What can you say? Egyptians are simply some of the most ingenious drivers on this planet.
Village women don't have the transport or the time to go into town to buy things so enterprising businessmen bring goods to the village wives. In this case, a tricycle motorcycle base has been fitted with a box on the back to carry cartons and some rails on the sides where quilts and blankets or dresses can be hung for viewing.
Years ago a friend of mine was visiting and shook her head in wonder that the shopkeepers in Egypt were dusting the shoes in shop windows but the meat was hung out in the air with only a cloth covering. On the other hand, meat here is very fresh in that it is usually cut from an animal slaughtered within the last couple of hours at the most and is cooked the same day in a way such that it is very well-cooked. And when butchers advertise "aged meat" it means that the meat was left hanging somewhere for a period of time before selling. I was sitting at a corner in a village and noticed a motorcycle parked against a wall. On closer inspection, I realised that the owner of the motorcycle had a large piece of beef strapped to the carrier in back.
Sometimes you can't afford or find a delivery truck for something. This man decided to take his refrigerator home on his bicycle.
One of the amazing things about living in Egypt is what you can get delivered to your home. You can have your grocery shopping done and delivered. You can have books delivered. You can even go online and order dinner from most restaurants in Cairo to be delivered to your home. The gentleman on the motorcycle is delivering koshari, one of the most basic, cheap meals in Egypt. A mix of pasta, rice, lentils, chickpeas, fried onions and various sauces, it can usually provide a filling meal for under LE 5, or roughly a dollar. And it's fairly nutritious as well.
A friend arriving at my birthday celebration with an enormous bouquet of flowers was looking for a suitably large vase and found an aluminum jug used for collecting milk from the water buffalo.
At least once a day I see something that takes my breath away having spent years as a mom trying to keep kids in one piece. But it's very much a case of beggars being choosers. If all you have is a bicycle...a bicycle is what you use.
A housewife rides home in a tuktuk, a motorcycle with a cab on it basically, with a load of groceries purchased from a souq near Imbaba.
Everything doesn't just travel in tidy trucks in Cairo. You see people carrying items all over the city, and the bread men who carry loaves of pita bread all over the city on baskets are a familiar sight. Sometimes on foot, sometimes on bicycles, they move the food.
The men with the sheet of wood were going in the opposite direction as the men with the ladders, so they don't seem to be related even if they are in the same area of the desert. The ladder carriers are a tiny dot on the horizon just above and to the right of the wood carriers. To give you an idea, they are about a kilometre walk from the nearest road. Not much fun in sand.
I was out riding in the desert with some friends and behind the pyramids of Abu Sir we encountered two young men carrying ladders and walking towards the pyramids from the direction of the desert. We didn't get a chance to ask them what they were going to be doing with the ladders, and I presume that they were being brought to some of the archaeologists working in the area. But the possibilities are endless.
No one can say that Cairene's aren't brave. You wouldn't catch me riding a bicycle anywhere in urban Cairo, much less doing it with an enormous tray of bread on my head.
I've put a shot of these guys before. There's something almost fantastic about the shape of the camels when they are carrying palm fronds. The movement is even more fantastic with the bobbing heads and the waving fronds.
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.
So what do you do when you really need a wheelbarrow but the store is 20 km away and you only have a motorcycle?
The balancing abilities of Egyptian women is started young as this girl demonstrates. They have wonderful posture and are so flexible...maybe we should all start doing this.
As the mother of small children in Canada in the early 80's I got used to the idea that sometimes strollers and prams just didn't work, so visiting Egypt and having to find a way to schlep kids around Cairo didn't come as too great a shock. The sidewalks are much, much better now than they were when I first began visiting, but there are no wheel-friendly ramps most place that you go. I solved my problems way back when with a back pack with a little jump seat for my daughter when she got tired. But I've always had a sneaking admiration for the way that many of the women here just perch one of the offspring on a shoulder and mosey on down the road.
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