Fellows' Reflections: Neely Egan

It’s hard to believe that 3 months ago, I was boarding an international flight to come to a country where I knew no one… during a global pandemic. This opening line maybe lends a bit too much drama to my American departure and my Tunisian arrival. During my travel here, I printed out three documents to present along my way: my negative PCR test, a letter of sponsorship from ClubAnglais, and a hotel voucher that proved I would quarantine in a hotel upon my arrival in Tunis. These three items meant I had a relatively stress-free journey here to Tunisia. I won’t bore you with musings from my two week quarantine period (one week at a government-approved hotel and one week at home), so instead I’ll get to the good stuff.

“The good stuff” includes fabulous friends, delicious food, great students, afternoons of exploration, and, well, normalcy. In other words, I’m running out of “firsts.” I have an ongoing joke with one of my good friends and colleagues. Whenever I’m doing something for the first time in Tunisia, we giggle and say, “awwwww, your first time _____!” We’ve applied it everything: from quotidian things like eating a keftaji sandwich to bigger moments like traveling to different cities. When I arrived at the end of August, my life was full of my firsts in Tunisia. Now three months in, I don’t have as many firsts. The trade-off, thankfully, is that Tunis is becoming more and more of a home. My life is slipping into normalcy. That’s not to mean I’m bored or I’ve stopped trying new things, and I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t randomly struck by the awe I feel to be here.

Now, instead of firsts, I’m beginning to build an intimacy with my new home. People in my neighborhood know me and I know them; I practice my Arabic with the tabouna (a kind of Tunisian bread) vendor; I can go on runs and never get lost; I can make meal and café recommendations to new expat arrivals. Of course there is still so much that I don’t know and still so much I haven’t seen (COVID certainly doesn’t help in this area), but I do find a thrill in reporting that things are becoming prosaic here in Tunis. I love my friends, my students are good (at least 80% percent of the time!), and I feel, simply, at home.