Tunis: Mindfulness in the Medina (ft. Joy Malonza)

Our travel journeys begin not with a plane ticket, but
with a feeling. We don't always know how we ended
up right where we need to be, but once we're there,
the journey feels inevitable. This is Wayfinder, life changing travel.
This podcast goes beyond the guide books into the heart
and soul of real life travelers as they journey around
the world. I'm your host, Daniel Scheffler, and I have
spent my life traveling the globe and staying curious to
the ways we human beings experience the world, whether it's
a meeting place, a shared meal, or a single conversation.
I've seen firsthand how our stories connect us and inspire us.
Today we meet Joy Melonza, a travel consultant and advocate
for ethical tourism whose journey led her to Tunis, the
vibrant capital of Tunisia in North Africa. Joy traveled to
Tunas as just one stop on a hectic itinerary, but
soon discovered that what she truly needed was waiting for
her in the corners of the city's winding corridors. She
unlocked Tunis through taste, texture and connection, sharing her favorite
spots to eat, explore, and engage with the city's soul,
from conscious luxury to the people who shape its rhythm.
Come along on this journey, guided by the senses. Born
in Kenya to politically conscious parents, Joy's journey with ethical
tourism began long before her trip to Tunisia.
When I was sixteen starting university. It had been about
seven years since coming to the United States, and during
that time we weren't able to leave the country because
they're waiting for all that people were to get solidified.
As soon as I got that green card, I was like,
all right, it's my time to go.
And I was applying for.
Visas yeh, like crazy, just so I could travel to
other countries. And during university, my school was paying for
a lot of it, getting travel for free on the
school's dime. That really kick started the travel bug that
was always in me but had to lay dormant. And
then years and years and years later, after being to
so many different countries, I hopped in a podcast about
ethical travel hygiene. That episode was really popular and I
thought to myself, Oh, this is how I've been traveling
for a really long time. I think a lot of
times when we talk about ethical tourism, it's respect the locals. Okay,
that's the first step, but there's so much that goes
into it, right, things like really understanding the historical context,
really understanding who's the dominant group, who are the marginalized group,
how did those people feature in the tourism industry.
In college, Joyce studied abroad in Morocco, a place she
returned to often. That first open door led to another,
guiding her towards tunis When you first arrived in the country,
what was the first thing you noticed?
How welcoming it was.
I've had several difficult experiences during my travels as a
black woman. Anywhere you go, you are going to face misogyny,
anti blackness, and then a toxic cocktail of both misogyn
noir as it's called. So Tunisia was a beautiful welcome
break from all of that. Tunisia has had a history
of anti blackness, misogynere towards local black Tunians and two
migrants coming in from neighboring countries. So not only did
I think, wow, this is a welcome reprieve, I was
genuinely taken aback by having such a positive experience, knowing
that there's been this history. So when you are traveling
with the focus of community, not only do you get
to tap into people who can guide you, who can
tell you where to go because they have that on
the ground experience, but they are also more connected to
ways to help you you should anything arise.
You describe Tunis as a place of reprieve by way
of your senses. So tell me what were you coming
from when you first got to Tunis?
So, oh my goodness, that summer was hectic. I spent
some time in Dublin, London, bopping around different countries across Europe,
visiting friends, and then coming to Tunis and have an
ability to say, okay, I don't even want to leave
the city. Our original plan was actually to try to
go south to see the waterfalls or maybe even to
the desert, but we decided no, We're going to spend
our week here, just in Tunis, which is something I
always recommend, being able to spend time and experience the mundane,
to slow down and almost experience it like a local
person would. For example, something I'm trying to do actually
more myself is when I go to me really slowing
down and reading through what I'm looking at instead of okay,
we have an hour let's run through this place so
we can go to the next place.
See, yeah, I love this thing that you said about
mindful travel, Like a large part of ethical travel is
slowing down to learn these histories and reflect upon them.
Tell me a little bit more about that.
Your destination is someone's home. Your luxurious vacation is someone's
birthplace where they've experienced all manner of things, from rich
heritage to marginalization to political strife, all those things are
alive in their day to day and taking time to
understand that that place isn't a set it's a movie
set where you get to have a curated version of it.
It's a place that's alive with real, actual people. And
the only way to interact with that place, especially if
you're somebody from the Imperial Core or the global North,
is to be mindful. And that word mindful can mean
so many different things, all the way from actual mindfulness,
practice of being in your body, being aware of your senses,
being aware of the little different things that make up
the place that you're in, the sounds, the smells, the sights.
It can range from that all the way to mindful
of the power dynamics, mindful of the political history, mindful
of the current political events that are going on, Understanding
what your presence is doing, what the posting on social
media is doing.
These things all.
Mixed in together to create what mindful travel is and means.
When you arrived in two Nous, where were you staying?
Darben Gassam was the hotel. They have two residencies. There's
Darben Gassam Pasha and Darben Gassam Kahia. I stayed in
Kahia and it was beautiful. Both hotels are super stunning
and they're five minutes away from each other, and they're
in the Medina of Tunis.
At the heart of most African cities is its medina,
the original walled city where trade, faith, and daily life
come together. In Tunis, the Medina is an eye catching
labyrinth of bustling markets and historic architecture, and the.
Boutique hotels that are available in the Medina are so
deeply connected to social enterprise and heritage preservation. I always
recommend that if you're traveling to North Africa, in whatever city,
you're going to stay in the Medina because that really
connects you to the culture and the beating heart of
the city. So because we were having such slow days.
We were just going around the city at a leisurely paced.
One of the things I had learned from some of
the folks at our hotel in Darban Gassam was the
bougain villas that Tunas has six different colors. So me
being me, I went around and called all the times
I saw a new color. And this was genuinely very
exciting to me, mostly because I had committed myself to
being in my body and making sure that I was
actually taking in all the sentences, being away from my phone,
being present in the moment, and noticing these little things,
which was a detail that I don't think I've ever
really truly stopped to notice about other places. Oh the
color of flowers, Who cares? That's part of what makes
Tunas so special.
The more joy let her senses guide her through Tunis,
the more present she felt, and after her eyes saw
the flowers, she felt the sea on her skin.
I love the tuniss on the Mediterranean because you're able
to go from one moment being in the hearts of
the Medina to fifteen minutes later being on a seaside
restaurant watching the waves roll in the calming breathe and
because of its location, it never gets too hot.
And traveling to North Africa, one of the things that's
so part of the experiences the sound.
It's the sound of the culture, prayer, people being called
to the mosque five times a day. That is such
a prevalent sound that obviously makes up the cultural religious
heritage of Tunis.
That was everywhere.
Wandering through the Medina of Tunas Joy was immersed in
the sounds of the people and the communities around her.
It's everywhere you are enveloped in the sound of local people. Socially,
if you're saying in the Medina, you are not able
to escape from the sound of life happening around you.
The soundtrack reminds us that travel isn't just about seeing
new places, it's about sharing space with everyday life.
The Medina often has shops that don't close until very
very late, but being in that is being part of
the beating heart of the community. So I think it's
part of it and you have to embrace it. Another thing,
if you're North Africa, you must go to a hammam.
Hammams are traditional bathhouse. I know that you can almost
find them anywhere nowadays. They've been appropriated outside of the region,
but to experience a truly authentic hammam is to go
to North Africa and really seek them out.
After experiencing hammams in other Northern African cities, Joy was
determined to try dar l Jeld, a haven for rest
and rejuvenation in Tuness.
It's a very rich experience.
When you step into the hammam, it's filled with plumes
of steeing from the warm water that just envelops you
as and as you walk in. An attendant was there
and scrubbed us down, made sure that we were as.
Clean as possible.
You feel like a baby afterwards because you are truly cleansed.
And then we sat in the sauna for what almost
felt like hours until I couldn't breathe and I thought, okay,
I have to get out of here. Yes, but that's
really a moment to relax rest. When you book her Mom,
you have almost two hours to just sit there and
really enjoy the experience, because it's not like going to
a shower where you take ten minutes. It's a culturally
rich experience. We were also treated to a really beautiful massage.
If you book through a hotel. Usually they'll have that,
and then we were also given these sumptuous little treats
drinks to cool off afterwards, because you want to have
something cold to contrast the warmth that you just spent
two hours being enveloped by.
Which leads us to one of Joy's favorite concepts and
a phrase you might not expect in the context of
ethical tourism, conscious luxury.
Conscious luxury sounds like an oxymoron, and in a lot
of ways it can be. Luxury is meant to be
out of reach, out of touch. It's meant to extract
from one group and give to another. That is what
makes luxury so alluring to people. It's the idea that
I get to have while you don't. One of the
things I found to be really interesting though, in tunis
you're able to access pieces of luxury, not just in
the sense that you're entering opoland spaces, but the sense
that you're entering beautiful spaces, culturally rich spaces. But they're
still connected to community, they're still connected to heritage preservation,
and that's what makes them conscious while still being decadent
and sumptuous and luxurious, but they're not necessarily excluding a
population or shutting out people. I found that to be
very true at Darben Gassam's hotels, in particular, because you
are weighted on hand and foot, everything is taken care
of for you. The rooms are stunningly ornate. And not
only that, but you know the social enterprise that is
actively working within the community. It employs people and pays
them a fair wage. So while you're having this amazing experience,
you know that the entire ecosystem around you is also
tapping into the positive externalities of such an enterprise.
Yea, But before we travel any deeper, here our joy's
favorite flavors of tunis and where to find them.
There's this bread called milbe, which is like a flatbread.
It's actually very similar to something I have in my
country in Kenya, which is called chapati, but in Tunisia
and Morocco you eat it with butter or with a
sweet jam. Also, there's this pine nut seed flower porridge
almost called a see de gooz gou, and you can
have it in different kinds of flavors. And I had
never had anything like that.
Yeah. Can we just say that word again? It sounds
so fabulous.
Yes, it's called a seed.
De gooz goo a seed that schoozchoo. Yeah.
So I had it on the first try warm, so
that was more porridge like. Then the second time I
had it on a rooftop of dar Lgel at dinner
and that was more of like a cold dessert presentation.
Wow delicious.
Some food spots I would recommend are starting in the
Medina funduk el Attarine. This is a great place to
go for nice lunch. It's actually owned by the same
people who owned d dar Algaeld also has a beautiful
rooftop for lunch. You can go there, you don't have
to stay there lovely. There's also Chez Hairene and Weld Muffida.
These are places that will serve you really local, authentic cuisine.
They're very popular amongst local community, so make sure you
go there early in order to actually get a spot
and indulge in authentic food and cuisine. And then for dinner.
The place is called the Gulf. This is where my
sister and I would go often for dinner. It was
in the neighborhood of La Marsa and it's on the seaside.
It's a beautiful place for having a sunset dinner by
the Mediterranean waters.
To really understand how to navigate a place, joy says,
we have to look where most tourists don't, to the community,
shaping the city quietly from the inside out.
Looking for and learning about the history of the indigenous
society and or the black community that exists there is
extremely important. These are the communities that will often be
at the helm of the service that is provided to
us a traveler, but they'll be behind the scenes of
the culture. So if you want to get the heart
of the local culture, it's important to understand, okay, who
makes local culture. Oftentimes it is the marginalized communities because
they take the scraps of what's given and force their
way to creating something beautiful. That is a relic of survival,
a testament to the will to be there despite almost
being stamped out, and that is connected to so much
history inherited. It's almost a shortcut to understanding a place.
So in Tunisia, we have the Amazek communities that were
there prior to the Islamic conquest in the seventh century,
but you also have the black communities that were brought
to North Africa through the transparent slave trade. Now in
Tunisia this Black population created an art form called Stumballei,
and it's not just a musical tradition, but it's also
a spiritual one. A lot of the stumb Ballei performers
and the heirritage keepers use it to connect spiritually to
indigenous traditions that the black populations brought with them from
West Africa, and they held on these traditions for centuries.
But here's the thing that complicates these conversations further. Despite
stumbali being so rich in culture, heritage and being used
in the forefront of the tourism scene, the people who
perform it, the heritage keepers, are still marginalized.
And that's the thing about the tourism.
Industry is it often appropriates these styles from groups, elevates
those styles, but keeps the group marginalized. And as a traveler,
we have to challenge that by humanizing the people who
do the music. Because music doesn't make itself. Look for
the labor that's hidden behind the thing you're consuming. Someone
made it, someone put it there. Who are they? Learn
about them, find out about.
Them, and wh're navigating. The Magnificent with the Mindful Joy
has plenty of suggestions.
Firstly, doing a tour of the central market. There's a
lot of different vendors with lots of street food. You
can even have street food tours, so highly recommend that.
There's a backing tour that you can take with this
company called Nomadic Bike Tour, and they can take you
to a local village about ten minutes away from Tunis
that is an artisanal village, so that you can really
get to see the art history. Mosaics are really key
to Tunisian history, so don't come away without a mosaic.
And you can also do tours that will take you
to local farms, local fishing spots. There's so many recommendations,
so instead of trying to create them yourself, find tour
companies that will do them for you. Tunis is really
good for nightlife. You are not in short supply. Mafel
Room is one really good spot to follow. They have
a ton of different music shows that they put on
and a lot of the music shows include Stumbali actually,
so if you want to experience Dumbali while you're in Tunis,
Mafo Room is a great place.
There's also Heavybee.
Downtown and then one thousand and one in Tunez. If
you follow these three locations on social media because they
often do collaborations with each other and different venues. You
are plugged into the nightlife activities that go on in the.
City, navigating by way of communities, curiosity, and sensory delights.
Joy had found her way to slowing down and getting present.
When the trip was over, she discovered a quiet sense
of change in herself.
When I got home after my time in Tunis, relaxing,
soaking in all the different experiences that I had, I
noticed that I was so much more well rested, like
the city free life into me because I spent so
much of that time being so mindful and so tapped
into elements of slowness and leisure and culture. When you
lead your travel with an ethos of mindfulness, a lot
of opportunities come to you instead of you necessarily having
to chase them down constantly. So a thing that that
led to that restore to feeling when I got home.
Travel can drain us or restore us for Joy, Tunas
did the latter, showing that mindfulness and presence isn't something
you pack in your bag, it's something you bring back
with you.
My message to future travelers to Tunis is to let
your curiosity lead you to heritage and let that connect
you to the heritage.
Makers before she arrived, had no idea that Tunisia would
change her pace and her perspective. She came to tunis exhausted,
but left renewed, reminded that presence itself can be our
greatest conscious luxury. Every journey shifts something inside us, but
the best ones don't just have us basking and good
food and beautiful architecture. They welcome us back to ourselves
wherever your path leads next, may you follow your senses
along the way. I'm Daniel Scheffler and this is Wayfinder
Life Changing Travel. Wayfinder Life Changing Travel is a production
of Iheart's Ruby Studio. I'm your host Daniel Scheffler. Our
show's executive producer is Sierra Kaiser. Our story producer is
Ryan Amador, with post production by James Foster and editing
by Sierra Spreen. Don't forget to subscribe to Wayfinder, and
please rate and review the show wherever you get your podcast.
Thanks for listening