The Pics - 2

The River Nile (I know, I know, I'd imagined something more romantic... kinda like what leaves the watershed. My final take on the whole 'Nile waters treaty'? Blease let them have it. It's a hardknock life to have just one river running through ya).

The lovely square where I was charged US$3 for a glass of chai rangi

Outfits "for make good time with your husband"

The viewpoint from which you can see all 3 pyramids

The Pics - 1

My favorite pic from Giza :-)

View of a golf course right below the pyramid area

Talk about building blocks! :-)

The first (largest) pyramid. Ticket office in the foreground, plenty of 'tourism and antiquities' police milling around, either on foot or on camels

The siphinix (sphinx)

Sun setting behind the Red Sea mountains

Foreground: Red Sea, background: Red Sea Mountains

Red Sea beach at Hurghada

Shamba za Cairo (Part One)

Cairo bwana, hamna shamba... so you have to understand, dear tourist, that shamba ni wewe. And you will be limwa'd without mercy.

My time in Cairo is short… do I want to do history and culture, or do I want to be
a headonistic, unapologetic mass tourist, and do the pyramids and bazaar experience? (stroking chin and sighing) Such tough decisions. My rationale is that the culture thing requires time, the headonistic mass tourist thing just requires transport and money. Bright and early, my travel companion in this adventure, Jo, and I hail a taxi from our flea bag 2 star hotel (which we booked into at 1am in the morning).

We ask the taxi driver if he speaks English and he confidently replies ‘yes’. Relieved, we enter the vehicle (and old fiat something or other painted in black and white) and tell him we want to go to the pyramids, so how much will it cost. We’ve been told by the hotel people that it should cost about 10 pounds from where we are, and you can knock us over with a feather when he quotes that exact fare. We look at each other – is it possible that by some miraculous twist of fate, we’ve happened upon a guy who doesn’t want to haggle in this here Cairo – don’t quite trust this possibility, but are happy to go along with it.

The traffic jam is real (about 8am) but we’re soon at the pyramids, right as the first few tour buses are rolling in. He drops us off at the entrance. A hard working young man (hwym) runs to us and tells the taxi driver to park his vehicle at the foot of the hill because he won’t be allowed to park inside. To us he says: ‘you come with me, you choose camel or horse, you ride to the pyramids’. Not having just fallen off the cabbage truck (or walked right off a plane), we decline and say we’ll walk to the pyramids. He says ‘pyramids is far, very far’. And we look askance at him, indicating that to us, the pyramid is right ‘here’. And it is indeed, outlined very sketchily through the morning haze.

He says ‘pyramids far, siphinix (as it's popularly called around here) far, you get tired walking… you sure you fit to walk long time?’. We indicate we’ll take our chances. He says ‘you walk through gate you pay 50 egyptian pounds, and you’ll have to walk. You come with me and for trip, you pay depending on size: small (15 min) = 15 L.E., medium (30 min) = 30 L.E., and long (60 min) = 60 L.E.
We don’t understand his pointless…. We’re planning to be here at most – an hour. To take pictures, touch the stone, then bounce to Khan el Khalil, the tourist bazaar. We firmly refuse his efforts to have us sign on to camel/horse rides, and pay the 50 L.E. entrance fee. We then walk to the largest of the 3 intact pyramids, and take a whole lotta pictures.

We’re debating whether to go see the sphinx (we fear that it’s quite far… judging from what the young man said) when our taxi driver shows up and says he’s been allowed to park inside. Apparently the hwym was not being truthful about parking inside the pyramid area. We decide that since we’re here, we might as well see the siphinix, besides, we’ve only spent 20 minutes of the allotted 60.

While taking pictures at the pyramids, a couple of guys try to sell us arab head-dress. One says hello to me and then says ‘take this (headdress) as sign of my friendship’. Thanks but no thanks, and I catch an undecipherable look being exchanged between him and another guy. I end up ‘getting’ the headdress later anyway, because Jo is suckered into it and pulls me into the ‘deal’. 40 LE for 2 sets of 3 pyramids (a crystal set and a black epoxy one) with the headdress thrown in as bakshish.

As we’re happily wearing the headdress and taking pictures (still at the largest pyramid), a friendly young man (fym) walks up to Jo and talks Jo into letting him take his picture. Fym grabs my camera to ‘make picture with both of you’, then decides the light there is not good enough. Come with me, he says, the light is better ‘over there’. We follow him until we round the corner of the pyramid. By this time I’m hot and bothered, and would please like my camera back! What do we find around the corner? A group of camels. Don’t you want to take picture on camel? He asks. I’m not interested… been there, done that… waaay back when mamba village was just starting and they used to offer camel rides as an activity… before the camels started walking the beaches of north coast… Jo is enthralled at the idea, and it all happens so fast I don’t have time to warn that there might be a cost involved.

Up on the camel, grinning at the experience, and they walk the camel a few meters, all the while urging me to take pictures, and asking me to hold the guide rope while they take a picture of the two of us. Jo then dismounts, and the father of fym says ‘you’re happy?’ and Jo says ‘yes’, so ffym says ‘you make good picture, so now give me my money, 120LE for camel ride’. Jo is thoroughly surprised, ‘but you said nothing about paying for the ride’. They settle on 20LE and he is thoroughly disgusted and disheartened at being that conned, that early in the morning.

We walk past the boat museum and ask to use the bathroom. While I’m waiting outside, a cute young boy, can’t be older than 13, walks up to me and says ‘here’s a headdress for you, ‘cause you look egyptian’. I gleefully produce my ‘pyramid kitsch’ and indicate that he can’t use that one on me. He moves on, and I quickly put it on again, a sign that “I’ve paid my dues in that department, thank you very much. If you’re walking up to me, please make sure it’s with a different story”. Ashraf asks which way the siphinix is, and we walk along the road in that direction. We’re now going down a gentle slope, and the bottom is still quite hazy. Ashraf says ‘there it is’, but I can only make out a lump rising out of the morning haze.

Talking eyes

I had forgotten how expressive eyes can be. I am quickly reminded on my walk in search for food on my first day here. Two European women walk slightly ahead of me, both in heels and short skirts… (didn’t the guidebook say to dress demurely?) I observe a couple of waiters taking in the women’s exposed skin… hmmm would that I could inspire such lust ...

But the expressive eyes do not speak only of lust. I have seen hard eyes, here. Eyes I had previously only seen on the marines at US Consulates/Embassies, and UN Security personnel (especially when their wakubwa are in the vicinity). The tourism and antiquities police have the hardest eyes I’ve seen in a while. Totally understandable though, given their geographic location and their circumstances.

Suggestive eyes… I first see them when my Sudanese neighbor on the plane tells the air hostess: “you do it for me”, referring to her lowering the food tray for him. The muslim call to prayer and supplications sent up to God sound so compelling, mind wanders to imagining love-making in Arabic… a la Jill Scot’s “how many ways was God called”. The Sudanese guy’s helplessness/command leads my mind down another avenue… that of giving in to the command… power pleasure derived from waiting hand and foot on someone you choose to do it for. Submission… with benefits. Sit a guy down, tell him “sit back, let me treat you like the king I choose to see you as you are… let me treat you to:______________(insert your name here), the hand and foot maid”.

Belly dancing outfits look so seductive, I start to picture myself in them (happily ignoring that I need several weeks of faithful running before I can like the way it’ll look on me). Something about this place that puts one in the mind of intimate secrets and has one wanting to be admitted into that world of wild eyed pleasure…

All dashed against the cold hard rock of reality when a conversation about Egyptian sex life reveals that FGM is rampant here, and that it contributes to no fun in the marital bed… so women focus on childbearing and child rearing (and before you jump down my throat, folk can, and do have a great marital bed life and still focus on child bearing and child rearing) while men walk their hungry eyes over exposed flesh wherever they find it.

A discussion on sexuality isn’t complete without mention of same-gender love. There’s even a website on it, how to identify one another, best pick up points, who are the difficult groups, etc. What does government say about it? A large group was caught some time ago, all thrown into jail. A gay-rights activist group came over and managed to free them all. I’m told there is never a shortage of drama on the gay-lover front. E.g. a gay couple comes together on vacation, then the male man sees a woman or man that he fancies, and the female man gets upset and has a fight with manly man, or slits his own wrists. Love, relationships: challenging no matter what the color, creed, culture, or gender.

Hope’s spring in my breast receives a boost in volume a little later when I chat with another gentleman and our conversation is interrupted by a phone call. He returns looking energized, and reveals that he was speaking to his wife. He’s been married to the same woman for 30 years. She was his first and only love. On their 22^nd anniversary, he gave her a poem that told of their story… how they met and how they still thirst for one another’s presence, and rush home everyday, and how their 5 kids envy their relationship. Whenever he’s away from his wife, he can’t have his breakfast without first calling her to find out if she’s woken up well. And she can’t go to sleep before calling him to find out how his day was.

His parting words? Marriage is like a watermelon, you can knock it (melon, not marriage) all you want (to check for ripeness) but the proof is in the eating… is it sweet or not? You can date and ‘test drive’ ad nauseum, but marriage will bring a different dynamic to the relationship. That’s why it’s truly a gift from God (so if you’re not in good marriage, God hates you, yes?).

The beleaguered African

I’ve never felt as beleaguered, as an African on this continent, as I have in the past 2 weeks. Mount the plane to Cairo, all hijab’d (too bad I forgot to change out of my trousers) and ready for adventure. I sit next to a gentleman who immediately asks me what country I’m from. I smile, counter with the same question, and he says Sudan. The smile freezes on my face, but I continue the conversation… after all, not all Sudanese sanction the genocide in Darfur, right?

The air hostess comes round with papers and magazines, I choose Paris Match, he chooses the Financial Times. A minute into our perusal of our chosen literature, he pulls out a supplement on aids and asks me what the red ribbon on the cover of the supplement stands for. Now, priding myself on being a repository for trivia, and having recently asked and googled that exact question, I quickly explain it. He follows up with a question that totally smacks of a set up: “what continent is most affected by AIDS?” I play along, “Africa”. Then why don’t African people choose the symbol for aids? [He’s got a point there…] You Africans take everything the west gives… and then follows a tirade on how we Africans never question anything given by the west.

I answer him using the words of others I’ve had this discussion with: the west brought development, they brought education and picked us from the morass of our primitive cultural and religious practices, so why should we doubt the goodness of other things they bring us? He asks why, if they brought education, there weren’t any people in his field (construction) from Kenya until 1978… they were all laborers before that. How to say “idon’tknow” in Arabic? He adds that we only need to understand our problems in order to half solve them… A discussion I can bet a thousand shillings is going on in at least 80% of pubs continent-wide. Enough already with these discussions! He, naturally, counters with something else, but I’ve switched off at this point. I refuse to engage in a discussion about how doomed and gloomy the future is for Africans, for the 3^rd consecutive night.

Yesterday, a person who should know these things was scripting (verbally) the play of african conferences: someone stands and presents a paper that makes recommendations for solution of certain problems. An hour later, someone else presents a paper that says the same thing, only in a different way. Then the obligatory ‘smart alec’ of the conference stands up and complains/analyzes ‘we are just going round and round and saying the same thing’. Never is an actor mentioned, only that ‘there needs to be more work done on the following…’, and that ‘someone should look into implementation of such and such’ (kinda like watchie’s column where people are always writing “who will save us from….”). After the presentations we all go for the buffet meal(s), and leave… to workshop another day. The night before last, we were talking about how ineffective our governments are, etc. etc. Honestly, I am in no mood to go anywhere near the doom and gloom wagon again. We are a beautiful, smart people, no matter what our shortcomings are, so don’t try to drag me into self-hate, thank you! We settle into an uncomfortable silence.

He breaks the silence to ask where in Egypt I’m be going, and I indicate that I’m torn between doing Cairo and doing Luxor. He informs me that Luxor is best experienced if you time your visit to occur either on 22^nd March or 22^nd October. That’s because, on these two days of the year, the hall in the temple of (one of the) Ramses(?) hits the statue, just so, and the sun lights the entire hall up in stages. It is dark/artificially lit except for these 2 days of the year. Gotta admire that old technology, yes? The original dates were the 21^st of March and October, but they had to raise these monuments when building the Aswan dam, so it altered the dates slightly. The total blonde I am about some of these things, I ask why they couldn’t just build the dam somewhere else (question is influenced by a discussion, a few years ago, about the Sudanese government wanting to build a dam in Sudan which would effectively wipe out the cultural heritage of Nubians or some other people living in that river valley). He says it’s because the rocky geology appropriate for dam building is not found along all stretches of the Nile, so the Luxor area was considered the best.

Sounds magnificent… can’t wait.

Amunmin... version 2 of the story

(Thanks for the links, egm)

Version 2, told to me this evening, goes like this:
The king was mobilizing his army for war, and Amunmin went to mage his ablication. He was rejected on the grounds that he was disabled (missing his left arm), so he was left as the only man in the village. Since those days wars took a long time, by the time the king came back, he found a whole lotta young kids walking around the village. He decided to punish Amunmin by cutting off his right leg... so that when he stood up he was unable to balance broberly.
Years later, another king came and started (you guessed it..) mobilizing for war, and realized there was a whole force of young able men in the village. He asked about who was responsible, and decided to honor Amunmin as a god of fertility.

Now, the blot thickens: There is, in Luxor, a hall in the temple of Ramses II(?) dedicated to something along the lines of ... fertility. In the old days, when soldiers went to (you guessed it!) war, they had to bring evidence to their king of how many men they had killed (in the good old spirit of 'take no brisoners'). They chose to cut off the brivates, and mounted them on a wall in the hall. Today I am told you will see women bumrushing the hall (berhabs i exaggerate, i just like that image) to look at all the mummified varieties from ancient times. They measure the various lengths with their arms and imagine...

Anyway, the guys manning these halls in Luxor today are, according to my source, "from upper egypt". They ask these women (almost always european tourists) if they'd like to see a real live one for 2 euros. If the woman responds in the affirmative, they go around the corner and lift their galabea (khanzu) and the deal is sealed. If you want to touch... the price goes up...
Finally! All this time I thought perversion around here was a one-way street... given all the belly dancing outfits being sold around every corner... glad to hear it's not.

I'm told a whole lotta european women land here and immediately want to go to the desert in search of a Bedouin man. Something about "they rub it with sand as they're growing up..." I just want to know how these urban legends come into being. My narrator says "These tourists come here with a dream... kalas! don't wake them up!"

Amin

They left out a whole lot in history class!

Got my hands on a couple of books on ancient Egypt in primary school and thereafter felt I knew all there was to know about it (pre-teenage… what can I say… 'tis the only time in life you truly believe you know everything). It took getting to Hurghada and allowing a shop owner to talk me into ‘trusting’ him, to realize just how much was left out of those books. The trusting is in quotes ‘cause … you have to talk yourself into trusting a guy who tells you “walahi I will give you special discount”.

I get to Hurghada at 6am, and since I was extra bright and didn’t change money at the airport I’ve just left, I am bila 'bounds' but do find out that the taxi fare to my hotel should be around $6. I cave in to a “taxi?” request, and he says it’ll cost me $25. I tell him I have been reliably informed that it should cost $6, so I’m not paying anything more than $10. He starts talking about how he had to pay for parking and airport entry, and I tell him that has nothing to do with me. He brings it down to $20, then $15. I ask him to let me off when I’ve spent $10, and point me in the direction of my hotel, I’ll walk the remainder of the way. He brings it down to $11, and insists on an additional $1 for bakshish. The guide books don’t joke when they talk about haggling! A few minutes later we’re at my hotel, having passed through some pretty desolate looking places. Sand everywhere. Can’t decide whether I like it or not yet, ‘cause I have a cold, am cold (it’s windy!), sleepy, and hungry. I check in to my room (after being told that it’s usually a 2pm check in) and am informed that the bank opens at 9am-12pm and 6-10pm. Gotta love a different system… that realizes life shouldn’t be confined to the hours of 9am – 5pm. Fruit basket gets attacked as soon as I’m settled, and I get to eat a ‘wet’ date for the first time ever. It… hints of taste and texture to come.

I black out until midday, dress very warmly and leave the room. Am back within 2 minutes of being outside… clearly the sun makes a difference to temperatures around here. Wear a t-shirt but carry something long-sleeved. I get pointed in the general direction of town and am off. Have legs and camera will travel. Still feeling listless and dull thanks to the cold, but the sun feels good, and hunger (for something other than fruit) drives me to seek out a restaurant. As I look for a restaurant that serves food that’ll hit the spot, I stop by hotels to find out how their rates and room quality compares to the place I’m staying. Armed tourist police at every major hotel I pass by... hinting that all is not well in this part of the world. I pass gaucho (argentinia), mafia (Italian restaurant… just in case you hadn’t figured it out), Lebanese, then ‘Papas II’ where I sit down for a burger and chips. A map I saw on a shop window indicated there are 2 KFCs and 2 McD’s somewhere in this town… they get enough tourist traffic to sustain those? Maybe I’m here during low season ‘cause streets are pretty deserted.

After a good (junk) meal, I pass by an internet café and as I’m leaving the ‘mall’, taking pics of a Nefertiti pic on papyrus parchment, and other misc. photos, a shop owner (turns out he’s 27) invites me into his shop. I go in to browse, and he invites me to tea and a chat. I figure… why not? We exchange vital data, then I ask him if he has any Cleopatra parchments (for a friend who thinks Cleo was the most beautiful woman ever. Me... I think the evidence indicates Nefertiti was the supuu. Cleo though, probably had enough feminine wiles in her little finger to have 20 men fall at her feet, as history indicates, lucky woman). He has 3 shops (directly or indirectly) in the mall: jewelery, tshirts, and misc. statuettes. We go to the misc. shop so we can look at the Cleopatra parchments he has.

He steps out the shop to look for Nefertiti, and I take a look around. When I see the statuette, I first think it’s a badly carved piece of work, and wonder why he’s selling it. It appears to me, at first glance, that the sculptor meant to show a man holding his leg up (the way the Zulus throw their legs up in dance). A quick browse of the store indicates that this particular statuette is not unique: (*can't figure out how to insert a link to the image - it's honestly too racy to just put up bila link - so if you can helb, bleez see me kando. I bromise it'll be worth the technical assistance you give - grin) One leg missing, and an extra large ‘3rd leg’. Definitely a story begging to be told here.

His name was Aminkamb (according to shopkeeper. Sadly, can’t find him on google, so will have to wait until I can ask others schooled in mythology… perfect excuse to buy one, neh?). The king went to war and left Amin in charge of the harem. When king returned, he found all the concubines pregnant. After asking who dunnit, and everyone pointing at Amin, he had Amin’s right leg and left arm amputated to teach him a lesson. Off went the king again, (not having learnt his lesson the first time) and returned to find his wife pregnant, same culprit. So the king had something done to keep Amin’s phallus permanently…engorged, and had him? his body? placed at the palace door thereafter.

Today (according to shopkeeper) he is a fertility god for women who want to get pregnant. I am now giggling like a schoolgirl, and he tells me I can touch it if I want to (the statuette, people!). I quickly decline… no need to touch a fertility fetish when I’m not in that whole ‘fertility’ frame of mind. He indicates he has larger statuettes… but I decline… I just want to take pictures. Now, the modern day stories are pretty interesting: these are especially popular gift items among gay guys and a woman has given fellatio to the larger of the statuettes. I've just discovered something else Amin is good for: dispelling blues cast by colds and 'PMS'… facilitating endorphin injection into bloodstream by way of delighted embarrassed giggles. Die olde mojo’s back after a two day absence.