A visit to the Funky Cold Medina and Pot World

Hi there

Firstly, I apologise for borrowing the lyrics from Tone Loc (for those of us who can remember the 80's). Luckily, this is where my attempt at banal humour ends and for the rest of the entry, I will try to be a bit more serious! What I really want to do here is show you some of our happy snaps so to give a bit of an idea about what Tripoli looks like, in particular the Medina and the nearby town of Giryhan.

Tripoli is a fascinating place and we are lucky enough to be here at a time of great change. Tarabulus (as the locals call it) has been around since the Phoenicians settled here in around 500BC (thanks Lonely Planet!). The city has been occupied at different times by the Romans, the Arabs, the Spanish, the Ottoman Turks and most recently, the Italians. Tripoli is quite cosmopolitan and you will see people from countries such as Nigeria, Liberia, Tunisia, Morrocco, Sudan, Chad, the Philippines and India, as well as all the oil industry expats who come from all over the globe.

Looking towards Tripoli from the beach to the west of the city. The cream building directly behind the centre palm tree is the Corinthia Hotel. The Desert Rat's office is part of this complex.

At the moment, there is an immense amount of development going on - lots of new high-rise offices, hotels and other buildings are being built. As a result, there are a lot of old buildings coming down at a fast rate - it is not unusual to drive past a building one day and by the next it has been demolished. There is a real energy about the place and there is a lot of talk about how this development will attract tourism and further investment.

It is nice to see that some important historical sites are being preserved and restored. The Medina in the centre of Tripoli, is the heart of this ancient settlement is having a lot of work being carried out at present - buildings are being restored, paths being repaved and new businesses established. Both the Desert Rat and I went on a tour of the Medina with a local historian as part of our cultural awareness course that we did when we first came here. This was great as it gave us access to some of the many mosques and other buildings we would not normally be able to go into.

A tiled wall in one of the mosques in the Medina.

Walking around the Medina is an experience to behold - there are lots of tiny shops and doors that lead to houses and mosques and hostels and workplaces. Children are running around everywhere and at times can be incredibly crowded as people come to do their shopping or catch up with friends. There is also a distinctive aroma, that seems to become more pungent as summer goes on. This may be in part to the piles of rubbish around the place - a favourite haunt of the many cats that live there. But there are also scrumptious smells of the restaurants preparing Libyan food. We have been to a fantastic fish restaurant where you sit in a tiny room with only 4-5 tables and they bring you amazing fish and seafood dishes served with cous cous.

A street in the Medina

The markets (souks) are an important part of the Medina and sell everything from clothes, pottery, spices, gold jewelry, silver, Berber rugs, souvenirs, fruit and canaries in cages.

Looking into the copper souk

For those Gladiator fans, this is the Arch of Marcus Aurelius, a prominent landmark in the Medina remaining from Roman times.

The outer walls of the Medina and gate inside. This is across the road from the Desert Rat's office.

Tripoli itself lies on the coastal planes, but to the south there is a quite high escarpment. A few weekends ago we headed out that way to a town called Giryhan, a place famous for its pottery.

The road to Giryhan - looking back onto the plains. This windy road is now the 'scenic route' as a main highway has been built which is more direct. As you can see, she's pretty dry. There are many eucalyptus trees on the way and it is very easy to compare the landscape to some parts of Australia.

There road into Giryhan is flanked by lots of shops and stalls selling pottery. You can park your car at one end and just wander along the side of the road, buying what you want. The sellers are very friendly and keen for you to look at what they have to offer.

One of the stalls we bought some bowls from.

A fine selection - we have been told the brown bowls are the more traditional Libyan colouring for pottery where as the brighter blues and greens are influenced by Tunisian colour schemes.

After buying up big at the pottery stalls, we headed over to a troglodyte house which has been restored and is open for tourists. These houses, which are centuries old are essentially man made caves dug into the ground. There is an courtyard that is open to the surface.

Looking into a troglodyte house from the surface

The doors lead into rooms or tunnels that connect with other houses. We met the owner of the troglodyte and he told us that his family had lived here until the 70's and he had been born in the corner of the room we were sitting in (see below). His whole family lived in this room and they had used curtains to separate sleeping space from the living area. In fact, at this house visitors could actually rent a room and have a sleep if you wanted (it was quite tempting, I must say!). Like caves, the temperature stays quite constant so on a hot day as it was, the room was lovely and cool at a very pleasant 22 degC. We had a really nice cup of tea flavoured with mint and cardamon.

So this ends this entry of The Camel Diaries. I hope this gives you a feel for Libya and I look forward to writing more soon.

Sahara Gal and The Desert Rat

The Camel House

The Camel House

The adventure began in January when the Desert Rat and I came over for our reconnaissance trip. Overt the 6 days we were here, I think we looked at no less that 25 different houses. Now houses ain't small in these parts and we saw many that the two of us could have have shared with a family of seven (with 2 dogs, a cat and a small pony) and we would have still been living comfortably!! However, we settled on The Camel House, a modest 2 bedroom, 2 bathroom, 1 living area, 3 air conditioners and a feature fountain. Aah, a feature fountain you say - what every home needs. However, we decided that having megalitres of water constantly flowing in the centre of the loungeroom whilst watching telly was just too much. Thus our landlord kindly agreed to remove the fountain for us. Luckily, we took a photo before it was removed.....

The feature fountain as it was..

But why is it called The Camel House, I hear you ask?

We have named it as such, because in our back yard there is an extraordinarily large swimming pool which is shaped like a camel. I kid you not...

The pool is so big, that we can not get the whole camel in! This perspective is taken from the 'hump' side, with the nexk to the right and 2 legs to the left and centre. Laps consist of swimming from head to arse and back again!

It is a fantastic pool, lots of fun to jump around in on a hot day, as well as being big enough to get some speed up when doing laps. As a lady of leisure, as I am at the moment, I spend most mornings swimming backwards and forwards, trying to get a bit fitter.

We are extremely lucky in that we have a beautiful house, a fantastic pool and to top it all off, we are situated within an orange orchard. The orchard has a few hundred trees which include valencia and navel oranges, possibly tangellos (our citrus identification is not quite up to scratch yet), a few lemon tress and the odd peach tree. We are not responsible for looking after the orchard, we have a workman on site who tends to the trees, as well as looking after us. Shaban is a really nice guy who we think comes from the south of Libya and who looks after the pool, supervises the grounds and acts as our guard (loose term, he primarily opens the gate for people to drive in, deals with maintenance people and orchard workers and keeps an eye on the property when we are not here). We are gradually getting to know Shaban better as our Arabic improves.

Some photos ....

The unassuming front gate

Looking over the orchard from the rooftop (in January)

The Neighbourhood...

The house and orchard are definitely our sanctuary. Outside the big walls that surrounds the property, life is much dirtier and chaotic. Libya is a developing country and at the moment there is extensive demolition and rebuilding going on everywhere. We live between the towns of Janzoor and Serage, which has been traditionally irrigated agricultural land. There are many orchards and greenhouses full of vegetables in this area. However, the suburban sprawl is infiltrating the area. Massive 2-3 story houses are being built on subdivided farms and there appears to be minimal urban planning or common infrastructure. Roads are often little more than sandy tracks and there is no sewerage system - houses each have their own septic tank. Water is supplied by digging bores and there seems to be little consideration that water is a finite resource. Wherever you go there are large pools like ours and it is very common to see trees being irrigated for hours and even days at a time, with water flowing onto the roads. I worry about how much water is used on the property we live on. There are no qualms about emptying tanks to sweep them out and there are no water restrictions. At the present time the Great Manmade River, which is basically a pipeline from the Sahara, is bringing more water to the urban areas. This is sourced from an underground aquifer but no one really knows how long that will last. This extensive use of water is incredibly difficult to watch after coming from Australia. I realise now how good our public education programs regarding environmental issues are.

Anyway, enough of my rant. I won't say too much on waste disposal except to say that the plastic bag well and truly rules here and there is no universal rubbish collection system. We pay to have our rubbish removed and wish that our glass, cardboard, tins and plastic could be recycled. It is not compulsory to have the rubbish removed and as you can see in some of the following photos, rubbish is often dumped at the side of the road. On a positive note, I have been told by a Libyan that things have improved vastly over the last few years, which is an encouraging sign.

This is the turnoff to our road (behind the two piles of stones.

The road outside our property walls - as you can see, it is more of a sandy track than an actual road. The dark patch is where it has been hosed down!

Some Aussie Gum Trees - eucalypts have been planted all around Tripoli and particularly on the sides of roads. It's quite nice to have them around. I haven't spotted any koalas as yet. This road is intersected by our road. Note rubbish on side of road.

The most important thing is that so far we are really enjoying our time in Libya. People are really friendly - both expats and locals - and it is fun exploring a new place. The fresh food is great - lots of beautiful fresh fruit and vegetables. We went to the fish market yesterday and bought some whole fish that looked like bream and some sword fish - all up we bough 3.5kg and paid approximately $AU45. Cheap, heh! The bread is outstanding and 5 long baguettes cost approximately 25c - bread is subsidised by the government.

In the next blog posting I look forward to including some photos of the old city and our day trip to Gharyhan.

Ma'a salama (goodbye)

Welcome to The Camel Diaries

Welcome to The Camel Diaries, a series of thoughts, reflections, pictures, musings and even the odd word of wisdom about our life here as expats in Libya. We hope to keep you all posted of our comings and goings over the next few years, insert a few happy snaps and generally save you from long emails waiting in your inbox.

Happy Reading from Sahara Gal and The Desert Rat!