Adventure vs Work

So I think I may have been focusing on the "fun" side of Libya a little too much. I figured I should probably say a few things about what I'm actually doing over here during the week. I'm essentially the project manager for housing projects in one of the shabias (county) in southern

Libya bid design build contracts for housing throughout the country in 2007. I don't know the total number, but my little piece of the world is about 4,000 units currently under construction across 14 sites in Murzuk and Al Gatroun. My job is to oversee the contractor and the construction manager, help them keep things on track, and make recommendations and reports to the appropriate government types on problems and progress.




Yes that is a guy carrying a bucket of concrete to pour the pedestals for the substructure of a house. Don't worry, I noted this as a problem that was "detrimental to productivity, and overall progress". They actually do have real construction equipment here: loaders, batch plants, pump trucks etc, but it's a lot more fun to take pictures of the ridiculous stuff.

One of my responsibilities is making site visits, thus the trips down to Sebha. Sebha is really just the starting point for me though. All of my sites are between 2 and 6 hours further south. I posted some pictures and a video before of us driving down a dirt road with the arabic music playing. At the time, I thought that was pretty 'rural'. I had no idea how wrong I was. I've heard old redneck jokes about turning off the dirt road, yada yada yada. Well, I have a waypoint in my GPS marked as "Enter Desert". This is where we turn off what was left of an asphalt road and spend the next 4 hours driving south over the sand dunes of the Sahara.