The Mother Of Bureaucracy

I recently sold my jeep, having found that it wasn't in the greatest of shape after being dropped into a canal a few months ago. I wasn't in the car when she went swimming. I'd loaned her to a neighbour who needed to do something one night, and he was run off the road by a large dump truck that was tooling along going the wrong way on a one way road without lights. Welcome in Egypt. Happily, no one was hurt, but the jeep has never been quite the same. After some searching around, I found someone who would give me a pretty decent price for the car and went into Maadi to transfer the ownership of the car.

The place where this sort of thing is done is one of those offices that most tourists and even most ex-pats never see during their stays in this fair country. Shahr el Qari is a very special place. I'm not sure what it would be somewhere else, but here it is where all powers of attorney are registered, where all sales of property such as cars, land, buildings are registered and it has to be the most crowded chaotic place in the universe. Because most of my late husband's companies were based in Maadi, and we lived in Maadi, I had occasion to get to know the people in our local Shahr el Qari fairly well while I was sorting out his estate. I think hardly a week went by when something or other wasn't being registered and the staff there got to know me rather well. I guess that there weren't too many foreign women coming in there that often.

I've always gone in to the Shahr el Qari with someone to run interference for me and to chase down the right people to sign, stamp and register the pertinent papers. I'm spoiled and I appreciate it very much. To do anything in that office you have to have paid at least three or four fees and collected the right selection of coloured papers to show to the people working at the desks. This time my faithful Mohamed Said (in the striped sweater) worked his way through the crowds in the office to collect the scraps of paper and the signatures we needed to finish the sale of the car. Honestly, if I had to do it myself, the process could take days.

At one point in the process we reached the stage where the director of the Shahr el Qari, a very friendly woman about my age, had to stamp things, and we came into her office. She had to send Mohamed back out into the crush to register or sign or stamp something else, so she offered me the use of the sofa in her room. While I was sitting there waiting for whatever had to be done, a man came in with his small son in tow on a similar paper chase. The director appeared to know this gentleman as well and suggested that he could leave the boy on another chair in the office while he also chased stamps, papers and signatures. The child settled in the chair and happily munched away on potato chips while he watched visitors come into the office to receive the final stamps on whatever it was they were doing that day. The two of us were probably the only people in the entire office who were relaxed that day because it was a Thursday and the whole place was closing down early at noon, making the work rather frantic.

After approximately an hour and a half of playing sardines in a series of four or five adjoining offices, I was called to a desk where they looked at my passport to be sure that I was actually who I claimed to be and then they asked in Arabic just what it was that we were doing with these papers to be sure that no one was having me sign something bogus, and then wrote immensely long sentences in Arabic in a large register which I had to sign three times in different places, and we were done. We took a paper to the car's new owner where we received a plastic bag containing bundles of money to be counted and verified and ultimately deposited in a bank. Mabrouk. The car is sold.
copyright 2007 Maryanne Stroud Gabbani

Random Thoughts on Supporting The Soul

I haven't posted for a while. Life has been busy and stressful. That's right, life on the farm isn't all fresh eggs and sunshine...though they are some of the more reliable parts of it. My friend Tracy went back to California to study some workshop techniques employing horses, got together with some friends and formed a company there to do the workshops in various places including Egypt and decided that she needed to be sort of based in California to work with them and to be closer to her aging parents. She put her house on the market and it sold, happily to a lovely British couple who are also long-term residents of Egypt, so she hopped on a plane back to Cairo, cleaned out her house and closed the deal. She also lined up some work here, and I suspect will be back for at least a week or so in March. Now I'm helping Philippa and Rob get started with their life at the house next door.

A lot of my friends and family are going through some pretty major changes right now. My daughter is applying to graduate schools and while we are hoping for good news, it's pretty tough waiting it out. The son survived a week of tough interviews for internships next summer and has a choice of places to work like a corporate coolie when his classes finish. Deep breath of relief.

I'm still trying to extricate myself from the remaining links to my late husband's companies, and that is not going all that well. Pretty high reading on the stress meter. The brothers-in-law have decided that they want to sell their parents' apartment, which is primarily owned by my children although they have no interest in it. They offered to sign off on their share in the family house in Sharm el Sheik in return for our share in the apartment and a rather hefty cash payment. In theory, all very nice but where is that cash supposed to come from? After seven years, they insist on believing that somehow we were left with little pots of gold all over the world. What universe do these people inhabit? Whoops! the lid just shot off the stress meter.
So last night was Valentine's Day and Tracy's last night in Cairo on this trip. She's left me with bags of vitamins, nail polish and all those funny things that you forget you have stuffed into the bottom drawer in the bathroom. Cool, but I have my own bottom drawer and it's pretty full. We went into town to meet some women friends for dinner, then she would go on with them to catch a cab from town for her early morning flight. Tracy and I had totally forgotten Valentine's Day while I was dealing with various small problems at home like an injured donkey and a sick dog. The restaurant was full of couples chatting intimately over candlelit plates of pasta and the four of us who all happen to be single, some of us single parents, found ourselves talking about the things that sustain us in hard times.

Naturally friends are important. That one is a no brainer. Then there is family, which is great when it's good, but a disaster if it's bad. Don't I know that one. Wish my side of the family lived closer. But those are things that we find outside of ourselves. Most of us had found that there were things that we carry within us that are even more important when the chips are down and so is our luck and buoyancy. Each of us could recall a blow to our lives that caused us to reevaluate our surroundings, our thoughts and practices, something that unbalanced us enough to make us see the world anew and we could remember how we first saw something new that we stashed away in our hearts. For myself, the death of my husband was the unbalancing point and the rides that I would take in the countryside at night alone with my mare the first summer were my secret treasure that could bring me back to the now. I'd been knocked so badly off my balance that every bird, every star, every wedding song meandering through the mango orchards was something new to be studied, turned over and carefully stored away to treasure forever. It took a horror to teach me about beauty, and it was hard to accept that the beauty could be there and be stronger than the horror. But it was and it has sustained me. Others had the same experience after a particularly nasty divorce, the loss of a parent, and so on. We all felt very fortunate that we'd been able to learn from and bounce back from our disasters with something stronger to show for it.

The photos are pretty random, but each one of them is one of those images that warms my soul.


copyright 2007 Maryanne Stroud Gabbani

When A Flight Cage Becomes A Jungle

When I moved to the country, I decided that my parrots should have more room to stretch their wings than they'd had before. I built three flight cages in the garden of my rental house, each a three metre cube that opened on a service room. My Amazons turned out to be two subspecies who didn't always get along (Cubans and Bahamians), and the two African Grey males each got their own flight, between which the female, Mona, used to bounce trying to decide who was the more attractive male. While the cage wire was strong, the holes in the cages were large enough to let in both rats and sparrows, so when I moved to the farm, I decided to replicate the cages but with a smaller gauge wire so that the sparrows and rats wouldn't be able to get in. Since I'd never seen the parrots chewing on the cage wires I opted for a lighter weight wire as well.

Ah, the best laid plans of bird owners and women often go astray. The parrots were initially very comfortable in the new cage, partly I suspect because I moved them into essentially the same cages that they'd had before, just with different scenery. Mona, the female Grey, had been the victim of a leg attack by creatures unknown last winter and was living in the house, as she still does at present, so the males were on their own with the company for Ali of the Bahamian, while the Cubans got the cage on the west side of the complex. Once we got everyone settled, I decided to get two pair of budgies to share Fritzi's cage with him. I like the sounds of budgies and their social life is very entertaining. We set them up with some nest boxes and sat back to enjoy the view. The first thing that I noticed was that the Cubans became bored and decided to chew a hole in the lighter gauge wire of their cage, and one of them got out. I was a bit concerned about predators such as the neighbourhood children, but since the other Cuban remained in the cage, and meals were still being served with regularity inside while not outside, I wasn't all that concerned that the parrot was going too far. In fact she hung around for about 36 hours trying frantically to remember how she got out (not called a bird brain for nothing!) until we left the service room door open and she flew in. That was the last bird to leave, but then the budgies and the lovebirds began arriving. We found ourselves with a pair of lovebirds who must have escaped from a nearby home and about four new budgies, all of whom appear to have been attracted by the sounds of the parrots.

Then we decided to get some new poultry, since our last group of chickens became soup when a farm within sneezing distance came down with the bird flu. The local vet called me to tell me to do in the chickens before they got sick and I obeyed. Once people began restocking poultry, I bought about eight young hens and a rooster who were moved in with the Cubans. A day or so later, my driver came home with what he said was a pair of bronze turkeys, both of whom later were shown to be hens. That's okay since turkey eggs are excellent, but one of these days we need to get a nice gobbler. The turkeys moved in to clean up after Ali and the Bahamian.

Our next arrivals were a trio of Muscovy ducks, two ducks and a drake (Daphne, Daisy, and Donald respectively) who were put in with Fritzi. One might ask why all the poultry was in the aviary, but the aviary is the safest place for these birds with 120 cm tall brick walls at the base to provide privacy from a pack of Rat Terriers who seem to think that they are all just feathered rodents. The dogs watch all the birds from the screened door of the service room, a sort of dog television. Daphne was obviously in a nesting mood and promptly began producing eggs in a nest in an old cat carrier, while the budgies and lovebirds were inspired either by cooler weather or by Daphne's devotion to the cause to begin laying millions of eggs in the wooden nest boxes above.

Other than an imminent population explosion, life in the bird house seemed pretty stable until Fritzi got bored over a couple of days and decided to chew himself a window/door to the service room where he could raid the sunflower seed stores. He was quite delighted with the arrangement and could be seen prowling the service room all during the day, though he was careful to be home for dinner in the evening or there for breakfast in the morning. He also took to rolling the duck eggs out of the nest box, a habit that did not endear him to the Muscovy's at all, and they were seen chasing him to the screen door where he would scramble to safety. In my concern for his piratical activities, I decided to move him into Ali and the Bahamian's cage for a while. This allowed the ducks to settle down a bit and Daphne began sitting on about a dozen eggs with a few chicken eggs as well that I tucked into her nest. But peace was not to reign.

During a trip to a local market with friends my driver disappeared for a while and reappeared with a cardboard box which he deposited in my friend's lap. As we drove off she exclaimed, "There are rabbits in here!" and in fact, Mohamed had bought me two albino does and a brown and white spotted buck who were named in honour of the visitors Casey, Sue and John...very imaginative names. The females are utterly indistinguishable, so we have no idea who is Casey and who is Sue.

Initially, the chickens, with whom it was decided that the rabbits would live, were terrified of them. The feeding time visits between cages that had apparently been motivated by a strong certainty that anyone else's food was better than that in the home cage, now took on an atmosphere of flight from the long-eared monsters. Chickens, however, don't seem to have very long memories and they soon settled down. The opposite was true of the parrots, however. After watching Fritzi come and go at will, the rest of the parrots decided to follow suit and they all chewed holes to the service room through which they began visiting each others' cages all day. At first they would all go home to their home cages at night, but that pattern has also gone by the wayside.

It is now anyone's guess where the parrots will be when I go to feed them or to visit and take some treats. Perhaps Ali the Grey will be with the Cubans, while Fritzi and the Bahamian hang out with the ducks or turkeys. And they don't bother to go home at night anymore either. I've been moving food dishes around the cages to try to accommodate the shifting populations, and I watch for any signs of aggression, but so far it's all peaceful. We still have the cocktail party atmosphere at feeding time when everyone goes wandering to check out what is left over at the neighbours' places, everyone including the rabbits at this point, who hop over to the ducks' or turkeys' places to check out the goodies. The ducks are not quite sure what to make of these fuzzy creatures who don't seem to care if they are hissed at.

The flight cages themselves are brick for the first metre or so and have concrete floors which are covered in chopped straw. The straw is very animal friendly material, providing scratching places for the turkeys and chickens, and comfortable sitting areas for the ducks and rabbits. The parrots and second story birds get a diet of chopped fruits and vegetables along with a baked parrot bread and sunflower seeds in the winter. All the extras get tossed to the ground floor birds and the rabbits who are learning that bird food in this neighbourhood is pretty good. We chop berseem, a type of clover that we grow for the horses, goats, donkeys, sheep and water buffalo, into short lengths for the poultry and the rabbits are happy to help devour it. The chickens and ducks have some old animal carriers to use as nest boxes, while the turkeys prefer a corner of their cage. The rabbits have a large terra cotta jar on its side to use as a den, along with a cardboard box and the corner of the cage between the chicken nest and the wall. So every species has its niche, and so far there has been no bloodshed in defending them, although the ducks get pretty testy if someone disturbs Daphne's nest. I've thought about getting better wire and separating everyone into neat boxes again, but they all seem to be having such a good time that I think I will just observe this little wild corner of the planet for a while and see how they all work things out.

Oh, and the sparrows? From day one they figured out that they could simply walk into the service room under the door and from there move from cage to cage. I have no idea how many are living in there or whether they stay or rotate in and out, but the population is very healthy.

copyright 2007 Maryanne Stroud Gabbani

Bread Baking

We built a wood-fired oven for making bread at home and decided last week that it was time to try it out. Mohamed Said went out and bought about 15 kg of flour, both white and whole wheat, some baker's yeast, some bran, and we organised the trays and baking equipment that we bought at the market a couple of weeks ago. Oh, and we also got a lot of wood for the fire. Magda came in and mixed up flour, water, and yeast in the largest plastic bin we had and left it to raise. Then once it had risen once, she formed it into balls and patted them flat to lay in the wooden trays to rise once again. After the second rising, the patties were flattened again and flipped a number of times on palm wood trays to reach the appropriate size and then slid into the oven.

The fire was built beneath the cooking tile on which the bread was baking and the tile would take two loaves. They were maneuvered around with a palm frond that had been carved down into a flat end. The entire process only took a few hours and we made rather a lot of bread...at least 10 kilos of it. Each loaf was about 10 to 15 cm (roughly 12 inches?) across and they were cut into quarters to put into plastic bags for freezing to use later. One quarter of a loaf is plenty for a sandwich that doesn't leave a millimetre of space in your stomach. BUT the bread is so delicious that it is really hard to eat just one.

I have no idea if this fresh bread is more economical than the bought bread but the flavour is so amazingly wonderful that I know we will continue to bake our own bread. We just had two couples from the US staying at the farm for about four days and they all couldn't get enough of the bread. It makes a great panini with a crunchy crust, heats up in the microwave without getting soggy like the commercial bread, all in all, it is just wonderful.

So now we will begin to explore the possibilities of the oven with perhaps pizza or tagens, the casseroles baked in ceramic pots in these ovens.
Tomorrow is bread day again. Our visitors did a pretty good job of emptying the stocks, but the guys aren't exactly slouches in the eating department either.

To Market To Market

A while back we built a woodburning oven behind my barbecue for baking bread. We brought in a skilled bricklayer, bought a special heavy ceramic plate to serve as the base in the baking section, and finally in that classic countryside style, plastered it over with mud. But an oven without any equipment isn't going to produce any bread, so today we did what any normal person would do under the circumstances. We went to the Menawet souq. Menawet is a village not far from the farm, somewhere near Badrishin. I don't believe that it has anything at all to recommend it other than the market that takes place there on Sunday, but from my point of view the Sunday market is pretty much worth the trip.

What we were going for was a selection of paddles made from palm wood that would be used to move the bread in and out of the oven. As well we bought a large shallow box into which the bread would be placed after baking. But, as so often happens on shopping trips, we found a number of other things to interest us. The first thing for me was a donkey barber shop that happened to be right where we were trying to park. Parking in the immediate area of the market is quite out of the question, as my trusty Mohamed Said kept reminding Farag and me. He and Farag had come once before to the market to get a harness for George, our donkey, and in order to fit him properly they had come with the donkey cart. In order to have the donkey, the cart and the harnesses all in the same place, they had driven right into the market area, a feat they had no wish to copy today. So while Mohamed was working the jeep into a tiny slot between a palm tree and a building, I watched the donkey barber shaving donkeys with his hand clippers. This guy must have a grip of steel, as he works these manual clippers all day long. Because all of my animals live out of doors, I don't clip my horses or donkeys in the winter. I figure that the longer hair has a very good use and just leave it, so the barber has never visited us.

Once we got into the market area, we immediately found something that we needed but had not thought of. A woman was selling various types of ropes and cords, so we bought about 40 metres of a medium weight pseudo yacht braid to make rope halters and horse leads with. The rope was soft enough to be comfortable in the hand, had a nice colour combination of black, brown and beige, but the fiber looks for all the world as though this cord is made of recycled plastic bags. All the better actually. Right next to the rope seller was a mat with handmade iron tools displayed on it for people looking for axe blades, chains, and the like. Business was pretty brisk and while Farag and Mohamed took care of the bargaining, I took pictures.

I had to watch myself as the street which would usually accommodate at least two trucks abreast was now so crowded with pedestrians that only one car at a time could manage to squeeze through. And what cars. I found myself nose to nose with truckloads of calves, donkeys, and poultry. At one point, a carter drove by with a young stallion of about four years or so tied to the back of his cart. No one was watching or monitoring the young horse who simply stood quietly when the traffic came to a standstill. Arab stallions have such a reputation for hijinks that I found myself chuckling at the sight of this steady young horse.

Down the road and across the street a group of men with donkeys stood around a doorway where a farrier was pulling shoes, trimming feet and shoeing donkeys on the side of the road. I have a pretty good blacksmith who comes to the farm to trim and shoe my horses and donkeys. We arranged with visiting farriers to have Omar trained to increase his skill level. After watching the farrier working on this poor donkeys, I was very happy to have Omar available to us. The tools were quite medieval and the skill level was best not discussed. A number of the donkeys gingerly made their ways down the road after having the hoof improperly trimmed. When I first took some photos, one of the men objected and asked me for money. I shrugged and told him that if he really didn't want me to take a picture I would delete it, but that I didn't have any money to give him. I explained that I own a farm with horses and have friends abroad who work as farriers who would be interested in his work and tools. Assured that I wasn't a tourist, he was all smiles at this point. It's ok to be a nosy neighbour. But it's hard to concentrate on one spot when people are walking past you with baskets of ducks on their heads.

Right across the street there is a wall and an entrance to a large piece of (probably usually) empty land which is currently wall to wall livestock, foodstuffs, and equipment. To the right are clusters of goats and sheep being offered for sale. Farag's family raise sheep, goats, and cattle so his attention is drawn to this area every ten seconds. Further back and to the left, cart horses are being sold and tried out. Some of these horses are beautiful and as the men buying and trying to sell them put them through their paces, a dust cloud is stirred up that just lingers over that quarter of the yard. I spot a dark bay mule and go over to take a look. A friend of mine has asked me to find him a riding mule, but unfortunately most of the mules in this area are actually hinnies. A mule's mother is a horse and father a donkey, while a hinny is the opposite and hinnies are smaller than mules. A casual question revealed that mom in this case was a donkey, but when I say "That's too bad. I was looking for one whose mother was a horse." I'm almost knocked over by the earnest assurances that that was the case. Well, thanks for the compliment, but just how young do you think I am anyway? With boundless enthusiasm, the handlers tell me that the hinny is very calm and trained to riding. Do I want to see? Well, whether I do or not, they are going to show me and they toss one of their number on to the back of the young male (I'm looking for a female mule) hinny. There follows one of the best bucking exhibitions through flocks of goats that I've ever seen in my life and we make our way back to the car hauling our boxes, paddles, and rope chuckling.

Eid...Interrupted by Technology

The chanting started at about 5 am. "God is great. God is great. God is great. There is no God but God. God is great. God is great. God is great. All thanks to God." I'd set the alarm for 5:30 so I just cuddled down into the covers and listened for a while. Today was the first day of Eid el Adha and I'd arranged with Ahmed, one of my grooms, to go to see the Eid prayer in the desert this morning. I'd gone out on horseback the first day of the Eid at the end of Ramadan, but this is almost January and we've been having a cold spell for the past week, so the Jeep was really in order. I pulled on jogging pants and a jacket, grabbed my camera and we headed out to see this. I've been hearing for years about how the people of the area gather for this important prayer in the desert and I wanted to experience it.

We drove down to the village of Abu Sir in darkness with the heater blasting away in an effort to defrost the jeep. It was 6 am as we slowly worked our way through the narrow alleyways but I was surprised to see market stalls open for business and housewives out sweeping the streets in front of their houses. We were heading for the desert near the modern village cemetery, but I do believe that there isn't a straight road in all of Abu Sir. Twisting and turning a decent size jeep through alleyways that were designed for donkeys can be rather daunting under the best of circumstances, and too early in the morning and freezing are not the best of circumstances.

We were early enough that most of the people hadn't arrived yet and neither had the sun. The antiquities' lights on the hill behind the spot chosen for the prayer were the only illumination. The place itself is extraordinary in that the modern cemetery abuts on the bluff into which pre-pharaonic tombs have been cut, so this morning's event was overseen by many generations of ancestors.

Men from the village spread woven mats on the sand as Ahmed and I sat watching and waiting for more people to arrive. I noticed that the mats were being spread with a gap between so that the men could walk in their shoes to find a spot to sit. Prayer rugs are never walked on with shoes. Gradually the rugs filled as the sky lightened. Men and boys streamed in from the village and from behind the tombs that line the desert. Sometimes women join in the prayer, but this morning they rather wisely stayed in the relative warmth of their homes.

Finally, as the sun crept over the Sakkara plateau, the sheikh spoke the Eid chant one more time and then roughly ten thousand men joined in prayer under the dawn sky. It truly was an awesome sight and one that filled me with a special peace. As the only woman in the area, I remained in the background as was appropriate so as not to be a distraction from prayer. Women always pray to the rear of the men or in another room, men being easily distracted from religious contemplation according to Muslim tradition.

This was certainly true for some of the younger set. A group of roughly ten year old boys kept turning back to look at my jeep during the prayer, and when it ended, they all appeared at my window to ask what I was doing and where I came from. I assured them that I had a farm down the road and was a neighbour who had heard that this event was a marvelous thing to see. They nodded sagely, agreeing with me but were still rather mystified. Seeing fathers leaving to take care of the next family chore on Eid el Adha, the slaughter of the sheep or goat, they scampered off.

Many people find this slaughtering practice to be hard to deal with, and I must admit that I do not slaughter personally. I don't eat lamb so I have no need for the meat and my staff all have their own animals, so I give them cash at the feast, something that they find a great deal more useful. A while back I participated in an online discussion of the pros and cons of various methods of slaughter with some American and European vets. The procedure for a halal slaughter is to use a very sharp knife to slice the jugular vein and carotid artery and then to let the animal bleed out. The vets assured us that the procedure involves a loss of blood that is so swift, there is little or no pain and the animal loses consciousness very, very quickly. I must admit that I found this reassuring.

With the prayer and the slaughter aspect of the Eid out of the way, the feast moved on to the enjoyment that everyone in Egypt looks forward to. Schools and businesses will be closed for at least three or four days, children and parents have holidays and everyone gets a rest. In Nazlit Semman some enterprising young fellows brought donkeys who would ordinarily be carrying cargoes of turnips or clover and began renting them out to the urban children for donkey rides, while other children played on the grass in the median of the main street. Parks, unfortunately, are in short supply in Cairo and medians make do on holidays and summer evenings.

I had some guests who wanted to go see the pyramids of Giza, so we headed to the Giza plateau. Tourism is alive and well in Egypt to judge from the crush of buses and minibuses lining up to enter. My friends decided to check out the interior of the medium pyramid, but having done way too many pyramid interiors in my mis-spent youth, I opted to sit in the sun and check out the United Nations at Giza. Everywhere I turned I heard another language: French, German, Italian, Spanish, Japanese, Korean, Russian, English, and a number that I couldn't identify for the life of me. The truly fascinating thing is how the camel men and postcard sellers keep up with this. They switch languages with an alacrity that any UN translator would envy.

The temperatures in the shade were still a bit chilly so many of those who were waiting for their pyramid-exploring kin opted for the sunshine. As we walked around the plateau, we were accosted by the usual number of oddly dressed individuals selling scarabs, pyramids molded from resin, glass pyramids, tacky tshirts, and faux Bedouin headcloths at every turn, but my assurance that "we live here" usually brought a sincere apology from the sellers. It's nice to know that they understand how annoying they are.

As someone who was more or less immune from the circus, I could really relax and enjoy some of the more common ploys. The favourite, of course, is to offer a sitting camel as a spot for a photo opportunity and then once the victims are on board to tell the camel to rise. Once the riders are about eight feet in the air, they are in a much weaker bargaining position and are then fleeced to be allowed to get off. It's a massively aggravating situation while you are sitting on some growling, smelly uncontrollable beast and being led in the direction of someone's perfume shop despite all protests, but pretty funny to watch from the ground and it makes a good dinner story.

As much as a resident gets tired of the usual tourist scenes, the people watching at the Giza plateau is second to none. Children dragging parents around massive piles of rocks or falling asleep in backpacks, awestruck teenagers estimating how long it would take to climb a pyramid (in your dreams, kid), and older visitors smiling calmly at something that, thank heaven, is older than them...it's all part of the magic of Egypt.

The Eid fell on the last day of the year and New Years Eve was a quiet potluck dinner at a neighbour's place. The mix was the usual for us, Norwegian, American, Spanish, Egyptian, and Canadian, and a roaring fire was most welcome. New Years Day for me was busy with some expat families bringing children out to the farm to play with the animals and blow off steam...a good omen for the coming year, I hope.

I had every intention of posting this on the first day of the Eid but the gods of the internet were not kindly disposed and my connection vanished for a while. Hopefully, all is well now.

Even Chickens Like To Eat Out

First of all, I want to wish everyone a belated Merry Christmas...or maybe it's an early one. We celebrate Christmas twice in Egypt, first on December 24/25 (Christmas Eve is often more celebrated by the Europeans) and second on January 7 with the Copts and Eastern/Greek Orthodox. Egyptians love a party and really have no problem with any excuse for one. This year the Eid el Adha, the Greater Feast that celebrates the willingness of Abraham to sacrifice his son in obedience to God's orders, will be starting on New Year's Eve so we have that as well. Crowded holiday season we are enjoying.
How did I spend my Christmas? First of all, my children are in the US this year so we aren't together. That is a bit sad, but life is like that. Airfares are expensive and school holidays are not so long. On Christmas Eve, I went to my friend Kati's home in Maadi for a Christmas Eve dinner as I've done for the past three or four years. Kati is a Finn raised in the Middle East who was married to a Lebanese businessman and has raised her three daughters in Egypt. The oldest who is the same age as my daughter is currently studying in the UK, her middle daughter couldn't make it home from San Diego where she is studying, and the youngest is still in school here. Kati's ex-husband and our friend Mona and her son Ali joined us all for dinner. Ali, is an irrepressible seven year old, who gave people a good excuse to buy toys to put under the tree and then had all of us playing with him. I'd been so busy out at the farm that I hadn't been into the city for almost a week and I gave a selection of farm produce: fresh lettuces, homemade pesto, and chicken and turkey eggs. A lovely evening. Then Boxing Day (December 26 for non Brits or Canucks) I found myself with an invitation to a Norwegian Christmas brunch with my neighbours. Norwegians eat an amazing selection of smoked and cured meats and fish for Christmas; moose salami, reindeer paté, various types of salmon, trout and herring. Eating out is such fun.

The poultry at the farm are becoming more and more entertaining. Every morning when I go to feed the parrots, ducks, turkeys, and chickens they all rush around to try out breakfast at every one else's house. The poultry eat the leftover birdbread and fruit/vegetable mix as well as their own corn and greens daily. The food in every flight cage is identical, so it must be the ambience that causes the moving around. The chickens live with the Cuban Amazons and sleep on a wooden curtain rod that serves as a long perch in the center of the cage, while the Amazons seem to prefer to perch in a corner near the top of the cage. It's quite funny to go out to the cages and see a long line of baladi hens on the long swing. I have about eight chickens, seven hens and one rooster. While a friend was visiting a while back we began naming them after explorers and got as far as Erik the Red for the rooster, Henry (for the Navigator for a beige hen who is always wandering out of her flight, Vasco, Pizarro, and a number of others. But they are pretty hard to keep track of. They give me about 5 small eggs daily.

The turkeys live with Ali the African Grey and Bamba the Bahamian Amazon. They also seem to prefer to sleep at altitude, having taken over a corner perch for the nights. Otherwise they patrol the ground looking for fallout from above. African Greys are interesting diners in that they will look through the bowl for the most delectable bits and toss anything in the way onto the ground. It didn't take the turkeys long to figure out that standing around under the parrot dishes was a very good idea. My housekeeper bought me the turkeys who are lovely bronze birds with low chortling vocalisations. They were supposed to be a male and a female and were originally called Uncle Tom and Aunt Jemimah, but as it happens they are both females and Uncle Tom is now called Oprah. They give big speckled eggs that are collected for eating since they aren't fertile. We are planning to have a male join us soon, but for now the eggs are delicious and I love the sounds of the turkeys. There are no plans to eat them. Instead , I'd prefer the eggs and to raise the young turkeys. Turkeys are surprisingly good flyers and I have to be careful to herd them gently back to their flight cage after breakfast so that they don't go airborne and frighten the other birds.

When I was considering ducks for the farm, I went online to learn something about ducks. According to the sources that I found, most domestic ducks are descended from two duck lines, either the mallards from Europe and North America or the Muscovy ducks from South America. Most of the ducks in the farming area are Muscovy or a mix of Muscovy and Mallard. I have one male, called Donald naturally, and then there are the girls, Daphne and Daisy. They have a plastic tub to play around in and they live in the flight cage with Fritzi the African Grey and his flock of budgies and the lovebirds. Donald is black and white with a small crest of feathers that rise up if he gets excited. There are two eggs in the nest box right now so hopefully we will have some ducklings soon. Again, these three will not be for dinner but for parenting. I get a kick out of the ducks because they are the least shy of all the birds and will eat out of my hand. Although the picture of the ducks shows a bare concrete floor, they all have chopped straw spread over the floors to give them some warmth in the winter winds and something to scratch around in.

The eggs that you get from properly fed poultry are absolutely wonderful. The shells are hard enough that you have to work to crack them and the yolks are a deep red orange. The larger eggs in the bowl are the turkey eggs, the large white egg at about one o'clock in the bowl is a commercial chicken egg and all the tiny eggs are my baladi chickens' work. My arugula and basil are adding the green touches.