Chapter 3. Benghazi as we found it.
We had quite a long wander through the souk today, and
found a couple of shops with some quite interesting
Moroccan and Tunisian rugs and blankets.
(Jan's letter home Sep. 76)
So we were finally settled in, and it was time to relax a little and get to know this strange city that was to be our new home. Benghazi is, in some ways similar to Christchurch, it was roughly the same size with some 300,000 inhabitants. It is on the coast, although in effect it is the West Coast, due to the curve of the coastline around the Gulf of Sirte in the Southern Mediterranean.
Even the latitude was similar, only ten degrees difference. Christchurch 43S, Benghazi 33N. However, Benghazi being on the edge of a continent had a more severe climate than Christchurch's island climate. Benghazi usually enjoyed a long, hot, dry, summer, going from March through to October.
The months of November December January could be cold and wet, with temperatures down to zero degrees Celsius. Whereas in June July August September the temperature could reach the forties.
THE ROADS AND STREETS.
Benghazi has existed since before the Greeks and Romans but historically speaking it first appeared in the records as the Greek outpost Euesperides though there is not much left to remind us of this. In later records it became known as Berenice a name it retained through various occupations.
Not much is known of this period and it declined in importance, and to all intents and purposes disappeared. Eventually it regained some significance as a staging post on the trans Africa camel route in the 9th century.
About this time an eminent holy man died and was buried in the area. His followers stayed and in time the settlement took on his name Ibn Ghazi.
Benghazi suffered many vicissitudes during various occupations of Libya, first the Turks took over, then the Italians and finally the 2nd world war. Both the Turks and Italians contributed to the growth of the city but the North African campaign of WW2 undid much of the good work, because as it happened the city was at the center of the whole North African campaign.
When Italy entered the war in June 1940 the British bombed Benghazi almost nightly until February 1941, when the city fell to an Australian mechanized unit.
However two months later the German Afrika Korps took over and the bombing resumed. Then in December 1941 the British regained control. Again this was temporary as Rommels forces ousted the British and this time held on for nearly a year, after which they were forced to withdraw, for the last time, in the face of General Montgomery's Eighth army, who finally liberated Benghazi on the 20th of November 1942.
The damage to Benghazi during those 30 months of fighting was massive as the city changed hands five times. It was shelled from land and sea and suffered almost constant air raids. However, it survived and has since been rebuilt.
The old Arab area is still there and seemed to have escaped most of the devastation, the narrow streets and souks exist alongside the more modern high-rises and are essentially the same as Benghazi was in the days of the Greeks and Turks.
Benghazi is quite flat and rather prone to flooding, as I was to find out later when the rain came. The main roads and streets were well paved but they were few and at busy periods become choked with traffic. There was very little in the way of public transport nor were there many taxis.
There were plenty of cars though, European and Japanese, plus over-loaded pickups and over- worked trucks.
He's shouting "Hurry up don't let them get ahead of you"
Once off the main roads or streets the story was quite different. The older areas were not too bad as the streets had been paved and though now potholed were reasonably easy to navigate. The newer areas, that is, those with new apartment buildings or villas were atrocious.
For some reason the buildings were put up, and services connected, and that's all. No one in the city bureaucracy seemed willing to take responsibility for newer developments.
This may have been because of a large civil contract which had just started and which was aimed at improving the cities storm water disposal. They may have been waiting for these major works to be completed before doing something about the street paving. I think I am being charitable here, as really I don't think they cared much if the streets were paved or not.
Part of the problem regarding the infrastructure of Benghazi and other cities and towns could well have come about because of Libya's recent wealth. Benghazi, when we arrived was a city of some 300,000 people. Only twelve years before that the population was 137,000. At that time and for many years prior to that the nomadic populations of Libya had been having a very hard time mainly due to Italian colonists acquiring their hereditary grazing grounds.
Because the patterns of their nomadic existence had been totally disrupted by Italian colonisation and then the war, the interior population graduated to the cities. This put great pressure on the cities ability to house them. A quick solution was to build apartment blocks. In Benghazi, hundreds of these blocks were built but little effort went into their surroundings.
What we would look on as being essential in any city or town. Sealed roads, kerbing, footpaths, parks or green areas, were just non-existent except in the older more settled parts.
Adding to the confusion, our arrival coincided with the start of a huge contract to provide storm water drainage for the entire city. This contract undertaken by an English firm meant the digging up of miles of main road and subsidiary roads. Unfortunately, the one main road that ran through the area where most of the expatriates were located was the first to be dug up,
This was not just a ditch in which to lay a pipeline, this was a huge excavation 8 metres across by 5 metres deep in which was built a rectangular culvert some 6m by 4m. This was to be the main storm water drain with smaller drains feeding it from adjacent streets. The result of all this was the closure of most of the main roads we would use in getting around our area.
As the rest of the streets and roads were not paved, the mad drivers soon cut them up and in fact any semblance of a road way disappeared. Driving became a matter of negotiating the bumps and potholes slowly and carefully.
The first few months we were there, it was the dry season and dust was the main problem. Driving or being driven meant bouncing around in the heat and dust and definitely wasn't your normal pleasant driving experience. Even so it was better than the winter conditions we were yet to come up against.
Our villa was situated on the edge of what was generally recognised as the good expatriate area. We had Arab neighbours, which was probably a good thing in that we were able to learn a little of the Arab way of life. They were friendly, if a little distant, which is not surprising as they had no knowledge of English and in fact regarded us with some curiosity.
I had to keep reminding myself that we were foreigners in their midst. They had children of course and one little girl used to visit us regularly. Here the learning started, the little girl always brought with her a small gift for Anna and Guy. We thought this was a nice gesture but didn't always reciprocate. Unfortunately, the little girl took it on herself to even matters up.
We noticed after a while that small things started disappearing, we should of course have given her a small gift in return for hers. However, for some reason she soon stopped coming around.
The street outside our house was unpaved, just bare dirt, in fact, almost all streets in the suburbs were unpaved, which made them very dusty in summer and a sea of mud in winter. We hadn't experienced the mud as yet as it hadn't rained since we had been there.
Later on when the rains did come, some new people we had just met, Kristen and Julia Ravenkeld
came to pick us up to take us somewhere. They became stuck. Another car that was with them became stuck also. We never got to where we were going.
By the time the combined efforts of all of us, and some Arab neighbours, got them free, and they had cleaned themselves up, the day was over. Kristen and Julia saw the humour in all this, and we became good friends from that day on.
There was no such thing as a regular rubbish collection or street cleaning and as the Libyans, though meticulously clean inside their houses, were just the opposite outside, and rubbish was everywhere. There were periodic clean-ups, but on the whole, Benghazi streets were not exactly aesthetically pleasing. Jan named the street outside our villa Frangipani Alley.
DC3 Graveyard at Benina airport.
High solid walls invariably surrounded houses. Footpaths were few and far between; there were no parks or grassy areas and very few trees.
That pretty much describes the area that we first lived in.
It was a different matter once inside our walled garden. There were grassy areas, not exactly lawns but near enough, quite a few trees, including orange, lemon, and a pomegranate. There were flowerbeds of a sort. With the patio and columns, it was a really pleasant area.
About this time, I was allocated an airport car. This was a great relief for me and, I think, for the airport drivers as well. Having a driver pick me up on a daily basis, at the same time each morning strained their organisational abilities somewhat.
The car was a clapped out Volkswagen kombi. I was never sure as to whether I could use it as a private vehicle or just as transport to the airport. So, I used it for private transport and no one complained, though it was certainly recognisable as an airport vehicle, being painted in the standard yellow of airport vehicles the world over.
Still, we were more or less settled. Since arrival, we had been going at a fairly frantic pace, but it was starting to slow a little.
In the few weeks we had been in Benghazi, we had accomplished quite a lot. Organised a villa, obtained a driving license, settled in at work, and arranged an account at one of the two local banks.
Doing anything at a Libyan bank is complicated and time consuming.
Our salary was credited to our account once a month. To obtain cash, entailed going to three different tellers, first to an upper floor to fill in a withdrawal slip (the writing on the slip was in Arabic), this was presented to the first teller. He went away and looked up huge ledgers. To see if there was enough money in the account I suppose. He then stamped the slip. Take this to another teller, he made various notations and also stamped the slip, then down to the ground floor to the third teller who actually gave out the cash.
Banking hours were restricted so there was usually a crowd in the usual non queuing form. I normally set aside an hour just to withdraw some cash. Libyans on the whole did not use the banks much, as cash was the normal means of settling a transaction.
Cheques were looked on with great suspicion. Even large purchases were paid for in cash. Although I never saw it myself I was told that when a new car shipment arrived customers mobbed the salesmen waving huge wads of cash, trying to be first to have a new model.
Another of life's little problems, though it was more Jan's problem then mine, was mail. There was no mail delivery so we had a box number. This worked reasonably well, though delivery to the box was very erratic.
This may have been due to something Jan noticed while we were at the Anice hotel. The main post office was opposite our hotel rooms and we could see into the area where the mail was sorted.
Jan noticed that a mailbag was brought in and its contents dumped on the floor, then the sorters got to work on the pile. However, before they had made much impression a new sack arrived and was emptied on top, the sorters carried on, still working from the top. Jan said it sometimes took weeks before a pile was cleared.
Next page. Chapter 4 Dogs