When we landed in Tunis, after a very nice conversation

with the Canadian professor and his wife next to me, I

was amazed to see that TunisAir had repainted all of their

planes to say "The official airline of WSIS 2005". It took

a moment to sink in.

The country had repainted its planes for the conference.

Maybe this was going to be a little bigger than I had

thought. I've been to CES and COMDEX, but I never saw a

country repaint its planes for a conference. There are

special lines through customs for WSIS attendees. People

are cheerful and tired, as it's about 12:30am local time

and most other folks have been travelling as long, if

not longer, than I. Someone mentions that there are

SEVENTEEN THOUSAND people expected for this conference.

Holy moley. I had been thinking 1000 to 2000. This is

nuts. Does anyone in the States realize how huge this is

going to be?

I cleared customs quickly and my bag was waiting for me

immediately (amazing!). I setup my moneybelt and put on

the backpack, readying myself for the adventure of

hailing a Tunisian cab driver and getting directions to

Jamil's. When, much to my surprise, Jamil and two friends

are there at the airport holding a big "David Weekly"

sign! I've got a *welcoming committee*. Wow. Jamil speaks

excellent English, which is no surprise from his emails,

and his two buddies, Walid (whose apartment I'm staying

at) and the driver (who apparently was a bit of a soccer

star and still looks pretty strapping) manage a little

bit of English. French is honestly helping me out quite a

bit here. Thankfully I haven't yet had an issue with

folks who *only* speak Arabic, but apparently on Sunday

I'm going to visit with Jamil's grandmother who only

speaks Arabic - Jamil will act as translator. We all talk

as we go to Walid's. Tunisians make around 2-3 dinars an

hour, apparently. Internet access is a dinar per hour.

There's almost no (or no, it wasn't clear) DSL, so it's

pretty much dialup everywhere.

When we get to Walid's flat, it's nice. It's what you

might expect from a good downtown flat in most modern

cities. It turns out they already have universal power

adapters and amazingly enough most of my equipment can

take 220v power. They are amused at the two $8 power

adapters I bought at the airport. "Those are probably

two dinars ($1.50) at the market!"

Walid and Jamil are astoundingly, almost comically

polite. It's really incredible. I feel rather in their

debt; they've quite taken me under their wing! We munch

on petit-fours and talk about differences in Internet

access and so forth. Jamil spends A THIRD of his income

on accessing the Internet. Tunisians don't own

Mastercards or Visas as part of a plan by the Tunisian

government to protect local economies. There are also

stiff tariffs placed on any kinds of imports. You just

can't buy online without a credit card. I start scheming

ways around this, like a local depository or the "cash

credit" cards that are being adopted for kids' use in

the US. It still wouldn't get around the tariff issue,

but it blows me away (in a sad way) that the government

would take a measure that would make it almost impossible

for an educated Tunisian to buy a book with his own

money. I feel I should have brought more books.

Walid goes to bed before Jamil and I later find that

instead of sleeping in his bed, he's taken a mattress

from the guest room to sleep on the floor; he's left

his own bed (the only true bed in the place) for me. I

am dumbfounded. What are you supposed to do when people

are this nice to you?

Jamil and I stay up late into the night. I bring out

two of the sausages Paul had strongly suggested I buy

at the Frankfurt market, not thinking about what I'm

doing. Jamil is an atheist, but having grown up in a

Muslim country has barely seen pork and never tasted

it. After he mentions this, I immediately start wrapping

the stuff up and putting it back in my bag, but he stops

me. "No," he says, "I've wanted to try this for a while.

It's a big thing." So we get out some bread and munch on

some strongly smoked Frankfurt sausages. I feel a little

like I'm corrupting Jamil, but he insisted. Oh well. We

watch some Arabic TV, including Al Aribaya and the ever

famous Al Jazeera, and what must have been about twenty

music video channels, many of which feature the same

lovely Lebanese singer, dancing provocatively. Jamil

explains to me that the Lebanese, as the dominant non-

Muslim Arabic nation, are apparently leading the culture

wars as they export a creative (and unrestrained)

barrage of media on the Arab world. Interesting.

Apparently they've got their own J-Lo and everything.

I crash at some unknown hour. Walid wakes me up at 2pm,

after around 9 hours of sleep. I swear I could have slept

another 9 no problem, but I feel ready to see Tunis. :)

My cell takes to the Tunisian network and gets a test

call from Walid. SMS seems to work too. Yay.

I'll need to buy an "Internet calling card" and use it

with the phone line here to able to get Net at Walid's.

I'm off to an engagement party of a friend of Walid &

Jamil's.