The —— —— uprising in 2011.
We saved a lot of Libyan lives.
Now, could we have done more
after the —— —— was ended?
Well, that's always, you know, second-guessing,
and I'm sure that there's more we could have done
but let's look at what we did do.
A complex and highly —— situation.
The international effort that we have led in Libya.
We finally have hope that our nightmare of 40 years will soon be over.
Welcome back to Tripoli, the capital of Libya here.
Check out this view from the roof of my hotel.
We've got the port over there in the distance, the Mediterranean,
and then a huge sprawl of city out this way.
The country of Libya has a total population of 6 million, which is actually quite small
considering I think it's like the 16th biggest country in the world,
so relatively that's quite a small population.
The country's huge majority of people live here.
Today we're heading out of the city.
We're heading to a place called Leptis got a very interesting past,
so we're gonna get on the road, drive out of the city, see what we can see on the way
explore more of the coastline, hopefully.
It's always hard to kind of film off the trail of where people want you to see here,
but I'm gonna do my best to meet people and see how life is here.
So, let's carry on, explore more of this country.
It's very odd at times, but I'm really liking it, I'm loving the people.
It's always an honor to be in a country like this where they hardly ever see foreigners.
It's a real privilege.
Enough talking, on the road, let's go.
Okay, so we have arrived in Leptis, we drove for an hour and a half from...
Boy races on the street.
So, we've driven an hour and a half from Tripoli, from the city center,
and we've followed the Mediterranean coast.
We've come out to Leptis, which is this historical Roman site.
It's interesting to see there's actually quite a lot of local tourists here,
there's little souvenir shops.
Apparently, this has all changed quite rapidly.
This place was completely closed you know, not even one to two months ago
and slowly start, things are starting to pick up for, you know,
families and things that want to take a day trip from Tripoli
come and have a look at the historical sites and things,
so it's quite interesting.
So, we're going to go, and we're going to meet the guide.
We might ask him how life is as a guide here
because I'm sure over the past decade or so
it's been very up and down and must have been hard to find work
but also check out the historical site because, you know, it's pretty magnificent,
I mean what we're about to see if this was in any other country it would be packed.
If this was in Egypt or Italy, or anything, it would be absolutely packed with tourists.
So we entered this world heritage site, and it was such a privilege
to be able to walk around this ancient ruins site dating back over 2500 years.
An unbelievable experience, you know, like I was just saying
if you were anywhere else in the world this place would be hauling with tourists
but whilst we were in the ruin area itself
we didn't see any other tourists, unbelievable.
And then we went to the theater just to be standing in this old Roman theater
with nobody around is really something that you only get to experience once in a lifetime.
This city was very significant in the Roman empire.
It was known as the second Rome.
Okay, so we're here with Fousey, who's our guide here at Leptis.
What's it like being a tour guide because I haven't seen any other tourists around?
We're trying with the ministry of tourism to bring many cruise ships and...
- Cruise ships? - Yeah.
But now, what about now?
At the moment, it could be hard sometimes,
but we'll try to make it easier, you know to bring them here.
Do you think that the future will be better?
Ah, better yeah, Libya will have a better future than before, better than before, yeah.
So you're saying things change and get...
Many, many things change with this government, yeah.
- What's changing? - From worse to good.
Can you give an example of what's changed?
The electricity, you know.
- Less power cuts. - Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Less power cuts now, yeah.
So more services, infrastructure and basic needs.
Yeah, we have many foreign companies came around here,
and they had a contract with the government to do infrastructures,
you know, under construction, you know.
So you're positive about the future of Libya?
Libya will have a very positive future, you know.
- Okay yeah, right. - Very good future.
And do you think it's safe for foreigners to come to Libya?
Yeah, very safe, yeah, we met a lot of Americans and English,
and they're from New Zealand like you.
And Italians, Brazilians, you know, Mexican people.
What about two years ago? Was it safe?
Always safe, but we had the western media distortion there.
So you think the western media paints Libya in a bad...
Many Arab media, they say Libya is not safe.
Once European people and American ones came around here,
they found people are very safe, and the place is very safe, you know.
Very friendly people they had they met here you know.
Shukran. Thank you.
So, we've arrived back on the outskirts of Tripoli, we followed the coastline down,
and we've come to a nice little restaurant here.
We're gonna see what we can get for lunch.
It's super hot. This is like mid-afternoon.
You don't want to be out in the sun at this time,
so normally you kind of try and spend these hours, you know,
at least in some kind of shade, otherwise you just basically, you cook.
It's a whole new way of living here, especially where we were further south
but even up here in Tripoli on the coast, it's super, super hot.
Let's see what we can get to eat.
So what do we have here?
So what we have is Rishda we call this.
It's like homemade pasta, chickpeas, and onions
and quite a popular dish in this country,
and then we have what's known as Borden,
which is cooking the meat under the ground very slowly
over about could be five or six hours, and you basically dig a hole.
Thank you.
And then you put your chicken in foil or something,
and you put it under the ground you bury it with your sand,
and you let it cook over a few hours,
and it comes back very tender, you know, and it's lovely to eat.
And I got the couscous, right?
Yeah, you have the couscous and a bit of salad to go with it.
So, we've arrived in downtown Tripoli here, we've got some beautiful old ruins here.
We just had coffee in a really nice cafe right on the waterfront there.
Really nice setting, beautifully maintained grass, and everything,
not the first image that comes to mind when you think of Tripoli or Libya.
So we're going to go for a bit of a walk now,
keep in mind that I have to be really careful what I do and don't film and have to be discreet,
so I'll do the best I can to give you a bit of a taste of what the capital city of Libya is right in the cent...
Not sure what that was. Let's go explore more of this city here.
There's a mosque here, there's a fish market across the road,
but we're going to go further in and see what we can discover.
Okay, I've got to be really quick here.
This is quite a high-profile place,
but we're right in this square, Martyrs' Square, which this is, you know,
basically the center, in the center of Tripoli.
Look at it. It's pretty spectacular to be here and to be able to film.
It's extremely high profile, but big flags here.
There's a building over there that's got marks all over it, ——, etc.
But generally, it's you know it's a really nice place,
and you know, lots of families going about their day, you know,
people selling food for the birds, and it doesn't feel at all hostile.
It feels completely calm to me, you know it does feel a bit tense,
but it's because I'm walking around with a camera filming it,
if I wasn't with a camera I would be completely at ease.
There's even like horses for families to ride down there
and like little cars, toys for the kids and things.
Little shops and this is the center of Tripoli.
Remarkable to be able to get this opportunity to film, so yeah,
anyway beautiful place.
Back at the hotel. Something just unfolded.
It was quite up there, it was pretty, pretty intimidating.
You're probably wondering what happened between the clip in the square and now.
Well, what I was saying...
I was saying I'm filming in one of the most sensitive places in the city,
in the country almost, probably.
We started to leave the square, a guy came up wearing civilian clothing, walkie-talkie
pulled us aside, took my passport, my guide got taken away from me,
he was questioned in a different building, and I was waiting outside.
This went on for half an hour or so
and then come down more agents in civilian clothing and one in —— clothing
they take us in the back of a —— car, they put us in the back of a —— car
escorted by another car with no number plates
to this base that was not in signage or anything
then the guide was taken in again questioned.
I will say though, I have to say this, I was treated with absolute respect,
and they were very kind to me, these officers, and everything.
Anyway, so I was left in the car with the driver.
The guy even left the car running with the air conditioning on.
They did treat us very well, I must say that, you know.
After a while of waiting and waiting, you know, I was getting quite nervous
because you know filming and stuff and even though I'm not, you know
trying to do anything sinister, it's just you know, you never know the line, you know,
and anyway, a guy comes out, and he starts to ask me questions.
He actually tells our driver who was in the back seat with me
to get out of the car and leave me and him alone.
It was an interrogation at the beginning.
He was asking me certain questions like my purpose in the country
and my plans and what I've been up to exactly,
and he had already, like obviously heard from my guide where we'd been,
and he wanted to see if our stories matched.
He was quite intimidating in the beginning, but then when I started to, you know,
tell him where we'd been, and everything and he really opened up,
and he was like, I just want to let you know that don't worry,
you haven't done anything wrong we want to make sure that you're safe
because the security situation in Libya is very unstable
these were his words, what he told me.
He said because foreigners are so rare here,
when there is a foreigner here, we have to be 100% sure
that they are looked after and safe.
Because if something happened to me, you know,
like sadly it would probably reflect badly on the country
and that's the last thing they want especially after everything that they've been through
they don't want any more troubles, you know.
So he was saying, are you comfortable? Do you feel comfortable with these people?
You know, if you ever have any problems you can come to us, and we'll help you.
He was really, really kind, and I must again say thank you
to the authorities of Libya, and I've been treated very well.
You've seen in the last video how well the authorities of Libya treated me.
Today was another example of that, and I completely understand
them seeing me filming in the main square and then questioning us, you know
about what's going on because they're in a good place, you know,
relatively to what, you know, has happened, so he was just doing his best,
they were all doing their best to just make us feel comfortable
but also get to the bottom of what was going on
because you never know, right I could be posing as who knows who.
He said, don't worry, you're going to continue your time in Libya.
You're going to continue doing what you had planned.
This is just a routine check.
I have been in situations like this before in other countries,
and I know, I'm taking risks doing this.
You know, you don't just go to Libya and make videos and things
and think that you're not taking a risk because you are.
I'm fully aware of that, and you know, that's a choice that I choose to make.
It's not taken lightly, I do consider all these things,
but this was, this wasn't at all a negative situation.
I really have to reiterate how kind the people were to us,
how kind the authorities of Libya have been towards me
and going so far to welcome me and want me to feel comfortable in the country.
It's really nice, especially after what they've been through to, you know
reach out to that degree for a foreigner it means a lot,
and it says a lot about the people I think,
so big thumbs up to the Libyan authorities, you know.
That whole escapade lasted one, two hours.
We did get to see the old city though, it was really cool to see the old city.
We might be going back in the next video to have a look around some other areas
but of course, you know, have to be careful with the camera, you know
adrenaline still pumping you know.
You know, again the common narrative is that life has got significantly better
especially in the last one to two years or less, you know.
Maybe even less, one year has been a huge improvement
even last six months it's been a huge improvement safety-wise
even some like services, and maintenance, and infrastructure is picking up.
I mean, this is the common theme that I'm getting told,
so it does sound very positive, the future of the country,
but you can definitely see what I'm when I keep going on in these videos
about how you know difficult and stressful it is to film here.
It's one of the most stressful countries that I've filmed
and out of all the places I've been to,
and I'm talking more stressful than North Korea.
It is really restricted and very strict of what you can and can't film,
and there's a very fine line, and you have to be very careful,
and I totally respect that, and I understand why it's there, and I agree with it.
It's just foreigners are so, so rare here
that when a foreigner is here, then they really take it seriously,
which is an absolute privilege to get access to this country at the time that it's at,
on the hinge of, you know, what looks like a promising future coming from a dark past.
It's a very, very privileged position for me to be here during this time, and I do not take that lightly.
And thank you to all the Libyan people for having me in your country.
And I just want to say thank you very much for watching these videos
and joining me on these crazy adventures that, you know,
one minute you're just walking down the street
next minute you're in the back of a —— station heading to a form of interrogation.
I'm going to be answering some of your questions in the next video,
so if you have any questions, leave them under this photo on my Instagram,
and I'll answer some of them in the next video.
Anyway, thank you so much for watching,
and I'll see you in the next video for more from Libya.
I'm sure, you know, who knows what the next day will hold.
Thank you so much for watching,
and in case I don't see you,
good afternoon, good evening, and good night from Tripoli.