Tunisia is not widely publicized or known in the US, other than the fact it's an oil-producing country. The closest depiction of Tunisia I have seen was in the Bourne series, where the protagonist travelled to Morocco, which I assumed was similar to Tunisia. The movie shows Morocco as a poor, chaotic place where the buildings all look dilapidated and the streets filled with pot-holes. Since the country is in Northern Africa, I assumed the country was all desert. In fact, Tunisia has a very diverse geography and economy, with coastal towns attracting tourism and mining towns scattered throughout (Wikipedia). While there is a fair amount of desert, there are also mountains and agricultural plains in the country. Tunisia is also a primarily Arabic nation, although it was once a French colony (Wikipedia), which would suggest that the country would be politically volatile, but the government is surprisingly stable. The country ranks near the middle for most landmarks of civilization, such as health care and infrastructure (CIA World Factbook), which is surprising since it is so under-represented in the media, meaning that one would expect it to be near the bottom. Tunisia seems to go against many stereotypes of African and Arabic nations, but there are sure to be some that are true.
Sources:
"Tunisia." Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia. Web. 20 Dec. 2011. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tunisia.
"CIA - The World Factbook." Welcome to the CIA Web Site — Central Intelligence Agency. Web. 20 Dec. 2011. https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/geos/ts.html
If you saw Star Wars, Tunisia was the main filming location for Tatooine. There are interesting links if you look that up on the web.
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