Probably Elsewhere Too

Today's New York Times asks if Jon Stewart of The Daily Show is the most trusted men in America, and then looks at why this may be. With my subscription to Showtime Arabia I get to watch Mr. Stewart every day followed by Stephen Colbert of The Colbert Report, a fact that my daughter in New York finds hilarious since she has to follow it online as she, being an impoverished grad student, doesn't have a cable subscription. I read my news online, following the BBC World, New York Times, Washington Post, and the International Herald Tribune among others through Google News. I haven't trusted television news for many years. The Daily Show is the only "news" show that I watch and I find that it keeps me remarkably up to date with American politics, certainly as up to date as I want to be.

Perhaps it would bear examining Jon Stewart's following in the world outside of North America as well. He is incredibly popular in the Middle East among English speaking viewers for his ability to get to the point of the matter, eliminating the political fluff. I am delighted that my cable subscription gives me access to his sanity on a daily basis. It's funny the things you find in Egypt....


copyright 2008 Maryanne Stroud Gabbani

Some Women's Issues

I don't like to discuss politics in general, not the faceless issues that so often populate the news. I'm not sure that they need discussion and they often don't really touch individuals directly. Recently, however, I read an Associated Press article online about a grassroots movement to convince Egyptian women that female circumcision is a bad idea. "Grass-roots effort in Egypt fights 'cutting' girls" written by Anna Johnson is an excellent piece that looks at a reasonable local approach to a very emotional issue. Every women's organisation in the world seems to be against FGM (female genital mutilation) and I am totally in agreement with all the objections. It is a pointless practice that causes much pain to young girls and later to women when many of them have problems with childbirth and pregnancy due to the rather haphazard surgeries performed. What I have trouble with is the strident demands that "they HAVE to be made to stop it!" without any background in the social complexities involved.

I was talking to my housekeeper about the issue the other day. Like most women in the villages here, she was circumcised as a child. She has five children of her own, the oldest two being girls and a couple of daughters younger. When I asked if they had been cut, she told me that her mother had come by one day while she was at work, taken the two older girls and had it done. She wasn't entirely comfortable with the fact and was rather embarrassed to tell me. This is where a good part of the problem lies. The older women who have been raised with the tradition have a vested interest in continuing tradition that validates their experience, no matter how unpleasant the experience might have been. In fact, in some cases, the more unpleasant, the more they want to see it continue so that they don't have to feel that they suffered for nothing. It's a variety of the old argument that perpetuates the British habit of sending children off to boarding schools at early ages...no one liked it but "if I survived and thrived, you will too".

One of my neighbours here managed to convince her housekeeper not to cut her daughters using an extremely ingenious argument. Most of the families here are very religious and she pointed out quite correctly that circumcision is not a Muslim tradition at all. This information came as quite a surprise to her housekeeper as it did to mine when we were talking. FGM is an ancient African tradition and is not supported anywhere in Islam, and at least in Egypt using this religious argument could be quite successful. The trick with it, as is the case with so many things of a religious nature, regardless of religion, is the fact that religion and tradition can become so totally entangled that they are hard to separate. There are quite likely figures who might argue that the surgery supports female chastity...but you can make the same argument for medieval chastity belts. I'm going to follow this grassroots movement and be cheering on the sidelines.

A Google link took me to a new blog today The Hijablog. This is a fashion blog for young women who wear hijab and I find it a real breath of fresh air. Hijab, the wearing of a scarf to cover your hair and often the neck and shoulders, is something that most westerners have a problem with. I could never even bring myself to wear a hat in the depths of a Canadian winter, often coming back into the house after shoveling the driveway with frozen hair after my morning shower (I mean how extreme a hatophobe can you get?) and I only wear a riding helmet because I promised my kids that I would for safety and I don't like to break a promise. So the likelihood of my ever being hijab is minimal to say the least, but I have also long been a an admirer of the women who turn their use of scarves and veiling into interesting and attractive outfits. Some might say that this negates the purpose of hijab, because it's almost impossible not to notice these striking young women, but I have to admit that I see the veiling issue as a combination of a social and a fashion choice.

My daughter used to wear a scarf over her vibrant auburn curls while in Cairo, partly to escape the need to do anything with them (they have a total life of their own!) and partly to deal with the reactions of young men in Cairo, who quite frankly need to be taught to deal with women on a much more comfortable and polite basis. It was never a religious thing for her, although it is for many young women. The way I see things, women have a multitude of manners in which to present themselves, hijab being just one. And I get a kick out of young women who are interested in exploring the fashion aspect of it. Good for you, Basbousa.




copyright 2008 Maryanne Stroud Gabbanien

Not Only In Egypt

About a week ago the net flickered and died out here in Abu Sir. We had to haul in our telephone company to check the lines (Gee! There are about 6 breaks in this section!) and our internet company to check the lines afterwards, and now we are back in the cybersphere. While my connection was down, I would go to a friend's place every couple of days to check my email. I'd delete anything not essential, not having much time to waste on things that I could usually meander through. One of the things that I did do, however, was to read my online New York Times. There was an article in it on the 23rd about how Philadelphia was in the grip of manhole mania... with the price of iron on the rise, they are being stolen.

Now this is a story I can identify with! Disappearing manhole covers are a fact of life in Egypt too. In the US they are trying to come up with a way of locking them so that they can't be stolen, but we deal with the problem in another way. Road Sculpture is the Egyptian solution to open manholes, as it is often also the solution to things like broken down buses on the side (or even middle) of the road. Road Sculpture is the artful placement of tree branches, stones, bricks, or even barrels in the road to indicate that there is something, aside from the tree branches, stones, bricks, or barrels that a motorist might wish to avoid.

It can be quite disconcerting to be driving peacefully, or as peacefully as one can drive in Egypt, down a road only to spy some anomalous object right spang in the middle of the thoroughfare. Having come from a basically law-abiding tidy society in Toronto, my initial response was to think "Good grief! Someone could hit that and have a nasty accident!" But after a while I came to understand that leaving large dangerous objects in the middle of the road was an attempt to PREVENT accidents. Of course. It makes all the sense in the world.

So maybe we need to export some of our road sculptors to the US to teach them how to avoid accidents while beautifying the roadways. Just imagine what the Highway Patrol would say.


copyright 2008 Maryanne Stroud Gabbani

Keeping a Cultural Mix

A Washington Post article on the boom in business for the Cairo Hard Rock Cafe which is owned by the Binladen family underscores the wonderful mix that is Cairo. When the Grand Hyatt was built a few years back, it was advertised as a 5 or 6 star hotel, but when a Saudi bought it recently and poured the entire alcohol stock into the Nile, making it a DRY hotel, it's star rating plummeted in the eyes of many tourists. We used to like the sushi restaurant in the Grand Hyatt, but I do like my sushi with a beer. Now most of the guests who want to refresh after a hot summer day are wandering over to the Hard Rock Cafe which is in an annex to the Grand Hyatt. I love the quote in the article from the Cafe manager who when asked about the fact that both owners are Saudi commented that no two fingers on the same hand are alike. That is so true and is the saving grace of the world. In fact, not all Saudi's are followers of the Wahhabi sect and many of them are not enamoured of the strict rules that the Wahhabi's enforce.

So raise a glass to variety!



copyright 2008 Maryanne Stroud Gabbani

Floating On The Ark

My life currently revolves around horses, mine and the horses of the people who entrust them to me. Imagine my horror the other day to hear that there is a virus sweeping Egypt that threatens the health and the very lives of those that I love. One of my vet friends told me that for the first time in ages, possibly ever, the summer racing season has been canceled here because of a highly infectious virus sweeping the stables initiating, as far as we can tell, in Alexandria.

Since that day we have quarantined the farm, as have many of our neighbours, in the hope of keeping the virus away from our horses. Equine Influenza is like any other influenza in that there are different strains of it and it mutates all the time. There are vaccines for it, and in fact horses in competition are required by the FEI to be vaccinated against it twice a year. The problem, however, is that the vaccines may not be entirely effective against the particular strain that is going around, so vaccinated horses may get it anyway, albeit an attenuated version, but enough to infect someone else who might not be vaccinated.

Last year Australia went through a countrywide quarantine when EI broke out in what until that point had been one of three EI-free (along with Iceland and Greenland) countries in the world. Strict controls that caused enormous hardship to the equestrian industries, racing and tourism, as well as sport and recreation, brought the situation under control and Australia has been declared free of Equine Influenza once again. Egypt, on the other hand, is hardly likely to ever be free of Equine Influenza. We have a huge population of working equids hauling carts of goods and food to all parts of the cities from the farming areas. To be honest, I don't know how the country would cope without its donkeys and horses.

So these days I'm sitting here with the creatures catching up on organisational work, writing, and so on. No one comes into the farm, no one leaves...other than staff who are extremely careful to avoid any contact with any other animals whatsoever. The local staff come and go in one set of clothing, leaving work clothing here where there is nothing to contaminate it. We have a mix of herbs that are being added to the horses' grain in the evening in the hopes that it will help their immune systems to fight off the virus. I get calls from my vet friends reporting the latest cases. This afternoon I heard that there were eighty cases at the EAO, the Egyptian government stud where 400 of the foundation bloodstock of the Egyptian Arabian horse are housed. I suspect that most of the horses here are not vaccinated against EI, partly for financial reasons because the vaccines are imported from the US and are very expensive, and partly for other reasons. I have serious doubts about the usefulness of the vaccines. The theory is that the vaccine gives the horse a small case of EI to induce production of antibodies, but since we have other strains of EI floating around all the time, they should also get antibodies from those strains that our horses come in contact regularly anyway. And in this case there are horses who should have had the vaccines due to FEI regulations anyway, and they are also ill....and worse, they are speading the disease. Hopefully, it will burn itself out soon and we will be free to roam the desert again. In the meantime things will probably get worse before they get better.



copyright 2008 Maryanne Stroud Gabbani

The End Of An Era

The Bob expired today quietly in his home in the aviary. He died of old age, actually quite extreme old age. In the wild hedgehogs only live to be about four years old and The Bob was closer to about eight or so. He was never a cuddly individual but he would come out to see what I had for him to eat whenever he heard my voice in the aviary. Hedgehogs are....well, prickly. But he was a much loved member of the community and was a gift from Uma and Jim when they moved from Cairo to Singapore.

He will be buried in the garden under a laurel tree that needs to be transplanted into the earth.

Farewell, Bob. You gave many people much pleasure during your life with us.

copyright 2008 Maryanne Stroud Gabbani

The Importance of Staying In Touch

I recently took a brief holiday to the US to see my kids. When I got back to Egypt, I arrived to find my niece from California, along with her five year old daughter, a fellow teacher, and ten high school students, happily installed at an alternative school not far from the farm where they would be staying for a two week visit to Egypt as a part of their school program. I also had an old friend from New Zealand who came to think out some major life decisions at the farm and within a couple of days, another friend and her daughter from California had arrived via Luxor. If I'd been rested after two weeks of bouncing between Boston and New York, a matter of conjecture only since I certainly wasn't after a flight home on a plane carrying every small child in the US with an Egyptian grandparent to visit over the summer, I wasn't rested once I got home. My animals apparently miss me a bit when I'm gone and the greeting from the dog pack was riotous to say the least, but it was later in the evening that I noticed a real difference. When I sat down...and later when I went to bed...I found that all the dogs, even the big ones, had to sit or lie close enough to me to touch me. With temperatures during the day of over 90 F/38 C, this could get to be a burden. Night time temperatures in the high 70's/high 20's, made things a bit better but I didn't get much sleep the first few nights. It was as if the dogs needed to reassure themselves that I wasn't going to vanish again while they were sleeping. Silly dogs...but are they?

When I spent some time talking to my niece and catching up on family happenings, I was astonished to find that I'd missed some pretty important events abroad. Living on the opposite side of the globe, more or less, from part of my family and a minimum of 11 hours flying time from the kids, I rely on internet communications a lot. Emails, chat, Skype, even Facebook are all helpful in keeping up with family and friends who are wandering the globe, but in the end, we only know what others tell us about their lives, and they only know what we are willing to disclose. That can be a problem. "Oh, I didn't want to worry you." "Well, I figured that it would blow over." How many times have we all used this excuse as a reason to keep our problems to ourselves? We all do it. We share the good times and hide the bad ones, but at what cost?

When my husband died, I soldiered on. I sat through years of horribly confusing negotiations, miserable meetings, and generally disabling work in fields that I really had no experience with. It was not fun. Without a group of women friends who gathered around me, held me as I cried, and encouraged me when I wanted to just give up and run away, I would never have made it. Ladies, I salute you and I would never have survived without you. A core group were also going through some pretty gut-wrenching life changes...divorces, separations, career issues...and we would meet about weekly for a meal and an exchange of woes. How depressing...but not really...and how therapeutic. An Irish grad student friend of mine used to tell me, while we were suffering from being the first major influx of women grad students in our department in Canada with all the weirdness that entailed, that a problem shared is a problem halved. It isn't really that other people are going to solve the problem for you as it is that simply carrying the burden of our problem alone adds to its weight.

So the dumb animals aren't so dumb at all. They understand the need to be with the ones that they care about even if they can't speak in words. Years and years ago, AT&T, the American telephone company ran an ad campaign to boost long distance calling (I'm not so naive as to think that they approached it as a public service!) that featured someone saying "Reach out and touch someone." It's good advice. And don't only share the good news. It really is okay to say, "I know you can't do anything about this, but just knowing that someone is thinking about it with me helps...." And if you are on the receiving end, know that hearing about a problem doesn't necessarily mean that you have to rush out to slay a dragon. Sometimes just swatting a fly will do.
Oh, and the dogs? It only took a few days of sitting on me for them to decide that I'd returned for the duration and to go back to giving me space to breathe...thank heaven.

copyright 2008 Maryanne Stroud Gabbani