Gaddafi

Interesting day. Spent most of it within a couple of feet of Moammar Gaddhafi. He was supposed to be there at “8am”… I predicted 11 or 12. Turned into 2pm. Waited in the National Stadium… I went home and showered in the meantime but the girls stayed and baked in the sun. The initial arrival was less-than-promising… a skirmish broke out at the door because they wouldn’t let women in with their heads uncovered.

Finally he arrived in the stadium in a fleet of cars with bodyguards running by the side. They did a couple of laps of the stadium, so the bodyguards must have run the equivalent of a 1500m race. He got out and waved and made his way to his spot, about 2 meters away from me and the rest of the press. He looked ridiculous… a cross between Motley Crue’s Tommy Lee and Liberace. He was wearing a white leisure suit with a green emblem of Africa painted over the heart, which from afar looked like a stain. He had white boots with high heels, and sunglasses which reflected all the hues of the rainbow. His stringy, almost Gherry Curl hair is receding. He was introduced by SL President Kabbah, who made a long list of the money, Mercedes and rice that Libya gave SL, and what a friend Gaddafi is to Africa. Gaddafi’s speech was mostly empty rhetoric, telling Africans not to go to Europe, that Europeans should come to Africa as workers and slaves, and not the reverse. At one point he asked the crowd in English: “Who feeds you? Africa or Europe?” Nobody in the crowd replied. “Answer me!” he said, and repeated the question but nobody said a word, so he was forced to shout: “Africa!” It was an embarrassing display all-round. It didn’t help that they chose that moment to distribute cookies in the women’s section of the crowd, so while he was talking about how Africa is a land of plenty, hundreds of veiled SLeonean women were hollering and screaming in the stands as they fought to get closer to the man flinging cookies to them.

Gaddafi was a Boy Scout. At least so said his security chief, a crazed South African, himself a Boy Scout.

Have discovered the best hummus in the world across the road. Long live the Lebanese!