Visa Fever

It takes ages to get a visa for Libya. And then you have to go through the same process to get out again. I've a job to go to at a summer school in the UK, but I'm kicking my heels here, waiting for the wheels of the Jamahirya's bureaucracy to turn...

Today the water and electricity went off mid-morning, the electric came back on at 7ish this evening and there's still no water now at 9pm. What larks, eh?

Nil desperandum. Sometime very soon I'm going to be outside of a pint of Guinness and a bacon sandwich, inshallah. But I've got very mixed feeling at leaving Libya this time, because I've grown to love this country.

Paradoxically, the affection I feel for the country and its people means that I'm glad to go. Increasingly, I've been feeling like a cog in a neo-imperialist, neo-liberal wheel. It's dressed up as "helping" Libya, but the reality is snouts in the trough of an oil rich state.

I'll say no more about this until I've got a bacon sandwich in my hand.

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