Monday, October 22, 2007

Getting a Ride Home


This sure isn't daily and it's driving me a bit nuts to be without a camera. Telephones are not really cameras even if they have them in them. But today while driving back to the farm after some errands in town, I passed a group of women walking down the road. One of them was carrying this huge aluminum pan and had her daughter happily perched in the pan.

Saturday, October 13, 2007

Taking a Watery Break


Canals are a fact of life in the Nile Valley. They were used in pharaonic times as well, although not as extensively as they are now since the building of the Aswan High Dam and the end of the yearly flood. They are slow-moving bodies of water with a lot of decaying plant matter in them giving them the dark colour of peat bogs in Europe. Many of my favourite riding trails wind along them and one of them is the cause for a hopefully brief break in posting to this blog.

Yesterday my young gelding Fagr and I went for a short unplanned swim in a canal when his back leg slipped off the path and he was unable to regain his balance. Though the experience was, to say the least, shocking to both of us, neither of us sustained any real damage due to our swimming adventure. I wish I could say the same of my mobile phone and my beloved Lumix, which I had only just received from the Panasonic service shop where it had spent Ramadan having two motors replaced due to dust damage. During that hiatus, I made due with the camera in my Nokia...but the Nokia was also in the saddle bag that got thoroughly soaked in the canal and while both machines will turn on, they are acting in an utterly erratic fashion. I'm just hoping that Panasonic will be able to fix the camera in something under a month this time.

Wednesday, October 10, 2007

Weaving Their World


In the early 50's an Egyptian architect Ramses Wissa Wassef began training young weavers in the village of Harrania, not far from my farm. He taught them to spin and dye wool using natural dyes and then he set them to work creating rugs and tapestries that reflected the world around them. The center and museum still exist today and the weavers still work making extraordinary pieces. You can see more at their website: http://www.wissa-wassef-arts.com

Wednesday, October 3, 2007

Another Roadside Attraction


I don't like to drive during Ramadan. Driving in Cairo is hard enough. Driving on roads with about 10 million hungry, thirsty, tired, nicotine and caffeine deprived motorists REALLY is not fun. I don't know if there are statistics about whether the accidents increase during Ramadan, but the general consensus of the motorists I know is that there is. This particular smashup involved two passenger cars and dump truck. Crunch. Luckily there seemed to be no real casualties. Hopefully traffic was so bad that no one was moving very fast.

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