Chapter 5. Daily living.
The butcher shops only open three days a week,
and
you never know when.
(From Jan's letter home Sep 76)
Now that we were in our own villa we could extend our horizons a little. We had to get into a routine of daily living. We had to get to know the town, the shopping areas, the beaches, and above all the people.
It was not easy to mix with the Libyans socially due mainly to the language barrier and the fact that their life style was totally different to ours. We had very little in common, even visiting with Suliman was something of a trial. We regarded Suliman more or less as one of us! But when we went to his house Jan and I were separated, I went to the main lounge with the men. Jan was taken off to the women's part of the house.
This is normal procedure. The women are kept away from the men and only appear now and then to serve food. Though I must admit that Jan and Suliman's mother joined us for dinner. A good thing as otherwise I think Jan would have had a fit!
As it happened we need not have worried about a social life. There was a huge expatriate community in Benghazi. There were people from all over the world; some had been in Libya for years others like us were new arrivals.
Most of the expatriates had a particular skill and were on a contract of some sort. Many of the English people we met worked for a large British civil engineering firm . This was the firm that was building the huge storm water system that was to prevent the flooding that Benghazi suffered from most winters. There were oil engineers, doctors, nurses, university lecturers, other UN people, just about every profession had an expatriate representitive. Some of the big projects had their own compounds, usually where their work was and not necessarily in Benghazi.
This then was our introduction to Benghazi. We had survived the period in the hotel Anice, and had settled in our first villa. I was becoming established at work, and Jan and the children were becoming established in the villa. We had our own transport albeit an airport vehicle, and best of all we were getting to know some of the English speaking expatriates.
Julia and Chris Ravenkeld with Nedco (Center)
Our lounge Christmas 1976
Our first contacts were the American couple who befriended us when we were staying at the Anice. Richard was a microbiologist and lectured on this subject at Benghazi University. It was because they let us stay at their house while they were in Tunisia on holiday, that we got to know several other couples and families.
One young couple became our particular friends and remain so to this day, they were newly married and had come to Libya, complete with their dog Alice only a month or so before we arrived. Christians and Julia Ravenkeld were a great couple. Although both were English by birth, Christian had Danish parents whereas Julia's were Greek.
Another man we met was a German chap who rented a couple of rooms off the Arab family who lived next door at our first villa. He spoke good English and I often went over to keep him company. The story which he related to me of his time in Libya was a sad one, and unfortunately was all too common.
He was a builder by trade and a very good one, going by the photographs he showed me of work he had done in Germany. However a downturn in the German economy had him looking for work elsewhere, so he undertook a contract to build several bridges in Libya.
(Although there are no rivers or streams in Libya, there are plenty of dry Wadis that needed bridges). He brought with him all his building equipment including trucks and trailers, everything he owned in fact. He did not bring workers except for a couple of supervisors as he had been assured there were plenty of workers available. His contract stipulated that he had to be in an equal partnership with a Libyan company
Things went well for a start but then problems not of his making began to appear. The labour force he hired became very unreliable, materials he needed for the bridge work became unavailable, or were not delivered, the Libyan company he was working with suffered from the problems all Libyan enterprises had at that particular time, - more on that later.
The result of all this was that he fell behind the schedule laid down in his contract. Eventually everything ground to a halt and he had to start selling off his equipment to pay his bills. When I knew him, he had only one trailer unit left. He was in the process of arranging shipping for his trailer unit and when that was done, he would go also.
As he was short of cash, I did us both a favour and bought some much needed tools from him. He was gone after a couple of weeks, but his story haunted me for some time afterwards, it was much more harrowing than I have outlined here.
We were now settling into a routine, I would go off to work at 8 a.m. Jan would organise the household which took up plenty of her time as there was still a lot of cleaning and tidying up to do both inside and outside. The previous tenants had been a Pakistani family, both doctors, with six children. How they lived as they did absolutely amazed Jan. They had left the house in a really filthy state, but more to Jan's horror was the rubbish she collected from the back yard. This included broken bottles, razor blades, and even the odd hypodermic syringe.
There was no set rule for working hours in the U.N.D.P. System. The general rule was to work the same hours and times that the people of the country we were in did. As we were in a Mediterranean country the observance of a siesta was normal practice.
This meant that people would go home at 1 pm, and return at 4 pm for another few hours of work. This was rather impractical in our particular work, so the rule was everyone who was not a shift worker went home at 2 pm and stayed there.
As we both tended toward the mad dogs and Englishmen
type of person, we didn't generally indulge in the daily siesta so having the afternoon off was quite a bonus. However we did work six days a week which evened things out somewhat. The Islamic religion has Friday as their holy day, so that was our only day off.
I quickly became used to this regime, although many times because of the type of work I did I often worked right through. The rest of the population such as office workers and shopkeepers followed the home for siesta and back to work routine.
This made shopping and interesting pastime, as the shops all closed at 1 pm and didn't open till much later sometimes as late as seven or 8 pm. In fact, Benghazi downtown didn't come alive until 9 pm and was still going strong at midnight. Not that there was much in the way of entertainment, I only knew of one picture theatre in the whole town.
There are were no bars, not even in the hotels, as alcohol was strictly prohibited. There were no milk bars or discos, though there were a few restaurants and coffee bars they were dull places indeed. The Arab population seemed quite happy to wander in and out of shops or talk in groups on the footpaths or just drive around. There was really quite a lot of hustle and bustle and we quite liked going downtown in the evenings.
SULIMANS FARM.
I mentioned earlier that the only contact given to us by the people in Tripoli, was a young Libyan who had come in contact with Graham during some airport building work that I.C.A.O. had overseen. This young man was manager of a construction firm owned jointly by Libyan and German interests. We saw him quite often during our early days in Benghazi, he took us to the beach club that he belonged to and introduced us around.
Beach clubs had been a feature of Benghazi for many years. The beaches themselves were pretty much what you would expect of a Mediterranean Sea coast. Golden sands, clear water, hot sun.
Most expatriates had a favourite beach which could be anywhere from just outside Benghazi to the town of Marsa Brega some 150 kilometres away. The beach clubs of course were just outside Benghazi. There were three when we arrived. An American one, a British one, and a French one.
During the Kings time they were restricted to expatriates only. After the officers coup they had to open to Libyans also, but were still run by the expatriates. That was the situation when we arrived. However, about a year later it was decreed that the clubs could only be run by Libyans. Unfortunately, that was the end of the beach clubs as they quickly became rundown.Suliman called round late one afternoon and said he was going out to his farm and would we like to come. We jumped at the chance resulting in this passage from one of Jan's letters home.
Dear family.
Things are improving rapidly stop in fact after the last two days I could even say that Christchurch was never like this. Imagine, if you please, our whole family, sitting on the edge of a 300 year all well, in a wadi just out of town, watching the quarter moon rise above the date palms etched black against the sky, enjoying a light breeze, eating our fill of fresh figs, some grapes,, pomegranate, and - believe it or not - prickly pear cactus. Listening to the croak of frogs and a donkey braying in the distance.
Sulimans Farm
We were taken out tonight by our friendly local Arab - Suliman Luhishi - he is really nice, and has been super to us. He took us out to his small farm where he grows the fruit and vegetables for his family. Gosh we enjoyed it! The children played at the edge of the well with dozens of small frogs, got covered in the red sand of course, but we all had a great evening.
We came home loaded to the gills with tomatoes, cucumbers, chili peppers, figs, prickly pears and watermelons, flowers, parsley and mint.
The "farm" of about one acre was really interesting. There was just a shed for tools and the old well. The rest was small plots divided by irrigation ditches. The well had been hand dug hundreds of years ago and was surmounted by the usual parapet. As a concession to modernity, water was pumped out to a holding tank.
To irrigate a certain plot water was let into the main irrigation channel then guided to the particular plot by building sand barriers in the subsidiary channels. A job Guy and Anna really enjoyed doing.
The farm next door had the children really fascinated, in that it was used to raise rabbits. You wouldn't know to look at it because it just looked like a bare patch of ground with a few date palms scattered round. The rabbits however were kept underground, not so strange being rabbits, but they lived there all the time.
They lived in man made caves rather than their own burrows. It was possible to go down among them and they were reasonably tame. Apart from periodically cleaning out their toilet area and regularly dropping them food there wasn't much effort in keeping them. They never tried to burrow out, I think it was too deep for them.
Suliman told us that for many years after the Desert war it had been very difficult to grow anything at all as the area had been use for petrol dumps and the ground had become contaminated. However there were few signs of the battles that had gone on in and around Benghazi.
We often went to Suliman's farm, and always enjoyed its peaceful atmosphere.
A contrast to Suliman's peaceful farm was a problem we had with cockroaches.
Jan had never come across these insects before, and was horrified to find our villa was over run with them. The larger ones were just over 3 cm long and before we got rid of them it was possible to hear them in the quiet of the night as they skittered around the tiled floor. Switch on the light and in a second they had disappeared, seemingly into the brickwork. They could be controlled with insecticide but it had to be something powerful. We used a French product called Beygon. By spraying every nook and cranny we eventually cleared them from the house, though it was an ongoing problem. Beygon had a strong characteristic smell and if ever I get a whiff of it or something similar, I am immediately transported back to Benghazi.
It was quite a sight they simply poured out and took off in all directions. At first I didn't know what had caused this, but it soon became evident that the septic tank was at fault.
This brought on another of those interminable brushes with bureaucracy as I endeavored to get the septic tank emptied. The landlord of course was no help. As he often told me, when I rented his house I was responsible for everything that happened.
Eventually the city council tank cleaning truck arrived, and the driver surveyed the problem. He only had a short length of suction hose, and could not get his truck close enough to the septic tank. Nothing daunted he drove around to a vacant section over the back wall. His hose still wouldn't reach over the wall. Ever resolute he took to the wall with a sledgehammer, knocked a hole in it, fed the hose through and did the job. Oh well, it wasn't my house!
He had to make several trips, but was away for only a few minutes each time. I wondered where he was dumping the stuff so on the third trip I followed discreetly. No problem, he simply drained his tank into the nearest convenient roadside gutter. Thankfully, it was a fair way from our place.
This was an example of the Arab approach to solving a problem, they get the job done in the simplest way possible, with little thought to consequences. I came across this characteristics many times when working with them.They have a word for it, "malish". This roughly translated, means "never mind" or "not to worry" or in our idiom, "she'll be right". It goes further in that your average Arab does not like responsibility and will get rid of it as soon as possible by whichever way is convenient. He will not plan ahead, that is the responsibility of Allah. The Arabic words Insh Allah (God willing) are heard in everyday conversation. This is an easy out as it takes away any future responsibility for an action.
This lack of forward planning makes the following day or days unimportant. Tomorrow will come but what it brings is in Allah's hands so why worry. The Arabic word "Buchara", although it means tomorrow literally, really means tomorrow anything can happen I can't make any promises, maybe I can do this or that, maybe I can't.
I hadn't been in Benghazi long when someone remarked, "you know this country runs on the IBM system". I bit, "you mean there are plenty of computers". "No" he said, "Insh-Allah, Buchara, Malish". A little unfair perhaps, but a certain amount of truth also.
There is no doubt that many of the people I worked with were very dedicated and did their very best to keep their country in line with the advances taking place in the rest of the world. But there is also no doubt that the muddled thinking of those who couldn't, or wouldn't, separate their Islamic religion from everyday practical matters, held these planners back.
Time moved by fairly quickly, it seemed almost daily we met new people and found out more about this increasingly fascinating life we were living. Almost by accident I became involved with the theatre group.
This was a collection of mostly English expatriates who had discovered a mutual liking for amateur theatre and had banded together to put on plays and play readings. Each year thy put on a pantomime at Christmas time and this particular year needed someone with electrical experience to organise the stage lighting and run the lights during the show. I volunteered and proved again the truth of the old adage, never volunteer for anything.
A scene from "The importance of being Earnest".
Someone else had already done the stage lighting, and connected it to the lighting control board, this control board was a problem, no one knew where it had come from, but it was old! It used rheostats to control a lights brightness, in this form of control the current that the lamp used to cause it to light up also flowed through the rheostat, the brighter the light the more the current.
This was OK if the max current was kept within the power capability of the rheostats. However the number and power of the stage lights far exceeded the control boards ratings. That was the situation when I took over and rehearsals commenced.
Very quickly I found that the rheostats heated up alarmingly if I used all the lights, so to start with I limited the number of lights to keep things cool, this was all right for a while but soon the producer called for more light, I told him I couldn't give him more, this caused an uproar in true theatrical fashion.
What do you mean no more light, just turn the damn things up!
Oh well, I thought, maybe a fuse will blow! That is if there is one. I turned them up but not too much.
More
shouted the producer, I turned them up a bit more, by now you could make toast on the rheostats.
I want this scene brilliantly lit
said the producer. By now people could smell burning and were starting to look worried. That was it I couldn't go on, the board was smoking and about to burst into flame, I pulled the plug.
Everyone calmed down eventually and the producer was convinced that he would have to compromise a little in his stage illuminations if we were to have a panto at all. So with a little rearranging of the lights the rehearsals went on and eventually a very good show was produced, even if it was a little dimmer then the producers ideal, no one in the audience noticed.
I stayed in the theatre group and took part in several plays, most noticeably as the bank manager in the play No sex please we're British although the name was changed to No fun please we're British, to placate the morals police who watched over Benghazi society.
Another group that was very active were the bridge players. Both Jan and I played though Jan was far better then me.
We had not been in Benghazi more then a few weeks when we were invited to a tournament put on by the managing director of one of the big English contractors, Jan and I did quite well, and subsequently became part of the bridge fraternity and played in their regular weekly tournaments.
Jan as I mentioned was quite an expert and when an airline organised a city wide open tournament, Jan entered with another good player from our group. The airline was Lebanese Airways and the first prize was a free flight to Beirut. Jan and her partner won and she was quite looking forward to visiting the famous city.
Unfortunately, just at that time Beirut erupted in violence, which continued unabated for some time. Poor Jan never got to use the biggest prize she had ever won at bridge.
There was certainly no lack of interesting things to do to occupy ourselves, with no television, movies, theatres, restaurants where we could while away the idle hours. We turned to things we could do ourselves to keep ourselves entertained. These were mainly dinner parties, or just parties, someone somewhere always had an excuse to have a party. It would have been quite possible to go out every night to some celebration or other. We wisely limited our carousing to a reasonably small circle of people, and even doing that got to be a bit much at times.
Jan kept herself busy with a variety of projects. She had been a Cub Scout leader in New Zealand, and found that there was a cub pack in Benghazi. It was run by some people we knew and when they found that Jan was quite a senior AKILA she was immediately co-opted into that role with the Benghazi pack, much to the bemusement of the local Libyan scout movement, which administered the cubs. They had not come across a female cub leader and didn't quite know how to relate to her.
Here is what Jan had to say about her first cub evening.
I had my first evening at cubs last night – and hilarious it was too. Mix up British, Welsh, American, Yugoslavian, Chinese, Libyan and Pakistani boys – and you have chaos. It took four of us to keep 13 of them busy!
Jan was also a weight watchers instructor in our other life in New Zealand and so after much persuasion from various expatriate ladies, she started up a weight watchers group which rapidly became very popular. They had some real success too.
Jan also helped organise a hospital visitors system and did some very good work, I will let her tell the story.I put off writing to you last week because at one stage I thought I just might be able to phone you from London. As it happened, - and I will tell the story in a minute, I didn't have a minute to spare in the hour I was in London, so it was no go. Now we hear that a NZ lad working here will be leaving on Monday morning and will take letters to post to NZ so here goes.
Jan Wilson (my Scottish friend) and I have been very busy preparing for our big party next week — we’ve cooked beef curry for 60 and Turkey Marengo for 50 and frozen it all and we’ve been really working hard. We knew that an older lady who had had a stroke and was in hospital from a week before, but last Tuesday a French/Moroccan lady came to us quite hysterical, saying that Nancy Black (the one who had had the stroke) was really bad and couldn't we do something!!!
So I got stuck in and got two midwives that I know and we went out to the hospital, which is fairly near here. Its a brand new, sparkling white, beautiful hospital with specialists for everything under the sun but the one drawback is that there is no nursing. Excellent medical care, but no actual nursing care. We got in touch with Nancy's Doctor and the Libyan husband of an English girl and got tacit permission for nurses to go out twice daily and look after her.
She had lost the use of her legs and was very weak, she had eaten nothing and couldn’t even give herself a drink etc etc. So we worked out a rota with the girls in pairs so that they could give her bed baths etc. and feed her, and we got people making tiny little sandwiches and delicacies for her, so she would eat something. That was Tuesday and Wednesday morning.
Wednesday afternoon she was apparently booked to go out as a stretcher case on a British Caledonian flight direct to Gatwick, but there was a muddle up and she didn’t go. So I got Jan’s husband, Ian, to come with me to see Nancy's husband Allan, who is about 68 and has had a slight stroke himself and had completely switched off about Nancy.
He didn’t want to know how ill she was or any of the details. We then met a young Englishman Bill who lived next door to Nancy and worked for the same company. He had just flown back from the UK that day with his wife and two small children and was horrified at the set up.
So, with Allan's permission, Bill (last mentioned chap) and I got stuck in. Thursday we set up a meeting with the MD of the company(a Libyan) and the Asst MD. We pulled all sorts of strings and got her booked on a Libyan Arab flight on Sunday to London - and that took some doing because LibArab doesn't like stretcher cases.
Friday we went to see her Doctor again and arranged for her to leave the hospital. Saturday we tried to get a nurse to accompany her but couldn't get visas for those who could go, because of various reasons. We rushed around flat out but to no avail and eventually the Company said that I should go with Nancy and also Bill to look after Allen who by this stage was quite incompetent to do anything, even look after himself. So, back out to the hospital to get Nancy's discharge papers.
Sunday morning dawned cool and clear. I was up at 5.00 am. Collected a nurse friend, drove out to the hospital, met the company ambulance, Bill and driver. Amazingly the Sister in charge of Nancy's ward had her all ready and we transferred her to the Ambulance and drove out to the airport.
Once landed in London there was an Ambulance and stretcher awaiting us. We had less than an hour till the plane took off again so it was really a rush. Bill had to go and confirm our return seats. I took Allan, and a Lib Arab security girl took us through Customs and immigration to find that they had already unloaded Allan's five cases (5 minutes flat). I got them and delivered Allan to his son in law, gave him a quick run down, and tore off to the Medical Centre where Nancy had been taken straight off the plane. Handed over Nancy's jewellery to her daughter, handed over the medical report from Benghazi and Nancy's clothes etc, and ran.
Remembered suddenly that I had letters to post so got them out and grabbed a security guard, explained and asked him to post them. We pounded up the steps of the plane, last on board and collapsed. Flew back to Benghazi, straight through customs etc and back home at 10.30pm.
Now, I can just hear you saying, why didn't we stay overnight at least. Well, a Libyan Company had paid for our tickets, I was travelling with a man not my husband - imagine what could have happened if we had stayed even one night in London. Probably, persona non grata if we had not made it back.
As it was the Company and all of us were so relieved that we had got her into capable medical care, and her family because the poor soul also has cancer of the brain and this has since been confirmed in UK.
Both Bill and I were absolutely shattered my knees kept going weak at the joints on the next few days, through sheer reaction, I think. My friends and Peter had been super about Guy and Anna I hardly saw them for 6 days altogether.
There is really something about a community like this when people are needed, they really come up trumps in the ways that they can.
Now all that's left is that I have to help Bill pack up their things tomorrow and he will get it all air freighted to the UK.
So, its all a very sad story, and. I have not told you all the details because you just wouldn't believe all of it. For instance, imagine doing all of this without using a telephone at any stage.
We went next door for hot cross buns this morning, June Carter had been busy making them and that was a pleasant relaxation. I am more than ever determined to get away for a week by myself somewhere soon to catch up on myself.
I feel mentally and physically exhausted by all this. And now we have the Benghazi flower show on again, and panicking ladies wanting me to buzz round and get people to enter for it. I have passed most of the buck but still had to sit in on a Dept of Agriculture meeting yesterday to decide details of times and openings etc.
Jan as can be seen from these excerpts kept very busy, more so then if she had been in the same situation living in New Zealand. There she would have had to go looking for something to keep her occupied, here if you were in any way a capable person, things could get loaded on you, in some cases to the point of overload.
Next page. Chapter 6 Buying a car