes are a difficult subject and you captured them with gusto!

I rented a car in Tunis in December 2004 and drove around Tunisia for two weeks. I met three professional ladies from Hong Kong in Douz the day after I was in Matamata. They were traveling from town to town by taxi and they ended up going with me five days up to the Algerian border and back to Qairouan. It was a memorable journey as the three of them chirped away in Cantonese (or some such Chinese dialect) as I served as chauffer.

The morning I was in Matamata I hired a young Tunisian man who spoke English to guide me to the town's sites. He was in his mid 20's and very handsome. We started fairly early and it was a very cold morning. He had on his brown tunic with the hood drawn over his head. As we headed to the first site, we were both shivering and the car's heater wasn't working. He looked over at me and asked if he could hold my hand. Being a bit homophobic, I was taken aback and firmly rejected what I thought to be his "advances". Later in the day I came to realize that this practice seems to be customary in the region and that it didn't have sexual connotations. I must have still been shaking when we arrived at the troglodytes as all my photos there were blurred. The fact that I wasn't traveling with a tripod might have also had something to do with it.

http://www.photo.net/photodb/folder?folder_id=560409

The above is a link to my Tunisian portfolio.