promised pictures

Here are some DDC pictures compliments my friend Kara. Click any to make 'em bigger:

On the grounds of the DDC.

DDC grain fields.

Maddy, keep feeding them!

Our chauffeur.

Millions of peaches...

Mokhtar and I receiving an explanation of the owner's irrigation system in Arabic. We did not understand a word.

Futbol with the kids!

By the way, I'm off to the Sinai tomorrow for a week. Stories upon my return.

Keep feeding them! Egypt's hungry!

Spent Friday and Saturday at the AUC Desert Development Center as a field trip for my Peasants, Nomads, and Rural Change anthro class. The “two hour” ride there turned into a four and a half hour ordeal, but that’s something I’m getting used to. My professor worked in this station twenty-some years ago, and it has grown considerably since. Located out in the Western desert (about 3 hours from the White Desert), it is huge research facility for desert irrigation, cultivation, and livestock rearing. It even includes an irrigated forest of trees imported from Australia when the center began. The dormitory rooms were the nicest place I’ve stayed in Cairo so far: soap, toilet paper, two towels, a plug-in bug repellent, a fascinatingly comfortable pillow… After checking in, I walked out to the woods, which were very reminiscent of a Northern Michigan coastal forest—pine trees, sandy soil, small greens coming out of the heavily needled forest floor. I wandered a for a bit with some classmates before being ambushed by a group of Boy Scouts wielding large sticks and obnoxious screams. A past coordinator of the center had lots of Scout connections and now organizes campouts for American Boy Scouts willing to make the trip. After a razzling game of 2x2 soccer, we had a late lunch of soup, grilled chicken, rice, stewed veggies, fresh veggies, tahini, bread, Hi-Spot (a citrus soda bearing the crest of Canada Dry). All of which, except the Hi-Spot, produced on DDC farms.

We took a tour of the whole center, which included a huge number of seedling tents, of which the DDC is among the country’s top sellers; an herb and medicinal garden; vegetables; citrus; landscaping tree seedlings; you name it, they grow it. We also saw their livestock pens, full of Egyptian-Swiss hybrid cows. Naturally the first thing you want to do when you see a giant lumbering drooling hoofed mammal is feed it. A classmate (and roomie on the trip), Yazin, started grabbing strands of hay to feed to the nearest cow. Mesmerized by the sloppy rotary grind and the black alien python tongues and seeing other cows amble on over after hearing the news, we scrambled for more hay. After we’d gotten a following of about five cows, Yazin cocked a little grin at me as he turned around and dragged over an entire bail and stuffed it through the fence. Our bus driver commented from behind, “Keep feeding them! Egypt is hungry!” (See previous posts.)

Later that night we visited the village beside the compound where a lot of local Egyptians who work in the university fields live. This village was started from the ground up a few decades ago. One mosque, one bakery, one café, and a whole lot of curious children.

The next day we visited a larger and older village. This one was started from the ground up under Nasser’s agrarian reform programs of the 1950s. A canal was dug out all the way from the Nile; engineers, farmers, and construction crews were sent; a city was created. We parked on a main street while our professor got off to find contacts of people she’d worked with 25 years ago. Little by little, children started coming out of the houses, hollering and laughing, while grabbing and teasing each other about what to say to us. We were still in the bus, so a wave and smile came first, followed by giggling and running behind the wall. The glass between us was gigantic. On each side were the observers and observed. They looked up at the big fishtank of Americans, and we looked down off the safari bus at the villagers. Once we felt sufficiently patronizing, we got out with candy and biscuits. Meanwhile, our professor tracked down a woman she used to know from her ethnography work.

The village had fallen on quite hard times, with the canal extensions failing because of a lack of resources to properly seal it. (A grad student recorded in some places they were losing 50% of the water through the ground and evaporation.) This woman’s brother migrated to Italy to find work. He worked construction and odd jobs until he could afford to open his own corner store. He saved up and turned this into a supermarket, and eventually added on a café. After twenty years in Italy he returned to Egypt to buy out two other families’ farms. When he left, they had five acres; they now have 93. We took a bus out there, and had to walk once the road got too rough. Peaches are just now coming in, and I made good use of their hospitality harvesting myself a good handful of fresh ‘uns. We walked along the little road to their house, peaches on the right, barley on the left, the wind blowing through it all, washing off any trace of Cairo pollution. A couple of us fell behind from eating peaches, so we hitched a ride in the back of pickup truck driven by a 7-year-old named Ahmed. He was a great driver.

I'll work on getting pictures of any of this...forgot the camera.

i was gonna do my homework, but then i ended up on facebook starting a revolution

On the topic of shortages here, water periodically goes in and out here as well. Waking up to no water is definitely a bummer. We also had a lightbulb explode last week. But no worries, I fixed it with a sock and a potato, using a modified technique that I saw improperly demonstrated on Home Improvement once.

Until yesterday there was still some fighting in Mahalla going on, the industrial town north of here where the idea for the strike first started. The government has promised to appease them, for now. There has been at least one death in Mahalla, and a large number of injuries and arrests. A number of organization leaders and online activists were also arrested--including bloggers and even the creator the facebook group announcing the strike. That's right, he's in jail for starting a facebook group. Seeing as facebook was the first line of communication for large scale real time networking after the Virginia Tech shooting, and now this, I'm starting to really see facebook not just as the guilty pleasure, sometimes addicting, most times quite vain, generally a bit scary (do you know who owns facebook and how he makes his money?), social networking site, but as a useful and hardly regulated tool for grass-roots (sometimes I hate that phrase) networking engine. The biggest problem with it here? The people who use facebook are only the rich and educated with access to computers, not the people that are being hurt most by this economy.

There is a new facebook group announcing the next general strike to be May 4.

news from the front

Another story that apparently barely made it overseas:

An American cargo ship, the Global Patriot, opened fire on and killed a 28-year-old vendor who was selling (with a license) cigarettes and antiques to boats in the Suez. Bush apologized to Mubarak on Thursday. ...and that's all.

Struck out

Don't know if this made the news across the world, but Egypt was on lockdown today since a number of organizations called for a nation-wide general strike to take place today (Sunday). After much confusion, the instructions came to be that participants should refrain from buying, selling, working, or riding public transportation today, with the addition of a public demonstration in Tahrir Sq. There are some big problems with that. Firstly, public demonstrations are technically illegal in Egypt, and the government warned, "immediate and firm measures against any attempt to demonstrate, disrupt road traffic or the running of public establishments and against all attempts to incite such acts". This hasn't totally stopped everything in the past, of course. There were demonstrations in front of our building across from the Social Fund for Development (remember them?) in January and again last week, and I've witnessed a doctors' demonstration as well as a public university professors' strike since I've been here.

No one knew what to expect today. I had one class canceled and one class remain. There was a strange air waking up this morning; outside looked more yellow than usual, and cloudy, like a big storm was approaching. Going down the stairs off to my 9am, I noticed the heavy fog making it difficult to even see down the street. When I got outside and across the street, my throat and eyes told me what I thought was fog was actually dust, and the fabled spring "khamsiin" dust storm was here. While the wind and cloud cover made the temperature feel unusually cool, the riot squads and armored personnel carriers made the atmosphere on the streets feel just as cool. Every corner from my apartment had a squad--young, bored guys shifting weight and smoking in their all black suits with helmets and thick fascist black boots behind the unconcerned half-greying man with the captain's hat, blue shoulder cords, mustache and walkie-talkie.

I came home after my first class and killed time until noon or so; the Tahrir protests were scheduled to start between 1 and 2 according to messages being circulated by phone and, yes, facebook. After being on campus for a bit, I decided to go check out the view from the roof (overlooking Tahrir Square). On my way up I ran into a bunch of other study abroad kids who had just been kicked off the roof. So by two o'clock I was walking out of campus and along side Tahrir... nothing. Just more cops and more cops. Can't exactly say I was disappointed, just curious. Some people (all Americans) were all pumped and hustling from spot to spot trying to get a good view and "wait for the show to start." If something did happen, there is a good chance it would've been broken up by force, and I didn't want to get caught in anything, nor did I really want to see someone get beaten with a baton. I suppose we'll see what affect this all has in the coming days. The government has declared the strike a complete failure, but also arrested 40 politicians and writers for inciting unrest.

Why?
The reasons for this action are many-fold and go back a ways. Most immediately is the staggering inflation that has hit since January. I was in a Western-style supermarket last week and saw a 5kg bag of rice for LE26 and thought, "This crazy overpriced place! I can get that for LE15 at the market." Only to realize the next day that prices were like that everywhere, and rice had gone up around LE10 since I had last bought it. In fact, since January, both rice and pasta have doubled in some places. This leaves bread as the major affordable grain. Of course you need flour to make bread, and Egypt happens to be the world's largest importer of flour. Hence, the price of bread is almost entirely contingent on the international price of flour. This price has also been going up on account of projects like bio-fuel production which has been taking over productive lands in Africa (particularly Tanzania) and using it to grow crops for fuel rather than food. Nasser introduced bread subsidies decades ago in attempts to ensure all citizens a basic right. They have come to take a heavy toll on the federal budget, and in 1977 Sadat tried to lift the subsidies. Riots ensued. So today, the subsidies still stand, but the supply is running thin. Subsidized bakeries face hopeful and, at times, desperate mobs from open to close daily. And everyday, the bakeries close with people still swarming at the window trying to get a loaf of the 'aiish baladi (lit. "life of the people"). Other bread does exist, but outside of the subsidies, it usually costs about five times as much.

The other side of this the demand for higher wages, as all this inflation has not seen any correlating rise in people's incomes. Public university professors and doctors both demonstrated in the last month. The former generally get a salary of about LE400. A salary. Per YEAR. If you break this down into months and deduct what it would cost to feed a family of 4 only daily bread, you would end up with about LE20 to spend on things like rent and clothing. (Or you could afford one McDonald's breakfast meal, medium sized.) To supplement their income, professors sell their notes and coursepacks themselves; often a student will have to hire the professor as a private tutor to ensure getting good marks in the class. I don't need to explain how this butchers the educational system. Aside from professors, more than a third of Egyptians live below or just above the poverty line of $2 a day (BBC).

The government has made vague promises to increase bread production and separate distributors from bakers on account of corrupt bakers selling flour on the black market instead of baking with it. (They can easily make more money doing this than baking and selling bread.) There are also parliamentary elections here on Tuesday, so this will be topic number one. I'll keep you posted.

done list

Last weekend I ate a cow brain sandwich and got electrocuted. Luckily, not at the same time, or else there may have been some inconvenient bovine Frankenstein business a-goin' on.

It was chewy.

LUXOOORRRRRRRR

Alright let’s get back to business. Luxor two weekends ago. Similar to the desert trip, I just hopped a train on down and met up with other groups that were going. Took the overnight 10 hour train there and slept most of the time. I had gotten myself all set by looking at maps and orienting myself, looking up hotels and making my pick. Upon arriving though I figured I’d just stick with the people on the train and go to the same hotel as everyone else. They all had reservations, but there was still a room open.

The Presidential Suite, I presume.

Regardless though, it was mine—quiet and to myself.

I found out real quick that Luxor is a city built on tourism. People in the city are always at work networking, relaying information of newly arrived tourists—where they are staying, what tours they’ve set up, where they’re from—and selling their own or their friends’ services. You can see it all sitting at a café on the main drag: young guys on bikes out patrolling for tourists, whether they look lost or not, making calls, directing friends to them, selling tours. It seems a lot of these guys don’t even work for a particular hotel, but carry worn out flyers and business cards of a number of places, take you there as if they worked there, and then collect a small commission if someone ends up staying there. Somewhat related, I came back from the Luxor Temple after the first day to find two new beds and bags in my room. Some other AUC kids showed up and the manager just tossed ‘em in my room. I guess I was surprised...but not really.

I’m gonna skip talking about Luxor Temple and go right to the tombs. We took a guided tour with a (gorgeous) Coptic guide, getting bussed across the bridge up to the Valley of the Kings. Also, in case ya dunno: Luxor is the place with most of the real famous stuff outside of the Pyramids. King Tut, all the Ramses, Hatshepsut… all these big players, plus even stuff built by Alexander the Great is down (upriver) there. Saw the tombs of Ramses I and IV first. (Sorry, no pictures as they were not allowed.) Before I stepped foot in Ramses IV’s tomb, I honestly had no real interest in Ancient Egypt; that is, it just felt too detached. The moment I stepped inside and saw all the walls and ceiling (probably 8-10 feet up) carved and painted, I knew it was something real. Most of it is very well preserved behind glass, but you see it and instantly connect with it—real people did this. Even most of the colors were intact, as they were made from powdered stone mixed with oil, not some shoddy pigment. The art itself hit me on so many more levels as well. All the patterning and abstractions (like a man pouring life on someone else symbolized by a shower of anks falling from an urn, or a crowd carved as a series of side profiles spread out like a deck of cards) stood out with a sort of contemporary relevance that stuck with me.

The same day, we covered the Valley of the Queens, the Temple of Hatshepsut, and the Colossi of Memnon. None of which I particularly feel like explaining right now, but feel free to click click click! Let’s move on to Karnak, an amusement park of old. I rented a bike the night before and took a pleasant 2km ride along the Nile out to the massive temple structure. Looking at pictures now really just frustrates me because not even the best ones come close to representing it fairly. Besides not capturing the majesty and size of the walls and pillars and statues, the exhilaration of being inside Karnak is from being completely engulfed.

Taking a picture of a couple trees doesn’t represent a forest, just as a few columns don't represent the Great Hypostyle Hall.

Everything in the temple is covered in hieroglyphics as well—they sure had a lot to say. Exiting the main courtyard to the left, I walked over some excavation sites to the satellite temple of Ptah. Inside is also an eerie and perfectly preserved statue of Sekhmet, complete with the one single hole built into the wall to send one solid beam of light down, Indiana Jones style. I was waiting patiently to take a picture behind a couple who were admiring it. A couple minutes passed, “Ooooooooook people…liiiiike to take a picture now.” I left the room, came back in, scuffing my feet a bit just to make sure they knew I was there. Nothin. Suddenly, movement! The couple took a step forward, placing a hand on Sekhmet’s chest while bowing their heads in silence. “Ahhh ok… uhh… I think I get what’s going on here.” Just then a number of their fellow travelers came in whom I immediately identified as German; a larger bald man with patterned baldness bore a chain with a marble at the end he was waving in front of the statue’s face and reciting something not German and not Arabic. “Great. Stuck here in a tiny stone room with some new-age German Egypto-pagan cult.” I needed a break so I went to find a tree and ate some Moltos under it.

Sekhmet

At some point after this I returned home and ate what would become a very fateful falafel sandwich. The falafel is, by the way, quite delicious down there. They add French fries and fried peppers. Anyway, the last night, like most of the others, was spent laying about chatting on the roof of the hotel. The last morning, I got up and decided I didn’t want to be there anymore. There was nothing left to do on my list and I had midterms due, so I decided I’d try to catch the 9:30am rather than the 10pm overnight train I had planned before. Scraped everything together without a shower, paid way too much for my hotel room, grabbed another falafel for breakfast and got on the train without a ticket (to be paid for later). This latest falafel went down a little rough and my stomach was feeling it during the first hour of the ride. Then the second hour came and “rough” became an understatement. Within the next 20 minutes I’m leaning out the side of the moving train blowing falafel back to the wind. A few Egyptian guys brought me some sugar cane, “Gentle,” one said in English. Nice and empty, my stomach was feelin’ fully rejuvenated, and took the sugar cane happily. I found another seat; we had to move around as people who actually had tickets got on the train and found their seats. After another hour however, I started feeling the twist again and I was back in the end of the car with the door open again. A couple hours later, there were no seats left, so I joined the other late-comers in sitting on the metal ground between cars next to the bathroom, which actually ended up being a pretty convenient set up. Soon after, someone offered me their seat, which I took, and spent the rest of the ride next to a boxer named Osama who once fought in Vegas.