Egyptian Humour is Special

Hannah Allam's blog Middle East Diary today listed some great jokes that Egyptians tell about themselves. The sense of humour here is a special gift.

copyright 2007 Maryanne Stroud Gabbani

Getting Creative

While my hands were healing from spider bites, it was pretty hard to ride horses, so thoughts turned to other projects that we wanted to pursue. One of the things that I'm wanting to get for the farm is a donkey cart that is built for driving with just two passengers. It would be so much more practical for local trips in the neighbourhood, along with being, most importantly, a lot of fun. I'd been told that an ironworker at a local art centre could probably help me make a cart based on a photo of one that I'd downloaded from the net, so I set off with my trusty Mohamed Said to make his acquaintance.

Not far from the farm on the Mariouteya Road is a place commonly called Fagnoon, after two Arabic words: Fanan or artist, and Magnoon or crazy. The crazy artist who established this wonderful place is otherwise known as Mohamed Allam. He decided that the children of Cairo needed a place where they could let their imaginations run riot...and in the process created a marvelous space where their bodies could be free as well.

The centre itself is a creature of constant growth. Platforms, balconies, walkways, and bridges connect spaces where children of all ages can paint, draw, work in wood or fabric in shade and sunlight. The meandering walkways invite exploration and an obviously handmade bridge curves over the canal to a garden where pottery wheels stand under shades and a pen of goats watch the activities with interest. Papyrus has been planted in the canal so that papermaking activities can also be pursued. This is one of the few places that you will see the plant that was so much a part of Egypt's history growing. The day we came, workers were constructing a third level to some of the centre, giving visiting chilren many metres of wall to paint and decorate.

With so many of Cairo's children living in apartments, a space where not just spirits but bodies can run free is a joy. In one area a net of multicolored fabric hangs from the ceiling ending in a slide down which children can slither onto a pad of mattress springs also wound in fabric. The center is full of objects that can be climbed over, into and under.

Adult art activities are also encouraged here. The hadad, or iron worker, that I'd come to see has created animal statues that are found randomly around the centre. A goat stands in a teepee framed in wood and woven from dried bullrushes from the canal. A vividly imagined pair of ducks and some ducklings gather in a shady corner near a column that is constructed of natural wood in the shape of a tree. While we were chatting with the hadad and the centre's owner, a group of college aged students ran about on an upper level pelting each other with water balloons. Paint streaks on tshirts and jeans showed that having a water balloon fight wasn't the only activity of the day. These young adults have been coming here since the time that they were school children being brought on excursions from the classroom. My grad student daughter is one of Fagnoon's biggest fans and was fond of spending an afternoon out there.

Mohamed Allam is a good director for such a centre, being an artist himself who creates beautiful and interesting work. A gallery for his work is part of the complex and his handiwork is everywhere, in statues scattered about, iron wall hangings and beautiful and innovative furniture created in wrought iron and wood,fabric or other materials.

A trip to Fagnoon should be compulsory for Cairo residents. Parents can relax under a tree if an artistic endeavour is not on the menu, kids can run amok happily, and resident bakers offer refreshments such as fateer, a flaky bread eaten with sweet toppings such as clotted cream, nuts and honey or with savoury such as cheese. There are even outdoor taps and showers to clean off all the grubby little Van Goghs after a day creating. Just recently another branch of the centre, Fagnoon Fellah, has been opened even closer to the farm. This centre offers space for camping overnight near the village of Abu Sir on the Mansoureya Road, within hiking distance of the original centre. The centerpiece of the new establishment is an enormous net hung from the trees, providing enticing spaces for climbing or just settling in with a good book. More information can be had by contacting them at fagnoon@fagnoon.net or phoning 3815-1633.

copyright 2007 Maryanne Stroud Gabbani

A Spot of Trouble

About two weeks ago I found a sort of white blister on the knuckle of the middle finger of my right hand. The blister soon had a red ring around it and I scrubbed it hard with a surgical scrub, fearing that it was a spider bite. The knuckle swelled, the right hand hurt like crazy, but after about three days the swelling went down and I stopped worrying. A couple of days later I found another blister on the palm of my left hand, near the heel of my thumb. That one really hurt and within 36 hours I had another blister on the tip of my ring finger on the left hand. By this time, the right hand was much better aside from the fact that the hole left by the blister on the knuckle was taking its own sweet time to heal. As a matter of fact, even today it still isn't healed.

I began getting alarmed when the wound on the left hand turned black, blue and a bit green with red streaks running up my arm and an egg-sized lump under my left arm. I wasn't getting much sleep with my dreams being entirely about pain in my hands, and I was feeling pretty terrible. I did some research on the net and made an appointment with our family doctor. The research confirmed what I feared, that I'd been bitten by a brown recluse spider, probably while cutting chicory in the garden for the birds' breakfast. Egypt has its fair share of venomous spiders, as well as spiders that are supposed to be venomous and aren't. We have poisonous snakes and scorpions as well. Despite my hanging about in the sorts of places that critters like, I really haven't seen much in the way of evil ones, other than the recluses.

One very rainy winter in Alexandria there was a rash of brown recluse bites among friends of ours. Most of us caught things in time and escaped with sore, swollen bites, but one of the men didn't pay attention and ended up in surgery having his elbow joint cleaned out when the bite became necrotic and invaded the elbow. These cute little brown arachnids pack a wallop. They are relatively small, just over a half inch in diameter, and nocturnal, with a preference for hiding under vegetation in the garden or in clothes that have been tossed on the floor...a good reason to be tidy. But they aren't aggressive and only bite when someone "attacks" them by putting a hand or foot on or too near them. In fairness to the spiders, while they are not uncommon in Egypt just as in the southern United States, my kids never seemed to get bitten and there could have been tigers hiding in the rubbish tips that they called bedrooms in high school.

Two weeks on, I'm still taking antibiotics. The tip of my ring finger and the base of my thumb on my left hand are still so sensitive that I jump if I accidentally bang them on something. The bite on my right hand has a nasty deep scab that is slowly healing, and I put a layer of A&D ointment (not just for babies, you know!) on my hands about three times a day to help the healing. The lymph node is no longer swollen and I'm feeling pretty good...especially since the temperatures are down to a balmy 33 C these days. Do I still cut chicory for my birds? Nope. On his suggestion, I let the gardener do it. He has calluses on his hands that no spider could bite through.



copyright 2007 Maryanne Stroud Gabbani

Time Enough To Eat

Egyptian food is wonderful. Much of the wonderfulness of it comes from the freshness of the ingredients. I was cruising the news on the internet and found an interesting piece on Time online (you can reach it by clicking the title here) about how much of the cultural aspects of eating are being lost in the globalisation of fast food. My closest fast food place is probably about 15 km, a fact which never fails to please me. In Egypt fast food places all deliver, making it even easier to destroy yourself with food. On the other hand, sometimes I get an invitation to Mabrouka's and that is much, much better. Mabrouka is a widow about my own age with four sons and two daughters. Two of the sons are married, two are not yet...all of them live in the family house. The daughters are married and live nearby. Mabrouka grows her own poultry and buys produce in the village that is grown by her neighbours. She is a wonderful cook, as you can see in the photo. Dinner included chicken cooked with sliced potatoes in a tomato sauce (fresh tomatoes of course...not a can in her house) that were baked in a wood burning oven. The roast chicken was also baked in the oven and the stuffed aubergine, peppers, zucchini, and cabbage leaves were cooked on a stone top to the oven. It's more work than I want to do, but boy, do I appreciate her work. Dessert is usually fruit.

I wish I could say that since moving to the farm I've lost a ton of weight and become sleek and svelte, but that would be fibbing. I haven't but I know that my diet is a lot healthier than it was in the city. The temptation to just call for a pizza was always really a tough one. Now most of my meals are prepared from the things that we are growing on the farm. This depends on the season, but being able to freeze or dry vegetables makes them last. Like most of our neighbours, we are growing the summer crop of bamia, or okra. Part of the reason for this is because I find the flowers lovely. Fresh okra is eaten while still small, but the parrots and poultry appreciate the larger pods. When dried and ground into a powder, the pods are the basis of a Sudanese stew, moolah, of which I am inordinately fond in the winter. The pods have small spines on them and I'm always struck by the dedication of the okra farmers who have to pick their crop in the summer heat while completely wrapped in fabric to keep the spines out of their fingers, arms, legs, and faces. Much of the crop is frozen to provide okra for winter meals, since when it is cooked with the rich tomato sauce and small chunks of meat, it makes for a very filling meal...much more filling than is needed in summer.

Another summer crop that is more appreciated in the winter is molokheya, which could be called the Egyptian national dish. Molokheya is essentially a weed called swamp mallow other places, a tall plant with shiny oval leaves and small yellow flowers. It grows almost anywhere wild and is also planted in fields. The leaves are chopped if fresh, or crumbled when dry, and cooked in a chicken, rabbit, or beef stock to which is added a fried garlic, coriander and a bit of cumin. Hot pepper can be added to taste as well. The molokheya makes a rather mucilaginous soup...another word for sort of slimy...but it is known to be good for digestion. Once you get past the texture, and some people never do, it is wonderfully delicious over rice. We have a small field of it growing next to the longeing ring and I find the plants all over the garden popping up next to roses or behind palm trees. Welcome.
My parrots like peppers, my grooms love peppers, and I like them too. This year we planted hot peppers and I learned that if you pick them young, they are usually sweet, but if you wait for them to ripen to red, they pick up a lot on the heat scale. Peppers have a ton of Vitamin C among other things and are very good for you. I never had any idea how many peppers can be produced by relatively few plants. It's quite astonishing and I haven't had to buy peppers all year. We also are still working our way through the braided onions and garlic in the verandah, while it is almost time to plant again.

Zucchini is a vegetable that is planted all year round and it only takes about two months to complete the growing cycle. One of my friends in Alexandria called Egypt "the land of the eternal zucchini" because of the omnipresence of this vegetable. Yesterday I made a salad from gargeer (aka: Arugula) cut fresh from the garden, tomatoes and red onions also just picked, the first zucchini from our garden sauteed with garlic and mushrooms (the only bought items), with chopped roast chicken. Zucchini just out of the garden tastes NOTHING like the stuff that you get from the supermarket. In another week I'll be sending zucchini home with my grooms because there really are limits to how much I can eat, even with the poultry, rabbits, parrots, and tortoises helping.

Finally, being on the cusp of the mango and date seasons, we have a number of sweet options. The mangoes this year had a hard time with the summer heat, but they are just as juicy as ever. The new dates are just coming on the market in time for Ramadan in a couple of weeks, and the sweet red Zaghlouls are already being sold on the roadsides. Left for a couple of days they turn brown and softer, resembling the dates that are more common in Europe and North America. The grapes, both seedless and with seeds are still in season as are the guavas. As the weather cools, apples, oranges, and bananas will take their places.

The farmers here for the most part eat a vegetarian diet. Vegetables grown in the fields, cheese and yogurt from the family cow or buffalo, and bread or rice are the staples. Breakfast is often cooked beans known as foul (pronounced "fool") cooked with onions, garlic, cumin and lemon, and eaten with cheese and bread. Lunch may be bread, cheese, onions, and then dinner might be a vegetable stew. It's a healthier diet than is followed in the city by a long shot. Sometimes it's easy not to miss junk food.
copyright 2007 Maryanne Stroud Gabbani

Shhh. We Want It To Stay...

However it happened, Mobinil finally got service restored in our area this afternoon. Thank you, Mobinil, we love you again.

Unfortunately, the only suitably jubilant photo on hand is set in New York...but you get the idea.




copyright 2007 Maryanne Stroud Gabbani

Please Contact Them

The story as I understand it is that some of the villagers in Menawet decided that the Mobinil relay tower there was causing cancer or some such thing. Or maybe they decided that the steel and concrete could be put to better use...who knows? At any rate, from what I understand, and this hasn't been published in any papers that I am aware of, they dismantled the relay tower last week and the area roughly from Shubramant to Abu Sir in Giza has been left with no Mobinil service at all.

To understand what a disaster this is it helps to realise that there are about forty thousand people living in the area, of whom probably less than 10 or 20% have land lines. The rest of us, including myself, make do with mobile phones. Some of us use Mobinil, some Vodafone, and a few adventurous ones the new carrier. To be honest, Mobinil, until recently, had the best reception out here and was the most reliable. Vodafone has improved a lot lately after calls to technical support brought engineering staff out here to check out and improve the situation. Because I do a lot of distance riding and the mobile reception in the desert is spotty...sometimes Vodafone working better than Mobinil, sometimes the opposite...I've had lines with both carriers. Right now I have my Mobinil line forwarded to Vodafone so that people can reach me at home.

Today one of my neighbours called me with the news that Mobinil has apparently decided not to replace the missing relay tower for at least a year, leaving the area completely without service for residents and visitors alike. Bloody brilliant. By the time they do replace the tower there will be no Mobinil customers to need it. As someone who depends on my mobile phone and who has been a Mobinil customer almost since the company opened, I am seriously ticked off. Probably someone in the higher echelons of the company decided that a bunch of ignorant farmers don't need a relay...so who is really the ignorant one?

The link in the title will reach the customer support page at Mobinil. If you are a Mobinil customer and find the idea of leaving 40 thousand residents and who knows how many visitors to the area with all of its antiquities, hotels, clubs, restaurants and so on without Mobinil service, do use the link to let Mobinil know.

We would appreciate it.

copyright 2007 Maryanne Stroud Gabbani

Cairo's Bridge Of Dreams - LA Times

This is a really nice piece written for the Los Angeles Times by Jeffrey Fleishman about one of the main bridges of Cairo, the Kasr el Nil bridge, where it seems that half of the city congregates at night. In the summer, the bridges of Cairo become parks with every possible type of person relaxing over the water, breathing fresh air and enjoying the scenery. Worth a read, so click on the title for a link.


copyright 2007 Maryanne Stroud Gabbani