I’m sitting on the ledge of what I keep insisting is the loggia of an eco lodge in a small village in the Middle Atlas Mountains with a stunning view of the neighboring peaks and an 18th century Berber granary that bears more than a passing resemblance to a Tibetan monastery. You can only get here in 4x4s on a dirt road from the nearest sizable town, about two kidney-bouncing hours distant via a pass over eight thousand feet high. The temperature isn’t bad – it feels like the 80s in the shade – and it’s one of those places that makes one prone to introspection because there’s precious little else to do here. We could wander over to the weekly souk, but we did that this morning and it’s about a 30 minute walk and there’s not much shade. The soil is rocky and the trees don’t get very big at this altitude.

I set out forty days ago on this seminar to explore the topic of religious diversity in North Africa, and, as we face our final couple of days as a group before heading our separate ways either in Marrakech, Casablanca, or New York, the question has been raised more than once: what have we learned on this seminar?

Well, ironically, what I’ve learned is that there really isn’t much religious diversity in North Africa. There used to be, once upon a time, but there is rather little of it today, and a good chunk of it is diversity that’s either celebrated beyond proportion (Moroccans and Tunisians are damned proud of their Jews, which combined probably equals the Jewish population of any good sized city in the United States), or completely ignored altogether (Djerba is home to one of the largest Ibadi communities outside of Oman (in which they form a majority), and most Tunisians have no idea). Christianity doesn’t exist in any real capacity in either country; it’s a foreign religion (although it didn’t used to be, back before Islam) now serving the handful of hangers-on from colonialism who were born here and refuse to “go home” to a country that they have no attachment to, or to the growing number of sub-Saharan Africans who have landed here in what they hope is their way to somewhere else.

This exercise in exploring religion has opened other doors, however. Inadvertently, we’ve gotten insight into the new Berber awakening in Morocco. The village where I am currently is Berber, although the inhabitants happily engage the rudimentary Arabic of our group, mostly because they’re so damned friendly. Never mind that a good number of them don’t speak much more Arabic than we do, which was not the impression voiced by our dapper Arabic instructor in Rabat, who announced his confusion about why Amazigh should be named an official language in the constitution since, “they all speak Arabic and they only need to speak Berber with each other.” The adult Americans studying diversity were far more into the concept of Amazigh’s official status than he was, not that it mattered.

Despite the fact that barely anyone we spoke to had any intention of participating in the constitutional referendum, the result was announced the morning we visited the Jewish Museum in Casablanca: 78% of registered voters turned out, and they approved the new constitution with 95% of the vote. Allegedly. And this, at least according to major news outlets, is one of the more promising reform attempts in the Arab world. I’m not sure what Abdullah is doing on his throne over in Jordan, but that’s been labeled a distant second.

Then, of course, there’s Tunisia, which apparently exploded into demonstrations the morning we left to come back to Morocco. It’s hard to say what’s going on there: as I mentioned in my last blog post, most of the Tunisians themselves seem pretty certain that the revolution has stalled, and they haven’t had the hundreds of thousands gather in Tahrir to try to jump start it again. People are scared of “the Islamists,” although that faceless organization claims in Tunisia as well as Egypt that it just wants to participate in the process that long been denied to it. Those of the generation of our guide in the country (the one who isn’t an organized crime boss, no matter what certain people in this group say) were brought up in a system only slightly less militantly secular than Turkey’s, and they fear what a more visible Islamist presence will bring. I asked point blank the question about Tunisia’s family code, modeled on the French system and far and away the most egalitarian in the Arab world—do the Islamists indicate a desire to change it? The speaker, a firebrand who went on at length about the Islamists, ending with an explosive, “They have no value for human life!” didn’t take the bait I offered, replying simply that all parties want women involved in re-writing the constitution. Which wasn’t the question I asked.

This afternoon, unable to nap (there was a fly that took a liking to my hair), I pulled out my Kindle and fired up a special issue of Foreign Policy about the Arab Spring I bought a while back, mostly on the recommendation of Issandr El Amrani, who is a featured contributor. When I first bought it, I read all the articles on Egypt and skipped the ones on Tunisia. Like the Greek –opolous-es and –ides-es, Tunisian names all seem to be Bou-something, and they run together for the non-initiated. Now that I can tell a Bou Azizi from a Bourguiba, I went back to see how much of it I can get now, and it all spits out the same: Ben Ali grew increasingly isolated after years of justifying his harsh rule on the basis that Tunisia had worked too hard to turn into Algeria, mired in civil conflict with its own Islamist factions. As people realized that the Islamists weren’t a threat – had never been, perhaps – things grew worse. And then, in January, the unthinkable happened: Ben Ali fled off to Saudi Arabia after his streets filled with the unhappy, disenfranchised youth who, thanks to plentiful university education, are vastly overqualified for jobs in the dominant agriculture, tourism, and industrial sectors.

The airline we flew to Djerba—formerly owned by the family of the hated first lady–had been so hurriedly combined with the national carrier after January 14 that they had only had time to paint over the title on the airplane, leaving the rest of the logo intact. Our ticket may have said TunisAir Express, but everything about the flight was a SevenAir operation. Even on the airport directory pointing the way to check-in, someone had crossed out “SevenAir” with a magic marker and written in “TunisAir Express” by hand. And they really try to pretend this is always how it’s been.

On the other hand, on Djerba, the Shaykh of the Ibadi community offered up a much simpler and possibly more eloquent statement about the outcome of the revolution: “I wouldn’t have been able to host you in my house this time last year,” he said. “It just would not have been possible. I would have gotten in trouble and so, perhaps, might you.”

This seminar isn’t about the revolution, but it’s hard not to have it front and center when you’re in a country that just had a revolution – and appears to be desperately trying to get back to normal. In fact, much of North Africa appears to be about imagining the way things should be—we should be a multi-party democracy, we just aren’t; we should have a large celebrated Jewish population, we just don’t; we should welcome Muslims of all stripes, we just ignore the ones who don’t practice exactly the way we do; we should celebrate the Berbers, but not too much—rather than recognizing the way things are.

And so, as with my sojourn to Turkey in 2004, I feel as though I’ve just scratched the surface. But at least now I know which questions to ask. In many ways, I feel as though this isn’t the end – it’s just the end of the beginning.

Let’s see, where did we leave off? As I recall, my last perhaps slightly morbid blog post was written about a week ago as we spend down the motorway toward Tunis to catch a flight to Djerba, an island in the south that currently acts as a five star refugee camp for rich Libyans.  We flew down on a rubber-band powered aircraft of the sort that would normally have me gripping the seat and making peace with my Lord, but I was tired and the flight was kind of smooth, and it wasn’t that bad. I’ve actually been on smaller aircraft, although the flight back on a regional jet took nearly half as long. TunisAir was certainly more friendly than Royal Air Maroc (as I write this, I’m in the Tunis Airport waiting on a flight to Casablanca that will be my third flight with RAM this trip, which is  three for three on delays). Ironically, the Djerba airport is far nicer than the Tunis airport, what with all the traffic it receives for the resort area, not unlike the Cancun airport vis a vis Mexico City International.

So. Djerba. If the coast where we’d been previously is the Tunisian version of the Riviera Maya, Djerba is like Cozumel, only with a vibrant traditional culture that is not entirely coexistent with the rampant tourism that feeds the island economy. And, as I mentioned, a lot of rich Libyans who are weathering the civil war in their country (the border is about an hour and a half drive away) in all-inclusive resorts. There was something really weird about watching the Libyan ladies in their veils lounging next to topless European women.

Side note: I have come to the following two conclusions: first, European women who swim topless really have no self-awareness. They’ll just whip off their tops and let the boobs swing like one of those perpetual motion devices with the clacking balls you find on executive desks. It’s a little disturbing to watch, at least for this semi-prudish American. Second, men in this part of the world have absolutely no issue with adjusting themselves … often and repeatedly … for all to see. A couple of times I’m wasn’t sure they if were making adjustments so much as hitting the reset button. I’m sure the issue here is that I’m the prude, but … dude. Move it over and let go already.

Where was I? Right. Djerba.

So, Djerba is home to one of the few sizable Jewish communities left in Tunisia, and one of the oldest synagogues that claims to have a stone brought by Jewish refugees from the destruction of the Temple in 571 BC. This was also the site of an al-Qaeda attack in 2002, so security is ramped up, if a little weird. You go through security and x ray machines before you’re allowed to enter the complex, but security is across the street, so … the effectiveness seems a little limited. Anyway, it was a fascinating experience, and I got some nice photos of the group in reflective moments there. As in Morocco, Tunisians are proud of their Jews even though there’s desperately few of them left–200 or so in Tunis; the synagogue is surrounded by razor wire and armed guards, and that has preceded the revolution. There’s another 5,000 on Djerba, where the community did rally around the Jewish community in the wake of the 2002 attack, which consisted of a car laden with explosives being driven into the wall of the temple. You can’t tell where it happened, so competently has it been rebuilt.

The other thing that Djerba is known for is its Ibadi population. The Ibadis are a sect of Islam that is neither Sunni nor Shi’ite, and trace their origins back to the Sunni/Shi’i split when a third group decided that, by attempting to negotiate to prevent the divide that the caliph had lost his legitimacy, and so they went off to form their own community. These people were known as Kharajites, from the Arabic kharaja, “To go out.” Everyone hated the Kharajites and, it has been made very clear by the high ranking members of the Ibadi community that we met on Djerba, the Ibadis are not Kharajites. They look like Kharajites, they walk like Kharajites and quack like them, but they’re not them. Got it? ‘Cos I don’t.

At any rate, since Paul, our cat herder, does his doctoral work on the Ibadis, specifically on Djerba, we got in to see one of their manuscript libraries (fascinating and terrifying at the same time, since leaves from 8th century manuscripts were blowing all over the room, and at one point their hired cameraman put his tripod down on the only existing copy of a 10th century manuscript (!)). We also got to meet the Shaykh of the Ibadi community of North Africa. It was really quite interesting.

And then we went back to the pool and drank beer with the veiled Libyan ladies and the topless European women.

Back to  Tunis we came, where we actually had—Lord Almighty—a free day! I was probably a little too excited to go to a grocery store for the first time in five weeks, but it was neat. With some time to explore the Tunisian capital, it was nice to cap the experience here. One of the highlights of the program was a visit to Sidi Bou Said, a whitewashed (with blue highlights) village that clings to a cliff overlooking the point where the Gulf of Tunis (green-blue) meets the Mediterranean (blue-green) that is quite reminiscent of a Greek island. Sue and I ditched the group when they moved on to another beach area for free time and stayed in Sidi Bou Said and had a wonderful time exploring alleyways and nooks and being pestered by the desperate, desperate shopkeepers trying to earn a living in these revolutionary times.

Tunisians are, by and large, pessimistic about the status of the revolution. This week I read two completely contradictory articles, one in Foreign Policy and one in The Economist. FP’s article talked about the massive frustration among the young and disenfranchised who started the revolution (they’re still disenfranchised), while the Economist had an article that was so upbeat it seemed like a different country. Quite frankly, I’m more inclined to take the FP article seriously because it seemed to match more of what we saw on the ground, and what we heard from people we spoke with (with the exception of the resident conspiracy theorist who is convinced that our last tour guide was an organized crime boss for reasons that I don’t quite understand. “I just saw things,” she says. “What things?” ask I. “You know, things.” I remain unconvinced, based on her previous conviction that the reason that no one was voting in the little village that we stopped in on Referendum Day was that the residents were afraid to vote in front of foreigners – ?!).

Unlike in Egypt, where the military seized control (and clearly wants to hand it back as quickly as possible), in Tunisia the parliament still functions. The current prime minister is a crony of the ex-president, and there’s a lot of speculation that he doesn’t really want change. There are protests daily, but none the size of the tens of thousands who have been demonstrating in Cairo to restart that country’s revolution, which has also stalled out. In the meantime, Tunisia limps along. In the souq, the sellers are desperate, and thank you not only for buying, but for coming to Tunisia. Tourism is down by half, and in a country where tourism is the largest segment of the economy, that’s bad. Last night a couple of us went to what is clearly a cute little row of restaurants and shops for dinner. We got there at 7:30 and half of the restaurants were closed, and by the time we were done with dinner at 9:15, pretty much everything was closed. This on a Friday when things should be hopping. This is life in the new Tunisia, and it’s clear that no one’s happy with it.

And so, I’m about to go back to Morocco for the last five days before heading home to the US. Moods are picking up now that we’re in the final stretch, and it seems like we can deal with anything now that the end is in sight. It’s been interesting, but, man … it’s been long. And there’s still new stuff to go: the Atlas Mountains and our finale in Marrakech!