Not the eclipse

I’m afraid you’ll have to look elsewhere for good pictures of the total eclipse that occurred in Libya on Wednesday (such as here) – we were unable to make the trip into the desert to see totality. Tripoli experienced some 80% coverage, but it would have been something to see the real thing out in the Sahara. But Blue Sun is anal about desert travel – we are expressly forbidden from taking any internal flights except on Blue Sun’s own plane (which, interestingly, that morning took a bunch of higher-ups to the drilling site which just happened to be in the totality range…), they discourage desert travel by car (not a problem for the thousands of tourists who got to see it), and they couldn’t get us desert passes anyway (again, not a problem for the tourists). Never mind, I’m sure I’ll one day have another chance to see totality (next one is 2008).

So, the switches for the lights at our place are very erratically placed; I finally got sick of some permanently-on outside lights and tried every switch I could find until I managed to turn them off. But I had inadvertently turned on some in-ground lights which I had no idea existed because they were hidden under a giant pile of cardboard and packaging from our move-in. Said giant pile caught fire about an hour later.

On the mandatory fire-fighting course before we came, the instructor specifically warned us to practise shouting ‘Fire!’ because we would likely blank out when we actually came across a fire – and sure enough, when I glanced out our front door and saw 10-foot-high flames shooting up the side of the house, the only thing I could say was 'My god, look at that'. Lucky for me the Ambassador was home, because I also stood there wondering how we were going to put it out since Blue Sun hadn’t yet supplied us with our fire extinguisher (garden hose, funnily enough).

You might be asking yourself why, if the fire was really that big, we are left with no mess other than a vaguely Uffington-horse smoke stain on the wall…that’s because the plumber working on the new house next door, and a Nigerian who has been around twice asking for work a both came in and dragged and swept and washed until everything was lovely and clean (and fire-free) again. Needless to say, we promised to use the plumber in case of plumbing problems, and we have given the Nigerian some part-time gardening work (I was going to anyway – he looked so disheartened the second time I turned him down that I felt guilty for days; we just didn't want someone living in, for our own privacy and for the sheer unfairness of making some poor man live in a box of a room smaller than our bathroom, while we live in a quarter-occupied mansion).

We're going to Sabratha this weekend, so I should have some actually interesting photos next week...