Daily occurrences in the compound

First, the garbage man comes to empty our trash can around 9 AM and then, around 2 pm, the blue garbage truck comes AGAIN and makes another round.....as if we can generate that much trash! The funny thing is that almost all of the residents are at work all day so the afternoon run is pretty much a futile exercise.


The other twice-daily occurrence we can keep time by is the mosquito truck. It meanders up and down the streets spewing a mix of diesel smoke and some sort of pesticide in an attempt to tamp down the mosquito population. Once at 4:30 am and then again around 7:30. David and I got caught taking a walk on one of our first evenings here....."What's that noise??" "Holy Cow, it's the mosquito truck!" I ran home, trying not to breath (which is very difficult); Mr. Joe Cool just walked home through the fog. He thinks that anything that kills mosquitos is a good thing. :)

A Karkady discovery

Can you see that gorgeous deep red hue?? This tea is brewed from dried hibiscus flowers (shown below), sweetened with a little sugar, and then iced and the result is a sweet/tart combo akin to cranberry or pomegranate juice. Egyptians call it karkady and I just made my first of many batches. Love it!!

Lahun Pyramid

Today we did our first pyramid visit. It was a cautious outing (close to home) but very enlightening and it gave us some good tips for future trips. One - it doesn't hurt to ask someone who knows how to drive there. On these less visited sites the signing just gives you general directions (at least the ones in English do). There is a big blue sign right on the highway so we knew where to turn off but that was the last one. We knew the general direction but soon got lost driving along the irrigation ditches and through little villages where I don't think a motorized vehicle has driven in quite some time. We finally made it by driving along the edge of the desert and coming up to the site behind a hill. This actually worked out for us because we were able to wander around an area to the west of the pyramid complex which they are currently excavating for about ten minutes before the guards spotted us and kicked us out. Which brings us to tip number two - bring along a native speaker. The guards were friendly but the one who guided us around the site spoke better English than our Arabic but not by much. We asked him if many people came to visit the site and he said "oh yes - many Americans" but as far as we could tell we were a pretty big deal. Our guide rode with us up to the site and we were followed by the entire guard contingent (all eight of them). The senior guys stayed with us and the younger ones climbed up on the ridges surrounding the site to stand guard with rifles and Uzis. What they were protecting us from I am not sure but we did feel very safe. Just another example of the many times we have seen the results of cheap labor. As far as the pyramid goes it was fascinating. It was the Lahun pyramid built by Sesostris II during the 12th Dynasty (around 2000B.C.) when the Fayyum area was much more the center of Egyptian power. We would have liked to spend a lot more time there just looking around but that didn't seem to be their plan so we will have to come back for a second trip. All in all a pretty good day.

We only had to run a few cows off the road on our journey down the irrigation ditches.




A view of the pyramid in the distance. Like almost all the pyramids it was built right at the edge of the desert and it is still the edge today. I think it is amazing that they have been farming the same ground for over 4000 years.











Some of the pottery fragments grouped into piles in the new excavation area. We aren't sure what period they are from. The area has been used as a burial site since prehistoric times all the way up through the Romans and just down the road is a modern Egyptian cemetery. There were a few pieces with beautiful blue coloring.






Looking down into one of the burial shafts. This area is not part of the pyramid complex but several hundred yards from it. If you search Lahun pyramid on the internet you will find articles about the discoveries earlier this year of some important mummies and coffins that predate the pyramid by several thousand years. If you enlarge the picture you will see that the objects on the left are human bones and scraps of cloth. Once again we don't know if they date back to the tomb construction (1st and 2nd Dynasty) or are later burials reusing the tomb, but bones are scattered all over the site.





The Lahun pyramid itself. What you are looking at is the mudbrick core. Once the limestone covering was removed (they think it was Ramses II that stripped this one) it begins to erode a lot quicker. You can see the spokes of the limestone framework sticking out upon which the bricks were placed.











This is looking down the shaft (80 meters deep) that leads to the burial chamber under the pyramid. In the same area was the only real treasure found here - in one of the princesses tombs. There were four vertical tombs in a row but only one of them had escaped looting.












In this picture you can see some of the remaining limestone casing.











This is walking around the east side of the pyramid with our guide and one of the guards - on the rock in the distance is one of the lookouts. Off to my right is the foundation of one of the two walls that surrounded the pyramid. In front of me is the queen's pyramid - not much left.

Cairo from the rooftop

They just opened the pool on the roof of our crash pad in Cairo so a couple evenings ago we decided to take a dip and watch the sunset.















David was reading a book on the pyramids and observed that it was pretty cool to be reading about the pyramids when he can actually SEE the pyramids. If you enlarge the photo at bottom right and look very closely, you can just see them on the hazy horizon. Pretty cool indeed. The river you see is the Nile. While we were up there, we heard the 7:30 calls to prayer by all the mosques within earshot. The noise from all the various chanting swells and overwhelms the normal city sounds of traffic and honking just for a few minutes and then one by one just fades away. I tried to record it on our camera but all you can hear is wind but I'll try to capture it one of these days.

Samia, my Arabic tutor

My first week here I was out in the garden and I heard a hello from the neighboring driveway. Samia works as the housekeeper for Rich next door and we introduced ourselves. Everyone here has a housekeeper and these women rely on it for a living. While my reputation as a housecleaner is, ahem, well-known (hey, I'm good at other things!), I just couldn't hire someone to clean my house while I laid on the couch and drank my iced tea. But I would pay someone in a heartbeat to teach me Arabic so when Samia offered, I gladly accepted. Samia is funny and generous and her English is quite good....I think she's going to be a great teacher and, I hope, a friend as well.

A few days ago, she taught me how to make maschi, a rice dish she makes. It has onions and a tomato sauce with cilantro and dill. She usually stuffs the rice in grape leaves, peppers, or slices of eggplant. But David and I just like it plain....it's SO good.

The Ottoman Empire, Omar, and Lebanese food : a night in Cairo

I couldn't figure out another O word associated with Lebanese. :) Anyway, we were up in Cairo for the evening and I had a PLAN. Said plan only included Ottoman Empire and Lebanese; Omar was a surprise. :)

The American Research Center in Egypt is a nonprofit founded to support research on all aspects of Egyptian history and culture. It partners with the Egyptian Supreme Council of Antiquities on major conservation projects and it provides a weekly lecture on Wednesdays for the general public. This week's lecture was entitled "The Ottoman Revolution, the Egyptian Press, and the Struggle over Islamic Politics" and I thought, "Hey, we know next to nothing about that....let's go!" We had the desk attendant at the crash pad write the address carefully in Arabic (David's team shares a very nice apartment building, aka the crash pad, in Cairo with other TAFT teams around Egypt for when they're in the city for any reason. They are HUGE apartments with a TV, pool table, computers, plus they have guards that watch the cars. These guards have guns which look like Uzis which makes me a bit nervous..but they're very nice) . The taxi driver seemed to know where to go and we were off to the Garden City district (actually right next to the Embassy). Dropped us off at the wrong building (my fault) and we were given subsequent directions from a security-type person that the building (2 Simon Bolivar Ave) was down a block, to our left. The problem is that none of the buildings had numbers as far as we could tell. As we were walking down the street, hoping for a sign, we ran into three men, sitting on chairs watching the busy traffic go by.

"What are you looking for?" one man asked.

We told him and he replied "Oh, that's right here", pointing behind him to a building which did not look like what I expected. It was rundown, no sign or number; it didn't even look like the front of the building, just an open side door. I must have looked skeptical because he asked "What? You don't believe me? I'm here all day. I should know. The ARCE office is on the second floor." He then introduced himself as Omar and, on finding out David was with the Army, told us about his uncle who works with the Egyptian military and the US military in some capacity. He implored us to go to his neighboring shop to see the certificate of recognition his uncle had received from the US Army and to please have some tea with him. So we went to his shop and looked around but told him we couldn't stay since we wanted to attend that lecture. He made us promise, PROMISE, to come back for tea after the lecture. We promised.

He was absolutely right about the ARCE office on the second floor. The lecture was about one of the debates held in the Moslem world in the early 20th century regarding whether or not it was appropriate to depose the Sultan according to Islamic law. I'm sure the University of Florida professor gave enough of an introductory framework for the other professors present, but I apparently needed a much bigger picture as I was mentally scrambling from word one. The Young Turk revolt of 1908? The deposition of Sultan Hamid?? She rattled over names of 19th c. Arab philosophers quickly, not even explaining who they were because they were so "well-known", in order to get to her main topic. David and I regrouped afterwards, trying to pool together what we understood from what she said, and decided to go have some tea with Omar. I actually find it a bit thrilling to hear about a whole world of scholarship about which I know virtually nothing....it's as if looking through a peephole into the garden on the other side of the fence.

Omar very happily greeted us and took us back to his shop which had a bit of everything for those interested in tacky souvenirs. Tin plates etched with the pyramids, papyrus sheets designed with hieroglyphics, glass perfume bottles of all shapes and sizes, as well as large glass containers of perfumes and oils. He asked us to sit and wanted to know if we'd like mint with our tea and then barked orders to his underling, a silent young man who when not getting our tea just sat and watched us. Egyptians seem to be very conscious of their stature, what they should and shouldn't be doing. Omar is the owner of the shop so he would not be the one to actually prepare our tea. We noticed this in our diving class as well. When the instructor wanted to show us something with the oxygen tank, he'd yell something at his subordinate in the other room who'd come in and pick up the oxygen tank and put it on the table. He'd then wait for Magdy to tell him to take it off the table. I remember thinking "Why doesn't he just pick it up himself??" but we've seen this quite a bit in different scenarios.

After we were served tea, Omar told us about the area, his family's history of owning these shops, why his English is so good (working with the Embassy folks), Obama's visit the week before (we've had lots of discussions about Obama since the Speech :) Very likable guy....even when he eventually tried to sell us stuff. To make a long story just a little shorter, we walked out with two large bottles of peppermint and lemon oil....for my virtually nonexistent back problems....and a couple hundred pounds lighter in the pocket. (about $30) David and I are not good at this sort of thing. :) I know bartering is a sort of game, but it's still based on deceptive interactions and I'd rather just trust what people say. I still liked Omar though. We'll most likely visit him again next time we're in his part of town, but we'll be more forceful next time. :)

Next was dinner. A Lebanese restaurant called Sabaya a few blocks away. A Lebanese meal starts out with little dishes, called mezze, which you eat with pita-like bread. We ordered hummus, a smoked eggplant spread, and a roasted vegetable salad. Then we had a grilled meat dish as the entree; David had chicken and I had lamb and beef. When we couldn't eat anymore, our waiter Gamil said "No problem" and brought back this amazing garlic sauce to eat our meat and bread with, as if we were simply tired of the dishes we had ordered! We ate a bit more and then when we absolutely couldn't eat anymore he brought out White coffee which is hot water with orange blossom water and is supposed to calm your stomach. After drinking that, we ate a bit more until we really couldn't eat another bite. It was a slow night so Gamil talked with us for quite a while, gently corrected my Arabic, wanted to know our impressions of Obama's speech, talked about how he had served Jimmy Carter back in the day and then somehow encouraged us to split a baklava and have coffee. It was a wonderful dinner but I'm not sure I've ever felt so full. The next day, still feeling the effects, we had some tuna on Ritz crackers for lunch and a salad for dinner!

We have a scuba video!!

Diving in the Red Sea

So we went scuba diving for the first time. I was a bit nervous but I really didn't need to be; we were well taught and, anyway, seeing the coral and fish up close was worth it! We felt like we were swimming in an aquarium! We went to Sharm el-Sheikh on the Red Sea. On the map below, you can locate where Sharm is...right at the tip of the Sinai peninsula:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Egypt-region-map-cities.gif

Some pics of us on the yacht:






We slept on the deck both nights and it was like being rocked to sleep under the stars...quite nice :)










Sunset













Getting ready for one of the dives
















We had an underwater camera but the photos are pretty washed out.....doesn't even begin to do justice to the pink, green, and purple coral we saw plus all the brilliant colors of the fish but this at least gives you an idea.


















A blue spotted stingray













And that's a manta ray way off in the distance












David looking serene. I think that jumbled mass on the left must be me.

















Me trying out my technique
















































Here's a picture of the group. This comprises all of David's unit over here, except for the two dive instructors in the middle, me, and another girlfriend. We had a great time!

Scenes from Beni Suef to Kom Awshim

First off, I need to start with a clarification: The air force base we live in is called Beni Suef; David travels each day to work at another air force base (where the Chinooks are) called Kom Awshim. Beni Suef has the air force's fighter pilot school so there are lots of F16s flying around. :) Last weekend, David took me off-post to show me what his daily drive looks like. I tried to take some pictures but the quality isn't that good because a) they were taken from a moving car and b) I tried to shoot surreptitiously. After all, it would be annoying if I was doing my Saturday errands and someone was driving around taking pictures of me!

As you'll see, Beni Suef is in farm country. While most men in Cairo wear western clothing, this long garment (you can see it if you enlarge the photo)--I believe it's called a jallabia-- appears to be more prevalent in rural areas:


Camels put to work!!






My Egypt guidebook tells me this canal is called Joseph's canal, thought to have been built by Joseph in the Old Testament, during his time as the pharoah's minister for public works. Is this possible? David was fascinated by all the little shelters built along the canal for the donkeys and cattle. We also noticed lots of women and children using the canal for washing dishes and clothes; you can see a few in the lower right:





Onions appear to be a major crop here. We also saw garlic, wheat, and sugar beets.













David goes through the city of Fayoum on his way to work each day. Fayoum lies in an oasis area, due to the canals and Lake Qaroun. We'll have to explore that another day but here are some photos from the Saturday market. I like the woman with the chickens in the last photo. :)