Misrata, 17/08/11

Quick update on life in the Misrata enclave

I’ve been here three weeks now, and the sound of shelling coming from the front lines and gunfire from within the city has become part of daily life. It’s amazing how quickly you adapt to your surroundings. Misrata is starting to feel more and more like home. In Benghazi it was difficult to believe that the country was in a civil war; life had virtually returned to normal. Here in Misrata the vast majority of shops and businesses are still closed, their owners often fighting on the front lines, while signs of war are everywhere.

In case I needed any reminding that I wasn’t exactly in North Oxford any more, it came yesterday. Eamon, an Irish guy spending some time working out here, was fixing something on our roof when he noticed that our next door neighbours had a cluster bomb on their garage roof, just the other side of our garden wall. One of the guys from a demining NGO working here in Misrata agreed to dispose of it for our neighbours. When he climbed up a ladder, however, he found it wasn’t there anymore; somebody had picked it up and moved it. Not particularly clever. What didn’t help was that the owner wasn’t home and nobody had any idea where it had ended up. Unable to locate it, let alone defuse it, the demining team went home and I went next door to our house to have some lunch.

When I walked out of our front door an hour later someone I’d never met before called my name from across the road. I went over and he introduced himself as Ibrahim, originally from Sudan. Ibrahim wanted to let me know that the bomb had been found and called me into a yard across the road from our neighbour’s house. There, in all its olive green, ochre yellow lethal glory, was the cluster bomb, sitting innocently on a plastic chair. Because I’d been with the demining team an hour earlier Ibrahim assumed that I knew what to do with it, so he picked it up and tried to give it to me.

These things have a 6 metre kill radius, are banned under international law and are motion sensitive. It wasn’t something I particularly wanted to be holding in my hand, thank you very much. The look on my face must have been priceless, because Ibrahim burst out laughing; I told him he was doing a great job of looking after it, but that maybe, just maybe, it would be best if he put it down.

Like I’ve said before, this is an office job with a bit of a twist. Still yet to go to the front line though…