Port of Tunis

Today was the day that our household goods were inspected by Customs at the Port of Rades. We saw a lot of containers. We had high hopes that one of them would be ours.

The first surprise was taking the long, scenic trip out to the port. We can see it from our hotel. I've been across the causeway bridge, so I know it connects somewhere north of us in La Marsa. But our native guide headed directly into the downtown rush hour traffic of Tunis center then waffled her way out to the port taking approximately nine times as long as it should have taken. But she lives downtown and she only knew the way to the port from her known points of reference. Have I mentioned that this city could use some Google Maps, Mapquest or GPS details? Tunis needs that van to drive around with all the photography equipment and waypoint all the intersections... but I digress.

Once we got to the port, we met up with our shipping company representative, who looked at me meaningfully and began speaking very rapid Frarabic with our native guide. It seems that only DH's name is on the paperwork and he was convinced that I would not be allowed to accompany DH on the inspection tour of our goods. Dodged that bullet.

I rode back to the hotel with our native guide, leaving DH at the port to stand by manfully for 4.5 hours while all the papers were inspected, he was quizzed about certain items ("Do you use this air compressor for business?" "No, it's for personal use." "It's a very nice, very big compressor. Are you sure you don't use it for commercial purposes?" "No, I use it at home.")

There were some items that we were led to believe would be problematic--books, CDs and DVDs. All the horror stories we've heard revolve around those boxes being held and inspected for months. One lady said she thought they kept her DVDs long enough to rip them all. We have scads of books, fewer CDs and DVDs, but still... If it's going to be a problem, we had to 'own it'.

We discussed what we'd do and we wanted to tell them to keep all the boxes they were interested in, but please just deliver the rest of the stuff. That way we could move into our house, get settled. I can wait a while for my books to be delivered.

But it didn't come to that. They cracked open three boxes. One full of linens and sheets. One full of paperwork from our office files. And one full of empty software boxes and computer manuals. During this time, DH could see some of our furniture and the whole container was there, with the door open so they could pull things out and check the entire shipment.

We passed. DH admitted that at one point in time, one of the officials asked about what kind of books we had. When DH stated what types they were, he was told, "NO! You don't have romances. You have cookbooks, business books, and personal papers." DH, being the intelligent international guy he is, said, "Okay."

So, with my decadent collection of romance novels, I have entered the country of Tunisia. They'll never be the same.

--Sandee Wagner