We recently went on a trip to the desert which began at an oasis. It was a lovely camping trip that was about 3 days and 2 nights. The trip took place in a land cruiser that was fully equipped for rough terrain, including a snorkel, which we didn’t end up needing in the desert. There was a driver and an English speaking guide, both of whom were Bedouin. The Oases in this part of the desert had for a long time been cut off from the rest of Egypt except for the very hardy. They were extremely traditional, as there was very little influence on them from outside until about ten years ago when the Egyptian government decided to build the Western Desert road, which runs the length of the country, and goes through a few of these Oases. All of a sudden a trip which used to take a week and would most likely have to be done by camels was cut down to four hours by car. It changed quite a bit in the lives of the Bedouin, and from my perspective, some of it was for the better (like the practice of marrying 12 year old girls). Apparently with the new road came new Sheikhs for the mosques, who informed them that they really couldn’t be marrying girls who were only 12, it just wasn’t right. It has since also made desert safaris from the Oases a practice which tourists flock to, because of its accessibility.
While Michael Schmidt's hunger strike nears 30 days, another Michael (Maikel) is also on a hunger strike for similar reasons. Egypt has been using religion to stir up division in Cairo between the Muslims and Coptic's in order to maintain their agenda and power with the upcoming elections. It is imp ...
A firsthand account: Marching from Shubra to deaths at Maspero I have only posted excerpts from the article. Please read the full account here. The march from the Cairo district of Shubra was huge, like the numbers on 28 January. In the front row was a group of men in long white bibs, “marty ...
As you all know, I currently have revolution on the brain so here are some interesting articles about how the Egyptian revolution was organized, plus one of my personal heroes, from the N. America side of the world Bidder 70--check out his video below. For us who are part of the grass-roots Real Foo ...
I did an I Ching reading recently, and to my surprise I got Ch'ien (The Creative) in which all lines are solid. Solid lines are either numbered 7 (Young Yang) or 9 (Old Yang). (See how to count yarrow stalks). When I read the special section about what it means when all lines are nines--it made me t ...
The fall is a nice time to be working in Egypt because there are lots of long weekends. For one of the long weekends I spent a few days on the Red Sea, doing a lot of snorkeling and reading and relaxing. This last long weekend that just came up, however, I decided that I wanted to do something a bit ...
First of all, I have to say that living in Cairo is an entirely different experience from living in a smaller town/village in Upper Egypt. So far the move has been extremely interesting, and has opened my eyes to the diversity of cultures and opinions and ideologies of Egyptians. It has also made me ...
It has been another month or so since I last wrote, and since I promised to try and be better about sending out more regular updates I thought it was probably about time to fill you in on all the exciting things happening this past month. The first thing which happened was that I went to a peace ...
My life in here in Beba has been similar to the previous posts I have written. I am still living here at the church and teaching English in two different towns. I have a couple more stories about Egyptians that I find telling about the culture as a whole. Both of them actually happened as I was t ...
I have had quite the exciting, travel-filled, and busy month which I will regal you all with presently. However, I have been thinking for the past few months that I need to talk about the generosity of the culture here. It really is quite remarkable the extent to which this generosity is a part of t ...
