So I'm dusting off the old blogging skills, and here's the latest in my adventures abroad. My hope is that through these posts you can keep up to date and learn about Tunisia. This time around I am a Fulbright Public Policy Fellow based in Tunis. Please let me know if you have any questions or comments if you read along.
I hope that everyone who reads this can learn about Tunisia along with me. I recently discovered that my previous blog on "Learn about Mauritania" from my Peace Corps days had over 11,000 views - for only 16 posts. Now I know that my family must have read and re-read some of the posts, but probably not to that extent. I realized though that this is my opportunity to share experiences and culture with more people than I could possibly ever hope to meet. And I hope that through my experiences and interactions here we can collectively breed tolerance, peace, and perhaps a little bit of understanding.
For the upcoming months I will be a Fulbright Public Policy Fellow at the Tunisian Ministry of Trade and Handicrafts. The fellowship is divided into a 80-20 split where the majority of time is spent working as a "special assistant" in the ministry. The remaining time is for personal academic research. Right now it appears that my broadly defined task will be to develop and design a practical guide for export procedures to the US. As for the other time, I'm still formulating exactly what I'm going to do, but will keep you posted. I would like to somehow study how economic opportunities are changing and possibly if and how they can, or would, affect the the democratic transition - but still in the brainstorming phase. Ultimately I expect that this experience (along with other service oriented projects like Peace Corps) will be more of a learning experience for me. I hope that I can take the lessons I learn here and apply them for the public good later in life.
It is an incredible honor to be selected as part of the inaugural class of the Fulbright Public Policy Fellowship, and I'm very excited to have the opportunity to experience Tunisia during such a critical transition time. Obviously the transition road is long, but persistence and optimism will hopefully not diminish in weeks to come. I certainly pretend to be no expert in the region or country. And after all, I will still be here less than one year. But still, I hope that through the chronicling of my adventure some people can get a glimpse of the beautiful complexities surrounding the Middle East and North African region, and Tunisia in particular.
