Learning To Live And Living to Learn

 I was talking to a friend today about this blog post and he told me that there is an Egyptian saying "If you do something, you might make a mistake and be punished, but if you do nothing you can't make a mistake."

Once a social psychologist, I suspect always a social psychologist. I went off to graduate school at the University of Waterloo in the mid 70's with a lot of illusions, but mostly I went there because they had a very short application form and one of my peculiar oddities is a horror of filling out forms. I can always think of other ways to answer the questions on them, ways that won't fit into little boxes, so I'm always left with a feeling of failure and confusion. Probably Waterloo wasn't the place for me academically, but it was where I met many beloved friends and where I met my late husband who was, in traditional Egyptian fashion, an engineering student. The social psychologists were experimental social psychologists, people who basically played experimental tricks on people to find out things about social behaviour. My advisor, Dr. Melvin Lerner, was an archetypal Jewish psychology professor and specialised in a field that studied victim blaming. He would undoubtedly be turning in his grave these days seeing my stand in social media for a just peace for Palestinians, but that is neither here nor there, because the parting of our ways came as I decided that I wasn't cut out for academia. I was interested in studying the development of verbal concepts of fairness in children, a topic that he didn't find very exciting, and his lack of support made me realise that this was not to be my life. When the graduate officer in our department asked what I was going to do next, I told him that I was considering opening a Mexican restaurant in Toronto...which, by the way, I never got around to. But much of what I learned to question and the concepts that helped me to formulate questions have continued to be useful to me in my very checkered career as a corporate wife, mother of multinational children, unwilling prisoner of corporate life and now living on the farm.

Dr. Sergio Forapani demonstrating dentistry to my staff

Before January 2011 many people in Egypt and beyond the borders never thought that the Egyptian people would rise up against the military rulers of the country. The reasons for this assumption were usually framed in terms of the "eternal patience" of the Egyptian people, citing millennia of authoritarian rule. But having watched methods of childrearing in Egypt, I had my doubts.  My in-laws, who were more or less upper middle class educated Egyptians, found it odd that I spoke to my children from the time that they were infants, explaining the reasons for my decrees as to what was acceptable or unacceptable behaviour.  I was living in Canada most of the year but would spend a month or so every winter with them in Cairo, during which time I drove my mother in law in particular rather mad by insisting that children under the age of three had no need of additional sugar in their diet, so her boxes of candies went untouched, or by refusing to allow a child who passed up a sandwich at lunch a couple of cookies later.  "But he's hungry!" she would cry. "If he were that hungry, he would have eaten lunch, but in the meantime he can have a carrot or a piece of fruit." was my cold-hearted response. I was terrible, I know, by refusing the request for a random toy when we went to a store. "But you have plenty of money!" "But they have to learn that you don't get everything you want it when you want it. Sometimes you have to work for rewards; it's called delay of gratification." She was utterly unappreciative of the value of a master's degree in psychology and thought that everything I did was completely mad, until one day she complimented me on my 16 year old son's skill at being a host at a family iftar and told me that she'd always thought that I was crazy but had decided that perhaps I knew something. I took the compliment with good humour, knowing that was as good as it ever was going to get.

Even one of my husband's uncles, a celebrated gastro-enterologist, told me flat out that it was pointless to talk to children under the age of four because they couldn't understand anything. I asked him how children were taught behaviour in Egypt and he just shrugged. Obviously, he'd never troubled himself with this problem, but his wife certainly had since his children of his first marriage, who were good friends of ours, were lovely people. When I moved out into the villages, my children were independent adults living and studying in the US, but I enjoyed the chance to watch parent/child interactions in the villages. One of the patterns I noticed was a sort of benign neglect. Children ran about under the more or less watchful eyes of parents, aunts and uncles, grandparents and older siblings, but they were not engaged in conversations by individuals older than them. They might talk to each other, but in general they would answer a simple question from an adult with a wide-eyed stare and no comment. This was true of my questions and I noticed that it also happened with most other adults. In my book of upbringing, not to answer a direct question in some fashion would be a major fault, but it seemed fairly normal to most of the adults. The children could speak when they wanted to, that was abundantly clear watching them together, but they rarely spoke to or were spoken to by adults. When I asked how the rules of life were learned, one father told me that people figured that by the age of ten or so a child was assumed to have learned them and would be punished for breaking them.

This fascinated me. Rules were almost never delineated or explained but breaking them brought punishment. It reminded me of the old learned helplessness experiments I'd learned about many years before. Basically, these experiments involved shocking or imposing other unpleasant experiences randomly to individuals in a learning task with the end result that the individual seemed to decide that it was irrelevant what he/she might choose to do because something bad was going to happen no matter what. The individual would no longer seek to do "the right thing" or try to avoid "the wrong thing" because it didn't matter. Essentially outcomes were random and uncontrollable, so why try. That essentially was the life for many children. They weren't told what sort of behaviour would bring a particular response....they had to find out for themselves and the outcome might not actually have anything at all to do with what they'd done. If Dad came home in a bad mood, you'd get hurt, no matter what the behaviour. Since the parents had also been raised in the same fashion, it all made a sort of perverted sense to them.

When I began looking around at day to day life in Egypt, the same random response pattern showed up. Even things like taxes for companies have no cut and dried rules, but are negotiated with someone, with the outcome completely unpredictable unless you figure out the right amount of lubrication to be applied. Students at universities and people competing in sports often find that who you are related to has much more to do with your success than what you do. One of my friends who visits me in Egypt from New Zealand on a regular basis always posts a blog of her trip and one year it was entitled "Egypt: We Do Random Well", so it isn't me who notices the tendency to random outcomes, punishments and rewards. The Egyptian school system is a prime candidate for the imposition of learned helplessness. In the first place, most teachers are just people who couldn't get another job. They aren't trained in any way at all. They are certainly not qualified to impart knowledge since their main qualification is a lack of qualifications for any other work. The curriculum could honestly be said to have been created by that famous room full of monkeys with typewriters. I've tutored village children with their English homework, and it is utterly insane. One little boy was given a text to read that went something like this:
"Fatima and Hamza are brother and sister. Their father is a doctor who works in a hospital and their mother is a teacher who works in a school. Every day they go to school, study their lessons and come home to do their homework after school. On Friday their father washes his car and then the family goes out to the park or perhaps to the swimming pool."

My first job was just to see if any of this made any sense to this boy. No women in his household worked outside the home. It is considered shameful if they do. Of course the fact that there is little in the way of transportation that could take women to jobs and even less in terms of jobs out here might also be a factor. None of the children in our village have a doctor for a father. Most of them rarely see doctors. Their fathers are labourers or farmers. In Egypt, NO ONE but possibly a cab driver washes his own car! If you can afford to buy a car,  you can afford to have someone else wash it for you..so this part of the story is fantasy. And finally, the little boy had to ask what a park was. He'd never seen one. He's seen pictures of swimming pools and maybe even seen one once but he's never been in one.  How could a primary school child make any sense of this, especially considering the fact that probably the teach was mispronouncing the words so much that the language hardly resembled English at all? And then,  even now corporal punishment is still common in schools and most of the people I've spoken to from our area experienced it and, in fact, quit school because of it. When I asked them why they quit, often the answer was something along the lines of "I could get hit at home, so why go somewhere else and have a stranger do it. I was too stupid to learn."

Dr. Sergio (left) and Dr. Mohsen (right) at a clinic

I have a staff of ten at my farm, five young men in their mid-twenties, three younger boys whose parents asked me to take them on to teach them, a housekeeper and my late husband's driver who is now my right hand after twenty years. Only Mohamed has any education. The rest never finished school and were convinced that they were too stupid to learn. I had often talked to them about going back to school but the answer was always the same....they thought there was no point.  After the revolution, when there was no work in tourism for us, I noticed that the guys were getting really, really bored with just the daily chores, so I sent them  out in ones and twos to work with the Donkey Sanctuary to learn to trim donkey feet. At first they were very reluctant, sensing another evil experience with the dreaded learning situation, but they came home energised and enthusiastic. The vet they were working under Dr. Mohsen Mohsen, is a skilled teacher who encouraged their learning instead of punishing their every mistake. They were happy to realise that the training I'd given them in horse and donkey care actually made them quite experienced in the field, which gave them more confidence.

Egyptian and Italian farriers demonstrating for my staff at a clinic

A biomechanics class with Dr. Sergio and vets, farriers, and grooms

After some months, after talking to some large animal vets who were saying how the gas price increases and increases in veterinary medicine prices were making it almost impossible to work with farmers who didn't have the cash to pay increased fees, a vet friend and I decided to try setting up a veterinary charity in our neighbourhood to help the farmers with their animals. We got a number of vets to work with us, both experienced and fresh from school. My guys were amazed to find that while they didn't have the technical knowledge of the new graduates, they did have much more experience and much more comfort in handling the animals, who ranged from pigeons to even the odd camel, with the majority being donkeys, goats, sheep, cows, water buffalo and poultry. This again was an enormous morale boost. We've been doing our work now for two years and every day farmers and cart drivers bring animals to the farm for treatment. We've had master farriers and a professor of veterinary science from Italy come to stay and give classes and practical lessons, often extremely technical work, and the guys are there for every class and every lesson, even coming in on their days off.  One of my gardeners has set up a chicken raising project for his wife and other women in his family to supplement their income, and they are raising some wonderful chicken. Friends from town make the trip to come to buy them, and there is an ego factor in knowing that professors and such are making a special effort just for your produce. Their veterinary knowledge is being used to raise better, cleaner, healthier animals and to teach others how to do it too.

I've watch typical learned helplessness victims turn their lives around and change their attitudes completely with giving them the chance to learn and use their knowledge to help others. One of the most impressive things, and something that I think has been extremely important, is the fact that they are not being paid for their veterinary work. It is all voluntary, even the work that occurs almost every day after working hours at the farm. This is a point of pride. Not only do they know things, but they can help people and do so without benefit to themselves. It isn't enough to give them knowledge...much of it they had before we started the veterinary work...they need to use it too.



copyright 2014 Maryanne Stroud Gabbani

A Watering Place Dries Up

For many, many years Christo, the fish restaurant across the road from the Mena House Oberoi at Giza, has been a favourite place to take visitors for a nice fish dinner and a beer or glass of wine while watching the lights of the Sound And Light play across the pyramids on the hill. Yesterday I met some friends of friends in the US who were visiting Cairo for dinner there and found to my disappointment that the restaurant has been bought by new owners who have decided that they will no longer serve alcohol. Christo was never exactly a riotous beer brawl sort of establishment in the first place, but nibbling on calamari and shrimp while sipping a cool Stella was a lovely way to spend a summer evening. My friends were still happy with the dinner, having no real reference point, but I found that not only did I miss the liquid refreshments, but the food isn't as good as it used to be either. Salads and fish were not as fresh. Another tradition falls by the wayside.

copyright 2009 Maryanne Stroud Gabbani

Observing The Pilgrims

I had a nice couple from the UK staying at the farm for a weekend not long ago and they wanted, naturally, to visit the pyramids at Giza. Even more, they wanted to go inside the Great Pyramid, a trip that takes some organising these days. We got up at 6:30 am to be at the pyramids at 7:30 so that we could be first in line for the tickets to the area and the pyramids. In the old days things weren't nearly so organised and it was just a matter of showing up, but now you have to buy a ticket to the plateau and another to go into either the Great Pyramid or the Middle Pyramid at the entrance. There are two entrances, one down by the Sphinx in Nazlit Semman and one up the road from the Mena House. Once you are wandering around the plateau, it is a long dusty hike back to the ticket offices to get entrance tickets to the pyramids. We were first in line, and they got their tickets to see inside the pyramid.

They wanted to wander around for a few hours and I said that I would amuse myself at the pyramid while they did whatever it was they wanted. Sometimes my visitors want my company, but they were very independent, so I settled down to watch and photograph visitors to the pyramid. It didn't take long for the crowds and buses to begin arriving and soon I had more than enough to watch. It was a Friday morning and there were people from every nation on earth, along with Egyptian families and some school trips towing crowds of children around the area. At first I sat on the stones facing the pyramid and taking photos of people having their pictures taken. I find people posing next to one of the wonders of the ancient world to be utterly enchanting. Their delight in being there is written all over their faces and the poses are marvelous.

The photographers in the groups were so intent on their shooting that no one noticed the fact that I was shooting people rather than stones. Their subjects would climb up a few steps to stand on some of the lower stones, or they might pretend to push. Some people would simply stand quietly at the side of an enormous block of limestone resting their hands on it, as though feeling the pulse of the stone.

Moods varied from solemn and awed to hilarious enjoyment of the experience. As someone who has been visiting Giza for the past thirty years, watching the visitors awoke the delight and awe that I felt the first time I came and gazed at these unbelievably enormous structures. The first time I came to Egypt my husband brought me to the Sound and Light the first evening and the next day we came out to the pyramids with a group of his teen-aged cousins. They had all seen the pyramids before and their enjoyment of my delight was obvious. We had bought a good camera for that trip and were having a marvelous time taking photos of everything...everyone assumed that my husband was a foreigner since why would an Egyptian take pictures at the pyramids? Times have definitely changed.

As the morning progressed, I took shelter in a shady niche about three stones up the pyramid from which vantage point I watched the visitors as they faced me. It was almost ceremonial. The footing at the base of the pyramid is quite uneven and the SCA have built a wooden walkway over the rocky platform along which many of the first time visitors approach. It's a lot to take in and there is a moment for each one when they stop and try to take in the enormity of what is in front of them. From a distance they must turn their heads from left to right to see the expanse of the one face and then they must lean back, back, back to try to see all the way to the top. After a few moments of orientation, the group photographer begins to motion people to stand in front of the pyramid to commemorate the day.

I was there about four hours and have to say that I never had a moment to get bored. The parade of visitors was unending, the buses filling the parking lot never thinned out, and I took about four hundred photos that one morning. I did a lot of critical trashing of bad shots but I was left with almost one hundred that I felt were worth keeping. I always feel that there is a peace in the pyramids that tolerates our human foolishness. They have seen it all over the millenia. They had their centuries of glory, of neglect and even abuse, but over all they persist. I'm quite aware of my anthropormorphising large piles of stone but when you live with them as neighbours, it's easy to do. So a Friday morning watching the endless games of the pilgrims who come in wonder and delight to play out the ancient rite of celebrating these ancient observers of our history made a perfect day.

copyright 2009 Maryanne Stroud Gabbani

Circumnavigation

I've had visitors this winter, as I do most winters, and we've had some unseasonably warm clear days to explore the Cairo area. Of course, one of the required visits is to the Giza plateau and on one of my visits there I took a series of photos as we walked around the Great Pyramid so that I could share the experience. The imagination soars with the mention of the Pyramids of Giza and most people who haven't visited Egypt visualise three lonely silhouettes in the desert against a blue sky, a view of them that must be achieved from a distance. The reality of the pyramids is quite different, a reality that some people find disappointing but one that I find never fails to engage me.

To approach the Giza plateau, one drives up an asphalt road from Pyramids Road dodging young men who run out into the road to try to convince the drivers of incoming cars that the ONLY way to see the pyramids is by following them to an area below the plateau where visitors will be mounted on camels, horses, or carriages (sometimes at great expense if the touts are lucky) in the stables opposite the Mena House Hotel and transported up the hill. Their claims are utter rubbish and it is quite possible, and in my mind preferable, to drive up to the entrance, buy tickets for the visitors and the car and then drive on in. There is a parking lot that overlooks the camel stables opposite the Mena House which provides a good spot from which to foray out to explore the pyramids.

As we walk across the stone to the Great Pyramid on a Friday morning, the sheer size of the pyramid never fails to strike. From a distance tiny figures gather along the eastern face of Khufu's pyramid facing the Nile Valley, crawling part way up the stones...as we approach it becomes clear that these are people who are climbing the staircase that has been cut into the enormous stones so that they might enter the tiny cramped passage that leads up to the chamber in the center with the enormous sarcophagus. The impressive weight of the stones, the size of each one, the effort that must have been expended to pile all of them up, is stupifying...but still the passages are extremely uncomfortable and visits inside pyramids are highly overrated in my mind.

As we make our way along the face, we pass Egyptian families out for a day in the open air. Fathers photograph offspring with mobile phone cameras while mothers sit comfortably on the lowest layer of stones dispensing sandwiches and chips. The children are all over the place. Most families in Cairo live in apartments, so to be out in this much space with virtually nothing breakable at hand induces a state of exhilaration in the younger set that is only matched perhaps by watching a set of goat kids bouncing madly around ricocheting off each other and any other object in their immediate vicinity.

As we round the southern side of the pyramid we find ourselves in the area where iron railings protect some of the more active albeit less observant of the young visitors from pitching headlong into the pits that once held the solar boats, beautiful graceful craft made of Lebanese cedar and held together with palm fiber rope. The best preserved of these is in the Solar Boat Museum on the western side of the pyramid, an odd rather banana-shaped structure that provides a climate controlled environment to preserve the reconstructed boat.

The new regulations restrict the camel and horse men who offer the services of their sometimes rather dubious mounts to the south side of the Great Pyramid, the area around the parking lot by the middle pyramid, and the panoramic view point out in the desert where it is still possible to photograph the pyramids in their lonely majesty. After glancing around quickly to determine that a collision with one of the plateau's four footed denizens was not imminent, we had to look up and admire the view of the stones reaching up into the sky. We are so physically lazy in our lives now that it seems quite impossible that these massive boulders should have been moved simply by muscle power, but in those days there were four months during the summer when most of the population of Egypt was available for labour such as this while they waited for the Nile flood to recede. Four months is a long time to go fishing and it makes the concept of the masses of labourers much more understandable.

Rounding the southwest corner of the pyramid we could see the middle pyramid with its limestone sheath still intact at the tip and the oddly shaped Solar Boat Museum next to our pyramid. The middle pyramid always looks larger than the Great Pyramid but this apparently is because it is built on a higher platform of rock. Just before the museum a pair of female visitors were debating with some camel handlers for a ride. As we wandered past we were regaled with squeals and laughter as they experienced the seesaw action of a camel rising to its feet and starting off.

As we headed back towards the parking lot along the north face of the pyramid, we were reminded of the winter winds that we had avoided on the west face. Other visitors were coming towards us with pauses for photographs as they wandered along. At Giza, photographing photographers is inevitable. Some young men tried to look tough and strong while surreptitiously zipping up jackets against the chill of the wind whenever the sun crept behind a cloud, and later we assisted a pair of newlyweds from the Delta with a photo on a mobile phone against the background of the middle pyramid of Khafre.

As we approached our starting point on the east face of Khufu's pyramid, we noticed that the crowds were getting thicker as more and more visitors arrived. Some of them were visiting the nobles' tombs at the northeastern corner while others were making their ways in carriages, on foot, on horseback or camelback towards the smaller pyramids or the panoramic view point out in the desert.

Once back on the eastern face of the pyramid we wandered over to admire the view over the valley. My friend had last been in Cairo in 1971 and remembered how the area before the Giza plateau had been green fields. Now it is so built up as to be unrecognisable to early visitors, but the pollution had been blown away by the winds and we had a clear view of the Citadel across the valley. When we turned to the pyramid again and saw it as a backdrop to the cars in the parking lot, we were definitely brought back to reality and present day.
copyright 2009 Maryanne Stroud Gabbani

Eid...Interrupted by Technology

The chanting started at about 5 am. "God is great. God is great. God is great. There is no God but God. God is great. God is great. God is great. All thanks to God." I'd set the alarm for 5:30 so I just cuddled down into the covers and listened for a while. Today was the first day of Eid el Adha and I'd arranged with Ahmed, one of my grooms, to go to see the Eid prayer in the desert this morning. I'd gone out on horseback the first day of the Eid at the end of Ramadan, but this is almost January and we've been having a cold spell for the past week, so the Jeep was really in order. I pulled on jogging pants and a jacket, grabbed my camera and we headed out to see this. I've been hearing for years about how the people of the area gather for this important prayer in the desert and I wanted to experience it.

We drove down to the village of Abu Sir in darkness with the heater blasting away in an effort to defrost the jeep. It was 6 am as we slowly worked our way through the narrow alleyways but I was surprised to see market stalls open for business and housewives out sweeping the streets in front of their houses. We were heading for the desert near the modern village cemetery, but I do believe that there isn't a straight road in all of Abu Sir. Twisting and turning a decent size jeep through alleyways that were designed for donkeys can be rather daunting under the best of circumstances, and too early in the morning and freezing are not the best of circumstances.

We were early enough that most of the people hadn't arrived yet and neither had the sun. The antiquities' lights on the hill behind the spot chosen for the prayer were the only illumination. The place itself is extraordinary in that the modern cemetery abuts on the bluff into which pre-pharaonic tombs have been cut, so this morning's event was overseen by many generations of ancestors.

Men from the village spread woven mats on the sand as Ahmed and I sat watching and waiting for more people to arrive. I noticed that the mats were being spread with a gap between so that the men could walk in their shoes to find a spot to sit. Prayer rugs are never walked on with shoes. Gradually the rugs filled as the sky lightened. Men and boys streamed in from the village and from behind the tombs that line the desert. Sometimes women join in the prayer, but this morning they rather wisely stayed in the relative warmth of their homes.

Finally, as the sun crept over the Sakkara plateau, the sheikh spoke the Eid chant one more time and then roughly ten thousand men joined in prayer under the dawn sky. It truly was an awesome sight and one that filled me with a special peace. As the only woman in the area, I remained in the background as was appropriate so as not to be a distraction from prayer. Women always pray to the rear of the men or in another room, men being easily distracted from religious contemplation according to Muslim tradition.

This was certainly true for some of the younger set. A group of roughly ten year old boys kept turning back to look at my jeep during the prayer, and when it ended, they all appeared at my window to ask what I was doing and where I came from. I assured them that I had a farm down the road and was a neighbour who had heard that this event was a marvelous thing to see. They nodded sagely, agreeing with me but were still rather mystified. Seeing fathers leaving to take care of the next family chore on Eid el Adha, the slaughter of the sheep or goat, they scampered off.

Many people find this slaughtering practice to be hard to deal with, and I must admit that I do not slaughter personally. I don't eat lamb so I have no need for the meat and my staff all have their own animals, so I give them cash at the feast, something that they find a great deal more useful. A while back I participated in an online discussion of the pros and cons of various methods of slaughter with some American and European vets. The procedure for a halal slaughter is to use a very sharp knife to slice the jugular vein and carotid artery and then to let the animal bleed out. The vets assured us that the procedure involves a loss of blood that is so swift, there is little or no pain and the animal loses consciousness very, very quickly. I must admit that I found this reassuring.

With the prayer and the slaughter aspect of the Eid out of the way, the feast moved on to the enjoyment that everyone in Egypt looks forward to. Schools and businesses will be closed for at least three or four days, children and parents have holidays and everyone gets a rest. In Nazlit Semman some enterprising young fellows brought donkeys who would ordinarily be carrying cargoes of turnips or clover and began renting them out to the urban children for donkey rides, while other children played on the grass in the median of the main street. Parks, unfortunately, are in short supply in Cairo and medians make do on holidays and summer evenings.

I had some guests who wanted to go see the pyramids of Giza, so we headed to the Giza plateau. Tourism is alive and well in Egypt to judge from the crush of buses and minibuses lining up to enter. My friends decided to check out the interior of the medium pyramid, but having done way too many pyramid interiors in my mis-spent youth, I opted to sit in the sun and check out the United Nations at Giza. Everywhere I turned I heard another language: French, German, Italian, Spanish, Japanese, Korean, Russian, English, and a number that I couldn't identify for the life of me. The truly fascinating thing is how the camel men and postcard sellers keep up with this. They switch languages with an alacrity that any UN translator would envy.

The temperatures in the shade were still a bit chilly so many of those who were waiting for their pyramid-exploring kin opted for the sunshine. As we walked around the plateau, we were accosted by the usual number of oddly dressed individuals selling scarabs, pyramids molded from resin, glass pyramids, tacky tshirts, and faux Bedouin headcloths at every turn, but my assurance that "we live here" usually brought a sincere apology from the sellers. It's nice to know that they understand how annoying they are.

As someone who was more or less immune from the circus, I could really relax and enjoy some of the more common ploys. The favourite, of course, is to offer a sitting camel as a spot for a photo opportunity and then once the victims are on board to tell the camel to rise. Once the riders are about eight feet in the air, they are in a much weaker bargaining position and are then fleeced to be allowed to get off. It's a massively aggravating situation while you are sitting on some growling, smelly uncontrollable beast and being led in the direction of someone's perfume shop despite all protests, but pretty funny to watch from the ground and it makes a good dinner story.

As much as a resident gets tired of the usual tourist scenes, the people watching at the Giza plateau is second to none. Children dragging parents around massive piles of rocks or falling asleep in backpacks, awestruck teenagers estimating how long it would take to climb a pyramid (in your dreams, kid), and older visitors smiling calmly at something that, thank heaven, is older than them...it's all part of the magic of Egypt.

The Eid fell on the last day of the year and New Years Eve was a quiet potluck dinner at a neighbour's place. The mix was the usual for us, Norwegian, American, Spanish, Egyptian, and Canadian, and a roaring fire was most welcome. New Years Day for me was busy with some expat families bringing children out to the farm to play with the animals and blow off steam...a good omen for the coming year, I hope.

I had every intention of posting this on the first day of the Eid but the gods of the internet were not kindly disposed and my connection vanished for a while. Hopefully, all is well now.