Today was a big day for my neighbour, her 22 year old son arrived in Libya for the first time to visit for a week. To celebrate his arrival she arranged a big barbeque for him and invited lots of people - there were 34 confirmed. After the major stresses and hassles with arranging his visa it was so nice to see him finally reunited with his Mother on Libyan soil.
However, the stresses did not end there. An enormous amount of preparation went into the barbeque (this included buying a new splendid barbeque (second hand which therefore mean't it needed a good scrub), marinating copious amounts of lamb & chicken, the huge shopping expedition to stock up on food stuffs & goodies, sourcing gas cylinders, chairs & tables etc.
After all of that, it turned out that it was most certainly the wrong day to be holding the BBQ , the security on our Regatta compound would not let anybody in as there was a VIP staying on the compound. In fact, they decided to forget completely even who residents were and we were forced to go get our ID to prove who we were. (This actually is a regular occurence, the head of security has seen my pass and met me on plenty of occasions but still has his power trip days where I'm forced to be interrogated in order to get to my apartment) Even though the majority of the party were turned away by the Regatta Mafia, the barbeque still turned out to be a fun event, and there was certainly triple, if not quadruple portions of food available.
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