Touring Libyan Blogs: Italian freedom fighters, niqab, road safety and the Libyan bloggers! · Global Voices
Fozia Mohamed

Abughilan – who has incidentally become one of my favourites haunts – surprises us with yet another beautiful lesson from the rich history of Libya. It is the story of an Italian soldier from the colonialist era who joins  Omar Mukhtar's fighters, learns Arabic, becomes Muslim and marries a Libyan woman – Tibra Mussa Almejbri.
“When he was a teenager he had a dream troubling him many nights and told his mother who called the village priest. He told the priest that he dreamt that he saw himself at the edge of a mountain and being transformed into a great bird, and when he was ready to fly a great serpent jumped at him and while he was struggling with the serpent he woke up. The priest told him not to worry, that at sometime in his future he would become something else and his struggle with the serpent is the eternal struggle between good and evil.[..]”
To read the epilogue of what happened to Yousel Almuslmani go to Abughilan's blog here.
Libyan history needs more exposure as there are literally hidden treasures.
AngloLibyan had a rundown with a niqabi woman and her husband at the supermarket in the UK..
“the lady in Niqab was standing in front of me in the car park, she was staring at me, I looked at her I just saw her eyes and immediately realised that she was a white English convert, I continued walking when suddenly she started shouting at me what are you looking at? she repeated it few times but I chose to ignore her, actually I chose to do what she wants the whole world to do that is to ignore her and treat her as a non entity, obviously she has problems and hang ups about her Niqab or she would not have shouted at me and what for? for daring to look her in the eyes! Few minutes later as I was loading the shopping in the car, her husband came over to me, looked at me I looked back at him then he went back to his precious wife and probably told her that he sorted me out,”
The thing is the number of niqabi women has risen  in Libya as well and that is a recent phenomenon which I'm still trying to analyse its origin.
Beacon  who blogs about road safety on Tripoli nights, has made a high impact post lately. Beacon is spearheading a drive on his blog to educate Libyans about road safety because car accidents are some of the highest killers in Libya.
“In Libya, the problem is that most people seem to take accept this reality and they accept it as part of life and its to be expected, I think every one has a responsibility towards their and other peoples safety. The government has a huge role in this and I hope that they begin to adopt the modern scientific methods in counteracting this huge killer.[..] Again, I apologise for posting the above picture if it has offended any one, and I hope we can learn from it and this tragic death which repeats its self more than 2500 times a year in Libya (and increasing) and more than a million times a year globally.[sic]” read more.
Braveheart who is studying in Britain and blogging from Birmingham went to the ‘stop the war’ demonstration that took place in London last week. It is so refreshing to read all these Libyans with minds of their own, especially that he was not daunted when his classmates did not go with him. Do check his photo essay here and drop him a line.
In Libya we celebrate children's day on the 21st of March,  tears welled up in my eyes when I saw what the Libyan bloggers were preparing for this year  following the success of last year's programme at the children's ward in Tripoli medical center.
“Participate with us on putting a smile on the faces of the children on
the 21 march as we did last year on the 21st of March Kids day
the same program shall be repeated this year after the success and
satisfaction of the last year's program […]
the program shall start after one o'clock in the afternoon , and will
include
three Plays act by the members
Decoration of the Units and adding a joyful environment
simple competitions for children and prizes
teling old stories by one of the members
simple gifts for each child on that day
short presentation of selected cartoon
Playgrounds put at each unit for daily entertainment for children
Light candies, snaks and Juice
puppets, Members wear to entertain the children [..] We were supposed to get financial support from one of the oil companies [ note from Fozia it is Shell company you can read it in the original Arabic leaflet here ]. But it appears that the company stated avoids the question of support. after the absence of its representative on the first meeting.accordingly we need to collect part of the money by ourselves , everyone can contribute with the amount he can and we will make it work inshallah and buy only the things we can afford.[sic] “
Bravo A.Adam and Libyano. Those two are planning a blood donation event with Khadijateri. I'll make sure to update you about it when it takes place.
To counteract the negative picture offered by the female pickpocket in this earlier report of mine about Khadijateri's experience, I would like to highlight the circumstances in which Trabilsia recovered her purse a few days after it was lost. A wonderful story about inherent human good and how this spirit is well and alive in Libya thank God. It is a story which makes me proud of my Libyan brethren and with which I chose to end today's post.
“What happened was that in my purse was no number of mine but medical receipts, so they phoned the clinic to have them phone me. The receptionist gave me the man's number and I phoned him.
When I phoned him he said that a manual labourer had found it and gave it to him as he was his boss Bab Bengashier, near Al Fateh University. Anyways he came to our centre and presented me with my lost purse ,nothing was taken, money (LD80 ) and all was intact !! The young chap said that as I was his mum's age(1955) he thought of it as his mum's purse . The young chap had grey hair and was slightly bald I CERTAINLY AM GETTING OLD I thought to myself and Tarek wasn't wrong. I offered to give him the money to which he completely refused, I asked him to give it to the labourer who found my purse , again a complete refusal. He only asked one thing which was to pray and say a good DUA for him !
I am very grateful for getting my purse back, money wasn't my major concern,but the id and drivers licence were ,due to living in a very bureaucratic country,the endless queues, etc……..
What do you all think ????
We are very lucky to still have decent people in this country of ours.”