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)