TUNISIA: Tourism after Historic Change

As we ready for a tour to Tunisia leaving March 19, 2011, questions loom large.  Is this the right time to be entering a country fresh from revolution?   Rising young powers met with declining old ones and sent messages around the world:  A seat at the table of their future and no tolerance for greedy rulers.  This is the result of North Africa bulging with deficits:  lack of education, lack of jobs, and lack of women empowerment---Millennium Development Goals 2 and 3. 

Tunisians are the lucky ones.  The Arab countries have more than 60 million illiterate adults but Tunisia has the highest per capita educated especially among women with many schooled in Europe and the United States.  They have seen the other side via the Internet and television.    Do we blame them for wanting a better life?  Such a positive outcome to a peaceful revolution has given rise to the rest of North Africa hungering for real leadership and a better life.   Nowhere in history can we see such bravery and unfaltering peaceful dedication than in the young voices of Tunisia and Egypt.  

To travel to North Africa at this time is paramount to our giving support to their courage for a better life.  Americans not only purchase hotel beds and dine in local restaurants but Americans put the money directly in the hands of the locals.  We shop.  Now more than ever, Tunisia and Egypt need Americans to pack their bags and venture forth to this brave new world.

Visiting Tunisia at this time will give travelers a gift greater than any photograph or a couple of Berber rugs; it will place the travelers square in the middle of a worldwide paradigm shift for the good of all and it will last in memories far longer than any souvenir.  Most of all, our being there will unlock the fullness of life for Tunisians and anyone who cries, “Freedom”.

More to come from the Sahara.

Peaceful travels,

MWT