But Don't Sit Down

A banana seller has a mobile stand but the seat for the bicycle is long gone. 

Clip It And Don't Lose It.

It has been ages since I've posted to the blog and truly I feel bad about that. Life has a way of getting complicated and busy, especially here in Egypt where nothing is as easy as it should be, nor as easy as it was some years ago. Power failures, internet failures and no time to leave the farm due to work that we are doing here all make it hard to take photos and post.

But I had two women who wanted to go to see the Menawat Sunday market last week, and I have some lovely photos of a country market in Giza. One friend needed a donkey harness for the donkey at her farm that hauls the manure cart, while the other was a visitor who was up for anything interesting...and the Sunday market is interesting. Imagine all the goods in a large supermarket unwrapped, unpacked and then distributed along narrow dusty streets and you have roughly the idea of a village market. You will find EVERYTHING there if you have the time to look for it. One of the things that I noticed that brought a huge grin to my face was this enormous pile of wooden clothes pins. My housekeeper is a tiny woman and the washing line at the house is quite tall, so clothes pins go missing regularly. She often will just tug at a sheet and the pins separate flying in opposite directions. When I saw this, I knew that I needed a shot of this place where the missing clothes pins must go to breed.

Consummate Carriers

Egyptian women carry the universe on their shoulders. Not only are they working hard to care for their families, but many of them live the way I remember my mother living when I was young, without a car, having only the basic mechanical aids to help clean (we were turned loose with old socks on to polish the floors), and being pretty much solely responsible for their homes and children. So most of them walk a lot and often are carrying offspring. 

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.

Location, Location, Location

Passing by the mosque on Road 9 in Maadi one morning I noticed that a shoeshine man had set up shop there. Since those who enter the mosque to pray remove their shoes, this is a perfect place for his business. Why not get your shoes cleaned at the same time?

Trailer Optional

One of the guys who works for me was doing some work on his home in the village and needed to borrow a wheelbarrow. They don't have cars so we offered to haul it over with the jeep, but his cousin said that he would take it over with  his motorcycle. This was something we had to see and record!

Pink Cloud

Cotton candy seller

The youth market never fails. In this case a man has filled plastic bags with wads of pink cotton candy (candy floss for the Brits) and is bicycling around the villages selling it to children for probably something like 25 piastres, which is a healthy markup on his materials, although not so healthy for the teeth.

Rope Of The Pharoahs

We were riding through the village of Sakkara and as we passed this garden, I noticed that the woman here was making a palm fiber rope. We've used this rope for construction around the farm because it is incredibly strong and doesn't degrade from the sunlight. It is spun from the brown fiber that they take off the palm trees when they are trimming the fronds from them. This is the same rope that was used to build the solar boat that is on display at Giza.

Fluffing Up The Pillows

 

I'd bet anything that most people can't identify that machine. It's a cotton fluffer for pillows and mattresses. The traditional mattresses are filled with cotton and every few years the fluffer man comes around to re-fluff the mattresses.

 

Elbow Grease

People come to Egypt and they marvel at the pyramids, at least 125 or so of them, scattered along the Nile Valley, and they wonder how they were built. Well, when they were built the Nile used to flood the whole valley necessitating many of the farmers living in the valley to move into the low desert around the temple and pyramid sites where they were basically stuck for about four months every year. With pretty much the entire population of Egypt looking for something to do for four months, the labor pool would have been pretty impressive. So they put their backs to it and moved rock.

We recently decided to drill a new 40 meter well on the farm. The actual drilling was done with the aid of a diesel motor that pulled up a weighted pipe into the air and then dropped in to pound it through sand, clay and layers of some of the hardest stone I've ever seen. And then when they were putting in the actual pipe, the well diggers and some of my staff took the handles to push the pipe in circles to disengage the digging pipe. Hard work, but they did it.

Three-wheel Haulers

So what do you use if you need to haul things in a city that was built a thousand years ago for donkey carts? How about a motorcycle dump truck?

How It's Done In The Village

This is a photo trash collection in my village.  The women and children sort trash collected by the recyclers and put it into these huge bags which are themselves recycled feed bags. Most people have poultry to take care of organic waste. The inorganic gets collected.

An Egyptian Cattle Drive

 While driving into Maadi yesterday I encountered an Egyptian cattle drive of sorts. The farmers from the eastern province bring their cows and some of their sheep and goats into the farming area here around Sakkara and Dahshur every July/August. The animals graze from fields that are being harvested and avoid some of the spraying of the cotton plants in their home province. In the old days, they used to walk them here but now they use trucks.

Just Trim The Mustache, Please.

Camels at Giza have intricate designs cut into their coats. I don't know if it is just artistic and or if it's also a means of identification. But these designs are created with an enormous handmade pair of shears. Frightening.

The Tie That Binds

We are having plastering done on the house and this is the scaffolding that the plasterers are working on. Holes are knocked into the wall (they will be filled in with brick and mortar later), holes are dug in the ground and then the poles that fit into the holes are tied together with palm fiber rope. Yep. Tied. With handmade rope. And they move the planks around to give themselves a place to stand while plastering. Workmen's compensation or industrial safety would be having fits.

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.

Dishwashing

Think of this young lady the next time your dishwasher is on the fritz. When all you have is a hand pump, doing dishes is pretty complicated. Soapy water in one pot, clean in another, and enough dishes for a huge family.

Taking a Rest

A street cleaner in Giza rests on his palm broom as traffic crawls by in the usual afternoon snarl.

Not Really My Machine

This is a photo of an industrial sewing machine that is used for making equestrian equipment. I'd been talking to my daughter the other day about how it would be nice to have one to repair bridles and such around the farm, but honestly, I never wanted this particular machine. It used to belong to my friend and saddle maker Mohamed Ibrahim el Said. He's about 42 years old. He'd gone to get papers for his brother who was shot during the revolution by the police. This was just before Ramadan. He'd just been to my farm to talk about making me a new lovely harness for my donkeys. No one has seen him since and no one knows where he is. His wife asked if I wanted to buy the machine because she needs money and most people were offering her peanuts for it. I gave her a decent price and told her that if Mohamed comes back he can get it back from me. I really don't want it. I want Mohamed.

Hot Tea on a Hot Day

Egypt runs on hot sweet tea. That's one reason the first couple of weeks of Ramadan are so hard on everyone. This tea shop was impromptu, set up on the sidewalk outside of the Mogamma while the people were living in the tents on the lawn there. It probably isn't there after the army's sweep yesterday.