Ramadan Decorations

In the days before the start of Ramadan, the villages begin decorating with bits of foil glued over a string or stars cut from paper and glued onto a string.  The beginning of festive nights.

Cooling Off

It's been hot lately and after trailing these stupid sheep around all day while they trim the foliage along the canals. So what's a guy to do? Let them eat their heads off, I'm going into the water.

Are You My Mother?

 A mother crow was feeding her baby on top of the hay pile. Mom had to go find more food and the baby decided to ask a passerby for a meal. She's lucky that she found Buffy who is a sucker for any kind of baby.

Life with Islamic Government

This sign was in the window of a pharmacy in Maadi. I don't find it terribly repressed...much less subtle.

Not Fisher Price

My housekeeper's son is figuring out walking but he wants to move faster than he can reasonably do so on his own. One of the villagers took some old nails and scrap wood and made this tricycle walker for him that he pushes around the garden. He still falls over but it's sort of slow motion.

Supervisors

My housekeeper's son was playing in the garden this afternoon and I noticed that four of the dogs had lined up next to each other and were watching him carefully. I couldn't resist the photo, but my moving over to take it did distract his oldest watcher at the left end.

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.

Feather Dusters

Palms are a member of the grass family and not real trees as such. Whatever they are they have so many wonderful aspects: entirely edible, producing wonderful food, and easy to grow. They also can look like a tidal pool of grey-green sea creatures from a hilltop or a plantation of enormous feather dusters.

A First

At about 3:45 pm today at the height of the usual rush hour virtually everyone in Egypt was somewhere sitting in front of a television set waiting to hear the announcement of the first (hopefully) democratically elected president in its history. The choice was a tough one for many people here, between an ex-cabinet minister from the Mubarak regime who was also a member of the military and a member of the Muslim Brotherhood. Surprisingly the unofficial vote count showed a clear win for Mohamed Morsi of the MB, and many people expected the military to push through a win for the ex-regime member, Ahmed Shafik, when the announcement of who won was postponed by 5 days. So the tension in Egypt was enormous. This shot of the roads going into the city from Giza was taken during the press conference announcing the winner. Empty roads like this are nothing short of miraculous.

Buyer Beware

Translations can be a bit sketchy here. I'm not sure that I'd want to buy jeans here.