Jenga

Then I had a leisurely drive back to Penn through the English countryside. It's so green, and I miss it.

The following day it was back to Tripoli. I picked up my car from Salem, packed all my belongings, and met the landlord to finalise handover details for the next tenant - a Berlitz employee who is being 'placed' in the flat - not sure what he'll think, but if I were him I'd probably get on the next flight out!

In the morning, I loaded the car and set off for Benghazi, 1000 kms east.

I didn't bother sourcing a map - it seemed straightforward enough - just keep going along the coast till you get there. And that was pretty much what happened. I did stop for a short snooze about half way - it's important to concentrate on this road 'cos other drivers take enormous risks, but I just kept to a steady speed, and kept focused on the road ahead. Just in case of breakdown, I had plenty of water and two fully charged phones - I had been warned about the dangers of the journey, so made some efforts towards minimising the risks. I wouldn't like to do the trip too often, but it was an interesting experience.

I stayed at a hotel in Benghazi whilst looking for flats, and in the end moved in to the first one I'd seen. It's smaller than the Tripoli place, so more suitable for a single person, it's carpeted, has air conditioning, and has plumbing which all feeds into the drains without any leakage issue. It's also 'European', which means it has a fitted kitchen, and a three piece suite. It cost rather more than I'd hoped, but it's in a decent area, and not too far from work.

Outside it looks like a Russian block plonked in the middle of some wasteland, but the neighbours are all very friendly, and the shops/takeaways are all just across the road.

I got home one evening, and one of the local children told me that someone in one of the flats had been killed in a road accident. I said how sorry I was, and started on the stairs to my flat. Then the caretaker told me that someone had been killed on the road, and it might have been suicide. Again, I said how sad, and went into my flat. The following morning, Yusuf, my estate agent, came into work, and told me that my landlord had been killed, with his wife, in a road accident the night we'd signed the lease for the flat. So that really was a shock - I hadn't connected the deaths with my flat until then. Road deaths here are very common, so perhaps I was a little foolhardy driving from Trip.

The day after I'd moved in to the flat, my car broke down. I'd stopped at a supermarket to stock up with essentials, and when I tried to leave, the battery was dead. Now, in the UK, I'd have called the AA, but here, not only had I lost my mobile phone, but also I didn't know who to call. So, I went back in to the shop and asked for advice. Not a problem, I was told, we'll bump start you, and then you can get home. This done, I got home, and then went round to a local garage. They diagnosed and fixed the problem (worn out generator contacts, in case you're interested), and I was back on the road within 24 hours. All negotiations were carried out in Arabic and hand signals, including agreeing a price for the work - £6 labour, £12 parts. Good job I bought a Mazda - they're ubiquitous here.

Work's fine. Luckily, although Dorothy, the senior teacher, has left, the other teacher, Aurelie, is still here for another two months, so she's showing me how things are done. It's smaller than Tripoli, and the Director is more accessible, so things seem to run very smoothly. All the teachers teach the same class all day every day, so it makes planning very straightforward; plus, if there's one topic you want to cover in more depth, you can overrun and not worry about poaching time from other teachers. It's quite demanding work - the classes are smaller, only about 8 or ten students - and the breaks are shorter than in Trip, but everyone is very friendly and helpful.

I did have to cover the rights and wrongs of exporting weapons to other countries in one lesson - we were discussing national boundaries, imports and exports. One student extolled the virtues of the IRA, and told me that Libya was right to sell them arms because they were freedom fighters, so I asked him if it would be OK for Britain to sell arms to freedom fighters in Libya. Well of course not, he said. I also asked him if it was OK to sell arms to gangsters, drug pushers, and people traffickers masquerading as freedom fighters. Definitely not, he said. You understand my point, I said. Yes, he said, and we moved on to oil prices, and the opportunities for selling sand to the Europeans.