Views from the Roof

Okay, so the blog is back in Libya. I thought over the next few weeks, I’ll show you where we live, and then move on to my local grocery store and vegie market etc, and in general try and give you an idea here of everyday life (for an ex-pat; I don’t pretend we live like the majority of people here).

I’m going to start with the view from the roof. This is off towards the main road of Janzour and well beyond that, the ocean, which you can’t see, but you can see the sun about to be swallowed up by smog, possibly generated from the oil-burning power plants (there’s another thing you could be using your ‘waste’ gas for, guys - though to be fair I have heard some other oil company is paying to convert the oil-burning power plants to gas, so it is happening). That’s our neighbour’s house in the foreground.

This is to the left of that first photo. You can see the closest mosque we have in the area – we hear the call to prayer in the evening, but aren’t woken up by the first dawn call…unless Dog hears it and barks.

This is a close-up of that mosque area. You can see the row of shopfronts lining the main road, and the suburban nature of the area. I think I once may have mentioned that Janzour used to be a separate town from Tripoli (and this was only in 2002 when the Lonely Planet was written), but now urban sprawl and a big development boom has made it another suburb of the city.

This is facing the other way. You can see the dirt track going further back into our little sub-suburb, and the gum trees which line the track and give us a nice outlook and reminder of home. I worry these will be chopped down and more houses built on the farmland opposite us. But I heard a rumour that chopping trees down is illegal here, though I also heard that only applies to the date palms as they are a source of food. You can see a patch of rubbish under the trees, not rare, and the building blocks they’re using to build the house next door.

This is to the left of that photo, the farm all these new houses have been built on. It doesn’t look much like a farm, but there’s sheep and chickens, so it counts.


In general news, the last couple of weeks have gotten very hot (and the city is filled with the evocative aroma of hot rotting garbage) and proved the sense of shutting down during the afternoon and opening again in the evening. It does not get much hotter than a Perth summer maximum, but it does stay consistently very hot and there is no sea-breeze or cooling down overnight. I was horrified when I heard people leave their air-cons on 24 hours a day, but I can see why – the houses have no insulation and without that night-time breeze, they just do not cool down.

We are also having more maintenance issues, what with leaking air-conditioners which leak worse after the maintenance guy has been...

Malta II - Before the Knights

Again, a photo-heavy entry. That’s what happens when you try and pick from over 300 photos.

I think the Malta prehistoric/pre-knight culture is under-rated. We saw three temples, one of which was built entirely underground, the Hal Saflieni Hypogeum; we were lucky to get into that one as they limit numbers carefully for environment control, but they don’t allow photos. Here’s a site that does:
http://www.jimdiamondmd.com/MaltaTemples.htm


This is part of the temple on Gozo, the Gigantija, so-named because it was once thought to have been built by a race of giants (because the stones are bigger than they look from these photos. This is thought to be the oldest free-standing structure anywhere, some 5000 years old.


This is the Tarxien temple, near the underground temple – they are finding the underground complexes were often built near an above ground temple, so it seems to have been a part of the religion. It’s not as well-preserved as the one on Gozo, but is bigger. There are other temples we didn’t get to, and all are different; this site has some lovely photos.

I looked in on the Museum of Archaeology in Valletta – they have collected some of the prehistoric statues and temple figurines they’ve found – the photos aren’t wonderful, sorry.



My favourite, the Sleeping Lady, perhaps a depiction of death, and perhaps not a woman at all, was found in the Hypogeum. Then there is the ‘Venus of Malta’, and a fine collection of sitting ladies. The heads, by the way, have not been broken off, they appear to have been designed to be removable/interchangeable.










We did the catacombs in Rabat next to Mdina. (Rabat meaning ‘suburb’, Mdina meaning ‘city’ – as with the Medina here in Tripoli).


These are photos of St Paul’s Catacombs, which are large and have an audio tour; you can see some of the various types of tombs here, and a table used for feasting to celebrate/mourn the dead, and a tomb ‘plug’ thought to be for a doctor, given the tools depicted on it. They were thought to have started from a cave in Phoenician times; and are surprisingly multicultural, holding the dead of Christian, Jewish, and Arabic peoples of the time.



We also went to St Agatha’s Catacombs; no photos allowed here, but it did have some fine paintings on the wall, all defaced by Arabs arriving after the Romans, but still recognisably fine work – here is a scan of St Agatha from a newspaper. We were lucky enough to have a torch with us, so we able to go off the lit paths in St Agatha’s and into the maze of catacombs they don’t think tourists want to see.







To finish, here are some nice photos around Mdina. The main entry and a view of the walls, the view from the wall on the other side of town (note the Mosta dome, mentioned in the last entry – see, it is big, isn’t it?), their cathedral (behind which is a fantastic cathedral museum, with artworks and coins and other interesting things, and OK, I know I sound old now), some winding streets ...









... and lastly the backside of the heraldic lion at the gate, which I feel is quite well-made.

Late Entry...

Cap'n Tightpants has asked me to post a brief message saying the weekly post will be a bit late this week - probably Saturday. Our water pump is broken and she needs to be home all day today and tomorrow in case they show up with the new parts...

The Cap’n adds: Ah, the frustrations of a culture which assumes women spend all their time at home ... still, it’s not like Australian tradespeople were quick to work out that people have better things to do with their time then wait around all day for them to show up ... and it wouldn’t even be a problem if I just had internet at home (three months and counting, and yet other Blue Sunnys have had a phone line within days of moving in).

Still, this did give me one of those surreal Libyan moments ... the repairman had just told me he would be back either this afternoon with a spare part if he could find one, and/or a replacement part tomorrow. And then five minutes after telling me this, he shows up with an entire brand new water pump. He doesn't have a car, and there's no pump store within a five minute round trip by foot (not to mention water pumps are heavy). Like, where did you ... how did you even ... okay, let's get that puppy installed so I can get to the guesthouse for my internet fix.

So we Malta-ed, why not?

Well, it’s funny if you’re a Futurama fan, anyway.

Malta is an extremely historic place – from prehistoric temples to roman catacombs, the knights, and World War II, it covers a full gamut of interests (including shopping, sunbathing and nightclubbing; some coastal areas are a little too over-developed and tourist-ridden for my preference). I liked Valletta, city built by the knights, and Mdina/Rabat inland the best, and the temples and catacombs. This entry will cover Valletta, shown here as viewed from Sliema (warning: very photo-heavy entry).



This is a view of (part of) the Grand Harbour, on the other side of the city from Sliema. Across the water there is a glimpse of a bit of the ‘three cities’, original settlements of the knights (and others before them, of course), before they planned and built Valetta as their capital. Lots of forts and palaces etc. The Grand Harbour was a focus of WWII hostilities, featuring as it did a safe harbour and ship-repair facilities.


This is St John’s Co-Cathedral in the middle of Valletta. Doesn’t look like much from the outside, does it? But check this out.



Not that the less tourist-attracting churches are much less grand, mind you. They were all using this baroque style to compete with each other in attracting worshippers. So the smallest towns have these overwhelming churches.



We especially liked the depictions of death on the tombs of the knights (knights buried here in the Co-Cathedral; other churches/cathedrals buried clerics etc). Sometimes he looks quite jolly, really (you know, like he would have a horse named Binky and like cats).




I only meant to cover Valletta, and there’s plenty to see in Valletta, but since I’m on a church theme, here is the painted dome of the cathedral in Vitterosa, Gozo (island to the north of Malta) – they ran out of money to build an actual dome (which you can clearly see from the outside, there’s a flat spot on the roof where a dome is supposed to go).


And here is the Mosta dome (ie the dome of the church dedicated to the Assumption, located in the town of Mosta), famous for being the third biggest unsupported dome in Europe and for being the site of a miracle during WWII – three bombs fell on it during an air-raid – two bounced off, the third pierced through, fell amongst the congregation, skidded along the ground for 200m and came to a stop…without exploding. Can you picture the faces of the congregation at that point? They have a replica of it on display. Oh, okay, here’s the photo.



Back to Valletta - the knights dug (or their Turkish slaves dug) a giant defensive ditch across the headline - just a bit deeper/longer, they'd have had a canal.


And here’s a shop you just don't see around much anymore. Note the distinctive Maltese wooden enclosed balcony above.

Next week, I’ll cover Mdina and get away from the churches by showing prehistoric stuff. Then it's back to the Libya blog, and I apologise the digression.