Sousse and an all-inclusive hotel

A touristic city with traditional blue and white Medina (the old city) and its rooftops was easy to fell in love with. Sousse is one of the cities which represent the Tunisia you'll find in pictures, when googling the country. It's also the city of opposites; you can find people wearing mini shorts as well as burkas (mostly the first ones though). For me it was the city where I visited a mosque the first time but also ate slightly darker bread, thanks to the German tourists which probably brought it to the hotel with their existence.

The all-inclusive hotel experience is perhaps something worth of experiencing once in a lifetime. However, it made me totally understand why my parents have always preferred other options. Reasons I could now give for those preferations, are following: It's crowded everywhere, which means queueing. People are smoking cigarettes on that nice private beach the hotel has. All the time somewhere music is playing too loud. The employees are mainly either super fed up with their job or then trying to be too friendly, which just feels annoying.

People you "spend your time with" stuck in the hotel area (because you paid for the meals and it would feel a waste to miss them) consist largely on persons who are used to get everything they want, right now - not forgetting their children who are on the same path soon becoming like them. This also makes the queueing part interesting. I sometimes felt I wasn't arrogant enough keep my spot in the line.

The food always fills your stomach but isn't anything amazing. You also need to hurry up with collecting all of what you want to eat, because the serving time is only an hour. When it comes to unlimited ice cream, you'll find yourself queueing again and trying to do your best with fitting as much as you can to a tiny cup they offer for you.

The drinks are included as well and that's probably the way people survive their holidays then. I, on top of the amazing experience, had a nice flu during the weekend and therefore couldn't really enjoy that part either. All in all, hotel is always a hotel, and for two days it's nice to have your bed fancily made. But two days, that was the limit my resilience when it came to all-in hotels.

I have spoken. Now, enjoy the nice part of the city with the photos.

The amphitheatre of El Jem

This breathtaking scenery, the best lunch location ever, deserves its own post. Standing on the stage in a place like this definetely made me miss the feeling of being part of a performance. Luckily we had the opportunity to experience the part of being in the audience, and that was incredibly beautiful. The majestic high pillars, huge amount of stairs, the view from the top, the lightning in the evening - I let the photos to try to describe it.

Do you have time to dream?

Two hours, four women, one company, common reality and rather similar backgrounds. Everybody knew that it is a challenge to find a balance between the work and family and a video about other challenges women face at work was very relatable for them. The topics were well known and the issues existed but not to talk about them was as big part of the environment they live in. “This is our reality, why to get out of it. It might not be the perfect one, but it has always been this way.”

We and ours, but what about you? The first question for which the women didn’t have a straight answer was the question of what do they like to do. When was the last time you had time of your own? This question simply didn’t belong to their reality. They have family, they have children, and most effectively, they have social norms which do not encourage to question the expectations. Having time of your own wasn’t considered as helping you to be the best version of yourself for the people around you. But what if it would?

The main question of our discussion was about the biggest dream. The little insecure answers varied from travelling to step by step achievable career plans, not anything too ambitious or crazy. After we showed this video, the mindset change could be seen from their faces. Eyes full of inspiration, with a wide smile, they now told us how all that they want is to live a happy life, see their children grow up healthy, enjoy their free time and the things they have right now. Life is actually pretty cool. And worth of dreaming.

Floating in the air beats being forced to a box

Not all the things tend to go as planned. Not all the attempts end up succeeding. Not all the projects manage to get enough air under their wings to keep flying.

Our project had high potential, worthy reason and motivated eight volunteers full of ideas of how to leave a meaningful impact on women's life here. We were ready to give our everything to achieve a common goal and to work hard for it. We knew that in six weeks it's impossible to change the whole world, or a whole city, but we believed in changing something in one person's whole world; whether it would be one's mindset, attitude or view on things in general.

The problem was, that there wasn't a common goal we would have been heading to. What we faced with all of our excitement was a wall of counterarguments, lots of questions not being answered and lack of willingness to listen genuinely. We were sharing our reasons for choosing this project but never actually got to hear the local committee's reasons for creating the project. We didn't know, what was supposed to be the aim of the things we were asked to do.

We wanted to take ownership of the project but as a response to that we got long procedures to go through in order to get our ideas to the project agenda. The communication felt non-existing, when searching for answers just got you from person to person; there was always someone else who was responsible for this topic, and as we didn't get a proper preparation in the beginnig, we had no clue who that person could have been.

In addition to all of these, the NGO we were supposed to work with, closed after our first week, because of summer. Accommodation issues distracted us from focusing fully to the wanted achievement of the project as a team. Along the way, our group became smaller and smaller, as people left because of the chaotic situation and when finding some more promising opportunities.

Today the last two of us also resigned from working with the local committee. There was nothing more left than a name of the project and continuous discussions about the same issues without any improvement. We don't have a clear plan for the remaining two weeks, but we are sure we don't want to spend them stuck in something which doesn't exist.

Going through all of these, has of course been disappointing. After several days and hopeless conversations, our comments have too many times been type of "this one was the worst ever". As an AIESECer myself experiencing something like this has sometimes made me think if I still do believe in the organisation and want stay working with it after going back home. However, when wondering that out loud, I've also got good comments which speak for it: leaving after seeing problems it's actually about leaving the opportunity to make things better.

As for now, I still want to stay in the country and I still want to work for gender equality. And I still believe in making an impact. The next step is to broaden our working possibilities through our already existing contacts and searching for new ones. We still have two weeks to make all the best out of the experience. Challenge accepted.