Day 38 – Wednesday January 12th 2011 (Kirowan, Tunisia)

The next morning at 730 I was super exhausted Lina and Connie gave me a spare key and let me sleep in a bit which was nice. I left for Kirowan at about 9am and got there around 11. I was still kinda tired but it was interesting visiting the 4th holiest city in Islam. I walked in and out of it 4 times because apparently if you visit Kirowan 4 times it’s just like going to Mecca. I also toured through the mosques and the city a bit but I wasn’t feeling it completely because I was kinda wanting to find some riots. I went home after a few hours and found a completely different city. All the shops and the Medina and everything were closed. The secret police were pestering me to no end and there were military everywhere. They had blocked off all the government buildings with barbed wire and they were breaking up any gatherings of groups of any kind. The schools and all the stores had been closed for a couple days now. There wasn’t much to do but to walk around looking for protestors or “manifestations” as they say in French, but I kept on getting hassled by secret police who wanted my camera. Eventually I gave up and went back to the apartment where I found Lina and Connie. There wasn’t much to do other than talk and watch another movie so that’s what we did. We picked a movie called Howl about the poet Allen Ginsburg. It was nice because we were able to talk about loads of things afterward. Connie and I stayed up again just lying there and talking for ages, eventually we slept like snoring turtles.