A Season For Horses

As I have been reminded by friends, Christmas is coming, and a trip into Maadi reminded me as well. I drove past a very expensive florist to see real Christmas trees for sale. These trees probably sell for about a thousand pounds....but they do smell right. The usual Christmas tree in Egypt is a cypress or juniper and they don't have the same scent at all. With both kids in the US for grad school this year, it's going to be quiet in some respects around here at Christmas. But not in all respects. I have guests arriving beginning day after tomorrow and staying on until after New Years. The people coming are riders so there's going to be quite a lot of work done over the next couple of weeks.

Winters in Egypt are the stuff of legend, both in the sense that a winter in Egypt was the ultimate in luxury many years ago, and in the sense that unfortunately they are no longer what they once were. Even five years ago we would have weeks of air so clear that the stones on the pyramids of Giza could be seen from Abu Sir. This is no longer the case, unfortunately, because the inversion layer over the Nile Valley is keeping a thick black pall over the city. When there is a strong north wind, the smog is dispersed to the south and we have the lovely clarity that was once so common. When there is no wind, I have to ride out into the desert to find clean air. The wind also sculpts some extraordinary cloud formations that the sunset paints with vivid colours each evening.

We now have another new face on the farm with the birth of Lily's son Rayyan. I was wakened at 5 am on the 12th. I wrapped myself in a shawl and went out to find the most enormous fuzzball on stilts I've ever seen. Lily was a cart horse when friends of mine found her working on the streets. She's probably got some draft horse in her because she is a big, fairly heavy, black mare. She spent some time as a riding horse and was recently retired to my place because of her gentle nature. A sneaky little bay colt got to her and to Shabboura the mother of Shams, giving us two totally different babies to enjoy. Shams still thinks that she's a dog and I have to put a chair in my front doorway to be sure that I won't find her exploring the living room with disastrous effects. At three days, Rayyan is almost the same size as Shams at about 6 weeks. Extraordinary. Her legs have half the bone his do and she must weigh less than he does despite the fact that she stands around eating berseem and drinking roughly 15 litres of milk a day. We still have to wait until April to see what the combination of Wadi and and Anglo-Arab will produce. This next crop, aside from being siblings, is going to be interesting.

copyright 2007 Maryanne Stroud Gabbani

Suffer Little Children

I heard from Mohamed today that my neighbour's son Ahmed had been asking why I hadn't been by to visit him. And why was I supposed to visit him? Well, it turned out that the families here circumcise their sons at about the age of four and it was Ahmed's turn to have this done. I was a bit shocked because I simply assumed that male infants would undergo this surgery right after birth, the way that it had been done in Canada. Please pardon the frankness, but I can see a good reason to wait since it is easier to snip off small pieces of skin when they are of a visible size, but then again the trauma to a newborn who may or may not even wake up during the process (and I know a few who slept right through it) is probably much less. However it works out, I was amiss and I snagged a small box of dark chocolate digestive biscuits as a little bribe to my small friend.

Ahmed seemed quite fine for someone who had just gone through a life-changing surgery and was buzzing around the house offering everyone cookies in no time. His older brother Mahmoud, who is in about third grade, was sitting with one of his aunts working on his math homework. When he finished that, he started his English and his aunt asked if I could help him. Sure, why not? When I saw what he was assigned, I was horrified. He was given a small paperback workbook to deal with that could not have been more irrelevant to his life if it had been written in Martian. Mahmoud and I sat together as we sounded out such vital questions as who in his family or neighbourhood played golf.

Golf? I don't think that a child in this area has ever seen a golf club. Mahmoud's aunt explained to him, "You remember that game you saw on television with the men on the grass with the sticks and the little ball?" Mahmoud's smile said volumes. Golf is not exactly a reality here. One series of questions asked about Mahmoud's interest in sport. Does he like to run? Did he play sports today? Did he go swimming today? Is he planning to record a sporting event on television today?...What was he supposed to understand from this? His family doesn't have a video machine, nor does anyone in the neighbourhood. Mahmoud has never seen anyone tape a show in his life. And swimming....just where is a boy from the countryside supposed to swim? I didn't know whether to laugh or cry.

I chatted with Mahmoud's mother and aunt about the work. I had to admit that one of the reasons that we'd never sent our kids to Egyptian schools was the horrific curriculum that is inflicted on the students. I'd been quite aware of the enormous load of homework that these kids have for some time...this on top of the fact that Mahmoud leaves for school at 7 am and gets home at 4 pm...and the fact that the work assigned is often quite inappropriate for the age range of the children. And Mahmoud is going to one of the local private schools as well. They are suppposed to be better than the public. The public schools are much more crowded and the teachers are even less qualified. For now, Mahmoud is going to drop by in the afternoon for some help on his English and I will be explaining golf to him.

copyright 2007 Maryanne Stroud Gabbani

Historical Note

One of my internet treats is The Writer's Almanac, published daily by Garrison Keillor and American Public Media. Each day it brings a poem and historical notes about writers and world culture. Today's historical note offered an interesting and thought provoking reflection on the conflicts of today:

"It was on this day in 1095 that Pope Urban II, while on a speaking tour in France, called for the first Crusade to recapture Jerusalem from the Turks. There was no imminent threat. Muslims had occupied Jerusalem for hundreds of years. But Urban II had noticed that Europe was becoming an increasingly violent place, with low-level knights killing each other over their land rights, and he thought that he could bring peace to the Christian world by directing all that violence against an outside enemy. So he made up stories of how Turks in Jerusalem were torturing and killing Christians, and anyone who was willing to join the fight against them would go to heaven.

About 100,000 men from France, Germany, and Italy answered the call, formed into several large groups, and marched across Asia Minor to the Middle East. Nearly half of them died from exhaustion and sickness before they ever reached their destination. They began sacking cities along the way, and they fought among each other for the spoils of each battle. When they reached the trading city of Antioch, they killed almost everyone, including the Christians who lived there. By the time they got to Jerusalem, it had recently fallen into the hands of Egyptians, who were friendly with the Vatican. But the crusaders attacked anyway, killing every Muslim they could find. The Jews in the city gathered in the temple, and the crusaders set it on fire.

Pope Urban II died two weeks later, never hearing the news. But the crusading would go on for the next 200 years. In the fourth and last Crusade, in 1202, the crusaders never even made it to Jerusalem, but got sidetracked and wound up destroying Constantinople, which was at the time the last great city left over from the Roman Empire."

The Egyptians who whom the note refers were those under the leadership of Sallah el Din (Saladin in western history books) who built the Citadel in Cairo and established the city in its current place. One of the buildings of importance in Constantinople was Hagia Sophia, a Byzantine cathedral that was later remodeled with minarets to become the Grand Mosque of Istanbul and the model for the mosque of Mohamed Ali in the 1800's. Now when you visit the Grand Mosque you can see some of the old Christian Byzantine paintings and murals that were once painted over with whitewash, and Mohamed Ali's mosque remains a favoured resting spot for weary tourists schlepping their way through Old Cairo. The past never really leaves us.


copyright 2007 Maryanne Stroud Gabbani

Nice To Feel Appreciated

A couple of days ago I received a note from Vicky Zhou asking if it was all right to include Living In Egypt in her book about useful weblogs. Sounded okay to me, so I wrote right back giving my permission. Always nice to be published, even if it is a bit indirect. Here's some information on the book:

Living in Egypt Included in Book About Top 500 Blogs

In the early days of the internet, if you didn't know how to write
code, you couldn't publish anything on the web. Well, nowadays with
software such as Wordpress, Blogspot, and Myspace, anyone.. yes anyone
can tell the whole world what is on their mind through blogging.

But, there really isn't a robust way to search for the best blogs on
any specific topic. Sure, there's Technorati, but what else? Besides,
much of the world wide web is full of splogs, spam, and
made-for-adsense blogs. And how many times have you read the same
exact post over and over in different blogs?

That is why a project, listing the top blogs by general categories
would prove useful. The book, titled "The Top 500 Blogs" is being
written by Vicky Zhou, an author and writer who offers href="http://www.gotacrush.com/best-online-dating-site.php">online
dating advice. From topics ranging from online dating to
technology, lifestyle, sports, music, health and love, the books aims
to be a comprehensive list of the top 500 blogs.

The Top 500 Blogs will be available in Amazon and all bookstores by
the end of 2008. Living in Egypt will be included in the category of
"Personal Blogs", so look out for that!

copyright 2007 Maryanne Stroud Gabbani

Coming Back Into Focus

Being short a camera has been a terrible strain. I'm used to a lovely little Panasonic Lumix that fits into a pocket and is so easy to shoot. Then last week an angel called Angela dropped into Egypt and dropped a camera into my life. She had a week off work and had always wanted to come to Egypt, so she and a photographer friend of hers came and spent a week at my guesthouse. She liked my photos and hearing about my dip in the canal, brought along an extra camera that she'd replaced with a newer model. It's larger and more complicated than the Lumix, but I figure that I can learn to use it. I'm back in business, and who knows? Maybe they will even be able to fix the Lumix.

Well, this last week has been busy with showing Scott and Angela around my part of Egypt. Naturally, they wanted to see the pyramids at Giza, so we rented some camels and went out just before sunset to catch the last light on them. We'd already spent most of the day in the desert chasing sun and shadows around Dahshur, Sakkara, and Abu Sir under a gradually darkening sky. We met our camel man in Nazlit Semman and headed out onto the Giza Plateau along with all the other visitors who have someone to pay off the tourist police who are supposed to be keeping us all out, but who are actually making a living wage on the bribes to let us all in. This is a fine old Egyptian tradition. As we reached the top of the hill, that evil winter Giza wind tore into us leaving Angela and I with our teeth chattering while Scott shot the photos that he wanted to get.

It's amazing what a passion will persuade people to do. I'd been asked to cover the endurance race being held at Sakkara Country Club under the auspices of the Pan Arab games. Teams from Egypt, Jordan, Syria, Libya, Qatar, Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, and the UAE were to race 120 km in the desert in a series of five loops with vet checks at the club. Unfortunately, the start of the race was scheduled for 5:45 am, necessitating a 5 am wake up. Happily, there was excellent catering at the race and once the teams of riders got underway, we were able to find a good breakfast while waiting for them to finish the first loop. Endurance racing really is not a spectator sport. There isn't much to see of the racing part because the riders are very quickly usually stretched out over miles of trail, each essentially riding alone. Once they get back to the vet check area, the horse is checked to see that its pulse and respiration have dropped to normal, and then there is a half hour hold for the horse and rider to eat and drink something before setting out again. Exciting, right? I overheard one nicely dressed woman remarking to a friend that this was the first endurance race she'd ever seen and probably the last too. She'd never spent so much time in her life "watching horses get bathed." A major part of the preparation for the vet check is to cool the horse from its exertions in the desert to the point where its heart rate is low enough to pass muster.

At the end of the day, the UAE took team gold and the individual gold, silver and bronze medals...as expected. Qatar took the team silver and Syria and Egypt shared the bronze. Bed felt great after chasing from one end of the race area back to the press tent about a dozen times to update the progress of the race to a website for endurance riding. I was really proud of our Egyptian team for their performance and careful riding of their horses. They were riding home-bred and home-trained horses rather than the best that money can buy.

Yesterday was American Thanksgiving as well as the last day of Angela and Scott's visit. We played with the horses and Scott got some lovely photos of Shams playing with her herd...the dogs. She is now downing over a litre and a half of milk at a feeding and is eating crushed horse pellets and fresh berseem. She wanders around after the grooms, plays on the lawn with my driver, and curls up in the shade with her buddies the dogs. She doesn't seem to realise that she's a horse at all. After taking them for a quiet ride in the neighbourhood during which Scott only took 670 photos, we wandered over to some friends of mine who live nearby for turkey, mashed potatoes, gravy, pumpkin pie and all the rest of the traditional stuffing appropriate to Thanksgiving. Early this morning we got to the airport to get my visitors back to the US and Scott left me with about three thousand photos of the race and the parts of Cairo that they saw. It's going to take me ages to see them all!

copyright 2007 Maryanne Stroud Gabbani

A Small Miracle

Last Saturday we had a small miracle happen at the farm. I've had two mares standing around becoming more and more rotund by the day. Everyone visiting had their own idea regarding whether Shabboura (Fog in English) or Lily (My Night in English) would deliver first. Well around 3 pm in front of the entire farm staff and about 5 visitors, Shabboura lay down in her paddock and proceeded to have a baby. Horses just don't do that. They like to have their babies in private as a rule. They wait until 3 am or some such horrible hour to foal. But not Shibs. No, she had to have an audience and plenty of attendants.

Foaling usually isn't a long drawn out process. For wild horses, it couldn't be because the mare and foal are at extreme risk during birth. True to form, it was only about 30 minutes from the first sign that she was having labour pains (puzzled looks at her stomach and flanks along with some sweating) to seeing the nose and front feet of the foal start to emerge. A couple of the grooms came to hold the foal's legs and then shoulders so that it didn't slide back during contractions. Once the foal was on the ground they helped to remove the placenta from the face, announce that we had a filly, and then move her to near the mother's head so that she could clean her up.

Shabboura's human audience were utterly enthralled by the birth. At some point I will have some photos from various real cameras, but I had to make do with my Nokia. Lily watched the birth very calmly from a corner and after the filly, who I decided to name Shams (Sun) had dried off Lula the mule and her buddy Jack leaned over the paddock fence to welcome her. When Diva had her filly about six months ago, Shabboura was the other mare in the paddock and Lula and Jack were just as interested.

We got the Shams to do the all-important early nursing that gives the foal immunities acquired by the mother, gave her an enema to move the meconium out of the filly and left mother and daughter together to get to know each other overnight in a quiet box. But the next morning it was apparent that all was not well. Shabboura was edgy, didn't want the filly near her, and there wasn't much available in the way of milk. We called a vet who came by later in the day, checked out Shabboura and told us that somehow she had a nasty infection in her udder and that the filly couldn't nurse from her mother. We'd started supplementing Shams' milk supply with goat milk, but most of the goats in the area are about to give birth and there isn't a huge supply. Some people will supplement with baby formula so we bought a few cans of a recommended brand and until we could get that out to the farm, we gave her some local skim milk from a baby bottle.

Shabboura was moved back to her paddock with Lily which is close to the grooms' room so that she could be monitored in terms of temperature and administration of some pretty hefty antibiotics. We felt that we could hardly lock poor Shams up alone in a box...since none of the adult horses are forced to live in them..so we constructed a small paddock right next to the boys' room. After creating a frame of rope, we moved in hay bales to build walls and then spread an thick layer of hay on the ground for a warm and comfortable place for the filly to sleep. The dogs very quickly decided that the hay was indeed a comfortable depth and moved in to help the filly sleep.

One of the hardest things about having a bottle fed baby is the frequency of feedings required to keep a small mammal alive. Shams needs about half a litre of milk every two hours or so, and I thank heaven for my grooms who are taking turns at doing it each night. They make up their bed on the mastaba bench that is next to Shams' hay paddock so that it's easy for them to get up to feed her the two bottles that are required. Waking up to feed her isn't that difficult. Shams can be pretty persuasive. She's figured out that humans are great because they provide food and that dogs can be both entertainment and warmth. This one is really going to be fun to raise.

Today we had some of the school kids in for a riding lesson and the grooms made sure that they had a bottle of milk to feed to Shams. She's not at all fussy who holds the bottle as long as they hold it. In a few weeks she's going to have to have another home, but it's possible that if the infection that Shabboura has clears up properly she will be able to go in with her mother and perhaps with Lily and her foal. We have a couple more paddocks under construction for this.

Shams is the sixth foal to be born here. All the others have been "normal" situations where the mare did most of the work for us. This is a new experience, because even if she should be able to return to her mother, Shams identifies very strongly with humans and dogs now, much more than the others ever did. I wonder what this is going to mean. Wadi, Fagr and Negma have grown up in the herd, while Nazeer and Nayzak were born in a boarding stable and lived with their mothers in boxes. Herd foals are much more socially adept, but the first two colts had a lot of paddock time with their mothers and the advantage of sharing an extra large box with both mares. This year's crop of foals is going to be something else.

copyright 2007 Maryanne Stroud Gabbani

Keeping In Touch

Rebellious Arab Girl had an interesting post today. She suggested that everyone post about their favourite blogger and why this is their favourite. I have to admit to very eclectic tastes and the site where I saw the reference to her suggestion is one of my favourite sites for blogging: Global Voices Online. Technically, I suppose Global Voices isn't a blog, but for someone like myself who is interested in things all over the world, a site that collects blogs and keeps track of who is saying what where is invaluable. I also have a Google News alert set up to give me a link to every news article and blog that mention "Egypt", "Giza", or "Cairo", which drops a little email into my box that gives me pages of reading every morning. This arrangement has brought me travel blogs by people just passing through the area, keeping-in-touch-with-home blogs by people who are living in the Middle East temporarily, and of course some of the more mainstream blogs from Egypt, as long as they are in English. I find, however, that Global Voices still has more depth in the blogging field than Google when in comes to aggregation. So they have my vote for a favourite blog/blogging tool.

I was chided this morning by an email correspondent who was worried that perhaps something was wrong because I hadn't posted for so long...almost two weeks. Well, there was a minor bug that was slowing me down, and I'm finding myself very busy these days on the work front. I've been mostly working my riding trips by word of mouth and such. My website is out there and I get quite a few inquiries from there, but I haven't done much advertising. A week or so ago, however, a newspaper from the UK was doing an article on unusual vacations and they listed my farm. Free advertising is always nice, and this prompted quite a few people to contact me about riding here. Between my usual daytime work with horses, lessons, rides and such, plus correspondence at night, I've been neglecting the blog. The fact that I am still cameraless doesn't help either. I really like having photos to illustrate my posts. But hopefully that will change for the better soon and I will be back to my chatty self.

copyright 2007 Maryanne Stroud Gabbani