Libyan exodus: 'I'm alive… I'm in Tunisia'

The UN white tents have sprouted like lines of mushrooms across the desert floor. 

Five miles in from the border with Libya the camp is four times bigger than the last time we looked in – three days ago. 

But that’s not all. They are still grading the desert sand, the caterpillars heaving it into flattened areas for yes, yet more tents. 

Because the UN say they need to be prepared for what we must surely now call the civil war going on in Libya. 

This being the 21st Century, Telecoms Sans Frontiers (TSF) are here with satellite phones and charge points for people to plug in their mobiles. The crowd around the chargers is quite small, because so many phones, they say, are stolen by Libyan authorities at the border. 

However the queue for that one, precious call home is long. 

We meet Ibrahim from Gambia, desperate to tell his brother back home that he’s still alive. Because of the use of black mercenaries in Libya in this war, to be young, black, and male in Libya, is to be in a very dangerous place. 

In return for his interview I lend Ibrahim my blackberry – but please don’t tell ITN. He strikes me as rather a serious young man, with rather a lot to be serious about. 

But the phone is an extraordinary device: “Hello, hello – it is me. It is Ibrahim. Yes, yes – I am alive. I am in Tunisia now. I am ok.” 

He hands me the phone. In a flash that serious face is cracked with a smile that could light the desert sun. 

Stand by the TSF’s sat phones and just watch. A serious Chinese face cracks with the smile of Ibrahim. Then it’s a Bangladeshi face. Then Egyptian… and on it goes. 

But there is unhappiness in the camp at the delays in onward transit. Several hundred Bangladeshis trotting and chanting around this camp, “We’ve been here for six or seven days. There are six thousand Bangladeshis here. And what is our government doing? They are doing nothing. Nothing!” 

Up the road Tong, from Hanoi, is surrounded by several hundred other Vietnamese. 

“It’s incredible what we’ve come through,” he says. “Fifty road blocks and they will take everything. And what now? We don’t know. We don’t know how long we stay here.” 

And so it is if you happen to be Vietnamese, Nepalese or Bangladeshi. A sleek Air China jet is loading today at Djerba airport. The French and British charter service will shuttle between Djerba and Cairo for the tens of thousands of Egyptians. They – like the Chinese – are the lucky ones. 

But let nobody think Libya is some kind of large scale Somalia. It is not. And my evidence for that? Why – just walk over to the entry point from Tunisia in to Libya. Deserted? No. Chaotic? No.

Just lines of cars calmly queuing up for the final passport check before entering pro-Gaddafi western Libya.