Wedding Season

girlsjumping, originally uploaded by Miloflamingo.

It was interesting to me when I first moved to Alexandria that most social events in Egypt (even at that time children's birthday parties) were held in the evening or at night. Now dinner parties and adult functions made sense, although many ended up being attended by sleepy children who were with parents. In the late 80's having a babysitter stay at home with your kids was a rather novel idea in Egypt. My children had been raised with early bedtimes, so night was not their finest hour, and my husband and I quickly broke in a set of babysitters from his office staff. It didn't hurt that we had our first baladi dog at the time, a spayed female called Pepsi, who was so devoted to the children that if we were not home, the "sitter" could only go from the chair in front of the television to the kitchen to make a cup of tea without being shadowed by a German Shepherd sized bodyguard.

One of the most interesting, and sometimes most dreaded, of social spectacles in Egypt is the wedding, most of which in the countryside are held in summer for the balmy night temperatures. City folk hold their weddings at homes, in restaurants, or at hotels, depending on how much the budget can afford. So they are not so bound by the season. A truly posh wedding here in one of the ballrooms at a five star hotel with a catered dinner can cost as much as a small house. I've told my kids since they were young that they will never get one of those weddings. These fancy society weddings tend, on the whole, to be rather boring as well. There is usually a singer and a belly dancer for entertainment and the entire program is videotaped to the nth degree.

Country weddings tend to be rather louder, more interesting, and are held outdoors. They tend not to stretch on into the early morning hours since farmers still have cows to milk early on the next day. Our neighbours, the family of the area power structure, are marrying off their last son this Thursday and the festivities should be something to see. The bride is from a neighbouring village and will be picked up in a rented Mercedes and led in a parade that will be heralded by a rented Hummer. I asked why horses weren't being used, but the distances are too long.

My daughter has one of her friends from New York arriving on Wednesday night, so Emily will move directly from jet lag to village wedding. What a culture shock. Should be quite an evening. I'll take some photos and post them. We were even honoured with written invitations to the do and are reallly looking forward to it.

I've inadvertantly been part of wedding processions in this area when out riding in the afternoons and evenings. Horses just love it when a line of honking cars comes up behind them on a one lane dirt road. The clapping of the men, the beating of the drums, and the laughing and singing women and children piled into pickups, dump trucks and on donkey carts make for an unusual parade. I usually try to get out of the way as quickly as possible, but a couple of times that meant just trotting in front of the procession for about half a kilometre. The participants were generally so cheerful that they didn't mind our slowness and in fact were pleased to have the horses as outriders. The horses weren't all that thrilled.

Living with Corruption

K-Man noted that as a foreigner in Egypt I might not have noticed the corruption among public officials, but I beg to differ. Maybe because my late husband was in business, or because most of my friends are either Egyptian or very long term residents, but I've seen truckloads of corruption in Egypt. Part of the problem lies in the utterly pitiful pay scale in public service. Back in the days of Nasser, when businesses all over Egypt were being nationalised, a job was promised to every university graduate, while at the same time, the universities were essentially free of charge. No country can afford to pay the wages of virtually every citizen without making these salaries miniscule.

So when I moved to Egypt in '88, there were Egyptian government employees everywhere, all making a couple of hundred pounds a month...which is quite insufficient for a family. Of course they took bribes to get their work done. I don't approve of it but I do understand it. But there is corruption in every society in most of the upper tiers, since that is the level at which people have the power to sell favours. Unfortunately necessity (that old mother of invention) promoted corruption at the lower levels where the employees were paid so little that they had to find other ways of supplementing their income, It's not found so much where a salary is sufficient to live on.

Eating well

Fritzi, originally uploaded by Miloflamingo.

I've come to the sad conclusion that crunchy Cheetos are bad for my arthritis. Having fallen off of at least 30 horses during my unlustrious riding career, I have all sorts of misalignments, cracks, crinks, and other assorted inauspicious joint ailments, with the worst being my left knee which is minus its miniscus. (Surgery done here for a 10th of the price of Canada or the US and a very good job too) If I spend too much time sitting down, as was the case through the four years of seemingly endless meetings and negotiations after my husband's death, I have trouble walking evenly for the first few minutes. That's a great excuse to go out and "exercise" it in the saddle! But to go back to the Cheetos, these wonderful cheesy, crunchy empty junk food morsels are my only true 1`junk food vice, and luckily, they are relatively hard to come by here. Today was payday and I went shopping for groceries, found some Cheetos, and decided to treat myself. My hands don't feel so great and I think that maybe I will cut the Cheetos off the treat list. Besides, mangos are in season and they are much nicer, as well as being better for me.

Most of my food money goes on my menagerie. The dogs get a diet of some kibble for the vitamins and protein in it, along with a cooked stew of pureed (before cooking) zucchini, carrots, some garlic and some ground meat, into which the whole wheat baladi bread is put to soak. This is a traditional canine diet here, since it's only very recently that dry dog food or cat food has even been available. And for the most part, it is still very expensive. As my oldest dog, Stella, a 15+ yr old baladi dog is in brilliant health, it must be a pretty good diet.

The parrots actually get the most variety in their diet, but then I have two species, one Old World..the African Greys..and one New World..the Cuban Amazons, Both are very flexible in their eating habits, but I notice that they don't all have the same tastes. Mona (a Grey) really likes a circle of banana first thing in the morning, while her mate Fritzi probably just wants a good cup of coffee because he mostly tries to bite me. The general diet for these feathered ones involves a dish of cut fresh fruit and vegetables such as carrots, cucumbers, grapes, pomegranate, apple, banana, guava, melon, hot peppers, soaked corn or chickpeas, orange...and other fruits in season that I might pick up. They also get a bread that I make up once a week that consists of ground broccoli, beets, carrots, whole eggs with the shell, hot peppers, corn meal, soaked black-eyed peas, green peas, whole wheat, sorghum, and chick peas. Amazing how much birds can eat, and the chickens who get the leftovers lay the most delicious eggs.

The tortoises mostly wander around the yard eating the grass and young flowers. They've been with us for over 15 years, and when one gardener complained that they were eating all the nasturtiums he was just told that he could plant more then. I had him place boxes around plants that he really didn't want eaten rather than putting the tortoises in a box, which was his idea. After all, plants don't need to move around. He wasn't a very happy gardener in a house where the animals had more rights than the plants.

The equids (I have both horses and donkeys) started their lives in a fairly normal Egyptian fashion, living in boxes and eating a diet very heavy in grain, specifically barley. It took me years to be able to arrange for them to live out of doors and eat a lot of rice hay instead, and many people think that I'm totally nuts. But they are much happier out side and are generally found under the sprinklers on hot days. Oddly enough, the changed diet is much cheaper than the original.

While the feeding of the animal side of the family is more costly, good nutrition for humans also comes of it. After all, if you fill your refrigerator with fruits and vegetables for parrots and dogs, there isn't much room for other less healthy things. And chopping fruits and vegetables first thing in the morning (hungry parrots can make quite a racket!) is a good chance to nibble through a good breakfast.

So thank you birds, and Fritzi, let go of my finger!

Momentsforeign, by the Rockwell Family

Momentsforeign, by the Rockwell Family

I met Rocky and Sally Rockwell in 1988 when we first moved to Alexandria. Rocky was working with a company that was rebuilding Alexandria's waste water system and Sally was a mainstay of the American Women's Associaton, a group that was infinitely more international than the name shows, being made up of women from all nationalities in Alexandria. This was one of the first contacts that I made in Egypt, and the women in the group were invaluable in teaching me how to get around and manage things for my family in Alex. I soon became editor of the monthly newsletter for AWA and a year or so later collaborated with Sally and other women in producing a guidebook that we called "Coming To Alexandria" for other families who might find themselves moving to Egypt.

Rocky and Sally had a rooftop apartment at the top of the hill in Kafr Abdou, the area of Alexandria that many of us lived in. The view from the terrace was of the gardens of the British Consulate, and it was the scene of many afternoon barbeques and evening parties. The entire old apartment building that they shared was a major social center with the Goulding family (British currently living in Portugal) on the ground floor. Rocky and Ben were co-owners with some other guys of a rickety old catamaran (I believe) and both families joined us frequently for sails from the Eastern Harbour to Montaza on our boat, the Peregrine. Peregrine, a 30 ft cruising boat, is still moored in Cyprus and is carrying her age well under my son's gentle care.

The Gouldings had been in South and Central America before Egypt, working with universities and fishery companies. Ben was teaching at the University of Alexandria. Sally's experience raising her children abroad was an immense inspiration and help to me, as was Rowena's practical knowledge as a nurse.

I remember the time in Alexandria as a special part of my life. Living in Egypt was an adventure that we had embarked on not knowing that it would take the rest of our lives. The children were four and seven and were attending the French embassy school in an old Greek section of Alexandria, Ibrahimayah, while spending Halloween with children from the British School and learning to trick or treat as they did...believe me, it is different. All the children had to be prepared to sing for their candy. For a brief time at the beginning, we had a donkey who lived in the back garden and took the children for rides to the ice cream store that was just opposite the American consul's home. The ice cream was fresh fruit juice prepared in the light Italian fashion, and the donkey (Homer) liked lemon. I would walk through the streets with my kids on Homer, usually trailing a string of local kids who were entranced with the idea of a foreign family having a donkey. Homer, unfortunately, got bored when the children started school and was sent back to the friend's farm to be more active. Donkeys really don't like sitting around alone much.

Sally was sort of a mother for Rowena and I, in a funny non-related way. She had been through it all, in the hard places and during the hard times, while we were relative newcomers. When Rocky retired and they moved back to Pennsylvania finally, she gave me a watercolour of her terrace in Alex. Right now, that painting is hanging in a nursery school run by a British friend of mine in Maadi. I only have so many walls in my rented house and Jo offered to keep and love it for me until I have more space. The children love the painting of the scarlet blooms overhanging pots of flowers on the terrace.

Rocky and Sally weren't any kind of heroic individuals. They were just great salt-of-the-earth normal folk. They did have the sense of humour, much needed when a cab driver's explanation for rear-ending Sally on a main street was that "It wasn't his fault. He had no brakes." The only damage was to the bumper so the story was told with great hilarity. They had the sense of adventure, a willingness to see the world from a different perspective. I think I'm going to have to order the book.

Hey! I made Reuters

Internet News Article | Reuters.com

The article is more about the uses of blogs in business, but I found my introduction quoted at the beginning. I wish Magdy were still with us; he'd get such a kick out of my blog being used even in such a minor way in a Reuters article.

I don't know about using blogs in business, myself. You have to have a fairly thick skin for some of the weird comments that you get, and if they were from your boss or a co-worker, it would be that much harder. I don't know that I'd have had the nerve to write my feelings on the net when I was younger. But I'm not and I gave up guilt and/or trying to please other people a few years back. My skin is thick enough now...getting two kids to young adulthood does that for you.

Cars and Donkey Carts

Donkeycart, originally uploaded by Miloflamingo.

My car, a 5 year old Jeep Cherokee with sunburned paint, is in the "shop" for a couple of days for an adjustment to the rear differential. Wow...that almost sounds like I really know what I'm doing here. Well, I almost do but I'm relying a lot on the guidance of a good friend, who drives desert rallies and does jeep trekking in the desert. He helps me take care of the car, while his wife helps me take care of my body with her amazing massage skills. The work on the car will take a couple of days but will only cost a few hundred LE, which is good since I have more time than money. The "shop", like many here in Egypt is a shady spot under a bridge where a good jeep mechanic has a small parts warehouse nearby and a light bulb suspended from the bottom of the bridge so that he can work all night during the heat of the summer. Meanwhile, I take some time to work in my garden and get some writing done.

If I really need to go somewhere, I can always call a neighbour in an emergency. There aren't any cabs out here, but on a casual basis there is always Zuzu's cart. Fresh cut forage is a basis of the feed for my horses, donkeys and water buffalo, so I invested in a cart that a steelworker made for me and that my daughter and some friends spent a hilarious afternoon painting last summer. My daughter is the arm at the right of the photo, her friend Rana is helping to pull the wagon, and Ganja, one of our baladi dogs is supervising. Driving that cart is one of the supreme joys in my life, believe it or not. I am the occasion of a great deal of mirth for my neighbours, since who ever heard of a foreigner driving a donkey cart? And every kid who sees the cart has to ask to hop on for a ride...I don't mind. I just tell them that it's 50 piastres from my house to the mosque and they all fall over themselves laughing. Zuzu is a white donkey who came to me skinny and covered in sores about 18 months ago. She's now sleek but with a bit of a belly still after the birth of her son, George, who appeared a snowy white, but has mellowed to a dusty beige. She trots along on automatic pilot, knowing the way to my friends' homes and staying to the side of the road so that the huge dump trucks full of sand don't run us down.

We have to share our roads with all sorts of creatures here, a wide variety of vehicles as well as the usual livestock (camels, donkeys, goats, sheep, horses, chickens, ducks, geeese, and dogs...plus children!) and Zuzu and my horses have learned to handle a myriad of situations that many other equids would freak out at. It's currently wedding season, as most village weddings are held outdoors in the summer, and every so often we encounter a parade of trucks...pickups, dumptrucks, you name it...all loaded with men, women, children, and the furnishings of a newly wed couple's house. Horns honk, women sing...it's a joyous occasion and one that almost sent my mare and I into a canal the first time she saw it! But country drivers are much more courteous that city drivers and they slow down for beasts. There are five geese down the road that I swear wait to cross only when a car is approaching...and we all slow down so that they can go for a swim in the canal.

Driving in Cairo proper is not for the faint of heart. As many visitors to Egypt have noted, Egyptians are warm, friendly, welcoming people....until they get behind the wheel of a car. Then the monster within awakes. Actually, it isn't really their fault I believe. Most have never formally learned to drive. The rules of the road are not published in neat little handbooks to study but are mysterious pieces of esoterica only for the initiated, whoever they are. Cairo traffic reminds me of those shots of fish schools on the Discovery Channel. You can never see what the signal is, but they all change direction at once. Well, sometimes the signal for the cars is the horn, but often you have to ponder the fact that there are much fewer accidents than one might expect with such creative driving.

One of my most terrifying experiences was that of having my son and daughter finally reach the age at which they could get a driving license. They were thrilled and I chewed my nails to my elbows. I had taken quite a bit of time teaching them both to drive, but what could I do about all the others on the road? So far, so good and they both seem to be good drivers. The trick is to assume that everyone else on the road is a homocidal/suicidal maniac who is probably going to do something to kill himself/herself while taking out as many others as possible. Cairenes are by necessity amazing defensive drivers.

But for two days, I can relax and depend on my own two feet or Zuzu's four.

Morning Laughter

Most mornings I get up about 7 or 8 and I connect to the net to download my email while I shower before I have a cup of tea, prepare parrot and dog food, and feed the avians. This morning I did the same, why not? but I peeked at the email before I made my tea and got distracted.

First, I wish I did speak Portuguese, but I don't. French and Spanish, yes, Portuguese no. I have some very good friends, originally Brits who lived in Alexandria with us back in the 80's who are living outside of Lisbon. Their extremely fair, blonde or red haired kids who grew up speaking Arabic with the gardener and housekeeper are now perfectly fluent in Portuguese and I'm quite envious. So, Mundomeu, my apologies.

The next two posts left me chuckling. First, there are probably many Portuguese-speaking Muslims in the world. Arabic is, after all, only required of those who want to read the Quran in the original. If my daughter can speak Italian, French, and Spanish, does it mean that she's not Muslim? Oh, the possibilities of entertainment here are endless.

Then there was Jo who was incensed that I "gave up" my religion for inheritance..... Uh, where did I ever say that I was Christian? In fact, I was raised as (as my good friend Ameeta, who was raised a Jain, put it so well) as a non-aligned monotheist. Let's face it. Whatever power may or may not exist, and people are qute free to insert anything that they might like, I doubt very much that he/she/it's primary concern has been the labels that humans wear. I don't recall anything in the New Testament in which Jesus is alleged to have said "And you shall call yourselves Christians"...in fact, I bet that he'd be horrified. Most of the advice in the Bible and Quran is about how to be a better person, rather than how to wear a team t-shirt. I happen to think that labelling humans as Christians of whatever flavour as opposed to Hindus or Muslims is rather silly and counterproductive. My whole point was that I didn't give up anything to be called a Muslim, I just let some people who are fascinated with labels be more comfortable. I suspect that I'm a better Muslim than many label-conscious folk are, but I was before too. It's how you live your life that counts.

No wonder Anonymous posts are anonymous. Now to feed the birds and chat with AliBird who truly understands God and the universe and everything.