A Truly Imaginative Tour

Businesses in Egypt often get rather whimsical names to say the least. While dropping her father at the airport this morning, Catherine noticed this bus. Harry Potter? Really? Does it come with Quidditch or an invisibility cloak?

A Girl and Her Dogs

 

Christmas is chaotic anywhere anytime. My daughter and I decided that a walk in the desert would help to clear our heads. A couple of the dogs agreed.

Water Work

Just a few metres from a busy road traveled by tourists visiting the Sakkara Pyramids a canal flows behind houses and apartment buildings to carry irrigation water along the farmlands and eventually out to the desert for reclamation projects. In the canals there live fish of various sizes, frogs and toad pollywogs, birds of all types and a newcomer to the area, crayfish. An enterprising fish farmer thought he was buying fresh water shrimp but when he saw his purchase, he dumped them into the river. Since then, about 15 years ago, they have multiplied like rabbits with a lovely side effect. The crayfish are especially fond of snails and have been devouring the snails that have carried bilharizia with the result that this parasitic organism has decreased 95% in parts of the canal and river system. But the crayfish are tough on the nets that the farmers set out for perch, so one of the men working in a boat is fixing his nets, while the others by the bridge are fishing water hyacinths and the ubiquitous plastic bottles out of the water.

Attacked!

My sincere apologies for not posting for a while but my MacBook got attacked by a Trojan that was hijacking programs on my computer and using up all my internet allowance. I've had to have technicians clean it out and we are now trying to reconstruct my data which was saved but I worry might be infected. Bear with me.

Meanwhile, yesterday was the birth date of young Khaled Alaa Abdel Fattah, whose parents are Alaa and Manal, two of the first Egyptian bloggers that I found when I started my own blog. Most of their work is in Arabic and they are second or third generation activists who have been working to improve life in Egypt most of their lives. Alaa was arrested by the military on charges that are so obviously false it hurts to even think about it. He is still in detention and missed the birth of his first son, just as his father missed the birth of Alaa's sister Mona, another activist here. So everyone wish Khaled a happy birth day and a speedy reunion with his father.