Green is good for you

Health News Article | Reuters.com
Every so often, and unfortunately far too often, I see a news item that proclaims something that is so horribly obvious but which we seem to have somehow forgotten. Reuters news service today ran an article about how researchers have found that children with attention deficit syndrome and hyperactivity become calmer when they spend time in green places. Well, duh. What an extraordinary idea. Children need to be out of doors among trees and plants.

I don't know. Probably I've been spoiled by the fact that I lived my childhood in green spaces because my parents believed that children belonged outside of the house as long as the sun was shining or at least it wasn't pouring buckets. I also was able to spoil my own children in that respect and able to toss them outside as much as possible. Egypt's climate, like Southern California's, is great that way. If I have to spoil and be spoiled, that's the way to do it. Better a day fishing or hiking than a day in the mall.

The fact that this story is news is probably even more interesting than the story itself. Humans had best be careful with their living spaces because it is much too easy to live in nice clean concrete than it is to cope with the randomness and mess of nature. But it isn't good for us. I get anxious after a week in Manhattan or London. Some park time calms me, but it isn't as good as going out my front door and gazing over the fields behind my house. I guess that I'm living proof that these researchers know what they are talking about.

My daughter took care of my menagerie while I went to Sharm utterly dogless for 3 days. Her remark when I came home made me laugh. "Staying alone at your house is too much work to be a holiday, Mom." Well, yes. You have to be up in the morning to feed the dogs and parrots and to prepare the dog food for later. The garden needs watering daily in the summer and the animals have to be fed again in the afternoon. Then, if there are any animals sick or injured, the medications have to be administered. No, it is a job, but those days that I can just stay around the house and paddocks to do it, well, they are the best.

Reading about Egypt and the Middle East

The primary activity of our merry band of vacationers has been reading, oddly enough, so I thought that I'd talk about books a bit. The reading list for my visitors has been as follows: Dan Brown's 'Angels and Demons' (Given the Hardy Boys booby prize), John LeCarre's 'The Constant Gardener', Milan Kundera's 'Ignorance', Heinrich Boll's 'The Silent Angel', and a Polish translation of Joseph Heller's 'God Knows'. I also brought along a book edited by Deborah Manley and Sahar Abdel Hakim called 'Traveling Through Egypt' which is a compilation of travelers' tales from Egypt from the ancient Greeks to modern times. It's a perfect beach or garden book because it's organised by topic rather than time period, so you can be comfortable picking it up more or less at random. The accounts of travelers the like of Ibn Battuta, Lucy Duff Gordon, or Gustave Flaubert give a fascinating persepective on the activities of tourists as well as on the country itself.

I've bought a lot of books from the American University in Cairo, and for people interested in any aspect of Egypt, their website is a useful stop. I was first introduced to Naguib Mahfouz, the Nobel prize winning author, through the AUC press paperbacks for sale in hotel lobbies. I bought one (Midaq Alley), read it and went back for more. I've lost more Naquib Mahfouz novels than I care to remember by loaning them to friends to read and pass on. I'm now the proud owner of autographed copies (hardback this time) of the Cairo Trilogy.

AUC Press publishes books about Egypt that aren't published anywhere else. You can find modern literature, including all of Mahfouz' works, guidebooks to the birds and animals of Egypt as well as the cities and ruins, historical and sociological studies, language handbooks, and the best book that has ever been written about Cairo, Max Rodenbeck's 'Cairo The City Victorious'. Max's book got rave reviews locally and my children bought me a copy when it was first published. In return, I bought each of them the paperback to take to college and read whenever they got homesick. Later, every one of the visitors we've had has been given a copy of the book to remember Cairo by. In almost every case, the reader has dived in to resurface about a week later with a big grin. So if you can't afford the air fare, try the bookstore.

What's an Egyptian?

A herd of unattended camels marching out of Nuweiba at sunset, originally uploaded by Miloflamingo.

We are six in the house in Sharm el Sheikh this weekend. One American widow of an Egyptian journalist, one Canadian widow of an Egyptian businessman, two Egyptian sisters who moved to Egypt in their early teens, a Polish architecture student who has lived in Egypt since he was six, and the American/Egyptian daughter of the first widow. It's a good group and the Polish student is handlng being the only male in a group of five women very well. We're pretty entertaining, I think.

The variety of backgrounds, languages, interests and ages (from 18 to 55) makes for some unusual conversation and my friend and I have been having a great time listening to the kids' reminiscences of being teenagers in Cairo. The girls all went to secondary school together and none of them knew the Polish boy, although they are all more or less the same age. But the stories are all similar, youthful adventures in Cairo's souq's, nightlife, coffee houses.

Janie and I have different memories of our youth, hers from Ohio and mine from Southern California, but we share a rural background. Neither of us had anything like Cairo to ramble around in as teenagers, but we did enjoy a time of more freedom of movement and action than many kids growing up today do. The world was a considered to be a safer place then, or something....I haven't really figured out what happened to things other than the triumph of liability insurance.

I was thinking about our little group courting skin cancer under umbrellas by the sea, about questions that I get at least once a week about the welcome that Americans specifically get here. All of us are, in one way or another, foreigners here, although none of us really feels like one. And, on the other hand, I recall the entertainment value that my trail rides in the countryside on my own or with guests or friends provide the local population in Abu Sir. There, among the fellaheen, we are foreign even when Egyptian, but our audience smiles at us with blue, grey, and hazel eyes sparkling in faces that may be as fair as our own or the brown that is usually expected. Everyone, from the ancient Greeks to the modern British, have left their mark on the people of Egypt.

Asking about a foreigner's reception in this light is a kind of funny question. Egypt isn't really that monolithic a country. The cultural/racial/ethnic mixes vary in both type and intensity from the north which has been the landing spot for foreigners for centuries to the south where the Nubians, who even have their own language, were dispersed by the flooding of their lands when the High Dam was built. The "ancient Egyptian type" of individual associated with the frescoes and bas-reliefs of the pharaonic tombs is generally conceived to be found around Aswan more than Alexandria, but he/she is just as likely to be fluent in Italian as Arabic. And, in fact, when you see enough of the frescoes and bas-relief, you realise that even in pharaonic times, Egypt was a melting pot of tribes and people's who were drawn to the Nile Delta for a variety of reasons. Welcome is part of Egypt's history.

Technical difficulties are being overcome

Well, the tagboard was cute but it didn't fit the page, so until I sort this all out, I've removed it. Alex, if you check back, I am indeed Yasmine and Nadim's mom, so send me your email. It's great to be back in touch with old friends. I have added something so that you can send individual posts to friends, should you so desire. Wish I was a techno-whiz.

Late Summer Chill

PalmWadi, originally uploaded by Miloflamingo.

I'm back in Sharm el Sheikh with a group of my friends for a four day chill by the Red Sea before the end of summer....but then, does summer really end by other people's standards in Egypt? I guess not. Our winter is other countries' summer to judge by England, Germany or Canada. We have the same kind of slowdown during the summer months that many of you have during the winter, but in our case the heat is the cause rather than the cold.

But to get back to the wonder of South Sinai, the wadi (a valley caused by winter floods) in the photo is typical of the small oases that are encountered where ever the water table is close enough to the surface for the palms to reach it. If Moses actually spent 40 years wandering Sinai, he wasn't wandering in a very large area, but it is some of the most daunting landscape I've ever seen. You find either barren rock or the odd oasis, and not much in between. The 5 to 6 hour drive down used to be a real trek with only a couple of gas stations that might or might not have gas available. Now there are hotels springing up all along the coast of the Gulf of Suez and the gas stations also have little mini marts that sell Red Bull, Dr. Pepper, and Tostitos. The price of progress.

The price has been much higher in Sharm el Sheikh, now known in our household as Las Vegas By The Sea. Once a sleepy group of camping huts and an odd hotel by Naama Bay, it has become the new Italian hotspot filled with shops, hotels, restaurants, clubs, and tourists. I brought my camera with me and will take some photos for the unbelievers. You will have trouble thinking that this is a destination in the Middle East.

We don't actually immerse ourselves in LVBTS much when we come here because I have the luxury of a house in an Italian vacation compound north of there. In some respects the invasion of civilisation has been a blessing for us since we no longer have to drive down here loaded with groceries. Now we have the fruit sellers in the Shades (aka old Sharm where all the local workers live and shop...Shades is for Discworld devotees), the foul and tameya shops, the plastic shoe sellers, and some big supermarkets where you can even buy Pringles. For the people who live and work here, it's a benefit being able to buy luxuries, visit doctors and have schools, definitely.

But the price in the area of the corals and the access to the sea has been enormous. The construction of the hotels and resorts has generated a lot of dust and sand that kills corals. The tourist aren't always careful in avoiding contact with corals, which kills them as well. The vast numbers of dive boats isn't exactly a blessing either but with all the tourists here, they are in use constantly. Where Sharm was once barren sand and rock with riotous colour and life, now recycled water has brought the rich green of the Delta to the gardens much to the delight of migrating bird life. This also has increased the humidity in the area, not to my delight. But you can't have everything.

Resting spots

Unfinished mosque on the Classique trail is typical village design, originally uploaded by Miloflamingo.

Mosques are everywhere in Egypt and most of the Middle East. With devout muslims praying at a mosque, if possible, five times a day, having one nearby is convenient. But mosques aren't places that have people administering them and supervising activities. People build them more as a place of rest and sanctuary from the racket of everyday life, and you find them all over. The mosque in the photo is unfinished but in use nevertheless and it is out in the countryside away from the village.

When I used to visit here with small children in the 80's, sometimes we would rest on the rugs in a quiet mosque so that they could take a break from the hustle of the city. This use of the building as a resting place is one of the kind aspects of the mosque. They function as community centers with classes to teach the farm children who may not be registered in school to read. This is the place to see your neighbours, visit, whatever.

The Classique trail, by the way, is one of our favourite riding trails near my house, named after an erstwhile restaurant called the Classique. The restaurant didn't do very good business, whether due to the cooking or the lack of parking on a one lane country road, I don't know. It's now basically closed having been busted by the local authorities a number of times for nefarious evening activities involving the fairer sex. And you probably thought that country dwellers were law abiding. Hah!

Summer Fun and Broken Toilets

I went to Agami last weekend with some friends to spend the weekend reading in a garden and lying about in a small, but large enough, pool. Agami is an interesting phenomena, as is most of the north coast of Egypt. When the British were in Egypt, during the Khedival period, Alexandria was the summer retreat for Cairenes and all of the embassies transferred the major part of their staff there from June to September on a yearly basis. When we first moved to Egypt in 1988, we noticed that Alexandria was a lovely sleepy town all winter, but it turned into a circus in the summer. All of the empty apartments along the Corniche, the street that runs along the beach, were suddenly filled with families of 27 who owned about 17 boom boxes that were all turned on at once. We tried to be other places in the summer. Even Cairo was preferable.

Sometime during the late 70's the little beach village of Agami became a popular place to build summer cottages. When I first visited Egypt in about 1976, it was a charming place. Beach sand streets had scattered villas (mostly small...the 70's were still hard times here with the Yom Kippur War not a distant memory) and bedouin huts scattered among palms and Alexandria's famous fig trees. We went to the beach which was just a beach then with no public and private sections and lay about in the sand while wandering vendors sold strange crispy crackers and live sea urchins. I tried one but wasn't too impressed. There was even an itinerant palm reader who was remarkably inaccurate.

My hosts had bought a small house there in the early 80's, which my friend Jo described as being a source of contention in the family because she couldn't imagine it being any good kind of investment. After all, who was going to drive all the way down there? She's rather sheepish about that now because the answer was soon apparent...everyone! By the end of the 80's when we moved to Egypt, Agami was no longer a sleepy beach town during the summer, although it did a very good imitation in the winter. It seemed that half of Cairo had built or bought villas and apartments there and from June to October it was virtually impossible to move along the dirt roads that had replaced the beach sand. If you had the misfortune to rent or own a place near a restaurant or some other gathering place, you could be sure that you wouldn't get a single night's sleep. The noise was astonishing.

Jo's family was smart and gradually bought bits and pieces of land (land is divided into microscopic portions by the inheritance laws) until they had collected a very nice garden in a quieter part of Agami. When we went through the gate, it was as though we'd left the area until the moon and the volume of a couple of nearby stereos rose. With the Egyptian sunshine and the humidity of the Mediterranean coast, plants go wild and gardens are lusher than anything seen outside of Jurassic Park. It was a lazy weekend for a couple of mothers sharing a garden with a group of college age daughters.

Driving home to Cairo along the 250 km "Desert Road" with the mothers in one car and the daughters in the other, we were apalled at the drivers sharing the highway. Some of them would zip down the highway weaving in and out of the traffic like an experienced "Grand Theft Auto" player. We had to keep our eyes well peeled for trucks that had a habit of stopping on the way in the slow lane. Not on the shoulder, in the slow lane. Every one was relieved when we hit the outskirts of Giza. The drive down and/or back on a busy Thursday or Saturday, the days most people traveled down there, was definitely enough to make me re-think any thoughts I might have of having a summer place there. During the late 80's clever developers began construction on a number of north coast resort villages further west from Alexandria than Agami. We spent a little time there with friends but were never very comfortable.

Naturally, having taken time off to relax, I had to shift into high gear on meetings with some of the people running my late husband's companies. As much as I'd like to leave them, I'm still a bit involved with three of them. I fed the birds and dogs breakfast, made the evening canine meal, and scooted off to Heliopolis and then Maadi about 8:30 in the morning, leaving my daughter and her friends sleeping. Halfway through my first meeting I received a call from Pat, one of the visitors, that the toilet was flooding the bathroom with, thankfully, clean water. I told them not to worry and I would get some one over to see what the problem was. I put in a call to Haj Shaban, the man who had done the finishing of my house, who said that he'd have someone over there right away. Now I've waited for plumbers in a lot of places and about 4 hours was usually the best time I've ever seen. I checked on the kids' progress in their task of turning off the source of the water that was spouting out of the back of the toilet. There must be about 8 different taps that look as though they could turn off the water, but only one of them did, and none of us knew which one. Within fifteen minutes when I called back to find out if they'd drowned yet, I was told that the plumbers were at work. Not bad. And I get my bill when Haj Shaban gets around to it. He takes care of construction and maintenance for most of the houses around here and we all grab him once a month to get our bills.

So, once again, my Arabic-challenged guests have had to deal with a household repair situation without the benefit of a translator. Pat is planning to stay on here until December to learn Arabic and work with refugees, and I suspect that his success with the telephone repair and the toilet repair have given him confidence. I guess confidence is good no matter where you find it.