Banned Countries Week: Libya

Yesterday was Libya day here at the Waterstrauts (and once again I'm two blogs behind- UGH!) 

Some Libya facts: 

The capital is Tripoli (like 'from the shores of Tripoli'), which everyone knows is from the first Barbary War.  

The government is 'provisional', they speak Arabic, and 97% of the country practices Islam. 

Libya, like it's neighbor, Algeria, is basically desert (95% of it actually!) A little slice of their Sahara can be seen from space, thanks to a volcano crater, three salt lakes, and a whole ton of ash giving the appearance of a great black hole. 

Also in the desert, is the Jabel Acacus, which is basically a bunch of cool rock formations rising up from the sands. There's also some prehistoric paintings, dating back something like 12,000 years.  

It's also full of Ancient ruins. They even have a city people call the 'Athens of Africa', which was built by the Greeks 2,500 years ago. The ruined Temple of Zeus was larger than the Parthenon. Since we had done a whole theme week for Ancient Greece, I knew the boys would find the ties from across the Mediterranean interesting. 

Lots of fun Libya stuff! 

Somewhere in their slice of the Sahara is also the Ubari Sand Sea. The water there is five times saltier than regular sea water. So for our activity we made some heavily table-salted water and dropped the same objects in regular water and salt water to see if they floated to the top, or if they sank. (The boys each earned 5 cents for their jar for each correct guess). 

Over at the 'Banned Countries' board, Libya was much less fun. We talked about the 'Arab Spring' uprising in 2011 ( in the simplest of terms- a series of anti-government protests - some peaceful, some violent- because the government was being, well, anti-citizens that spread all over the middle east). 

But Libya is a little different than a lot of the 'banned countries', because five years ago it was one of the wealthiest and most stable countries in Africa thanks to their leader, Gaddafi. But, Gaddafi was killed in a raid, and the country spun out of control.

But, we do need to back up, Gaddafi was by no means a great guy, in fact, had he lived, he probably would have been charged with crimes against humanity. He made a habit of eliminating political opposition, and restricted the lives of Libyans. But, under his iron-fist, the country did well economically. and the average Libyan was much better off than the average African. 

Libya, I'm sure you all know,  isn't safe for visitors. First of all, I'm sure everyone knows about what happened at the Embassy in Benghazi. I mean, if you don't, where do you live? Because it's not anywhere where Donald Trump ran for president against Hillary Clinton. If SOMEHOW you missed it in 2012, and then the movie about it, surely you learned about it this election season. 

As a result, we don't have any embassies in Libya, and even if we did, most international airports are closed, and flights out of any operational airports are sporadic and may be cancelled without warning. The US Department of State gives it one of those 'Don't go here, and if you are here, get out' warnings. 

As you can imagine, life there is tough. Basic community services are hard to come by, food is scarce, though the severity of these issues depend on just how devastated the area is. 

Libya cuisine is similar to Greek, which I never really thought of too much, but they are neighbors just across the Mediterranean there. We had olives, apples with honey, slata tunisiya (the salad), and Mafrum with cous-cous 

This meal earned four spoons up. 

Asa actually was very busy at work, and dinner was not super easy to make. The mafrum (basically  potatoes stuffed with ground beef and stewed in tomatoes) took forever, and work was really busy. So he was in and out of the kitchen for dinner. He ate all of his food and left, and then the boys and I started trading food until it was all gone. 

I traded Calib the rest of my cous-cous (and give him the one potato left in the pot) for his olives and apples, Hayden traded  his cous-cous for Peyton's salad, and before I knew it everyone had eaten everything. So, since everyone wasn't thrilled with everything on their plate, we decided to drop one spoon off the total. 

But, I do think the boys are getting way better at trying all these new foods. I'm even getting better about it. I was sure I hated radishes, raw onion, and raw green pepper, but I've been making sure to try everything, and as it turns out, I don't really mind any of those things. (And honestly, I'm not really sure where I got that I 'hated' them from. I think it's entirely possible I had never tried them!) 

The boys made their Libya postcards, that's the 9th in their second set of 10, so we'll be voting tomorrow on the collections. 

And we colored Libya in a nice purple color. 

19 countries down, 174 to go! 

Next up: Yemen