Café Blues House

It's a lazy Saturday morning. Rihanna Gaga and I spent most of it lounging at home after she woke up at a little past six in the morning. Before, she mostly slept until seven or eight, but nowadays it's mostly six o'clock or slightly later. I can only hope this will become a bit later again once the sun starts to rise later as we approach autumn.

Most of the cafés we've been to so far have been either at the seaside corniche close to our house, or in the part of La Marsa that borders Sidi Bou Said. Now, we walk towards Gammarth, an expensive neighbourhood to the West of where we live. Here, several more trendy cafés and restaurants are located. One of these is the Blues House, a modern affair with quite stunning views over the Marsa bay and the mountains behind it. We sit down at its terrace, where quite a few people are enjoying breakfast this Saturday. Blues House has several set breakfasts, but they are mainly variations on the same ingredients: hot drink, viennoiserie and eggs. I order the Blues breakfast, which adds fruit juice and a more elaborate omelet to this.

That is to say, I order this after I finally managed to attract the attention of a waiter. This is a recurring problem in Tunisian restaurants and cafés: service is incredibly slow and in fact, only after fellow guests who were waiting for someone to come to them for as long as we did pointed a waiter in my direction did one come to me.

Rihanna Gaga brought her Miffy doll. Miffy is the famous Dutch rabbit designed by Dick Bruna and she's crazy about it. She loves Miffy books, films, cartoons and not the least the doll that we bought for her at Schiphol airport in December. Miffy is Nijntje in Dutch, which Rihanna Gaga pronounces as 'anshe', a word she shouts several times a day, whenever she wants us to read a book, watch a film on youtube or is just looking for her doll.

Now, she speaks to it. This is something she really enjoys: she'll give one of her dolls to me - most often her moomin doll, but sometimes another one - and I have to start talking to her with it. She takes these conversations very seriously - much more seriously, in fact, than any conversation she has with us. One of the reasons for this is probably that with her dolls she is totally in control. She will speak sternly with them, strictly forbidding them this or that, or telling them to dress up, wipe their bottoms or any of the other things that we normally tell her to do. 

Rihanna Gaga, as her name already implies, is a bit of an actress. Most of her gestures are grand, she seems to constantly be performing her life on a stage, loving it when people applaud or praise her. She's in a particularly dramatic mood today, smiling as a diva while I feed her bits of omelet. This is enhanced by the beatiful red dress she's wearing - and which she picked herself. When she's finished eating - the omelet containe some harissa (Tunisian red hot chilli paste), which she doesn't like and she doesn't believe me when I tell her the rest is without it - she starts moving to the rather good blues music they're playing here and orders me to have Miffy dancing with her.

Since we lived in Dubai, she has developed a fantasy world. This started with her acting as if het Miffy doll was sleeping in her bed, and her telling us to be quiet because Miffy was sleeping and now encompasses a world populated by her animals and dolls and full of rich experiences (of which remarkably many have to do with imaginary poo being everywhere). Now, she grabs hold of my phone and starts a telephone conversation with her Moomin doll, who is back at home. She discusses the fact that her mother is working with him and then hangs up to tell me it's time to go home. I put her shoes back home, we pay (I decide to walk to the counter rather than waiting for a waiter, a word that word is really apt in this place) and we walk home. Rihanna Gaga's mood has become a bit worse. She often doesn't like to sit on her stroller on the way back, even though she has no problem with it when we leave the house. So I sing songs to her, which always helps. We must be a strange sight on this North African coast, with me singing Dutch nursery rhymes and Rihanna Gaga humming along