Ramadan Greetings.

 The wind today is hot and dry, enough to parch you from the inside out, and it is the first day of Ramadan. My staff are mostly fasting and given that the temperature is over the 35 degree C cut off level, they are resting (sleeping) in the shade of their reed hut. The temperature limit for work was initially created for the horses who have a hard time cooling their core temperatures when the ambient temperature is too high. Humans do much better cooling themselves, but honestly once the temperature hits over 35 degrees C, aestivation becomes a very interesting word.  Aestivation is the heat-induced version of hibernation wherein an animal becomes very quiet and rests in the shade to avoid the heat. It is mainly considered a habit of reptiles, but it makes sense for other animals too in Egypt in the summer. The weather forecasts say that the temperatures should drop day after tomorrow, which will be a relief to everyone.

Ramadan is moving gradually into the cooler months of the spring, winter and fall in the weird backwards crawl of the Islamic calendar through the Gregorian calendar. Subsequent Ramadans will be cooler, have shorter fasting days, and will require a different kind of patience because it is harder to justify the long naps on shorter cooler days. This is more or less the end of our string of summer Ramadans for a number of years. The adaptation of our society to this fasting requires an adaptation of its own to the difference in the length of the days. But the fact is that no matter how long the days, the month of festivities that mark this month in Egypt is disruptive to routines.

When my children were young and were learning about Islam I was fasting with them and preparing iftar every evening. Ramadan was one of the few times when my husband would actually be home at dinner time, unless he had social engagements...business iftars are almost every evening. Later I found that I had an issue with highly reactive blood sugar and was warned by my doctor that fasting in general wasn't good for me and I stopped doing it. But during Ramadan, our family routine did not change that much. We were not addicted to the Ramadan television festival that keeps people up all night. There was school and work the next day, so everyone turned in at a reasonable time. We also didn't change our diet much during the month, having a light evening meal without any sweets at the end of it.

Now that I am living alone at the farm, my Ramadan schedule is even quieter during the summer fasts. Visitors to the farm usually come in the morning to be able to head  home before the pre-iftar traffic insanity. Driving during the two or three hours before sunset is essentially something that one only does because it is absolutely necessary, so no one is going to be traveling out here at that time. My staff live nearby and they go home just before sunset, having taken care of the evening meals for the animals. Of course the wives and mothers have done all the work for the iftar. I remember my riding friends in Alexandria who used to invite me to ride before iftar...their way of distracting themselves from hunger and thirst. It was a nice idea, but I had to point out that they all had wives who were getting their meal ready and in my case I WAS the wife who would be doing that. The lightbulb would switch on over the heads and there would be a rueful shrug. I don't bother with iftar since I am not fasting, but my diet is lighter during Ramadan and I have something very simple and easy. If anything, Ramadan is a bit of a holiday for me since the work of visitors to the farm is much less.

This year the general happiness that characterises the Egyptian approach to Ramadan has been sadly tempered with the tragedy of the attack on the Christian families in the south and the news that Egyptian planes are bombing in Libya in retaliation. The connection between these two events is not entirely clear, but then most things in Egypt aren't generally entirely clear. Perhaps some clarity will come later, but perhaps not. While the month is one of fasting which seems very solemn, Egyptians focus on the breaking of the fast with friends and family, which makes Ramadan here almost like a month long Christmas season with gatherings at night, special meals, and a huge emphasis on family. The fact that this season has been started out in blood has not been lost on us and we are all mourning. I hope that it will not also end the same way.






copyright 2017 Maryanne Stroud Gabbani

Changing Gears

 Six years ago things happened in Egypt that changed much of how we saw ourselves and how others saw us. All of a sudden with the alleged Arab Spring in early 2011, the eyes of the world were on Egypt and other countries in the Middle East. To say that things didn't exactly work out as planned or hoped (since there really wasn't much planning involved in the events of 2011 and the following years) would probably be the understatement of the century. At the time of the unrest my children asked me politely but very forcefully to stop blogging for a while. I like my children and I could understand their concern (like if I got deported I would be driving them out of their minds) so I went along with it. Meanwhile I was trying to make sense of the political activity in the area and was doing a lot of research with journalists on Twitter and other forums, and I was sharing that information on Facebook for friends of mine who had lived in Egypt, visited in Egypt, or who were just interested in Egypt. My Facebook feed turned into a news service of sorts where odd bits of information are shared with the world about life in the Middle East. That was the original goal of Living In Egypt, after all, to give people outside the country an idea of what it was like to actually live here. But after six years of mostly doing the news, life has changed again in Egypt and I've decided that it is important to document this change.

My farm went into the Arab Spring period as a place where people came to do equestrian tourism. We had visitors from abroad who would come to stay for a week or so in Egypt and would ride our horses seeing Egypt very much up close and personal. Immediately after the uprising in 2011 we still had a few visitors but the numbers fell quickly to nothing. This was, to say the least, a very difficult period. Not only were there no visitors from abroad but many companies, embassies, and schools in Cairo were extremely nervous about their people even traveling around the city, fears that most of us living here found quite baseless...but no one was asking us. Financially we managed, but for me the most difficult issue was how to keep a group of bright young men occupied while most of our work languished. The opportunity came up with The Donkey Sanctuary to have them trained as farriers and vet assistants, so I decided that if they weren't working much, they might as well learn. At first they were reluctant, but realising over time that they had real skills and knowledge was a powerful push for them to learn more. These were young men who had never finished primary school, having been told that they weren't smart enough...but it was not the case at all.

 In 2011 we began a goat breeding project at the farm to add the characteristics of some European and Middle Eastern goats to the local baladi Egyptian goats to improve the production of both milk and meat. We are now on about our third or fourth generation and our herd is a mix of Syrian, Saanen, Alpine, Nubian, and Boer goats along with the baladi base, which is important for its hardiness. We have since branched out into breeding Sudanese sheep, which are a short-haired sheep that give very nice milk for cheese. During a period of serious power cuts in 2012 we began looking at improving the viability of electricity and water at the farm. There is no provision for water supplies out here in the countryside and the electricity is somewhat eccentric to say the least. We arranged to dig a new 40 meter well closer to the animal paddocks than the original 20 meter well behind the house and I contacted a friend of my children's who had come back to Egypt to work in the alternative energy field about installing solar power. That began a four year project to gradually provide solar power to the farm and to ensure that we had sufficient water supplied for all the animals and our growing agricultural projects.

With all of these projects going on, we also started an initiative to provide free veterinary care to the local farmers who were becoming increasingly harmed by the inflation in gas, electricity and medical costs. Vets work with us and most of our work is caring for wounds and doing maintenance on the farm animals to teach the farmers that it is easier to keep their animals healthy than it is to fix them when they are broken. Even with the demise of tourism in the Cairo area, we were keeping fairly busy, and once the panic over security dropped we found a new source of income and visitors in the schools and families from Cairo who wanted to come to the farm to learn about animals, plants, farming...or just to take a nap under a mango tree. With the general stress level for Cairenes increasing as well, a quiet spot for relaxing in a green space has been very appreciated.

So living in Egypt has definitely become a new game. We are dealing with ferocious inflation here, insecurity about what is going on in the region in general, disillusionment with the hoped for social changes in the country, and concern for what will come next. The political sphere is ephemeral and uncontrollable it would seem, so I see no point in commenting on that. Here at Al Sorat Farm we are concentrating on doing agricultural research and development introducing new varieties of vegetables which we grow organically (one of the contributions of the many horses and other livestock at the farm) and then harvest seed to provide seedlings to other growers. We are experimenting with goat, sheep and buffalo cheese. We have increased our selection of unusual trees with lychee, longan, pecan, neem, karob, and sapodilla trees in the garden. So the focus in the blog is going to narrow a bit to life on the farm and our activities here. This is only appropriate since as I approach my seventies, I am less and less interested in subjecting myself to the craziness of Cairo traffic, the crowding and the pollution, and all the other urban problems. This blog has always been about my life in Egypt and these days it is more about plants, animals, and people in the countryside. For old readers, I hope that you enjoy my posts, while for new ones, I hope that they give you an insight into another lifestyle.


copyright 2017 Maryanne Stroud Gabbani