I was introduced to shakshuka on my first trip to Jerusalem, when a young woman slapped a flyer in my hand promising the Best Traditional Israeli Breakfast for fewer shekels than I’d been dropping on coffee drinks. Shakshuka, a traditional dish claimed by Israel and North Africa (particularly Tunisia), features eggs poached in a flavorful sauce […]
Last May, Lebanese lawmaker Walid Jumblatt called for marijuana to be legalized in Lebanon. While he never touched the weed himself, he said, “I support growing cannabis for medical use and to improve the living conditions of farmers in north Lebanon and the Bekaa Valley,” according to the Daily Star. Now he’s back in the […]
Rachel Carson would be shocked: A recent study has found that the concentrations of banned chemicals like PCBs, DDT and organochlorines found in human breast milk of women sampled throughout Tunisia indicate widespread and elevated contamination particularly in older members of rural populations with high dairy and meat intake. Although these concentration levels are relatively low for […]
Tunisians are famous the world over for trash selfies. Now simple calculations made by this Green Prophet shows that Tunisia, and many other countries in the MENA region, could spend at least three times as less than they do for collecting municipal solid waste by donkey.
More than 100 graffiti artists were invited to Tunisia as part of the Djerbahood project – an inventive rehabilitation initiative that uses street art to turn a dusty village into an inspiring open air gallery.
Street art helps the young generation cope with discontent and dissent- making space for fresh ideas, while preserving old values. At least that’s how we see it in this fantastic series of Tunisian murals which take the old Arabian domed style architecture in Tunisia and playfully interacts with it.
Tunisia offers other-worldly landscapes, fantastical and mysterious. Did you know that four of the Star Wars movies were partially filmed in the southern part of the country? (Tunisia had a starring role as the planet Tatooine). Now, adding to the Atlas mountains and Sahara desert, the tiny republic has another tourist attraction – a newborn lake.
Today Redeyef, Tunisia, is quite a scene: it’s a decrepit French colonial houses are surrounded by mountains of black phosphate sand, radioactive water lakes and its inhabitants, the vast majority unemployed, walk around with yellowish brown toothy smiles.
Holoscenes is a public art and performance installation that is a visual response to climate change. It’s centered around three people-sized aquariums that flood and drain and re-flood using powerful hydraulics that move 12 tons of water per minute.
Social media has again proved to be a powerful tool in Tunisia, where a group of people started a Facebook page that turns the ubiquitous ‘selfie’ into an opportunity to express disgust with the country’s stinking trash problem.
As I enter Arafet Ben Marzou’s new “office” at the top floor of an apartment building facing the lakes in Tunis, I am met with a very familiar feeling: that silicon valley, young brains, start-up feel. Only this time it is “ à la Tunisienne”, and I have to say, I prefer it.
To sleep at Dar Ben Gacem is to spend a night in a bygone era. Located deep in the warren of alleyways and vendors that make up Tunis’ labyrinthian medina, this newly renovated artsy boutique hotel offers a tasteful glimpse of Ottoman period architecture and art.
With its oversized ears and soft brown eyes, the world’s smallest canid is also probably the cutest. But being adorable has turned out to be lethal for the Fennec Fox in Tunisia, where both locals and tourists are loving the species to death.
The Driba Atelier (or L’atelier Driba) in Tunis is one of those unique places that emanate a natural and humble love for creativity. Their motto “on travail pour le plaisir et avec plaisir” (we work for pleasure and with pleasure), their obsession: to restore objects from the past and preserve the Tunisian handicraft heritage.
Tunisia was the first Arab country to talk about environment policy. Green Prophet attends a local conference on water and pollution and stunningly sees how there is no framework for Tunisia to make environmental change and progress. Read our report.
The history of handmade tiles in Tunisia is fascinating. Green Prophet digs deep between the tiles of a rundown factory in Roman Neapolis, Nabeul, a historic tile making center in Tunisia, to discover what fragments remain of this disappearing art.
After the success of TEDx Hiriya in Israel which focused on sustainability, its now the turn of TEDx Carthage, which will be held on the 8th of December in Tunisia.
Guess who might be the culprit carrying a new SARS-like virus to people in the Middle East?
Tunisian female footballer Fatima Maleh announced on national radio that she is now a man, legally registered in civil records as Mohammad Ali. One not-small step for this man; and a giant leap for Tunisia’s lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) community.
The world’s biggest street art exhibition was demolished this week in Paris just one month after opening to the public. Destruction of the wildly popular Tour Paris 13 was staged as carefully as its creation. This wall-to-wall-to-ceiling-to-floor painting project was performance art every step of the way.
Sometimes if you stand on the wrong corner of a busy street in Cairo, taxis will drive right on by, guilt-free, while in less populated cities throughout the Middle East and Africa, they are simply hard to find. Experimental taxi apps are in the works to ease the problem, but Brazil’s Easy Taxi heading our […]
Star Wars fans lovingly restored Luke Skywalker’s Tatooine home in Tunisia recently, but the former home of young Anakin, who would eventually become Darth Vader, is about to be engulfed by fast-moving desert sand dunes.
It’s hard to monitor vessels that pollute out at sea, so five aircrafts from Algeria, France, Italy, Morocco and Spain got together to keep an eye on the Mediterranean Sea in a recent coordinated aerial surveillance program organized by the Regional Marine Pollution Emergency Response Center for the Mediterranean Sea (REMPEC).
More setbacks for Middle East solar or the only way a big dream can move ahead? DESERTEC has canceled its commercial partnership to build a solar super-grid with Dii GmbH, according to a press release issued by DESERTEC.
Thirty-three people are dead from MERS, a coronavirus that the World Health Organization (WHO) is calling a “threat to the entire world”. MERS, for Middle East Respiratory Syndrome, is a newly discovered virus that causes severe respiratory infection.
