I mentioned in the prior post that there are two types of traditional troglodyte houses. The first is by digging a pit in the ground. The second way is by digging into the side of a mountain and then creating the same format for the house. While still in Matmata, we visited a family in their home of this style and they served us our lunch. Our guide said that this family is a semi-nomadic Berber family. So evidently, they live part of the year in another location.

The first photo is the entrance to their home and the Berber couple are coming out to greet us. Their entrance door is under the fish but I never learned about the significance of the fish.

The second photo is the entrance to the house which is really like a cave entrance way, dug into the mountain.

The entrance cave led to their courtyard, just like the courtyard in the pit-dug troglodyte houses. On a side note, our guide told us that no troglodyte house in Tataouine ever had white paint around the doors or windows UNTIL George Lucas did it in Star Wars movies. Our guide called the white paint the “George Lucas effect.” We saw several houses like this in Matmata. We ate lunch in the room on the left in this photo.

This was where we ate lunch with our host starting to serve us.

This was one of the main dishes that we were served. It was basically eggs over tomatoes. The rest of our lunch was salad with eggs, fresh baked bread, vegetable stew, and sweets, pears, grapes, and tea for dessert.