This scrap heap, photographed on a blustery day was at our first camp in the Calanscio Sand Sea.
Close by the site of the mechanics' workshop, we'd already started moving camp to the north west.
The oil drum cut in half was to be made into a barbecue grill.
For the rest, there was kind of an unwritten desert rule that you didn't destroy empty oil drums. Sooner or later someone would come along and use them for water storage or as route markers. If you left the caps off, in the desert heat the residual oil would vaporize off relatively quickly.
Behind the oil drums appears to be either a spare vibrator or generator engine and behind that, the remains of a labor kitchen trailer. While we were here we received a new one. The old one was written off so we scrapped it on site.
On crews where we had a bulldozer, we'd doze a pit and bury everything. Here we'd just pile it up and let the desert cover it with sand at its own pace.
I think the dune buggy had been someone's idea to help move gear in the dunes but we never used it that I recall.
This old kitchen was the site of an incident that ended with an Indian cook pouring boiling water on an Egyptian cook. We used all our burn bandages on the Egyptian and he was in terrible pain. We got a medevac flight in from Benghazi early the following day and he went off to hospital.
The Indian stayed on camp for a few days until we were able to guide a police patrol in and they took statements and took him away. I think he got some jail time and was expelled from the country.
Ghadafi was cracking down on Indian guest workers at the time and after this incident it became very hard for us to secure Indian labor again. Our Mr. Fixit at the time was a Ghadafi loyalist who wasn't going to make waves.
Several months later the Egyptian rejoined us at a different location and resumed his cooking role but he was scarred for life from that night.
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