Very hot city: 48 in July8 degrees, so hot that the doors and windows are closed for fear of affecting sleep.
The average annual temperature in a city reaches 48 in July8 degrees Celsius, isn't that unbelievable? Before I came here, I had considered a lot of things, such as a mistake in the temperature measurement, or it only happened in July, but the reality is that there are all kinds of strange weather in this land, such as the city of Gbibilly in Tunisia, where the temperature is so high that you can't even open the door at night.
Gibilee met in a book called The Lord of the Rings, described by a Tunisian friend as the entrance to the Sahara Desert, and although it is close to the Mediterranean, the temperature here is always high due to its location in the Sahara and the Great Salty Lake of Jared, with a maximum temperature of 55 degrees Celsius and a surface temperature of 77 degrees Celsius, which is enough to cook a piece of beef.
Later, at a WFP conference, he heard Hender Sabri's speech, and he learned that Salim had grown up in Jibili and was one of the "100 most influential Arab women" who had been advocating for the world's poor, but she was unable to speak out about her homeland because of her own interests. This also inspired us to travel to Gibilee and "taste" the taste of "purgatory" in this way.
Tunisia is located in the northernmost part of Africa, its northeast is the Mediterranean Sea, it is only a strait away from the Sicilian Islands of Italy, although the population of Tunisia is not more than 10 million, but it has an ancient civilization, coastal, desert, forest, the whole of Africa is relatively developed.
According to reliable information found by archaeologists, Jibilee was the first inhabited area of Tunisia and has existed for about 200,000 years, according to reliable information found by archaeologists. So, will Gibilee always be like this? Can locals really live in such a hot environment for 200,000 years?
We found in the National Museum of Tunis and the Guibilee National Park that the bad weather in the Guibilee region, which was studied by the French early in the last century, dividing it into two regions, the Sahara region is a typical desert area, and the north is a dry area of the ** zone.
In other words, the temperature in the Aziziyya region of Libya has been 0 for a long time because the temperature there fluctuates greatly. Located near the salt lake, Jibilee is in a state of high temperature all year round, and its heat and evaporation are very high, causing the surrounding environment to become very bad, according to the research of meteorologists, the temperature of Jibilee has been maintained for 200,000 years, and it is higher.
There is also a very key reason, that is, the area where Jibilee is located was still an ocean millions of years ago, when due to the impact of the earth's crust, the African continent was uplifted, and some of the undischarged seawater was stranded in the Jibilee area, after a long period of exposure and evaporation, forming a "brackish" soil, not to mention the lower places, even if it is a plain**, it is also a barren.
For many tourists, Jibilee is a "gateway" to the Sahara, while for locals, it is a "forbidden place" that represents death.
According to the current construction plan, the real land of the entire province of Jibilee is 50,000 square kilometers, excluding deserts and no man's land, there are more than 22,000 square kilometers, but even so, there are only more than 150,000 people in Jibilee. According to French statistics, there were more than 140,000 people in Gibilee in the thirties, and only more than 10,000 in the past 100 years.
An African shepherd told me that there are less than 150,000 residents in Jibilee and that most of them have moved to better places where there are more and better jobs, leaving behind some elderly people and poor families who have no financial needs.
Tunisia was remembered as a Muslim country, mainly Berbers (indigenous to North Africa) and Arabs, but in Gibilee he found many Africans, most of whom were sent to the French colony very early, and later with the development of coconut palms, some blacks also came here. Gibilee once tried to carve out a piece of farmland on the land, but every year the land was buried in sand, and the villagers did not get enough money to cultivate the land.
How hot it is in Jibilee is always answered with a smile: it must not rain in a downhill rain, and if it rains, the rocks will collapse and block the only remaining waterway during the rainy season (August). The residents of the Jibilee region are exposed to the sun for a long time, the moisture in the air is almost zero, and in this dry weather, the stones can be severely corroded, and if they are not crushed by tools such as road rollers, they are likely to cause landslides, so the residents here love the rain and do not like it.
The highest temperature of the year is from April to October (40) and the highest temperature in July is 488, the minimum temperature is 23September, the lowest temperature in January is 265, minimum 46℃。And according to NASA's spectrometer satellites, the warmest city in the world is not Coober Petty (45°C) in Australia, nor is it the United States (uninhabited Death Valley) (566 degrees), which is due to the fact that Jibilee is not only a livable city, but also a city with extremely high temperatures.
On NASA's thermal imagery, the rest of the place is small spots, except for the Gibilee area, which is clumped and connected, because it's so hot that nothing is green except for coconut palms and cacti.
In order to experience the heat here, we rented a car to come to the "Mars camp" in the Sahara Desert, but as soon as we got out of the city, the car encountered a series of failures, first the air conditioner was broken, and then the engine suddenly stopped running when the temperature was too high.
On the road leading to the barracks, there is a place where the herders rest, more than 20 years ago, it was a small oasis, now it has been flooded by salt flats, and the guide told us that they used to be shepherds, then switched to the business of transporting salt, and now because of the rise of tourism, they have become a place for entertaining guests.
Correspondingly, about 200 camels die from heat and dehydration in the heat and drought, especially those transporting passengers (more than 5 km).
Along the way, they passed through a small town, most of the houses in the town have no gates, even if the doors are open, in the summer, the doors will be open, in the summer, they will set up a tent next to the house, in the summer, they can cover a blanket in the house, in the winter, they will use Shanghai cotton blankets, to cover their bodies.
In the Sahara, the "Martian camp" is the largest, most complete and most expensive, and in the best of seasons, a bed is hard to come by, and it is not until the sun goes down that they start to have guests here. According to a tour guide, they follow the car to walk around and go back in the evening, so they can only provide breakfast, dinner and other services, and when there are more people, there will be a bonfire party for the Berber natives.
There are no special restaurants here, and when it's time for lunch, everyone will eat out, just a blanket and a table. There is not much space in the tent, only three single beds, and Hao Ren has experienced a kind of torment in it: in the sand, the ground will have a warm temperature, but outside, the temperature will decrease, so there will be three layers of blankets. In a tent, everyone has a basin of water, then pour it into the pot, and then turn on the faucet, each person can only drink one bottle at most, and more money has to be added.
However, it is reassuring to note that this white-bearded chef is quite good, and I heard that he is a native of Berber and has become a special chef in a Michelin-starred restaurant in Tunisia, mainly making local Berber spaghetti. The old man recommended that we bake the bread with fruit so that we can taste the unique taste of camel milk, dates and fruits. Later, in Tunisia, I also went to many high-end restaurants, but the most memorable thing for me was the pancakes he made.
They went to the guide's residence, and saw that the houses inside were all more than five meters high, and the rich and powerful families were even seven meters high, and each room had a door, but most of them had the door open. According to the tour guide, the residents here are designed this way mainly to lower the temperature, and if there is a strong wind, they can open the front and back doors so that the temperature in the room will be lower. This is also why the locals rarely buy electric fans, refrigerators (they can afford them, but they can't afford to pay for electricity), red dates and other grains, which are also dried and stored.
The Gibilee people like to eat sweets, they like to put some coconut or mint in their coffee, this is because they like to survive in this harsh climate, and the coconut sugar content is high, in the words of traditional Chinese medicine, it has the effect of dissolving phlegm and benefiting the lungs, so in the eyes of the locals, if you are not sick, it is the best tonic. In the hot summer, people often have hot colds, swollen teeth, itchy rashes and other diseases, soak mint leaves in coffee, and then add some honey, which is a local dietary Xi that has been passed down for hundreds of years.