Anyone Hear The Tick Tock?

Ok, I can't verify the headline but the news stories caused great hilarity and rejoicing around here. Apparently a 16 ft crocodile attacked the boats of some fishermen such as these, then killed and ate a dog, and moved off in the Nile. Crocodiles haven't been seen around Cairo in a long time, certainly not since the High Dam. There are plenty in Lake Nasser above the dam, but this is the first I've heard below the dam. There are pet stores that sell baby crocodiles and possibly this is one that someone decided to let loose....like the stories about the sewers of New York...except that the Nile is the natural habitat and without people hunting for it, a croc would be quite comfy. You think that anyone is going to celebrate the return of an endangered species?


copyright 2007 Maryanne Stroud Gabbani

So What Did You Have For Dinner Today?

If it was fish, it probably wasn't what you think.....

http://www.loe.org/shows/segments.htm?programID=07-P13-00026&segmentID=7


copyright 2007 Maryanne Stroud Gabbani

Time To Take Out The Trash

I love riding along the canals. I enjoy the water birds, the fishermen, the trees along the edge. When you mention "canals" to most people here they talk about how dirty they are, about the trash in them, and wonder why people dump dead animals in them. The fact is that the not all the canals in the countryside are dirty...just the ones with a lot of people around them. Odd, that. I was reading the news online the other day and found quite a lot of coverage of the west Pacific Gyre. What is that? The west Pacific Gyre is an area in the western Pacific where the ocean currents move in a circle and there is little wind. In the days of sailing vessels, they called them the "doldrums" and the captains avoided these areas for fear of being becalmed. Not long ago a sailor on his way back to California to Hawaii decided to cut through the Gyre and discovered that the area had been collecting floating trash and plastic in its pool. He's gone back to check again and found that the area of the trash is now twice the size of Texas. If you do a Google news search you can read all about the Gyre...and the five others in the world's oceans. Pretty scary reading.

Trash is a problem everywhere. We make jokes that the plastic bag is Egypt's national bird because there are so many of them blowing across the desert. The Giza dump is just over the hill and when the wind is blowing the right way there are literally hundreds and thousands of inflated plastic bags blowing in battalions across the desert. What good does it do to collect them, dump them and let them blow across the landscape again? They hang up in trees, against fences and then blow into canals. The ones on the fences can be collected yet again and carted back to the dump or sold to the recycling plant to make garden chairs.

But one of the questions that needs asking is whether these plastic things ever really go away. The research being done in the Gyre suggests that plastic never goes away. They've found microscopic shreds of plastic floating in the sea where sea birds fish for plankton and krill. The baby albatross on Midway Island are having a very tough time on a diet that sometimes is more than half plastic and many of them are dying from starvation. The fish that feed on the plastic/plankton mix end up in our food chain, maybe in our restaurants or tuna sandwiches. Many of the components of plastic might leach chemicals into the fish and birds, mimicking hormones and causing chaos. Ugly stuff, plastic.

I used to be bothered by seeing dead animals in canals until I learned how it actually made some sense. The ground water in the Nile Valley is so high that there isn't room underground to bury a large animal without it just soaking in water. If it soaks in the water a meter or so underground, it releases so many nutrients that it can poison the plants all around. It is next to impossible for most farmers to be able to move a dead water buffalo or donkey or cow up into the desert to bury and there are legal problems as well. The antiquities authorities don't like people digging holes whether it is to look for something or to bury something. That more or less leaves the canals which are full of fish, crayfish, water birds and wild dogs. These creatures can strip a carcass to bone within 2 weeks. When you think about decomposition, think about what is decomposing and what it is decomposing to. Animals are made up of the same elements as the soil. They go back to their components. Plastics are made up of polymers created from oil products. If and when they break down or decompose are they ever going to be natural? I don't think so.

copyright 2007 Maryanne Stroud Gabbani

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