Sales, Sales and More Sails

If you can sell sand in Egypt, then you are one helluva salesman. And there must be 100,000 applying for an interview. Sales techniques at the local market make it a proving ground for all perspective trainees. They stick to you like fleas to a dog or flys to camel dung. Persistent and unrelenting. May God shine upon you and may Allah bless you if your sister is available. Our visit to the town of Esna on the banks of the Nile was a scene right out of a movie sound stage. Sorry, but Disney couldn’t have even replicated this. A time capsule with all the services of a medieval Arabic town. Want to get your clothes pressed by someone ironing with their foot on a heated block of iron? How about the local taylor to sew you a new gambia? Fresh pita or falafel? How about getting your sofa restuffed with some genuine Egyptian cotton or get your favorite grains crushed for your cooking oil of preference. Don't forget to get blessed by the priest. Then there is the one stop shop for a mortician who will come to your home, fit you in a cotton wrap and have you buried before sundown. We bought a few scarves but even I got worn down by the non stop haggling over price and quantity. It was a full afternoon of sailing down the Nile for Aswan. Many little row boats with one or two fishermen and just as many river boats full of tourists going in the opposite direction. A few camel sightings and a lot of sand stretching to the horizon. We enjoyed the sail but the sun is taking it’s toll and I have a very red and sore nose to prove it. One of the goals for me was to see the Aswan High Dam and it did not disappoint. It was a joint venture between the Russians and Egyptians under the leadership of President Gamal Nasser. The lake that was created due to the construction is named after him, despite his death before it’s completion in 1970. It produces 20% of the electric needs of the county and helps to irrigate and expand upon desert recovery efforts. The felucca sail up the river was good fun and a swing by Agatha Christie’s Old Cataract Hotel brought the book, Death on the Nile right back into the forefront. It is a leisure afternoon and I am just back from getting some money from an ATM. The ship manager insisted I get an escort with one of the ship security guards and he arranged getting a taxi (if you can call it that) for the return trip into town. A grand total of $2.50. I gave him three dollars and told him to keep the change. They keep insisting the country is safe, but we have an armed policeman on all of our busses and we get an armed police escort vehicle, every time we go on an excursion tour. There are police and army checkpoints with armed pillboxes, where automatic machine guns are visible and if you thought Texas has a problem with firearms, then they must have learned it all from these guys. I don’t see the locals carrying guns but certainly security forces everywhere do. Shalom!!

My Head Goes Round and Round

Hundreds of temples and tombs, 100’s of thousands of servants, slaves and workers and millions of hours of labour. I can’t get my head around how all this building was done to honour the pharaohs, kings and queens. The construction is one thing, the decoration of the walls and tombs with drawings and hieroglyphics is totally another. The workmanship and intricacies of all the tradespeople who constructed these mammoth monuments and the artists of the drawings, carvings and statues is something to behold. God’s, goddesses, priests and pharaohs, all to be honoured and revered. It all is overwhelming. From the Temple of Karnak and the Temple of Luxor to the Valley of Kings and the tomb of King Tut and Queen Neferari. We were fortunate enough to get into Tut's tomb and I was able to take a picture of his mummified remains.This famous tomb was discovered in 1922 by the British archeologist Howard Carter. Then there is the Valley of Queens with the tomb of the first female pharaoh Queen Hatshepsut and the untold number of tombs still to be discovered. We talk about the Romans but the Egyptians were well ahead of them and the Greeks as a society and paramount in the world order. The tombs were hidden for centuries and the terrain they were built around is bleak and barren in order to discourage looters and allow those in search of a quiet afterlife, peace and prosperity. We are on the Nile sailing south, upstream. As I write this blog on the top deck of the ship I am listening to the prayers of the Iman drifting across the river from the minarets as they sing out their praises to Allah. The source of the Nile is Lake Victoria to the south in Uganda. 6600 kilometres in length, it is one of the longest rivers in the world and a potential source of regional and international dispute with different countries threatening to dam and control the water reserves which are becoming more and more critical to sustainability. The temperatures are hovering around 19 to 20 Celsius but the early mornings and evenings are cool. Considering the river traffic, the river itself seems relatively clean this far downstream and it is certainly the lifeblood for agricultural survival. Very few tractors are in evidence and men on their donkey carts and the manual labour in the fields appear to be an inefficient way of keeping the country fed. The unemployment rate is in the mid 20 percentile and the guide agrees there is a population problem but between the Muslim faith and government decree, abortion is illegal except in cases of rape, the wellbeing of the unborn and the health status of the mother. Relations with Israel appear to be calm and the subject of the six day war and the Yom Kippur war in 1973 are still fresh in the minds and not far from the the surface. Peace and prosperity are at the forefront but the gap between haves and have not is apparent everywhere. The population survives but it is difficult to see how they do. Shalom!