Living our own Decamerons

When I was about ten years old or so I found a copy of Rats, Lice, and History in our local library. My mother had already made it clear that I was allowed to read anything at all that I wanted, so I checked it out and entered a fascination with the changes that epidemics can bring to society that continues to this day. In the process of reading about the medical history, the economic and political history, and all the updates to our knowledge in the past 60 years, I also read the Decameron, which was written by Boccaccio almost 500 years ago, although that came rather later. Essentially, the book is a series of short stories told by survivors of the Black Death in Italy, and the stories run the gamut to the extent that they are not entirely appropriate for ten year olds. Summaries of some of the Decameron tales 

Now every morning I open my computer to read the current stories from all over the world trying to cope with the situation of a virus run amok. It seems to me that there are a couple of generations of people who have had a lot of consistency in their environments, politics, and health. I'm one of those infamous Boomers, born in 1949 not long after World War II. While I doubt that there was any time at all while I was young in the US when the country was not involved in a war somewhere, there was little sense of danger or urgency for most of my childhood. We were fighting people in places like Korea, Vietnam and so on, and life continued happily. This was something of a golden time for many Americans when mothers could stay home to raise kids if they wanted because it was financially possible. I was probably part of the last group of young people to be able to work their way through college. I was part of the grand polio vaccination and remember some of  my friends' parents suffered with paralysis and had to spend time in iron lungs when I was in secondary school. But I don't recall there being a problem ever that involved closing down schools, shops, and life in general in such a scale as is happening now.

When the issue of self-isolation came up, I wasn't concerned. After all, I live out of an urban center. I'm not in the habit of spending time in the city or in crowds. Why would I be endangered? My children had other ideas and very quickly took me to task with lectures on why I need to stay on the farm as much as possible and why the farm has to be closed to guests. Reading the news over the past week has convinced me that my children were right. I don't believe that anyone outside of areas of central and west Africa have any experience with what the world is seeing now. Articles on the problems with ebola simply do not have the same impact as seeing Italy empty its streets.

What remains to be seen are the after effects in the world's economy and social structure. Will everything go back to where we all were at the beginning of November 2019? Will we see that a new path must be taken. The speed at which skies cleared of pollution has been heartening. We saw the same in the 18 days of 2011, but it didn't take any time at all for the streets to become even more crowded and the air to become even more polluted than it was before. Perhaps if there is a way to work through this virus and come out of it with something of a healthier environment and social consciousness, it will all be worth it. But I believe that for now we are mainly gathering and saving stories to tell.


https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/51799.The_Decameron

copyright 2020 Maryanne Stroud Gabbani

Starting Over

I began blogging in March 2003 because it seemed to be a good idea. I wasn't quite sure why it was such a good idea, but it surely appeared to be. I wanted to give friends of mine who were living everywhere other than Egypt, an idea about why I loved living here despite its eccentricities, oddities, and peculiarities. I continued writing regularly about my life in general in Egypt for the next about eight years, while I moved out of my home in Maadi in January 2004, built my farm, and became a fixture in my new rural neighbourhood.  I was quite settled out here about 45 minutes from Maadi when the revolution showed up in 2011 and my children, who were both living abroad called and insisted that I stop my blog at once. I wasn't writing about anything political, but why take any chances when everything in Egypt seemed to be up in the air? Instead, I began posting news articles to Facebook, the products of my research into just what was happening in Egypt and the Middle East. Gradually, I realised that the things that were happening in my part of the world were often mirrored in events elsewhere, for example the way that the Trump/Clinton in the US was almost a rerun of the Morsi/Shafiq election in Egypt bordered on frightening. As things got more complex, I moved the news service to another page on Facebook, The Peoples' News Group, which is a page where news items from all over the world can be shared. 

Much of my research was now public, political, and fairly unemotional, but I downloaded all of my blog entries and began reading them, which led to more personal and emotional thought. I had been writing my blog imagining myself describing and explaining life in Egypt to foreign friends, but I began writing it in the spring just before I decided to rent out our family home in Cairo, to sell our long unused-by-us family home in Toronto, and to buy land out near Abu Sir in the neighbourhood where I had kept my horses over 10 years, and which had proved to be a  haven during my years in Cairo. My move, my farm-building, my establishment of my own personal life as opposed to previous lives as "the wife of", or "the mother of" was a complex and subtle process. For the first six months that I lived out here, I would drive into Maadi at least four times a week, until one day I realised that the only thing that happened on most visits was that I would spend money that I really didn't need to spend. At this epiphany, my finances got a real break and I began spending more time working with my horses and gardens. I began a fairly successful equestrian tourism business that was built on a different model from most riding stables here. We were more National Geographic on horseback, taking riders from all over the world through farms and villages on horseback while talking with them about the environment, social issues, history, antiquities and so on. We invited friends and visitors to lunch after riding or just for fun and I remembered how much I love cooking and designing dishes that were economical, locally sourced and produced, and highly nutritious. In short, I was discovering who I was.

The abrupt involvement of all of Egypt in the questions of change, how to enable it,  how to thwart it, and just what on earth it really was brought many of us to a rather abrupt halt in 2011. We all endured at least four years of confusion, indecision, stagnation and all sorts of other quite unpleasant experiences. I saw friends of all ages leave Egypt in the hopes of finding better futures elsewhere. I watched other friends tentatively come home to try a new idea at home, offered suggestions, and often hugs and condolences when things didn't work out as anticipated. We gave up on equestrian tourism when a combination of increasingly stringent security measures in the deserts took many of our favourite desert trails and the decreasing interest in Cairo as a tourist destination saw our work lessen. We changed the farm's focus to education and service, offering field trips to schools, a venue for crafts, gardening, and a program to assist the local farmers with health care for their animals. Our work has grown exponentially, sort of like the spread of the virus that currently keeps me here on the farm maintaining a safe social distance.

These are odd times everywhere. The corona virus has governments at least encouraging people to stay home to avoid infection, and at the strongest authorizing complete lockdowns of cities and rural areas. However, you can’t really lock down agriculture because someone must do it so that everyone can eat. My farm isn’t one of the main providers of food for anyone but us, but still animals must be fed, plants cared for, and therefore my staff are being careful of everything they do but they are still coming in to work. At 71 with a history of bronchitis, everyone is telling me to stay on the farm away from the public, and as far as I can do this I will do so. It isn’t really a hardship since I’d rather be on the farm than anywhere else.

We had a massive rainstorm on Thursday and Friday just before they began muttering about having people stay home. A lot of us were expecting the announcement since we’d been watching the events in China, Italy and other places. But sadly the news in Egypt has been de-emphasizing the virus, which in turn undermines orders to avoid other people. You really can’t have people cajoled into feeling safe and at the same time get them to avoid social and physical interaction because it carries a danger. It’s totally impossible. I’ve gone for the warnings and explanations for my staff and a discussion of symptoms and how to handle them. The rainstorm’s main effect on the farm was to turn paddocks into quagmires of prime manure that had dried nicely and was about to be collected for renewing the earth in the gardens. That’s easy to do when it is dry, fluffy, and easy to spread. It isn’t quite so easy to do when it is thick, sticky and wet, but some of the lawns do have a nice layer of brown goo on them. Ordinarily, spreading manure around has to take into account the sensibilities of clients, but since there are no clients these days, we can just slather it on.

These are odd times everywhere. The corona virus has governments at least encouraging people to stay home to avoid infection, and at the strongest authorizing complete lockdowns of cities and rural areas. However, you can’t really lock down agriculture because someone must do it so that everyone can eat. My farm isn’t one of the main providers of food for anyone but us, but still animals must be fed, plants cared for, and therefore my staff are being careful of everything they do but they are still coming in to work. At 71 with a history of bronchitis, everyone is telling me to stay on the farm away from the public, and as far as I can do this I will do so. It isn’t really a hardship since I’d rather be on the farm than anywhere else.

We had a massive rainstorm on Thursday and Friday just before they began muttering about having people stay home. A lot of us were expecting the announcement since we’d been watching the events in China, Italy and other places. But sadly the news in Egypt has been de-emphasizing the virus, which in turn undermines orders to avoid other people. You really can’t have people cajoled into feeling safe and at the same time get them to avoid social and physical interaction because it carries a danger. It’s totally impossible. I’ve gone for the warnings and explanations for my staff and a discussion of symptoms and how to handle them. The rainstorm’s main effect on the farm was to turn paddocks into quagmires of prime manure that had dried nicely and was about to be collected for renewing the earth in the gardens. That’s easy to do when it is dry, fluffy, and easy to spread. It isn’t quite so easy to do when it is thick, sticky and wet, but some of the lawns do have a nice layer of brown goo on them. Ordinarily, spreading manure around has to take into account the sensibilities of clients, but since there are no clients these days, we can just slather it on.

copyright 2020 Maryanne Stroud Gabbani