Egyptian Jacks

If all these photos look a bit random, that's because they are, at least as far as my understanding of them. We were working on one of our vet clinics near a mosque in a village by Abu Sir and there was a very intent knot of young girls sitting together all facing inward on the terrace of the mosque. I noticed them but it wasn't until we had finished with most of our patients (donkeys, buffalo, cows, goats, and so on) that I got a chance to see what they were doing. One of the girls had three flat round stones and three flat angular stones. She would toss them on the tiles and then toss one stone up into the air and collect the stones on the tiles in various combinations. It reminded me of a game we played when I was a child in California with a ball and a set of spikey metal objects called Jacks.  In Egypt it is called "Al".

Killing Farm Land

The news has stories of thousands of acres being sold to Arabs, but out here near Abu Sir, they are building warehouses by the hundred on good cultivation land. This would look to be a factory. How can our government be so stupid and shortsighted? 

The Cotton Candy Man

During protests, the activists used to tweet that it wasn't real until the cotton candy man showed up. That's how ubiquitous these men carrying a big plastic bouquets of bright pink sweetness are. You may see them in any neighbourhood, walking down the center of a busy street or winding through coffee shops. This man was walking the dusty roads near Abu Sir. I have never seen a cotton candy machine to make the sticky sweet inside the bags, but there must be one.

Old Friends Care For Each Other

An older farmer's concern for his water buffalo's sore foot is clear in his face as he waits for the vet to come examine her at one of the Rural Wellness Initiative vet clinics. He was first in line for seeing us there. The buffalo had a crack in the sole of her foot and the treatment was quite simple really, frequent washing with betadine to keep it clean. Photo by Tulip Afifi.

Turnip seller Abu Sir

 In the fall when they plant the berseem for the winter the villagers plant turnips as well. Sometimes they are planted in with the berseem crop and harvested with the second or third cutting of the berseem. Other times they plant them along the borders of the beds and harvested as needed. Turnips in Egypt are generally eaten raw like the radishes that are closely related. I like to cook the greens but this isn't a common dish. Generally they are cut and pickled in a simple brine solution and eaten as an accompaniment to almost anything.  She was enjoying  the winter sun in Abu Sir and snacking on some of her wares.

Kelly's Girls

Yesterday we were doing a mobile veterinary clinic for the Rural Wellness Initiative just outside of Shabramant/Abu Sir, a farming area of Giza that is south of the Giza plateau. With all the governmental unrest and changes in the past few years, agricultural services to farmers have essentially died in Egypt, so members of my farm staff, some veterinarians and members of the Donkey Sanctuary staff have gotten together to provide free vet care for the small farmers in a roughly 300 acre square. Neighbours and friends donate money to buy simple preventative care veterinary medications such as wormers, vitamins,  and antibiotics for wound care.  The Donkey Sanctuary trained our staff in hoof trimming, abscess treatment and also how to flush the tear ducts of donkeys, which when blocked cause the tears to run down the donkeys' faces attracting flies which infect the skin with parasites causing long open sores on the face.

We have found a local craftsman to manufacture sturdy fly masks to protect the donkeys' faces from the flies, more  humane halters that help to control wayward donkeys without causing damage to their noses as is caused by the usual chain halters, and noseband covers to prevent chain damage for people who are using the chain halters.

But a huge part of the fun of this work is seeing the children of the countryside playing, like these two girls who were on their way home from school and hitched a ride on a VERY slow moving truck.  As it slowed even more to pass our clinic site, a little boy joined them on the bumper.

Staff if Life

We are having the first anniversary party of our veterinary charity, Rural Wellness Initiative Egypt, and did our grocery shopping in Abu Sir. The baker there makes some of the beat pita bread I've ever eaten. We knew we'd be waiting for a big order so Um Ali bought a couple of lia es from the oven directly to give her kids a treat while waiting in my car. 

Mean Streets

This is a street in the "village" of Abu Sir. This "village" houses about forty thousand people. It has no mayor, no town council, no police, no sewage, no trash collection, no running water...among many other things that it lacks, like paved roads. This is rural Egypt, the place that the government never thinks about. 

Market Smile

If you are sitting in a car in Egypt you may find yourself the object of children's curiosity. The easiest way to entertain them and yourself is to haul out your phone and take pictures. The children will be delighted and are dying to see their photo, and you get something like this little girl in Abu Sir. 

Light My Fire

I've barbecued a lot of ribs, hamburgers and chicken in my time, but I never stopped to think where the charcoal came from, other than from a nice bag at the grocery store. Out here in the farmland, however, there are small corners of land where the owners of trees that have to be trimmed can sell their wood to the charcoal burners. These people layer the wood carefully and then cover it all with wet straw. The wood and straw are then covered with a layer of dirt and old charcoal and the wood is set alight. It burns very slowly over a number of days and then the fire is put out. When everything is cool, the mounds are opened and the charcoal is taken out and put into bags, but usually old feed bags out here.  And that's how they do it.

King Of The Mountain

During the summer, especially during Ramadan that is our July this year, the farm is a great place to relax and enjoy the denizens. Google, our Nubian/Alpine buck likes to regard his domain from the top of the wall. Mindy, the Dane, on the other hand, is either curious about what he's doing or trying to encourage him to get down. Google, quite clearly, is having none of it.

Everybody's Bruce Lee

The perfect playground for some twelve year old boys...a plain white plastic drop cloth for a stage and someone with a camera! One of Jan Nikolai's photos of the Abu Sir children.

Fading Into White.

We had a young German couple come to stay at the farm a little while ago. They do photographic art and went out to the Rural Wellness Initiative Egypt's mobile vet clinic with us. Jan Nikolai set up a white plastic drop cloth to shoot portraits of some of the farmers and children with their animals. The results were amazing.

Spot light

On a winter afternoon with big thunder clouds blowing above the desert, the sun will shine down through a gap to highlight  a spot on the desert. When the spot happens to be the pyramids of Abu Sir.

Lending a Hand

Egypt's small farmers are being crushed by a lack of support. There are government subsidies on human medications to keep the prices affordable, but no subsidies are provided for veterinary medications that the farmers need for their livestock. These prices are rising steadily along with the prices of clothing, schools, books, and food that they need to buy with what little money they make from their crops, whose prices are rising much, much more slowly. Many farmers now are lucky to be able to pay for medications for their animals, but can't afford to pay any more to cover the cost of gas for the doctor's car or money for the doctor's time. Most vets can't afford to spend time without earning a salary so they are not going out to treat animals.

A few months ago the Egyptian Society of Animal Friends and Al Sorat Farm joined forces to provide free veterinary care to farmers between Shabramant and Abu Sir. Here the vets from ESAF and the grooms from Al Sorat are working on a donkey with an infection in his shoulder. They make weekly visits to different parts of of the farmland as it isn't easy for farmers to find time to take a sick or injured animal to either the clinic or the farm to have it checked. Much of the work consists of discussion with the owners about the proper care of their animals to help them keep them healthy.

Colourful Cleaning

Village families don't own cars for the most part and there are no shops out here so salesmen come out and wander about with pickup trucks, donkey and horse carts and motorcycle trucks filled with goods that households might need. This man is the local version of the Fuller Brush man.

Important Addition To The Neighbourhood

We have much less pollution out here than in the city and more room, at least technically. But most of the land in the countryside is spoken for and used for farming or housing for the most part. The true stuff of life for male Egyptians under the age of about 50 is football (aka, soccer for North Americans) and it is played in any place that it can be played. In the villages along the desert there are football pitches lined up along the edge of the desert that are filled every Friday afternoon. Near my farm, an enterprising individual leveled some land, fenced it and laid out a football pitch that can be rented by the hour. If everyone playing chips in a couple of LE, the cost of a game is minimal for each. There are even lights for a night game. This is going to be a busy place.

A Place To Play

One of the things about the crowded Nile Valley is that there are so few places for leisure activities. Of course, leisure for the boys and men is football (soccer to North Americans) and for this you need a football field. These players are from the village of Abu Sir which is to the left of the photograph. Every Friday they gather on the edge of the desert and have a complete football league that plays in impromptu pitches.  In our little village, a clever land owner has built a football pitch complete with light poles on a piece of empty land. He will rent it out to people wanting to play by the hour, about LE 50 per hour which works out to be only about LE 2.5 per player for people wanting to play a game.

Yalla!

There simply isn't anything better than this to chase the cobwebs out of your head. This is a very common daydream for a lot of people visiting Egypt. Two fast Arab horses and a lot of sand.

Always Time To Talk

If there is one thing that Egyptians love to do, it is talking. Most of the social interaction in this country is conversation over tea, coffee, a domino game. In this case two friends stop to chat on their way home from the fields, despite the high winds and the stifling dust. It's never too unpleasant for a chat.