Interview with Mrs. Rym Ben Becher, spouse of the Ambassador of Tunisia.
By Bonnie Klap, Editor in Chief.
What is the best part of being a Diplomat’s wife and what is the more challenging part?
The learning of new languages and getting to know new cultures is a beautiful and large part of our profession. We are accumulating a load of cultural experiences. I find it very stimulating to arrive in a new country and to discover the traditions, the customs, the museums and the literature.
I like to read and when I arrived, I started to read Dutch authors: Hella Haasse, Cees Nooteboom and Anna Enquist. As we moved quite frequently from country to country, the different weather, cultures, languages, friends and relations have allowed me to live several lives. I also think it is a very rewarding profession regarding interpersonal contacts, as it enables us to have contacts with large numbers of people of various professions and conditions.
However, herein lies the challenge: it is necessary to possess considerable resilience and inter-relationship skills. It is these qualities that help in a meaningful way to adapt to the new country and the creation of a new social network. As the new surroundings and the workplace are different from my natural surroundings, which are the Arab-Muslim and the Mediterranean, this makes the challenge even bigger. The separation from family is also difficult, especially when the parents age and feel less inclined to travel.
Tell us a bit about your background, such as education, career.
After studying modern literature, I passed the entrance exam to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Educated in a family of state employees, where the service of the State is sacred, I naturally went into public service. My ideal was to dedicate myself to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. I have the rank of Counselor and I served as Deputy Director in the Directorate for the relations to the European Union before following my husband to The Netherlands. The work at the Embassy abroad involves a strong interrelationship in terms of private and professional life.
My professional sacrifice is an act of solidarity with my husband. Being spouse of an Ambassador is a real function, which involves the required work, the representation and the interface with local companies. The possibility of having a double assignment exists, which means having an assignment in the same country, which I carried out in our Embassy in Rome, while my husband worked within our Consulate General in Rome.
What is your favorite place in Tunisia and what is your favorite place in The Netherlands?
Without hesitation I would say that my favorite place is the sea. The sea is really a part of my roots. The Gulf of Tunis is beautiful, dominated by a typical Mediterranean village to which I am very much attached: Sidi Bou Said. My mother was born there and I spent all my Sundays and my vacations at my grandparents’ home. Tunis as The Hague are cities located near the sea. I feel a sense of satisfaction walking along the sea, the beaches and dunes with its fine sand. The colors and the light remind me of the paintings by Dutch masters from another time. One of my most unusual and exciting experiences was to participate in “Wadlopen,” in other words leaving the continent by foot at low tide to reach the Island of Ameland.
The Wadden Islands are located on the Norhern coast. During low tide the sand banks are dry, which allows you to walk. We walked for 4 hours and made a loop of 14 kilometers. I was very slow, the last of our group of ASA! I love sport walks, but this was a big surprise, I did not know anything about this amazing practice to walk in the mud. I had to continually fight to get one foot after the other out of the layers of mud. I have read that this is also called “ horizontal climbing.” That excuses my slowness! In retrospect I have to say that, fortunately, there was no wind that day. The challenge would have been bigger!
