The School Bus

I was on my way into town to do some urban errands and school had just let out in the larger village near me. It runs in two shifts, children come mornings and go home just at noon and then others come for the afternoon. Part of this has to do with the fact that there are too many students for the school and part with the fact that these kids usually have to help out with the family farm or business as well as attend school. There are a very few buses around for children, usually for the very young, and the rest of the children get to school and back by any means that they find. These two scamps jumped on the back of a pickup loaded with tomatoes to catch a ride home.

The National Sport

If ever a country was made for photography, it is Egypt. Not only are there so many subjects available, but the light itself is extraordinary.

Camels Yes, Rain No

One of the wonderful things about Egypt to my way of thinking is the fact that we get about 360 days of sunshine in Cairo/Giza. But sometimes we don't. I took some friends of mine to the Giza plateau on camels on a day of storms blowing down the valley leaving us with wonderful patterns of sun and shadow in the desert. When I warned them to bundle up as we were a bit late in the day and the wind by the pyramids could be bitter, I got some pretty patronising smiles. "Poor thing, she's gone soft living here for so long". Those smiles changed to chattering teeth when that wind came blasting past the pyramids and crawling inside sweaters. And when it started raining, well....

Smoke in the Wind

Cairo has the unfortunate honour of being one of the most polluted cities in the world, which is one reason that I live on the edge of the western desert. Oddly enough, one of the reasons for the pollution can't be seen easily unless the wind is blowing enough of the crud out of the valley for the chimneys of the cement factories of Helwan to be made out....like today.

So nice to be back. I really missed having a camera.

The Motor Men

A stable electrical grid is a wonderful thing. An unstable one has the tendency to burn out electric motors with amazing efficiency. One of the nice things about simple electric motors is the fact that they are simple and someone who is willing to patiently rewind cable can bring one back from the dead. Most Egyptians have more time than money and the motor man can become your best friend.

Getting a Ride Home

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.

Taking a Watery Break

Canals are a fact of life in the Nile Valley. They were used in pharaonic times as well, although not as extensively as they are now since the building of the Aswan High Dam and the end of the yearly flood. They are slow-moving bodies of water with a lot of decaying plant matter in them giving them the dark colour of peat bogs in Europe. Many of my favourite riding trails wind along them and one of them is the cause for a hopefully brief break in posting to this blog.

Yesterday my young gelding Fagr and I went for a short unplanned swim in a canal when his back leg slipped off the path and he was unable to regain his balance. Though the experience was, to say the least, shocking to both of us, neither of us sustained any real damage due to our swimming adventure. I wish I could say the same of my mobile phone and my beloved Lumix, which I had only just received from the Panasonic service shop where it had spent Ramadan having two motors replaced due to dust damage. During that hiatus, I made due with the camera in my Nokia...but the Nokia was also in the saddle bag that got thoroughly soaked in the canal and while both machines will turn on, they are acting in an utterly erratic fashion. I'm just hoping that Panasonic will be able to fix the camera in something under a month this time.

Weaving Their World

In the early 50's an Egyptian architect Ramses Wissa Wassef began training young weavers in the village of Harrania, not far from my farm. He taught them to spin and dye wool using natural dyes and then he set them to work creating rugs and tapestries that reflected the world around them. The center and museum still exist today and the weavers still work making extraordinary pieces. You can see more at their website: http://www.wissa-wassef-arts.com

Another Roadside Attraction

I don't like to drive during Ramadan. Driving in Cairo is hard enough. Driving on roads with about 10 million hungry, thirsty, tired, nicotine and caffeine deprived motorists REALLY is not fun. I don't know if there are statistics about whether the accidents increase during Ramadan, but the general consensus of the motorists I know is that there is. This particular smashup involved two passenger cars and dump truck. Crunch. Luckily there seemed to be no real casualties. Hopefully traffic was so bad that no one was moving very fast.

Breaking the Fast

We are halfway through the month of Ramadan now and everyone is pretty much into the routine of not eating and drinking all day, and then breaking the fast at sunset, often with friends and family. My neighbour, who manages a landscape nursery, invited me to join him and his crew for iftar in the nursery garden. A long table covered with plates containing roast goat, duck and rabbit, rice, bread, green salad, yogurt salad, stuffed eggplant and zucchini, pickles,dates, and fruit stood in the center of the garden and as the sunset call to prayer sounded, we all sat down to have iftar together. The meal was simple, healthy and plentiful, and afterwards all the smokers gratefully sat with a cigarette or water pipe to enjoy the night sounds in the garden. Ramadan Kareem.