The Importance of Remembering

Anniversaries are sneaky. They lie low in the bushes of our lives pretending to be asleep or not even there until we walk by, and then they smack us from behind. Sometimes we don't even recognise the smack as coming from where it did until a bit later. I learned a new lesson about the power of emotion over body during the past 10 days.

On June 10, I spent the day pottering around the farm. I noticed the date and thought with a certain amount of pride (watch out for that stuff...always caused the Greeks problems) that this year I was taking it pretty well. June 10 is the anniversary of my husband's death, an occasion that changed my life and my children's lives irrevocably and with the impact of having a building fall on us. So to just be doing some gardening, go out for a ride, things like that on June 10 felt good. Foolishly, I thought to myself that I was really "getting over it".

Losing your partner isn't the sort of thing that you get over. You do get used to it. As a friend of mine told me not long ago, it never hurts less...it only hurts less often. I've gone through the anger, through the expectation of him walking in the door surprised that we weren't expecting him home from a trip unepectedly, through the sadness...well, some of the sadness. Now the loss is more like an old friend.

So how did I get smacked? About the 12th I noticed an itchy eye which on closer examination was a stye, an inflammation on my eyelid. A stye? I haven't had one of those in years. Styes are a sign that your immune system is on the blink and for the life of me I couldn't imagine why. Then all of a sudden I had a sore throat and fuzzy tongue. Thrush? Another immune system warning bell. Neither of these things have been life threatening, just unbelievably irritating, and easily treated. I found myself extremely tired as well, to the point of taking an unplanned 6 hour nap one day.

It was only around dawn today that I suddenly woke up and made the connection. Sure, consciously I'd slid by June 10, but that didn't mean that my unconscious didn't notice. For many years I used to get incredibly cranky and argumentative right after New Year's Day and each year I had to remember consciously that this was the anniversary of my father's death. My mother died slowly and there never really was a particular date associated with her passing, so I never noticed the phenomenon with her death. At any rate, having realised that not taking the time consciously to recognise the day ended up with me paying for a week or so, I've decided to pay more attention to these things from now on. This is probably the reason for many of the ceremonial anniversary observances. It keeps things out of the bushes.

copyright 2007 Maryanne Stroud Gabbani

The Relaxing Country Life - Hah!

I think that I know what Old MacDonald died from. My strong suspicion is that it was exhaustion. When I decided to have a small working farm, at first I envisioned a place about twice the size of what I have now. Land prices decided otherwise for me, and in some ways I'm glad. I'd love to have bigger paddocks, but I'm understanding the direct relationship between land area and work now. I have about 3/4 of an acre that we plant in crops for the keeping of ourselves and our animals. Fresh vegetables, right? Wonderful....hmmmm, yes. My vegetable drawers in the fridge are running over with aubergines, cucumbers, peppers, tomatoes, and okra, while strings of onions and garlic festoon the verandah. The ata (a local variety of cucumber) and the sweet potatoes haven't started to be harvested yet. The grooms' refrigerator is in a similar state, but at least I don't have to worry about anyone going hungry.

So a major portion of this chunk of land is currently planted in garawa, which is simply corn that is planted closely together so that it stays more grassy and is used for feed for horses, cows, goats, etc. When it is planted this way, it doesn't produce the amount of corn that stalks which are widely separated do...thank heaven! Because every day now, the boys cut garawa for the gamoosa, donkeys, goats and sheep, and every day they strip the corn off the stalks so that the corn can be used for the parrots and rabbits if it's too small to roast in the evening. The larger ears are roasted over coals and just eaten warm without any additives, and they are delicious. So I have chopped ears of corn in many ziploc bags in the freezer and fridge awaiting delivery to birds and bunnies. I have grilled corn every evening for dinner and frankly am getting a bit sick of corn...but the field is only a quarter empty. Oh my.

Then there are the sunflowers. I love sunflowers. I think that they are beautiful and the parrots adore the seeds. With our weather, we can grow them pretty much year round as well. So when they were seeding the field with the corn, they seeded sunflowers, three different kinds. We have the black seed sunflowers, the striped seed sunflowers, and the white seed sunflowers. They each give different sized flowers and LOTS of seeds. As soon as we notice the birds taking an interest in the flower head, we cut it and lay it face down on a rack in the sun. The heads need to dry but if they are face down on an open rack, the birds don't seem to recognise them to come and eat all the seeds. I doubt that I will be buying seed for the parrots this year.

With a batch of baby ducks and three litters of rabbits in the flight cages, breakfast preparation for the birds has taken on a new dimension. I have chopped corn cobs for the parrots and rabbits, all the vegetable leftovers for the chickens, the fruit/vegetable salad for the parrots, and now a large plate of chopped tomato, cucumber, and pepper for the baby ducks who eat with all the delicacy of a horde of locusts. They are cuteness personified toddling around the cage floor, climbing up on bricks to get into the plastic dish that is their pool, and swimming around...but they are all business when it comes to food. We are enjoying their cuteness stage and appreciative of the fact that they will grow up to resemble their father, who was recently re-named Howard after another cartoon character who more closely resembles our father duck than Donald does. It's a lot easier to roast someone who looks like Howard, and I have people already lining up for ducks.

Rabbits are kind of automatic feeders...but that just means that their keepers have to be on their toes with the food. Our first two litters seem to be providing breeding stock to neighbours who want to breed rabbits, which is fine with me. In the meantime, they are wonderfully entertaining to visiting children who can spend hours sitting on the ground with baby bunnies on their laps. The baby ducks are entertaining too, but Howard is pretty scary so kids have to wait until I will pick out some ducklings to cuddle.

Then there are the flowers to check for seeds to plant in new beds, the flax seed that we harvested from beds of flax this winter needs to be sifted to get rid of dust and dirt, the basil plants are growing like weeds this summer so that they have to be trimmed regularly to make pesto or just to harvest leaves for friends and neighbours. Horses have to be ridden, wormed and checked regularly for stupid horse boo-boos that they accumulate while playing in the paddock. The filly has to be haltered and walked daily so that she learns to obey humans while she is small enough that we can still manhandle her when she acts silly. And one of the turkey hens is sharing a box with one of the chicken hens because they are both sitting on chicken eggs to hatch them. We've marked the eggs so that new eggs can be collected for eating...however, turkeys and hens take a dim view of egg-theft and collecting is now done at the risk of your hands. But at the end of the day with a glass of ice tea, it's still worth the effort.

copyright 2007 Maryanne Stroud Gabbani

Welcome To The Melting Pot

When our children were born, Diaa and I wanted them to have Arabic names that could be spelled, pronounced, and not Anglicised. One of our first choices for our son was Yusuf, the name of my husband's grandfather on his mother's side, but when our OB said "Ah, Joseph. Nice name." that was the end of Yusuf. It took three days to find a name for our son that fit our criteria, and in the end it has remained, thankfully, a politically neutral name. One of his uncles was called Osama, which is a good name in Arabic, but neither of us wanted a child named after someone still living. This experience could have been his.

My heart goes out to this young man and his family. You only have to watch American television to realise how hard life can be for young people of Arab descent. In the wake of 9/11 when my children were both in school at Columbia University, I asked them please not to speak any Arabic on the street. I was worried, but most people don't associate my son's first name with any culture and my daughter's is a name that is common to many cultures.

The anti-Arab mentality that the American Christian fundamentalists are so happy to promote has to be recognised and opposed. That this sort of thing should happen to a boy like this is criminal. Many of the young people from Egypt who had gone to study in the US in 2001 came home for a year or two that fall. They didn't feel safe but hoped that things would die down. Obviously, they haven't entirely.

copyright 2007 Maryanne Stroud Gabbani

Population Explosion

One of the interesting things about a farm is that it's a place to grow things. Pretty basic, right? We grow corn, aubergine, cucumber, tomatoes, dates, all sorts of eating things. We also have chickens, turkeys, ducks and rabbits, not to mention a flock of highly fertile parakeets. My previous flock of chickens produced a fair number of eggs, but bird flu culling got them before we got any babies. This year has paid back for all the lack. Our first arrival was Negmat Sallamat on the evening of March 8 (see "New Arrivals" post). Then we had three of our goats give birth in fairly quick succession. I have one nanny, a red goat that I call Pippi due to her resemblance to Pippi Longstocking. The others belong to my driver and one of my grooms. Mohamed's were the first babies, two adorable black and white females, who quickly began running and bouncing all over the goat pen to the delight of us all. The next to arrive were Pippi's twins, Golda and Sharon. (I didn't name them. Don't blame me.) Golda was born with a twisted back leg, something that happened to her in utero, and despite my concerns she has turned into an active athletic kid. When Golda and Sharon were about a month old, Mohamed's other female gave birth to twins a few weeks early. The female was stillborn and the male was a bit weak. His mother wasn't the most willing caretaker and had to be held to nurse little Bush (again, I didn't do the naming). He's come along quite well and now there are five little popcorn balls flying around the paddock to the delight of visiting children. All of the goats have discovered that children are a brilliant source of treats and scratches...they donkeys got that sorted out months ago.
We started out with four rabbits last winter and now have three litters of babies with more to come. The first litter are almost as big as their parents and are sharing space with the chickens and turkeys to give the younger litters space. The chickens were a bit put out at first but they've figured out that bunnies don't bite birds, and life in that flight cage is pretty calm. The mid-sized bunnies are the favourites for cuddling. At about a month, they are hand-sized and cuddly. The older ones are better at twisting out of a lap, and the adults are not that thrilled with humans.
This morning I had a riding lesson for the daughters of some friends, and after the lesson we all went to the bird house to visit bunnies. The girls are five and eight, prime bunny age, and they played with furry things while I checked food and water for the parrots and other creatures. I went to check on Oprah, one of my turkey hens who has been very determinedly sitting on some chicken and duck eggs for the past few weeks. The turkeys don't have a male so their eggs get collected regularly for breakfasts. When I reached under her, Oprah's response was rather less than welcoming...a hen turkey pecks pretty hard...and we found a pair of baby Muscovy ducks. This is the first time I've had baby ducks that small and they are criminally cute. We moved them to the duck cage where Daphne, one of the female Muscovies was hiding another six nestlings under her wings.

A natural question is what we plan to do with all of these little creatures. Well, this is a farm and I do have staff to feed and people who are very interested in being able to buy clean fresh meat. Personally, I eat some poultry and fish with fruit and vegetables, so I can't see myself chowing down on Bush or Sharon. The male goats are castrated and raised for meat, while the females stick around for milk and breeding. I do like rabbit and find that adult rabbits seriously drop on the cute scale...but then I won't be doing the slaughtering of them though I will ensure that it is done quickly and cleanly. The ducks, being Muscovies, are the best for meat production and again get a lot less cute as they grow up. They will most probably be sold when they are about half grown to people who will feed them to slaughter weight. Maybe it seems a bit heartless, but who's to say that it's any worse than eating peaches?

copyright 2007 Maryanne Stroud Gabbani

It's A Dog's Life...or Death

I have a regular set of news alerts for stories that mention Cairo, Giza, and Egypt. It's always interesting to see what people are saying about us. This morning my alert included the news story from Al Ahram that can be read by clicking the title which links to it. Al Ahram is the primary government newspaper, and it publishes a weekly English summary as well as an online version. I was actually rather surprised to read about the petitions that have been collected online to try to get the government of Giza and Cairo to stop killing street dogs and to use a more humane and ultimately useful means of control. No one in Egypt questions the need to control the stray and feral animals in Egypt, but there is considerable debate on the way that it should be done.

The Al Ahram article provides a good discussion of the issue. There is no question that something must be done for these animals, but at this point there are a number of groups who are trying to provide neutering and vaccinations for them. This is a vast improvement over the way things were when we first moved to Egypt. In the late 80's it was hard to even find a vet, much less animal rights organisations...and in Egypt animal rights does not mean the sort of strangeness one finds with PETA or some of the other extreme groups. In Egypt, people who talk about animal rights are really talking about the chance for a halfway decent life. The fact that we do kill and eat animals is not subject to debate. Life and death are more immediate and accepted here.

Unfortunately, there is less understanding of the needs of animals to lead good lives. One of the things that the article doesn't mention is the need for education of the general population about how the environment consists of humans AND everything else. The dogs, cats, weasels, rats, mice, foxes, bats, owls, lizards, snakes and geckos, to name a few species, inhabit our cities and villages with us....and without them, our lives would be very different. During my first years in Alexandria I was horrified to find our staff killing geckos whenever they found them and I asked why on earth they would do something like that. I was told that the folk wisdom is that geckos spit poison into salt dishes so they must be dispatched. People who work with me now get constant lessons about the need for animals such as geckos and garden snakes to help control insects and other pests. There truly isn't a basic understanding that the other creatures inhabiting our space have to be considered as well.

As deplorable as this massive lack is, I can understand a lot of it. Until very recently, a huge proportion of Egypt's population was rural and they were subsistence farmers who struggled to make ends meet. There isn't much time to think about the quality of life for donkeys, dogs, and cats when you are simply scrambling to feed your family. Medical care for animals was sketchy at best even when I moved here in the 80's. Most vets took care of dairy cows or chickens and there was perhaps one small animal vet in Alexandria...and even he knew more about chickens or rabbits than cats. I knew more than he did. Most farmers rarely see a vet and know almost nothing about the animals that they use. When George, our donkey, was born I had some fairly knowledgeable grooms tell me that we should tie strings around his legs above the knees and tie his ears together over his head. After I picked myself up off the ground from laughing at them, I absolutely refused, pointing out that we never tie a foal's legs to strenthen them, nor do we tie their ears to ensure that they are upright. They were rather amazed to see that a donkey who goes without these essential steps not only grew up strong and straight, but that worming and trimming him from an early age gave us a donkey that is generally admired greatly for his size and strength. As he still isn't four years old, no one has ridden him either, so his back is still intact and very strong from his pulling work. Most donkeys are ridden far too young, destroying their spine early and leading to an early death. A ten year old donkey is old in Egypt. I expect George and Daisy to outlive me.

The missing link, of course, in all of this is education. We can hope that some of the television shows that people see will help a bit, but I'm not holding my breath. In school systems that rely on memorization and rote learning, there isn't much hope for teaching either. Perhaps the various animal rescue/rights groups will be able to make some inroads on education. For myself, I just do what I can with the resources available to me. Anyone who admires George gets a lecture on the need to let a donkey or horse grow up before being ridden. My neighbour, Am Ramadan, however, continues to have a heartbreaking string of two and under two year old horses going through his "training" program prior to selling them. We wormed everyone on the farm yesterday...horses, donkeys, mules, goats, sheep, and gamoosa. When I insisted on doing the babies as well, the boys were shocked but I pointed out that they will grow much better if they aren't carrying a parasite load. Hmmm, novel idea. And the goat and donkey pen does good business as a petting zoo/instructional setting for both visiting city kids and some of the village kids who come to play. This way, I figure that I'm reaching some of the children with a different idea about how we live in this world. If everyone does one small thing, we can actually make a difference.

copyright 2007 Maryanne Stroud Gabbani

Keeping Busy in May

A number of things have conspired to keep me from the blog lately. The biggest obstacle has been the appalling connection that I have with my Vodafone card. To be fair to Vodafone, they have been trying but it is simply awful. I am working on getting DSL and expect to be connected in a week or so, and this will make life so much better. Another obstacle to my writing has been a much happier one. My daughter came home about two weeks ago for a holiday before she heads off to help excavate a site in southeastern Turkey and then heads straight into her first year of the PhD program in anthropology at New York University. It's wonderful having her home. She gets a real kick out of the animals here at the farm and has been religiously going out to the rabbits to cuddle the baby bunnies into cooperation. Before arriving, she sent me a list of foods that she'd been missing in New York, so we have been arranging all her favourites, such as koshari, a mix of lentils, pasta, rice, chickpeas, tomato sauce, fried onions, and a vinegar/garlic sauce.

The first week that she was here we had utterly abominable weather with highs in the mid 40's. One day we took off and headed to Carrefour, supposedly to shop for things that Yas might need, but actually just to waste time in an airconditioned space until dusk. Not too surprisingly, we ended up at one point in the toy section where we checked out what was new in dolls. Barbie dolls were introduced when I was a little girl, and I was as likely to use them as pistols (aiming from the feet) as I was to play dolls with them, but my daughter actually liked them. Now some of the dolls available here are some interesting variations on the Barbie theme. Fulah looks a lot like Barbie, but her proportions are a bit more realistic and she comes with a head scarf. On the other hand, some of her outfits are pretty racy for what people might think that a veiled woman would wear. Another doll was simply frightening. She's supposed to be a belly dancer and the carton explains that her hands, head and hips can move rhythmically...the mind simply boggles. I didn't actually see many little girls demanding her immediately, although the store was full of families with children. Carrefour is sort of a French Walmart, and they have a number of major outlets here. They carry everything from food to major appliances, with clothing, books, and strange signs to tell you what everything isn't. We wandered the aisle with a friend and her eight year old son, watching families of some of the visiting Gulf Arabs stocking up on household needs for their summer holidays. Even with our heat, Cairo beats the Gulf cold.

We've spent some time catching up with some of Yas' friends between dental appointments and doctor appointments. A lunch with one of her high school buddies at a fish restaurant overlooking the Nile was the occasion for an hour or so of gossip to review who was going to school where, working where, and who was either engaged or married. Oddly enough, marriage is still pretty far from the minds of most of the Egyptian from her graduating class in Cairo, while quite a few of the American kids have made the plunge. While crossing the bridge over the Nile we encountered a truck of camels on their way somewhere and I was able to get a photo that I'd always wanted of a truck full of camels. The camels seemed quite unconcerned about their travels and persisted in engaging in mock battles as the truck made its way through traffic.
One of the nice things about a child who studies something that I'm interested is the fact that we have plenty to do together that interests both of us, no matter how odd it may seem to other people. While driving in the desert the other day looking for interesting stones for my rock garden, we found an area where the Antiquities department has been dumping debris from excavations. Most of the debris consists of ancient mud bricks, chunks of old pottery, sand, gravel and such. But surprisingly, we also noticed some very old cloth sticking out of the sand in one pile. When we examined the cloth we realised that it was, in fact, an object wrapped in ancient linen. Carefully unwrapped, the item was revealed to be the crushed mummy of an infant. Not much was left that could be identified other than a tiny mandible and leg bone. We left the wrappings and bone shards in the desert with the other discarded objects.

Today was a lovely day so we decided to visit Memphis, once the capital of pharoanic Egypt, but now an area that is part of one of the neighbouring villages. The last time we'd visited the museum at Memphis was when the kids were still in primary school. We checked out the tacky tourist trash that was being sold, chatted with the sellers who got a kick out of some locals visiting the site, and most importantly got some seeds from a wonderful tree that was shading the garden there, an acacia whose delicate flowers give a sweet scent. We brought a number of pods home to be planted on the farm. Much better than a rather cheesy set of stone pyramids.

copyright 2007 Maryanne Stroud Gabbani

Down To The Nitty Gritty

Life in Egypt has its gritty side sometimes as we noticed yesterday. I was supposed to ride with my friend Cristina who arrived at about 9 am. We went out to feed the parrots and popped back into the house with the food bins. Open the door to go to the horses and....where did they go? We got hit with roughly half of the Libyan desert yesterday and high winds driving the dust into every crack and cranny imaginable.

No way we were riding in that stuff. When the sand hits, everyone heads indoors and/or stays as still as possible. The less sand in the lungs the better. The horses turned their butts to the wind and stood head down in the hot blast. My grooms hid out indoors with forays out to see that the bathtubs were full of fresh water (when the power was on and the hoses worked) and to give the herd meals. This was one of the worst storms I've seen here. Most of the day we had no electricity so we were sitting indoors in the dark. Good day for a nap.

Cristina and I decided to go over to a neighbour's place to visit and welcome him home. His wife is the Norwegian ambassador to Jordan so he bounces between their farm here and the embassy there. This is Mette's last posting so they are looking forward to retiring here...they have great windows and doors in their house, so even yesterday's blow didn't turn Pal off Egypt too much. I know where my next investment in the farm is going. We stayed for an hour or so chatting and admiring photos of wild flowers in Jordan, when Cristina suddenly remembered an open window in her home in Zamalek. Time to run!

I shot most of these photos from her car with my phone. The trees, tall eucalyptus and casuarina, were lashing all over the roads. I heard that there were a lot down along the canals. Cristina said that the drive into town was miserable, no visibility, blowing debris, and branches falling willy nilly. I headed indoors where I swept the living room three times during the day just to keep from tracking kilos of sand around the house. Even the dogs were willing to be indoors for most of the day.

When I went out to feed the parrots and other birds, they were all a sort of beige colour. I changed their water so that at least they had some fresh water and they all looked at me miserably, but no way I could bring all the parrots, ducks, chickens and turkeys in as well. They are all out there whistling and calling this morning so they survived the blow.

But today is sunny and bright. There will be time to wash the sand out of the grass and flowers, about one hundred loads of laundry to do, and I have five women from Maadi coming out to try riding this morning. I guess I'll keep the farm.

copyright 2007 Maryanne Stroud Gabbani