Are We Upstream or Down?

The New York Times today ran an article on cities like Seoul, South Korea, that were digging out, or "daylighting", streams and rivers that had been covered over for the sake of automobile traffic. This is an interesting idea here in Egypt where lately a lot of work has been done in areas of Giza in which large irrigation canals have been buried in pipes to make way for roadways. We do have the Nile in Cairo, although building and businesses line the river and don't really give human access to the water and view. The bridges here are crowded all night long during the summer as city residents seek the cooling breeze that persists along the river. Businesses have sprung up among those who rent out chairs, prepare food, and offer tea or soft drinks to the bridge lingerers.

Many suburbs of Cairo have lost their canals to roadways as housing has overtaken farming in the area. Maadi has a wide green space of sorts along Canal Street, named for the canal that once flowed there. I don't know if the canal was filled in or redirected through pipes. While some people say that covering the canals helps to keep the mosquito population down, I would argue that we manage plenty of mosquitoes in areas with gardens but we are lacking the frogs, toads and dragonflies that abound around open water and who are major consumers of mosquitoes. But Egypt has millions of miles of irrigation canal in the countryside that could be enjoyed by walkers and others if they came out to do so.


Living out here in the farmland I have gained a special fondness for the canals that I have to admit is not shared by many. Most people think that the canals are dirty, which in some areas they are, and especially when the water is low, they can have a rather ripe aroma of mud and rotting vegetation. The water in the canals is slow-moving so they tend to be a dark green with abundant algae, but many people don't realise that they are also full of life. They are teaming with small perch, frogs, toads, crayfish, and support a wide variety of birds and animals. One can find egrets, herons, three different varieties of kingfishers as well as bee eaters, rollers, swallows and other birds nesting near, eating from or flying over the canals.


There are problems with the canals, without doubt. They do harbour schistosomiasis parasites and the water is best viewed from a distance, but this is certainly no reason to do away with them. Schistosomiasis, or Bilharzia, is a problem for the farmers who work in the fields and are often wading in irrigation canal water. I don't know that there are any sure solutions to our need for irrigation and the problem of Bilharzia other than the easy access to inexpensive medication for it. I see that my staff (who irrigate with well water on the farm, but who might help in fields on their days off) get dosed with praziquantel twice a year at least. There is also the problem that there is no better place to dispose of a dead donkey or water buffalo than a canal if the farmer lives in the valley. The water table is so high that nothing can be buried in the Nile Valley and most farmers don't have any means of hauling a carcass out to the desert to let the wild dogs and kites dispose of it, even if they wouldn't be subject to prosecution from the Antiquities Service should they do so. The fish, crayfish, dogs, and birds do a pretty good job of disposal in the canals, however unpleasing it may be aesthetically, and the body is generally gone in about 2 weeks providing water soluble fertiliser.


Our canals are the circulatory system of the Nile Valley. In the old days we had four months during which the Nile flooded the entire valley, drowning a large proportion of the rodent population, laying down a fresh layer of silt to fertilise the fields, and in essence, giving the valley land a yearly transfusion. We no longer have the floods to clear the valley and I don't believe that the mentality has ever adjusted to the change. The canals are seen as a necessary evil for the farmers and little or no work has been done to educate people in the best ways to keep their canals healthy. We have an astonishing wealth in our waterways and they should be nourished, protected, and cherished.


copyright 2009 Maryanne Stroud Gabbani

Islanders Win For Now

An article in the Daily Star today revealed that the courts had ruled in favour of the islanders on Qorsaya
who had been fighting off military dredges on their island and eviction orders. A previous suit by the islanders against the Potable Water Company asking for service to provide water had been denied because the courts ruled that as a protectorate the island wasn't entitled to civic services. This worked against the encroachers when again the island was declared to be a protectorate and immune from industrial or commercial building.

This is hardly the last word on the subject, but it is heartening.


copyright 2008 Maryanne Stroud Gabbani

The Second Day on the River

The next morning we had breakfast at Kom Ombo and then set sail for Edu. This was my favourite part of the trip, heading down the Nile with the northwind in our faces. We passed farms much like those of my area, and fishermen working their boats in the river while their children played on sandbars nearby. Mango, orange, and banana orchards lined the river, but the date palms here in the south were not as well-trimmed as those in our neighourhood.

We weren't the only ship on the river. In addition to the fishing skiffs, there were some smaller motor craft for travel or cargo and, of course, other cruise boats. Since we were all supposed to be going through the locks at Esna that evening, sometimes things looked like an old fashioned river boat race. The weather had warmed up quite a bit, but most of us were looking abit askance at some of the travelers on other boats who were sunbathing on the top deck. Maybe our boat was colder on the topdeck or something but we were quite happy in tshirts.

When we got to Edfu we were told that we would take a horse-drawn carriage to the temple and back. To my delight, the majority of the horses presenting themselves to us at the riverside were in excellent condition. As a horse owner and someone who works with horses, I really can't tolerate working abused horses. The Brooke Hospital group have been working really hard in Upper Egypt constructing shades where the horses can rest and visiting veterinary services.

The temple at Edfu is amazing. It is wonderfully preserved temple that was constructed for the most part during Greco-Roman times and was buried in sand until the 1800's. I remember being incredibly impressed with its halls and decoration years ago. Many of the halls are stained with soot near the ceilings from people taking shelter in them many centuries ago.

After Edfu, we set sail once again, heading for the locks at Esna. At times we could see desert on one side or another, and there were some beautiful buildings along the river. One sand coloured house in the traditional Nubian style particularly caught my eye. The way that it blended into the surrounding desert hills was lovely.

Finally, as the sun was setting, we came to Esna where we moored with a number of other boats while waiting our turn to pass through the locks. South of Esna the river is significantly higher than it is below Esna. Nile cruisers traveling south from Luxor wait in pairs to enter the lock, have about 4 metres of water pumped in to raise them to the southern level, and then after the southbound boats leave the lock, the northbound boats, like ours, enter to have the lock pumped out to lower us to the northern level. From Esna we traveled north to Luxor to find ourselves moored at the corniche in Luxor the next morning.
copyright 2008 Maryanne Stroud Gabbani

Cruisin'

This has been a week for old friends in many senses of the word. For the past year, one of my childhood friends has been working out the details of a visit to Egypt with her husband, a woman friend of hers and the woman’s husband. At the very last minute, her friend’s husband couldn’t make it on the trip and we had to reorganise a few things. They had planned to come to Cairo for a few days to see some things and catch their temporal breath at the farm. Flying to Egypt from California does really knock one’s time sense askew in a big way. Then they had booked five days during which they would take a three day cruise from Aswan to Luxor with a following flight to Sharm el Sheikh for a couple of days. When one of the party couldn’t come, they invited me to join them and after working out the logistics of getting away from the farm and work for five days, I did. We flew up to Aswan early in the morning to catch the Movenpick Royal Lily, a lovely boat for a vacation. The rooms were beautiful and the food was great. Each day we visited some of the sites along the Nile between Aswan and Luxor and in between we would sail along some gorgeous countryside. It was my first Nile cruise, despite the fact that I’ve lived here for about twenty years.

In Aswan before we sailed, we hopped into a minibus with a guide to visit three sites, the unfinished obelisk, the Aswan High Dam, and the Temple of Philae. My only other visit to Aswan was in about 1992 with my brother and his family at New Years. We had driven up from Luxor (this was in the old days when you could still do that easily) and we opted to see the High Dam, Abu Simbel, which involved a flight from Aswan and back, and a felucca trip to the west bank for a camel ride. This trip involved seeing two new things and revisiting one old friend. The High Dam hasn’t changed much and standing on top looking out at Lake Nasser was a familiar sight. The site of the unfinished obelisk, on the other hand, was totally new and interesting. The site is an enormous granite quarry, where for thousands of years the ancient Egyptians cut the famous red Aswan granite for pyramids, obelisks, and other statues. I’m not sure how many of you have had to buy countertop for a kitchen but Aswan granite still goes for a pretty penny in the market today. The unfinished obelisk is a 42 meter slab of granite that cracked as it was being carved and was then left in place. Undamaged obelisks were carefully removed from the site of their carving and placed on barges that could be floated to the Nile directly from the quarry via a canal that’s only recently been discovered.

Driving from the quarry to the High Dam we crossed channels where the Nile flows out of the dam and some of the old rocky empty channels that are used for excess run off. Aswan’s main characteristic is the amazing amount and variety of rock. The High Dam hasn’t changed in the 16 years since I was here last. It’s still high, still windy and the view of the lake is still lovely. The jury is still out as to whether it was a Good Thing or a Bad Thing as well. In addition to losing many important archaeological sites to the lake, Egypt and the Mediterranean Sea lost the important silt that was washed down the river yearly. This has cost the farmers of Egypt a lot and the fishermen of the Med perhaps even more, since the silt gave nutrients to the fish of the area. At the time that they were building the dam, no one was interested in ecological impact statements so we are pretty much stuck with the results.

Our next stop was one that I’d wanted to see for ages, the Temple of Philae which is between the old Aswan Dam and the High Dam. Like many sites in this area it has been relocated to keep it from being lost in the waters, but unlike Abu Simbel and others, the relocation didn’t involve that much of a move. It was built in Greco-Roman times to honor the goddess Isis, whose tears over the loss of her husband/brother Osiris were believed to be the source of the Nile flood. The carvings there are beautiful and interesting, as the Greeks who were then ruling Egypt added their own little touches to the décor. The juxtaposition of the huge raw boulders of the river, the harsh stone of the riverbank, and the lovely workmanship of the temple were a marvel, as were the warm tones of the stone and the cool clarity of the unpolluted sky and the sapphire of the lake. I grew up near the sea and any time spent by water always seems a blessing, twice so in the desert like the high deserts of California or in Egypt where water that pours over the hot rocks gleams with a light more lovely than any diamond.

We returned to the boat where we laid into dinner with the special gusto of those who have been hiking over rocks and learning more than they’d bargained for as the boat sailed for Kom Ombo. Kom Ombo is the site of a temple to the crocodile god Sobek and to Horus. Apparently this area of the Nile was notorious for its crocodiles and one reason for the temple was to try to encourage the crocodiles to play nicely with the locals, while on the other hand Sobek was a fertility god and this seems to have been a temple for the practice of medicine. There are carvings on one of the walls that detail medical practices and tools. We visited the site by moonlight as there was a full moon, at least a 10 on the romance scale. There was plenty of light to see the carvings between the moonlight and the illumination provided by the antiquities staff. As we walked to and from the temple along the Nile embankment, I was struck with the loveliness of the night (definitely the most powerful feeling) and with the enormous numbers of visitors to this part of Egypt. There must have been at least ten cruisers the same size as ours tied up along the river bank and in many cases they were moored in flotillas at least three deep. That night we slept the deep sleep of weary travelers who had risen at 3 am to spend a day time traveling on the river.


copyright 2008 Maryanne Stroud Gabbani

No Man Is An Island

Funny things happen to islands in the Nile near Cairo. A couple of years ago residents of Maadi noticed dredging equipment working on a small unoccupied island just off the Military Hospital on the Maadi corniche. Rocks were piled against the banks of the little island, palm trees brought and planted...all very intriguing. Oddly enough, no one could find out who was doing the work or why or to what end. Now as you drive by there is a very manicured island with a picture of the President of Egypt on it. Did he change the island? No one knows. But there was quite a loud fuss made over the process because changing the shape or size of an island changes the way that the river flows and the River Nile is not just an Egyptian river but it is a major world river. When the Aswan dam was constructed and the silt that used to travel down the Nile to the Mediterranean Sea became blocked behind the dam, the farmers of Egypt weren't the only people affected by the change. The sardine industry was devastated because the sardines relied on the nutrients that had been reaching the sea through the Delta...except now their food source had vanished. Changing a river in any way affects much more than the people who are living on its banks.

Not long ago news reports mentioned that another island was having problems of a similar sort, but this was a larger island and one with quite a few people who have been living there for a number of generations. The islanders found some dredges parked alongside their island and some military personnel standing about on the shore. Having both military personnel and dredges is a very awkward situation. The military have fairly remarkable powers in Egypt... one doesn't want them as an enemy.

The situation became quite tense in fairly short order. The inhabitants of the island are, for the most part, farmers and as such very dependent on their land. At the rate that farmland is being developed in Egypt, to have to pull up stakes and move to another plot of land would not be an easy thing at all. Starting over on reclamation land is a massive enterprise in terms of installing infrastructure and building a new life...plus, Egyptians in general really don't like moving. They like living near their families and friends from generations back.

I've been watching the news to see what is happening with this island and for the past week or so there's been no news. The islanders are fighting the incursion of the army in the courts, but in a country where the military have extraordinary powers, that's not an encouraging activity. There's been no indication of who it is who wants the island or who claims to own it and no indication of the intended outcome. Hopefully, at some level of planning in this issue, people will realise that this isn't just a corner lot somewhere that might make a good grocery store. Islands are part of a river and the Nile isn't just any river.

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