Libya
We’re back… after an eye-opening trip to Libya!
Something I didn’t think I would be saying a month ago. Not that we wouldn’t make it home, just that Libya wasn’t even on my radar of places to work in at all, never mind this year.
We recently won a pitch to brand a major Libyan company and came to Tripoli to visit the company, soak up the culture and research research research… I can’t divulge too much information just yet as we are currently working through the project but all will be revealed soon enough.
What I can tell you about is our time there and the culture. Libya is a place that really didn’t come to mind when talking about anywhere I would like to visit or work in and to have been there is a little surreal. You can’t just visit Libya, you need an invitation, visa and $1000 US dollars on arrival, oh… and you need to have your passport translated to arabic, which is kinda cool when someone asks for your passport to see where you’ve been. We arrived on a Friday which is the first day of the weekend here and we were taken straight to the beach to join a company day out (a male company day out as men and women socialise separately). Saturday is classed as the weekend too but we headed into the office to kick things off with a 6 hour project meeting!
Life there is fairly slow and relaxed except when driving! The Libyan people we met are awesome; really friendly, polite and welcoming. They seem to have a balanced respect for each other no matter what you’re social status is, which I like. Some things do move very quickly here though, like meetings; we were called out to quite a few meetings with no notice at all and on occasion, got there only for it to be cancelled or delayed. This is accepted of course. We’re told it’s normal, this happens, it’s Libya!
We were based in Tripoli, a short walk from the office and it was mostly work work work, so we didn’t have too much time to explore but we did venture out towards the end of our trip to battle the heat, cameras ready. Check our flickr feed for pics.
Here’s a summary of our time in Tripoli: Sand everywhere / friendly folk / insanely hot / air conditioning / the sun burns your eyes / work work work – then brief / no alcohol / no girls / driving is mental / good beaches / the butchers sell camels’ heads and balls / grilled chicken / green tea / good coffee / roman ruins / traffic / missed flights / wild dogs at night / hooka pipes.
More to come soon…
Cheers
