A) I am happy to be home - Vermont - just returned from Northern Africa after a 3 month survey…I’ll most likely never return.
B) I’m tired of lurking.
C) I am joyously happy to step into these boards. The sagacious people here really keep me reading…
D) My recent chronicles in Northern Africa have made me realize several things I thought noteworthy of telling everyone here.
US Tension makes for horrid a work environment.
Digging around Petro-Canada oil workers is near impossible…
A three month dig in Northern Africa yeilded little more than a few trade route casks filled with sand…and petrified camel dung.
4)Cobra’s are God like to some people in the world.
This was my first trip to NA and my second in the Mid-East proper, I have been lurking on the boards for quite a while, but my work keeps me extremely busy. I am an archaeologist working in the private sector for a large eastern US company. I survey and dig before major contruction…I travel a lot!
I just came home from a three month stint in Libya. I was working south of a town called Surt, southeast of Tripoli. It was an adventure but not one I would soon take on again. Tension in the area is fierce and I am happy to be stateside.
I live in Southern Vermont but spend considerable amounts of time in Boston - 4 days a week usually. I have a dog, who needed to get to know me again after being gone so long, and a fiance whom I missed the most. We actually work together so the commute is not that bad, but she did not go overseas with me, as she is an analyst not a digger. Glad to be here…
Bernse I was on a tight timeline, and surveying a dig, excavating, and logging usually take longer than three months. Working during wartime, is no easy affair either. If you’d like to know more about their operation see here .
I wasn’t commenting on their unwillingness, or how they act towards others, I was merely saying they move quickly, and at times, they were quite obstinate.
Phlosphr - Thanks it is a very fun job. It keeps me busy.
Well, Lybia is the “ass” of North Africa afterall. Ghaddafi is a nutcase and the embargo doesn’t help either. Why don’t you tell us more about the country? And what was that about the cobras?
The country in general has a very loose infrastructure, as far as I could tell. I was mainly at our site but of the people I met they were decent to me and my crew. The State archaeologist was a diplomat as well. He was all over us the first couple day swe were there. Inspecting our equipment, asking us what we expected to find, making sure we weren’t setting up some US surveillance system. I was traveling in a fairly large motor-cade, so our presence was known at all times. I spent a solid two months basically, sweeping sand away from our site, and making sure my sand encrusted sunblock was kept on my neck.
The cobras were really cool. I had only seen photo’s of people playing with them, tantalizing them with their flutes. Realizing it wasn’t the sound coming from the instrument as much as the movement of it.
A lot of different settlements had different sayings and some of them revolved around the cobra. They are scared and at the same time proud of their hooded national serpent… One very difficult aspect of being there was the poverty in-country. Extremely poor people, many children with the bloated stomach’s and asking for thins thing or that. I gave away many of my stuff the first two days there, and one funny thing was, when we arrived at the dig, I realized I had given all of my bandana’s away… I use those things like they are going out of style, especially on digs. I had so many multi-colored ones, that I gave away…
Also many of the country men there were very friendly to us…“USA!” they would say. Made me believe for an instant that we were not at war, and things in the world were actually pretty good.
Glad I finally registered… You guys are great…
