I titled today's photo ‘Checkpoint wadi' because when we moved into this concession in western libya in 1990, this was one of the few routes for travelers to traverse the escarpment.
consequently, the Libyan Police had a checkpoint here from which they'd observe the traffic, such as it was.
If you click on the photo to go to my SmugMug site then click again to enlarge it, you can make out the checkpoint in the wadi just below the setting sun. There's a white building with three black trucks parked outside it.
By the time I left this concession, the Police had abandoned the post. The additional routes we had bulldozed in the escarpment meant that they lost effective control of the traffic so their presence here served no purpose any more.
It must have been a most awful posting – not as bad as the assignment to guard the water well in the dunes – they didn't even have a hut – but the policemen posted here didn't have the degrees of freedom to roam over the desert as we did. As for the traffic, well I didn't see much that wasn't us.
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