A Lion Runs Amok

Today I got home just as the rain started coming down. The rain that normally comes in August has hit in late September this year, and it's caused a lot of problems around Tunis. For example, yesterday they shut down the metro because of a storm - which made getting a taxi absolutely impossible. Luckily, I passed by Lee outside of Amideast as I was walking home, and he gave me a lift.

So, I get inside, relax, and start checking up on my favorite sites (BBC, Kottke, Fark, The Sartorialist, Chubby Hubby, Buzz Feed, etc...), when I get a text message from a Tunisian friend. It turns out that the lion escaped from the Belvedere Zoo today. The Belvedere Zoo, for a geographic reference, is right by Amideast. Luckily, I didn't happen to get in the path of said lion. In fact, nobody got in the path of the lion, to such an extent that it almost made it downtown - about a 20-minute walk from Belvedere.

It reminded me of one of my last days in Sierra Leone this winter. We were planning to all visit the Tacugama Ape Sanctuary on Monday and leave the country on Tuesday. As Monday morning came up, one of the people helping us around, Harry, informed us that the trip to the Ape Sanctuary had been canceled. He said "it's not safe, there are some problems." It turned out that it not being safe was an understatement, the famous Sierra Leonean chimp Bruno (already known in the international press) and some other chimps had escaped again and attacked a car carrying Americans. Tragically, they killed the Sierra Leonean driver before the other people managed to escape.

On another note... Work goes very well. I am now the coordinator of the American Corner, which is the American cultural center at Amideast. It's an exciting job because there's a lot to tackle and to plan. My first order of business has been rearranging the place, which has a lot of English-language books, to make it into a more useful space. The best part of being coordinator is that I get essentially carte blanche to do what I want - it's a great feeling to be "master of your own domain," and it's challenging me to see what I can do with what I have. So far, I'm keeping the weekly Friday English conversation group, I'm going to add a weekly Amideast American Film Club soon, I'm working with a Fulbright scholar who's a French professor in the States - she is going to be using the American Corner for a film class and also possibly for lectures, there's a few other lectures/photo exhibits I'm working on and I just met today with two recently-arrived American artists.

The artists lived in France for ten years, and are now here in Tunis for the next two years to paint. I like their work, which has a lot of French influence, and we're going to work on hopefully doing a showing sometime soon. In addition, Laurie used to be a librarian, so she's going to help me with our collection of 2000-odd books. Here some links to their work: Art Notes and more paintings (I especially like the one of Les Deux Magots, even if I was always more of a Cafe de Flore guy...). I'm thinking I'll pick up one of their paintings of Tunisia when I get a chance.

Also... one final and very exciting thing. SIT, which runs an exceptional study abroad program, is going to be doing their first program in Tunisia this Spring, and Amideast and CEMAT (Centre des Etudes Maghrebines) will be helping to administrate it. Here's the link to the new program.