Egypt - new country, new life

A few stray thoughts

2009-10-03T11:28:00.007+02:00

Logan - first birthday

Logan

Logan

Logan at the beach

Fallon Day 114

Fallon Day 113

Fallon Day 105

Fallon Day 56

Fallon Day 48 with dad

Fallon Day 26

So you were in drought of postings, now you’re in flood!!! Well, would you believe a rainstorm? Maybe a little shower???

It’s cleaning lady day today, Saturday, when Mohamed goes to the office without me and I’ve put Elvis on the CD player. It’s only Elvis because we watched America’s Got Talent last night and there was an Elvis impersonator who was excellent and then I remembered I had Elvis Gold and thought I’d play a little… See how one thing leads to another?

Anyway, it’s cleaning lady day today (and I’m not sure what she and her daughter Yasmeen think of Elvis). Umm Rami is not working for me just now because she had a baby boy in the Eid (Mohamed), her 4th child which she sure wasn’t excited about when she got pregnant. So I haven’t seen Umm Rami for a while and the cleaning lady is her sister Umm Mohamed and she often brings her daughter Yasmeen (2 for the price of 1 so I don’t mind) who is about 14 I guess and has already had a position as a live-in maid but that family went back home to wherever they lived and Yasmeen now works casually. Mohamed sometimes suggests she could come and be our live-in but I don’t want that in essentially what is a 3-bedroom flat. I wouldn’t mind the “all the cooking and cleaning done every day” part of the arrangement but I don’t want the “someone living on top of us and with us all the time” part. If we had a bigger house with a separate area maybe…

Anyway, where was I? Oh yes, Umm Mohamed. Umm Mohamed wears a niqab which adds another dimension…. I need to tell her every time Mohamed is going to be in her sight so that she can put it on, she needs to wear it to clean the balconies or if someone comes to the door, so things need to be planned a little so that she has time to be appropriately dressed if there’s any chance of a man, including Mohamed, seeing her. That means Mohamed can’t (or doesn’t) move freely about the house while she is here and I have to precede him, announcing his presence. It also means that if he happens to come home early she eats in the kitchen as she wouldn’t eat with him - plus it’s more difficult to eat with a niqab, although I do see women out doing it. I guess that Mohamed could just do as he pleases and she would have to wear it all the time she was working but he understands that it is hot and more difficult so he is happy to be the one to make allowances (if that’s the right was to say it).

Interestingly Umm Rami doesn’t wear one and nor does Yasmeen, both of them just wear a scarf. The other really interesting thing is that once there are just us women in the house Umm Mohamed is quite unfettered and one day in the height of summer even washed the floors in her underwear! She always tucks her abeya up into the bottom of her knickers so that she has free and bare legs. And yet Umm Rami always keeps her abeya down and even usually wears leggings underneath…. One interpretation obviously doesn’t fit every woman.

Forgot to tell you the other day that Logan has started walking – he’s such a cutie – Lahni shares video of him on Facebook for me so I get to see him making progress. Would love to give him a cuddle though. And Fallon is growing like mad and smiling at everything and chewing rattles etc., she’s gorgeous. Ley’s partner Amanda is having a boy – his name is Finn. She’s around 21 weeks, due in February. I doubt I will get back home now until after he is born, can’t see how it will be possible with the business and all.
The business is slow to begin, if anyone knows of any travel agents with whom we could partner to provide tours I’d love to talk to them… give them my email or tell them to talk to me on Facebook under Nile Wave Travel. (Sorry another short ad break there, I think realistically you can expect one in each blog :-))

OK got to go now, I’m sure there was something else I was going to tell you but I can’t think of it right now, I got distracted by Umm Mohamed. I bet as soon as I post it will pop into my head. :-)

Promise to keep writing more regularly,

Lotsa love

Lyndall

PS Recently enjoyed reading “Salmon fishing in the Yemen” – look for it at your local library

Catch up time!

2009-10-01T13:14:00.003+02:00

It’s a long time since I wrote and I’m sure you’ve mostly stopped reading and looking by now, so you’ve probably come across this by pure chance! Life has just become so busy with the company (Nile Wave Travel, find us on Facebook and become a fan - sorry, small ad break there) and the net is so slow here that I just never seem to get around to writing. Besides, life is now routine- the same routine you have – get up, go to work, come home from work, have dinner, watch TV or work on the computer, go to bed! There’s not much exotic or interesting about that!

But because it’s been a few months there have been a few bits and pieces.

Mohamed’s sister Shimaa and her husband and 2 kids, Yousef and Hella visited from Kuwait. I have put some photos of the kids on Facebook – they are gorgeous but “full of life” shall we say. Shimaa is adorable and taught me a little more Arabic and a little more cooking. They mostly stayed in their own flat in Maadi, and bought another one while they were here (in our estate). Mohamed adores the kids and it was lovely when they were around.

We bought a new car – Mohamed finally got his way and we now have a new black BMW which is nice but not sure that I would buy another, at least another not 3 series. There’s no storage room in it for anything, only takes a single CD, no cup holders in the front, doesn’t have anything like floor mats (the dealer generously gave us rubber ones), the leather seats and sun roof are unbelievably hot here in summer (maybe I’ll appreciate the sunroof more in winter) – I have a list! I know these are all little things and I’m sure the engineering is superb, still, little things matter. I especially hate the no cupholders and no storage, there’s nowhere to keep any CDs for example when you want to change the one you can have in the player and your bottle of water rolls around on the floor and you can’t have a coffee…. whinge, whinge, whine…

There was a story in the trip when went to collect it – having sold the Honda we took a taxi. Not just any taxi, the most dangerous, decrepit, battered taxi in all of Cairo I am sure. When we got there Mohamed gave him 100 pounds and told me he hoped he’d go home for the day so no one got killed. For most of the 15 or so kms I was sure it would probably be us! At least I was in the back, but I didn’t have a seatbelt and my door didn’t close properly…. Seemed very incongruous arriving at the BMW showrooms in this fashion.

And Mohamed’s sister Hagar got married, a very nice Nubian wedding through the night with much music and dancing – so many different customs. The contract ceremony was on the Saturday, with Mohamed standing in at the mosque for Hagar (men only ceremony) and then the party on Sunday night. They are not together until after the party.

So - Hagar's wedding was different and interesting, about 200 people I'd guess, most from Upper Egypt (Aswan) as both families originate there. So the faces looked African rather than Egyptian and the music was Nubian, like Ethiopian/Sudanese. The dancing was also African rather than Arab, so no belly dancing. More like line dancing of a sort.... really easy to do.

It was all very different from the start - we collected Hagar around 8.30 pm from the "coiffeur"/dress place/photo studio and her Mohamed (yes her husband is also called Mohamed) was already there along with about 40 other people attending the wedding and about a dozen other brides, all with their own crowds - incredibly hot, incredibly crowded, incredibly noisy - we had one family photo taken and then, once the most important people had all arrived, we all loaded into cars and one of our Coasters amid clapping, tambourine banging and music, people blessing the couple etc. Our new car was the couple’s transport, decorated with flowers, Nubian music playing - loudly.

We all went in a sort of procession (as much as you can in Cairo traffic), horns tooting and music blaring, with some cars weaving in and out of the traffic, to the reception place beside the Nile, open air with coloured lights, awnings and heavy satiny curtains - hard to explain. Tables and chairs and a dance area (concrete but with carpets over some of it). A raised stage for the bride and groom with big chairs. Food was a small cardboard box with a small round croissant, a slice of sponge/cream cake and a small juice. Feeding Omar (one of our little nephews) I managed to get the cream all over me. Lots of dancing. Sometimes just men in one group and women in another, sometimes together. Sometimes the bride and groom sometimes not. Stick waving (like walking sticks being waved in the air by the men), finger snapping, clapping, ululating, spraying with Santa snow and air freshener (go figure). SO HOT!!!!

About 1 am the bride and groom danced with Mohamed's parents (his dad on crutches so couldn't get up onto the stage etc.) and another relative of Mohamed's also danced with them holding a tray on which was a velvet box and chocolates. Then back onto the stage and it was revealed that this was the wedding gold for Hagar including her wedding and engagement rings, gold bracelets, another couple of gold and diamond rings and a diamond pendant. So Mohamed put those on her and she in turn transferred his wedding ring from his right hand to his left. Then they threw all the chocolates into the crowd. Lots more noise – tambourines and ululation.

And there ended the only formalities, as such. Lots more dancing. Finally the procession out preceded by the tambourine type drums (big ones) and singing, clapping etc., then up to the car and the men all picked Mohamed up and threw him into the air three times after which he joined us in the car and half a dozen cars made another horn-tooting, music-playing procession to where they were staying. Normally it would be to their house but the carpenter didn't finish the kitchen so they stayed a few days at Shimaa's flat. Then it was goodnight and goodbye.

So there you have it – all very exciting and interesting.

And now I’d better go, get back to work so to speak, designing more tours, talking to more hotels, etc. etc.

I hope you are all well and happy

Lotsa luv

Lyndall

PS - there's some wedding photos on Facebook and photos of the family - look for them in the family in Egypt album but feel free to browse and comment on my other photos as well :-)

Life as usual

2009-06-30T15:38:00.003+03:00

Back in the office after a trip out and about this morning, Mohamed’s friend called early asking could we take his wife and baby son to the hospital so that was the first task, then a look at the BMWs on the way past to Honda to check out a noise which has turned out to be a broken engine mount (to be fixed next Monday at a cost of 900 pounds), collected Mohamed’s new passport and back to the office.

Had news yesterday that Mohamed’s sister in Kuwait’s new baby is in intensive care; apparently he has a congenital problem that means his food doesn’t go into his stomach but rather his lungs. Apparently he still needs a week in ICU and then they will operate to fix this. We are all very worried. His other sister also arrives from Kuwait on Sunday (I think) to be here for around 6 weeks I believe – she will be here for Hagar’s wedding on the 26th and then a little while after that. She and her husband and two children are coming, Mohamed is very excited as he hasn’t seen them for almost 3 years.

Meanwhile for us the lawyer says the final license will come from the govt between Thursday and Sunday - oh I hope so!!!! We are currently speaking to an Australian company to work with and also a man here in Egypt who brings tourists from the US. Hopefully both these deals will come off and give us some immediate business.

Because we are having visitors tomorrow we have 2 cleaning ladies coming – Umm Rami and her younger niece who looks around 13 and has already had a live-in cleaning lady position – so that all the windows etc. can be taken out and washed and all the lights cleaned and all that stuff you don’t do all that often. Started cleaning the curtains last night. Mohamed gets really fussy when anyone is coming – you should see the flurry of activity if one of his friends calls to say they are coming, even when the place is clean (and really it’s clean all the time!). I have to confess it makes me cross, just one of the things we don’t agree about. Why can’t his friends take us as they find us instead of me cleaning toilets and bathrooms that are already clean and washing down kitchen benches and sweeping floors and putting absolutely everything AWAY? By the time they arrive I want a shower and feel sweaty and horrible and cross and I’m rushing to change my clothes as well so that I don’t ever enjoy a visit. I appear all red-faced and dripping saying “no problem, no problem” – they must all think I have some sort of congenital disease that means I look like this all the time! And I struggle to let my crossness go and relax and enjoy the company. I wonder if they leave muttering to each other – “can’t see why he married her!”

I worry a bit about Umm Rami these days, she is almost 6 months pregnant and looks about 8.9 months and I get concerned for her so find myself saying “leave that I’ll do it” quite often. Crazy! Not sure how much longer she will work. She also cleans the office for us. She told Mohamed the other day her husband is thinking of taking a second wife (remember Egyptian Muslim men can have 4 wives). I felt horrified but when Mohamed asked her she said she didn’t mind, maybe the new wife would help her. This is one of the truly unfathomable cultural things to me – I know I couldn’t do it. But maybe with baby no. 4 on the way and a life of work, work, work, she really does see it as an opportunity to get some help (her daughter isn’t old enough yet to do a great deal although I’m sure she does quite a bit in looking after the smaller children etc.) and maybe all the stuff that would matter to us doesn’t matter to her at all. But I wonder if that’s what she truly feels deep down…. But really what choice does she have?

Egyptian women, at least the poorer ones, really do work hard. Again, I struggle not to get agitated when I see the doorman’s wife washing all the cars in the morning or mowing the lawn in the bottom villa as well as looking after the children while the doorman sits under the tree drinking tea. And I know she goes out to clean houses too. And my hackles go up just a tiny bit when the man from the shack over the road arrives home on his motorcycle beeping the horn and one of the women rushes out to untie the load and take everything inside while he parks and sits himself down in the shade. And I know that those women have been up since daylight cooking for the small shop they run and working in the villa over the road.

That’s one thing that I have found out about myself living in Egypt. I am very accepting of other cultures when I visit, I find it much more difficult when I live here, especially in relation to women and children and their rights and treatment. I hate that I see boys who look about 11 or 12 working in the exceptional midday heat, clearing rubbish from the roads or working on a building site. I hate it that the doorman’s little girl doesn’t go to school and that Umm Rami can’t read or write a must ask her young son, who has more knowledge and power and rights than she does. And although I know that women chose to wear the hijab and abeya etc. for themselves and for God, I still find it difficult to watch the women, especially the older women, in the incredible heat fully covered, often with 2 or 3 layers, red-faced and looking like they might expire at any moment.

I know that all this says more about me than about Egypt, but I must confess I love that I can visit home and just be myself and have what is familiar around me. I feel, from my daily levels of irritation, it’s almost time to visit again…

Lotsa love

Lyndall

Next time

2009-06-28T14:33:00.013+03:00

The photos have a couple of problems, I've uploaded twice without fixing it properly, will maybe try again another time

So here it is next time and I’m still here, we are both still here. In fact, after the small demolition by the police on the Sunday after the visit to the governor (and we stayed in a hotel that night, just in case, bought pjs and toothbrushes and had the hotel laundry service see us ready for the next day) things have settled down a great deal. For us personally I mean. We feel more safe and hope we're not being lulled into a false sense of security.

The police visit and the knocking off of a bit of the slab and one wall certainly didn’t stop ole no 88. He’s just keeps on building, finishing the interior walls of the top floor and the external rendering, having windows installed and even re-building the bit of wall that was knocked down. And now the workers are bringing bricks up to the top to build something else on top again. As I was saying to Leah, it’s so ridiculous it’s actually laughable. Not that I laugh at it very often but in my more hysterical moments it seems very funny.

So we are continuing to live our lives as usual – still waiting for the final license for the company and grateful that the piece of paper from the bank didn’t come back for changes for a fifth time. That’s given us a little hope that maybe now all the paperwork is correct at least. The final criminal check for Mohamed is finished and with the lawyer, yesterday the tax documents came back to us and now it really is just waiting for the last license to arrive. The lawyer says we can begin to ask him/chase him tomorrow. Can’t believe it might nearly be this close. Etisalat have almost sorted out the complete stuff up of the phones when they gave our number to another company to use, the signs are up (even if the phone numbers aren’t there yet) and the office sits, cleaned yet again, and waiting for the starter’s gun. If I didn’t have the Internet sometimes I think I’d go crazy.

Apart from all that we haven’t done anything too exciting – went to the Cairo Car Show but it was a total fizzer, very poor, nothing new or exciting and nothing grand or expensive; some manufacturers, like Mercedes, didn’t even show up and many others only had one or two models there. Toyota had a slightly funky looking concept car there but the turntable it was on wasn’t working so we could only see the back of it as it was in a corner :-) I think that sort of summed things up. Mohamed also hoped to be able to look at buses but only 2 low-end models there.

Otherwise our outings seem to be driving through Dreamland and looking at villas and dreaming. The other night we got to see inside the one owned by the Sudanese man that we’ve driven past over and over, asking price 6.5 million pounds with furniture but probably could get it for a bit over 5 million. That’s a partly underground floor of large, open Egyptian/Arabian style room and two large other rooms, ground floor of 200 sq metres of living/dining etc. (known as reception or halls in Egypt) and a kitchen and bathroom, first floor of 4 bedrooms and small central reception and bathroom and top floor of largish bedroom and bathroom and then the large roof. I wouldn’t use that top one as a bedroom unless you had to as you have to go through it to get up onto the roof. And also a room and bathroom for the doorman/maid family on the ground. Quite nice landscaped gardens of around maybe 350 sq. m. Furniture looked high Italian, French or something but I didn’t like it at all. So you can have it unfurnished for 6 million. Beautiful mosque over the road in landscaped gardens and hospital just down the street and international school a little way in the other direction. Mohamed LOVES it!!

I liked the internal finishes, not crazy over the top ornate in the worst taste like the last one we looked at (also 5 million but much bigger), but very classy in fact. No pool, Mohamed says you’d have to put one in (the owner said he had thought of putting one on the roof, I'm so glad he didn't). Apparently the family have never been in it, barely had a holiday in it – the kids want to live somewhere with more action like Mohandaseen. Don’t know what he does but I’m guessing money is no object. So we’ve bought a ticket in the Oz Lotto 90 million – I think that’s the only answer personally. And that's given Mohamed license to dream about a new car as well...our outing the other night was to the Audi showroom :-)

Anyway, am at the office and need to be doing something else, just thought I should put your minds a little at rest – thanks for all the concern everyone

Lots of love

Lyndall

To be or not to be

2009-06-13T12:48:00.003+03:00

Mohamed tells me we are going to die. On one level this is true. However, that’s not how he means it. He means we are going to die soon. He means that there is someone out there who wants us dead and he thinks they are not afraid to make it happen. He’s making me nearly as stressed as he is.

It all started almost a month ago. The owner of the building going up in front of ours (between us and the pyramids), from now on called 88 coz that’s the building number, started to add a second illegal floor. He has approval for 4 floors and a roof, 5 altogether. And now he’s up to 7 and still going and we, as well as several other home owners in the building, are losing our pyramids view. Mind you, he’s not alone in this, dozens of buildings around us are of illegal height, but this one directly impacts on us. Anyway, when he started the second one, Mohamed decided enough was enough. So off we went to the local government offices to lodge a complaint.

You don’t need to hear the whole saga, but we’ve now been to either the local government or the governate offices 10 times. And on Thursday we got to see the Giza Governor himself. During all of this there have supposedly been stop work notices issued and notices to take off the illegal work. Nothing has stopped the building, some of it done in the middle of the night (like pouring the slab for the next floor) or at times like 6.00 am on Friday when everything is closed. The building goes on as I write.

As we understand it the governor has now signed a demolition order to take off the illegal floors and the police and government officers will be coming to carry that out on Sunday or Monday. What usually happens is that they knock holes in the walls and floors and order that the owner takes the rest down. Also what usually happens is that it stays like that for months or years, or a little of the floor is taken off and the rest patched up. We see it in lots of places. I guess we’ll see what happens in this case.

The governor was gracious and understanding; he spoke to the police himself and also told his staff we could come to see him any time without an appointment. He told us to take photographs of anything that continued to be done illegally and bring them to him. Very helpful. We hope.

So what has all this to do with dying? Well, this is Egypt. Or a similar thing could happen in any country where there’s a reasonable amount of money at stake and unscrupulous men who don’t like being crossed I guess. Number 88 stands to lose a few million. So far we have had our house and our street under surveillance, been followed, had our car hit twice by two men in a silver Mercedes who followed us from home (from number 88 - this one reported to the police and the Embassy), been threatened over the phone (told to take “very, very good care of ourselves”) and had everyone from the doorman and the man we bought our house from to Sami, the man in charge of the local government office, tell us to leave it alone. We’ve seen number 88 appear with another man in the vacant top floor of a building one street over where he can see into our house, and saw him disappear quickly when he noticed Mohamed on the balcony. And to be honest I do take it all very seriously and feel very threatened and not a little frightened. It’s wearing and tiring and uncomfortable.

Mohamed is definitely on edge, hardly sleeping, spending hours in the dark on the balcony watching what is happening around us, smoking up a veritable storm and barely eating. We no longer let anyone into the house, including the cleaning lady. He’s told his brother-in-law what to do if we are both dead. He seriously believes that something will be done to us – he thinks most likely a bad traffic accident, although I don’t think he entirely rules out someone breaking into the house to harm us. At least I’m sure he didn’t last night when he heard noises on our roof and we sat up for almost 4 hours in the dark with all the outside lights on.

I’m not sure exactly what to think really. I think maybe it’s possible. I think I don’t like living where I live any more and wish I was somewhere else. I hate feeling suspicious of everyone I see in the neighbourhood. I am tired of living in a house with continuously closed and locked windows and doors. I’m glad we’re looking around to buy somewhere else but know how long that will take. I think I’d probably love to fly home for a few weeks and de-stress. Then I would worry about Mohamed, although maybe he can disappear and take care of himself more easily without me around to worry about. I worry that it might take months to be over, or it maybe never being really over. I worry that I’m worrying about nothing and I worry that Mohamed is right.

And if I believe the Facebook quiz, Anne Hathaway will play me in the movie of my life. :-)

Until next time (I hope)

lotsa love

Lyndall

PS And don't you worry - I'm worrying enough for all of us...

Getting to know the locals

2009-05-10T23:15:00.010+03:00

Yesterday I became better acquainted with a few of the locals. Not that we had any scintillating conversation but I really enjoyed getting to know just a few of them a little better.

It was a good day, maybe it was my Mother’ Day a day early. Mohamed had to go Downtown to see one of the companies we deal with and also to see the lawyer so I went to the Museum. The Egyptian Museum (http://www.egyptianmuseum.gov.eg/) is in Tahrir Square right in the heart of the city – a huge pink building that was opened at the end of the nineteenth century and which will be supplanted by a brand new Museum that is currently being built just a few kilometres from us. And the locals I got to know better were just a few of the pharaohs and higher court officials of the ancient Egyptian dynasties.

The Museum is huge and absolutely stuffed with artefacts of all sizes and types, from colossal granite and limestone statues to the tiniest of gold beads. In between are wooden boats, papyri, linen clothes, chariots, funerary goods, mummies, the fabulous grave goods of Tutankhamun, leather sandals, exquisite jewellery and painted plaster pieces of tombs and temples. When I went before we only spent about 3 hours and there’s far too much to cover to even scratch the surface in that time. I had Hend with me as my guide then and while I was grateful to have some of the Museum’s treasures shown to me, I was also delighted to have this opportunity to wander on my own and just go where my whims took me.

Previously, Hend did all the work getting me in and I tagged along, but it was a simple matter to do it alone. There are many, many police around and all of them were friendly and welcoming. My ticket was 60 pounds and I went through several security points and had my passport checked. Cameras are not allowed, nor are food or drink and bags are X-rayed several times. It gets quite warm inside so you need to dress in fairy light clothes, or at least layer so you can strip down if you need to. Yesterday wasn’t as busy as it was the first time I went so it was a little easier to see what I wanted.

When you walk in you can almost be overwhelmed. To the left and right stretch large halls full of stone statues, stele, sarcophagi and coffins. Straight ahead, through an opening flanked by colossal statues, is the main hall, sunken, with a temple opening at the end, a pair of lit statues in front, just as you might see in situ at many temples in old Egypt. To the left and right of this hall are extra galleries, the one on the left containing one of the Dashur boasts and appearing to be closed off, while the right one also has a boat, but is open for you to walk part of the way through. Beyond a sign that says you can go no further is a long gallery full of dust covered objects of all types jumbled together. Some of tourists take no notice of the sign and walk on through.

The two Dashur boats are worth a close look. (http://cairodahshur.imrd.org/) As I get close, looking at the incredible mortise and tenon joints inside that hold the planks together I can smell a distinctive odour. It smells of age and dust, old mud, a slightly sweetish smell that is really indescribable but quite unforgettable. These boats were discovered under the sands on the Dashur plain in 1894 at the funerary complex of the Middle Kingdom pharaoh Senwosret III. Five or six were excavated but only four can now be located with certainty – these two in Cairo and two in the US. I wonder where the other two are.

Because I’m taking my time and looking closely at anything that interests me I am zigzagging around a bit. When I was studying art and art history we certainly learned a lot about the conventions of ancient Egyptian sculpture and painting. And this sort of potted knowledge certainly led me to believe that until the Graeco-Roman period added its own particular influence, the art appeared the same, bodies in the same position, figures and faces stylised to a great extent. And while this is true to an extent, closer study in the museum shows just how adept the ancient artists were at portraying the people (or wildlife) they were depicting, and how the differences, sometimes subtle, sometimes pronounced, almost outnumber the few conventions.

So in wandering through these first floor galleries I came to see lots of little (and large) gems that I am so delighted to have discovered. Some of them are famous and considered treasures of the Museum, others, like the small pottery fragment painted with the back quarters of what looked like a giraffe in the grass – exquisite.

But I think it was some of the “portraits” that I really enjoyed seeing most – the portrait of Siesi with his double chin and strange lip carved on a stele and the brilliant Rahotep and his wife Nofret (the Beautiful), carved and painted limestone from the 4th Dynasty , the reign of Sneferu (between 2613 and 2589 BC). This work looks as fresh as if it was done just a few years ago, but it was excavated in 1871 at Meidum. One thing that I found really unusual is that Rahotep has a moustache and there are not too many representations of this. So we know the concept of the “mo” is at least 4600 years old. These two are of the high nobility, Rahotep maybe a son of the king even, while his other titles label him as a priest of Ra and supervisor of works. As his pharaoh, Sneferu was a very active builder of pyramids, completing the step pyramid of Huni at Meidum, commissioned his own step pyramid at Meidum as well as the Bent Pyramid and Red Pyramid at Dashur, so maybe Rahotep had lots to supervise. The Museum describes his wife as a “Royal Acquaintance”. Wonder what that job description was?

Perhaps the most beautiful portrait is that of Nefertiti, not the painted one we are so familiar with in pictures (that isn’t in Egypt) but an unfinished sculpture which is still very beautiful, if this is what she looked like she really was a great elegant and classical beauty.

I loved the King Sahure relief which showed the gods/goddesses making tribute to the king. The Nile god had an amazing overhanging belly, while the ocean goddess had a body covered in waves. The corn goddess was covered in spots. Another goddess had the pendulous breasts and belly of an older woman who has had a number of children. These were definitely real people portrayed here.

Thutmose III was one of Egypt’s most warring pharaohs, reigning for 54 years (1479 – 1425 BC) and conducting many military campaigns. I’ve read a little about him and Egyptologists seem to agree that he was the most competent pharaoh in ancient Egypt. His portrait, on the statue of him as a young, athletic man, showed very defined features, a slightly hooked nose and almost feline eyes, smaller mouth and thinner lips – he even looked familiar to me, reminded me of someone from my past. (For my family I finally figured out it was the Genrich boys).

And of course Akenhaten is unmistakeable with his long face, big chin and full lips.

Another fragment of plasterwork that I loved was a small wall section that had geese painted on it. The sign said three species but it looked to me like two species, the male and female of each. But really, what do I know? But they were delightful, painted in such detail and in quite realistic poses. This was also from the 4th Dynasty (IV) from Neferma’et’s tomb at Meidum.

I did sneak upstairs quickly, because the crowds thinned right out so I swung by King Tut and had a long uninterrupted look at his mask – yes, THE mask, 11 kg of solid, beaten gold, lapis lazuli, glass paste and semi-precious stones - which is so beautiful, although not quite perfect with some of the lapis missing at the back. But it’s amazing to be able to have your face (albeit through the glass or Perspex) just a few inches away from it and really see it… All his grave goods and the big gold sarcophagi are incredible really. Not all of it is there just now; there is a temporary international travelling exhibition, the funds from which are going towards the new museum.

And I had the Tanis tombs room to myself for a few minutes, the jewellery is exquisite and the silver coffin of King Psusennes I, engraved all over, is really something. This is late, the XXI dynasty. The work is quite fine, wish I could read hieroglyphics.

One other thing that I loved on the upper floor was the coffin lid of Maakare. Maakare (a princess of the 3rd Intermediate Period, XXI Dynasty also) seems to have been the first of this dynasty of princesses who was sworn to celibacy. These princesses devoted themselves exclusively to the service of the god Amon, while retaining all the royal privileges, and they came to play an important political role. The funerary ensemble enclosing Maakare's mummy was found at Deir el-Bahari. The exterior coffin, whose lid is amazing, is the most elaborate part. The body of the coffin is decorated with intricate scenes of gods and goddesses protecting the " ba " of the deceased. But it is really, really lovely.

Anyway that’s more than enough from me – when you come to visit Egypt I hope that you can find your own special treasures in the Museum. I’ll be going back again someday to concentrate on another section. I still haven’t been to the Mummies Room or looked at the models or….

Till next time

lotsa luv

Lyndall

PS - you can't take photos inside the museum so I've relied on a few I have got from the web (with permission to use them)

Apologies

2009-04-18T20:22:00.002+02:00

Apologies, apologies to everyone who reads the blog – now that I “Facebook” and we are busier I just find it hard to sit down and really write. Facebook is so bitsy, there’s really no concentrated writing but it’s kind of addictive and so easy to keep in touch with lots of people.

I posted an album of pictures taken on our bit of a trip around the Faiyoum on Facebook (look for me under Lyndall El Masry) – had a great day there really, seeing the water and all the greenery. And on the way out, not too far from home I looked off to the left and there were more pyramids on the horizon. They are the pyramids at Dahshur – especially the Red Pyramid and the Bent Pyramid. In fact, although there are really only the 3 (well 2 really) famous pyramids, Egypt has over 100 and there are many more in Sudan also. In fact they recently found yet another near Saqqara buried under 65 feet of sand. http://www.usatoday.com/tech/science/discoveries/2008-11-11-egypt-pyramid_N.htm

So who knows how many more there are out there? Anyway, I really want to go and take a closer look at these and get some photos but we haven’t managed to make the trip yet. Far fewer people go to see them so I’m hoping it will be easy to get good photos. I understand you can also enter the Red Pyramid

The Faiyoum also has a couple of pyramids and I didn’t get to see those either. I have now bought a little guide book to the Faiyoum and have discovered just how much we didn’t see. It’s a fascinating area. I knew there was bird life and a national park but I didn’t know there were flamingos and it’s a breeding ground. I knew there were the big waterwheels in the middle of town, but I didn’t know that there are so many all over the area that it’s the symbol of the governate. I didn’t know there is a huge fossil park known as the Valley of the Whales because of all the whale fossils there and although you can’t get off the beaten track you can still see some of the large fossil skeletons from your sand road. I also didn’t know that there are Roman ruins as well as pharaonic monuments and early Christian buildings. In fact there’s still a small monastery hidden away. So the Faiyoum has lots to offer and I really want to go back more often.

We also went up Cairo Tower one day – 187 metres – gave an amazing view of the city and even out to the Dahshur pyramids. So here we are on El Gezira Island in the middle of the Nile and we look to the south west and we can see the pyramids and to the south and we can see the Dahshur pyramids, to the east and there’s the Citadel and the Ali Muhamed mosque, Tahrir Square is just over the Nile and minarets are everywhere. It has really helped me to get a better feel for the city on the ground. I also put an album of photos for that visit on Facebook; even though it wasn’t terribly clear (and the air smelled awful up the tower) there’re still some nice views of the city and some of its landmarks.

I have been back to Ethiopia for 8 days, I really enjoyed seeing all the kids again and I managed to do a little work, getting a financial report ready for supporters in the US and also re-jigging the forward budgets. Also started to write the text for a new website for Youth Impact but need to finish this now I’m home. It rained every day so it was quite a change for me, even thunderstorms. Since I have been back we have in fact had one shower of rain here – our second for the year. Saw a couple of movies in Ethiopia, one of which was Slumdog Millionaire – I think it’s one of my new all-time favourites – I thought it was just an amazing movie. Interesting construction, great story, terrific messages – we all liked it so much.

Although I had a great time I had a litany of woes to do with my little trip. At the airport a lady put her bag down right behind me (and walked off to get a visa) in the passport line and when the man beckoned me to go around into a new line I turned around and fell straight over her bag fair onto my knees on the marble floor – really badly bruised them both and the right one is still sore. Then after 3 days I caught the flu, from which I am still suffering with a sinus infection and asthma. Theeeeen, coming home, in any one of my 3 airport security checks and searches and taking everything off, one of my Pandora charms came off my bracelet without me noticing and the flash drive fell out of my handbag without me seeing….. Hopeless! I think that’s all – otherwise it was great!

I’ve also created a Facebook page for Youth Impact Ethiopia – the aim is to spread the word as much as possible in the hopes that somewhere, someone with some spare money will help support the organisation and get it onto a secure footing – they desperately need financial assistance, they struggle continually and above all need to secure their housing. The other aspect of spreading the word is that they always welcome people to volunteer with them or just visit; they do get some US students to help tutor the kids in summer and occasionally have visitors stay at one or other of the kid’s homes. All interest and assistance is welcome. The library still needs books, the kids need clothes, and the list is never-ending.

Mohamed remains a non-smoker, I think it is around 2 months now – he misses it very badly but remains smoke free. He keeps threatening to return to smoking because he seems to have been far less well since he gave up than he ever was when he was smoking. I keep trying to tell him it will take time (he’s been smoking since he was 15) and that at first his body has to get rid of all the rubbish and he might not feel so well, but the explanation’s not really cutting it. Still, I am keeping everything crossed that he will stay off the cigarettes, mostly for him and his health, but also a little selfishly for me – life is much more pleasant these days…

Once he gave up Mohamed went to the dentist because he developed sore teeth and mouth but mostly to get his teeth cleaned. That was an exercise! Although the elderly dentist seemed very nice it was an eye-opener for me, I think my dentist that I had in childhood was more modern than this surgery. No assistant of any sort, no masks, bibs, spit suckers, cotton wads – the list goes on and on. The dentist’s desk was in the very small treatment room so I sat in the visitor’s chair at the desk and watched the whole thing. The filling composite was in the desk drawer. Treatment was very inexpensive. After several goes Mohamed’s teeth were pretty much cleaned but he does have special toothpaste to use for a while. All-in-all a very interesting experience….

Perhaps the biggest news is that the office is about finished, we have a company name – Nile Wave Travel – and the men from the Ministry come to inspect the office next Tuesday (Monday is a public holiday). All being well we will pay all the fees etc. in the following week and we very much hope to be able to commence business by 1st May. Given that Mohamed made a first application in November 2007, we made another in June 2008 and a third in September 2008 it does seem that we’ve been waiting forever. It’s actually the September application that’s been approved; can’t wait until we’re open. I think the office looks fabulous by the way. It will all be cleaned up on Sunday, will take some photos then and will put them on Facebook.

We have also been Downtown a bit, one of the main companies we deal with has moved down there just off Talaat Harb Street. Talaat Harb is one of the main streets in the heart of Cairo. One of Egypt’s best-known novels – The Yacoubian Building – is set in a real building at 34 Talaat Harb. I’ve read the book a couple of times so I always try and relate when I’m Downtown in this area. There’s a building being renovated on the outside and we think that is the Yacoubian building, right on Talaat Harb Square… And I went into Groppi’s – featured in another famous series of novels by Mafouz Naguib - who won a Nobel Prize – but didn’t find it had the atmosphere I expected. Cakes were amazing though…

Have also been to the local orphanage and met all the very beautiful little girls (35 girls aged between 3 and 7) and will go back and volunteer on a regular basis.

Also Logan is great – 4 teeth now, Lahni says he got 3 all at once at Easter. He’s very adorable.

Anyway, enough for now, I invite all of you to the Facebook page as well for the latest in photos, take care

Lots of love

Lyndall

PS – To Jeff Payne – if you lived in Singapore in 71 and 72 then yes we did know each other – glad you enjoy the blog, staggered that you ever came across it. Sorry I can’t reply to your email – comments come in as “anonymous” without an address.

Busy, busy

2009-02-10T17:59:00.002+02:00

Busy, busy

First off let me extend deep sympathy to everyone affected by Australia’s current disasters, floods at one end and those almost unbelievable bushfires at the other. Hope all of you and your loved ones are safe and well. The fires have been on the news here (Al Jazeerah) and so have seen some footage, and of course have been keeping up on the net. A very sad time.

Otherwise, g’day from sunny, albeit cold and windy, Cairo – soooo sorry that I haven’t managed to write before now, I seem to have been really busy since I got back with lots going on every day and not very much time spent in the house. Mohamed found me a lady (Umm Rami) to come and clean twice a week while I was away and so with most of the cleaning chores out of the way I now go with him pretty much everywhere all the time.

One of the places we go is the office, although we have yet another holdup in the company process. We thought we would be working full steam ahead by now but we are still waiting for our final paperwork while the Ministry and the government debate whether we will be able to supply visas for pilgrims to the Hajj in Mecca. I find it frustrating but Mohamed remains philosophical. Meanwhile he did an excellent job while I was gone and the office looks great, we are just waiting for the chairs which will be ready about the middle of the month. He organized a paint job, new blinds, new glass door, air-conditioning, desks, computers, phones, fridge and stove and resurface on the wooden floors upstairs while I was away and had it cleaned so it all looks good. We need a plumber to do a little work in one of the bathrooms and that’s about it. Some plants, carpets and wall decorations and we will really look ready for business.

We are meeting a prospective partner from an Aussie company there on Wednesday so we’ll go again today and have another quick clean and make sure it all looks as good as it can.

We had Hagar stay for a week which was nice; she has started a ticketing course so that when she is done (3 months x 2 nights a week) and we are ready she will come to work with us. She is still planning her wedding for July although there’s no date set yet. Sister Walaa who lives in Kuwait is expecting baby no. 3 in June so I’m guessing Hagar wants to make sure that she and the family will be right to come.

Had a computer disaster with the laptop dying not long after I got back – when they took it to fix it they completely wiped my hard disk so I have lost lots of things including photos. Some I had on my external hard drive but not all – another hard lesson learned. But it did mean that I lost Yonas’s story which I had promised to post – I now have to wait to get it again from Ethiopia, sorry.

We’ve also been out to dinner at Mohamed’s friend Mohamed’s house – Elkardy and Sabah and their two children, Sabah speaks a little English - to City Stars a couple of times, the movies etc. etc. We had a small household disaster when the bedroom door slammed in the wind and the decorative glass panel smashed to pieces (have ordered a replacement – 600 pounds gone in the blink of an eye) and another when one of the figs blew over on the roof and broke the pot. We have had power outages, the net going super slow, the water off, the traffic is still totally chaotic and parking almost impossible – life is normal really.

Went to the Cairo International Bookfair although my hopes were not fulfilled by it. The site covers about 15 hectares with a large number of exhibition halls and try as we might we couldn’t find any maps of it. So we set out in hopes of finding books in English but sadly no, we were exhausted before we came across them. We did find some religious items in the Saudi hall and I did buy 3 books in English about the Muslim religion and also a Qu’ran in English. I hope this will all help me understand the Egyptian culture better and maybe also the people. I have dipped into them but not had any sort of concentrated read yet.

Today has turned into an appalling day with a strong wind and the sand so thick we can’t see the pyramids. It looks like the khamseen although that’s only supposed to come in March. We had a quick trip out to deposit money in the bank and visit the office but I’m pleased to be home again. It’s cold and miserable. There’s been no rain so far this winter except the very lightest sprinkle one day before I left to go to Oz. Mohamed says none while I was away.

Last night we went into Mohandaseen to order a new sheet of glass for the bedroom door and also to take a new fire extinguisher to one of the Coasters (the driver helped someone else put out a fire). On the way home we went past one of the luxury car places and thought we’d stop off the have a look at the Mercedes roadster and the Porsche Carrera etc. The boss wasn’t there so we had a look round, looking terribly interested and discussing which one we liked best etc. – definitely prospective buyers and everyone being very attentive. Until I looked down and discovered that I had odd shoes on…. I have two pairs exactly the same except one pair is pink and one pair is natural leather and I had managed to stick my feet into one of each… Needless to say I left the shop very rapidly, leaving Mohamed a bit bewildered until he came out to see why and I showed him my feet…. Doubt that I’ll be able to forget this one in a hurry. But we did laugh all the way home and now I am Linda Two Shoes who must be checked before she is allowed out of the house .

Anyway, time to go and wash the dishes after “lunch” (that is the main meal which we had at 4.00 pm today). For anyone interested I now also have a Facebook page that I keep up-to-date, must admit it’s easy to keep in touch that way… so maybe I'll see you there.

So until next time take care, lots of love

Lyndall

More from Africa

2008-12-23T04:09:00.020+02:00

I had hoped to be able to post Yonas's story today. Yonas was one of the young men, just off the street, who was living in the Hope Centre in Ethiopia. He told me his story, as I've explained in a posting before, while I was visiting, and it was incredibly inspiring and touching. And even more inspiring was news that he came top of his class at the end of term a few weeks ago when he graduated. I have just received his permission to publish what he told me. However, much as I hate to disappoint, I have discovered that I've left a really important part of it on my laptop in Egypt. So sorry, you'll have to wait until I get home in January. But I promise I will do it as soon as I can after I get back.

So here are a few photos to tide you over....

Wishing you a joyous holiday season and a peaceful and healthy 2009

lots of love

Lyndall

The sun goes down over the dusty African grasslands - Botswana. This is often the time of day we would go looking for lions.

Elephants gather to drink at a small waterhole on the edge of the Kalahari

The mighty Victoria Falls from the Zimbabwe side. Omus Otunda - The Smoke that Thunders. That little bit of the local language was taught to me by a Zimbabwe man begging on the streets of Nairobi, Kenya.

Playing football in Kasane near the border of Botswana and Zimbabwe only the only sort of field available. Football (or soccer) is immensly popular all over Africa.

The camp helpers Amos and Timan get the water out to allow us to shower. All our water had to be carried with us on safari in Botswana.

The lion and the jackal - there's been a kill, the lion still has a little blood on his nose and fortunately he's too full for us to be of much interest

A hyena watches us warily - Botswana

Some of the children of Khwai village Botswana. We stopped here and visited the general store and these children were delighted to be given lollipops. They were friendly if a little shy, happy, delightful.

An injured young lioness rests up in the shade during the heat of the day - Chobe, Botswana

An elephant threatens with a head shake as we get too close in Botswana. The clapping of ears is a BIG sound up close

A year ago - Ethiopia

2008-12-19T05:45:00.024+02:00

It's Gabriel's Day and for almost half of Ethiopia's population this means a day at church, and a holiday for everyone. It was an amazing thing to witness.

At the entrance to a church, crowds wax and wane

The grass is sold to be laid inside the house to freshen it and also in some way to mark a new beginning or "fresh start".

A street seller

Crowded streets on Gabriel's Day

This woman smiles shyly as she sells her candles.

Some of the crowd in one street near a church, Gabriel's Day.

It's Gabriel's Day (after the Archangel Gabriel) and the citizens of Addis come out in their hundreds of thousands to celebrate. Impromptu markets are near every church and everything you could imagine is on sale, including candles and very colourful umbrellas used for offerings.

An Addis street

Koni and Dagem say goodbye with a typical open-handed slap "handshake". The harder the bigger the "slap" (that is how far back the arm is taken, and the slap never hard enough to hurt), the more affection and regard you have for a person (the same in Egypt). Once the hand is slapped a loose and quick shake follows.

The Emperor Haile Selassie's throne, in the Museum.

Dagem, one of the former street boys who lived in Ermi's House, or the Hope Centre, looks at Lucy's skeleton in the Museum. We went to the Museum on a "field trip". The boys were all fascinated with their country's history and culture. The oldest humans known have been found in Ethiopia. Lucy, several million years old, was discovered there in 1974.

"The interestingly named "I Love You Hotel"

Building scaffolding - I used to hold my breath watching the workers go up this ramp, bags of cement and other materials across their shoulders

A man makes his living with a sewing machine at his "shop" on the street

Pedestrians walk past one of the "plastic houses" of the homeless

Shoe shine "boys", some of the homeless of Addis. When Sentayhu asked me about shoe shine boys in Australia and I told him we didn't have any he couldn't contain his amazement and referred to it often.

Just a small supermarket

Near the end of the street that eventually leads to the girls' house (Joy Centre)

One of the small workshops where artists make goods for sale to tourists like me. I bought beautiful beads, a wonderful knitted shawl that I use all the time, saw weavers and artists at work.

G'day. I've been looking through some photos while I've been home and of course many of them are from Africa last year. I miss Ethiopia and all the wonderful kids and even Addis - I really found a heart-to-heart connection there. Sadly Konjit tells me that the Youth Impact Library hasn't opened again yet after the summer break when this year it closed down, not offering a summer program. It's all money of course, that's all, such a simple answer to this particular problem. Not even a lot of money.

Is there anyone out there who knows how to access around $30,000 US to make this amazing project basically self-sufficient for the forseeable future? $20,000 for one year's operation and $10,000 to set up the little business venture that should make it self-sufficient. Anyone who could help or who has ideas don't hesitate to let me know - PLEASE!

Anyway, I hope that you enjoy these few photos of Addis that you probably didn't see before.

Hope you enjoy,

lots of love

Lyndall

PS Tomorrow the kids go away for the day and so I will add some more photos and stories from the African trip

At home in Oz

2008-12-12T12:18:00.017+02:00

First solid food

Playing soccer

At Underwater World with Lahni and Lonni

Well I made it home just fine - 27 hours travelling with my stop in Dubai almost 8 hours. But it was at the new terminal (Terminal 3) and as a Silver level frequent flyer with Emirates I am able to use the Business Class lounge so it's not too arduous. I even found a vacant bench to sleep on - had a staff member come and ask me if I needed a blanket - that's service. So I had a couple of hours sleep as well as did some shopping and also had an excellent snack - the food is always brilliant - and free.

Have had plenty to keep me busy, doctor's appointments, doing stuff with the kids, a colonoscopy and endoscopy, shopping for Christmas and of course, Logan. I've put in some of the pics we've taken while I've been back. He's very wary of strangers (as in, he bursts into tears) and after not liking me at all on the first day and only a little bit on the second day, now he is great and tonight I am babysitting. He always has big smiles for me and is happy to be carried, nursed, changed, walked etc. He's a joy. Hope you enjoy the pictures.

On Tuesday I get to go back into hospital for Dr Tarr to work a little more magic but best case scenario is that this time I am out the next day (worst case, 3 days), get my stitches out on Christmas Eve and will now fly home mid January. No heavy lifting for 6 weeks again but still I am sure that Logan and I will manage fine.

Anyway, I still have the ironing and the dishes to do so I'll get going. Mohamed is doing fine in Egypt getting the office organised and says "hello for everyone".

Lots of love

Lyndall

A visit to City Stars

2008-11-17T21:46:00.009+02:00

Mohamed bought me all this cake for my birthday and even candles. This was a big deal as birthdays are not important in Egypt.

Well hi, sorry that I haven’t posted for a while, life has been just in the house but without anything very exciting happening. Yesterday we went for a drive and visited City Stars looking for clothes for Mohamed and so I thought I’d better send you something at least, and this is what you get.

I was amazed at how many changes there were to be seen in just over a couple of weeks. At the end of the street, only a couple of hundred metres tops, there’s a new building going up, on the corner of First Street (our street) and the main road into the estate from the second gate (Khefre Gate). There are 3 main gates leading into our estate from the Faiyoum Road and they are named after the 3 pyramids.

As we head into the city we must go through Ramiya Square (well, it’s a huge roundabout really). This is a total bottleneck and almost always busy – for example last night (about 6.30 pm) we were at crawling pace for around a kilometer or more. The roundabout is controlled by police, usually there’s about a dozen on duty. There are 4 divided roads that feed into the square, the Cairo-Alexandria Road in one direction and the Faiyoum Road and the street that leads down to Faisal Street (one of the biggest and busiest in the pyramids area) in the other. It seems that the powers that be have finally decided there must be a better answer and the roundabout has road works happening, which at this early stage look like they are making it into an intersection. All I can say is - I hope not, I think that will make it even worse unless there’s an overpass that goes in. I guess time will tell.

I notice that the police are now in their winter uniform. Egyptian police wear a white cotton uniform in winter and a black uniform in winter. When I last went out they were all in white, now they are in winter uniform. And it is getting much cooler, especially at night, so the timing is good.

As we head into El Haram (Pyramids) Road (yes, it is the main road that leads from Cairo through Giza and up to the pyramids) I also notice there are new traffic and tourist signs looking SO clean and spanking new. Most street signs in Cairo are pretty battered so these really stand out.

The trip on the Round Road is fairly smooth and we have time for a stop at On the Run for a coffee. One thing that's new is the price of coffee there - and the coffee is very good I might add - but when I came a year ago it was 7.50 pounds, now it is 13 pounds for a cappuchino. Inflation in Egypt is running at around 23% at the moment but this still seems a huge price rise. Off the Round Road and into Ourouba Road and down into Heliopolis and finally we arrive at City Stars after about an hour’s trip. City Stars is on the north east of the city, while we are on the south west. It’s not so busy tonight and we jag a park on the first sub-level near one of the doors. To get into the car park we must open our boot and have it swept for explosive traces, a sniffer dog goes around the car and another guy with one of those mirror devices to see under the car also goes round the vehicle. Once we’ve parked and want to enter the shopping centre we must also go through a metal detector and my handbag goes through an X-ray machine. This sort of security also applies at the big hotels and some other shopping areas we’ve been to. It’s a world away from Oz.

So we shop, it’s a big shopping centre, about 6 floors and I never know where I am particularly but I reckon we walked it all, ending up getting one jumper for Mohamed at the Levi’s store. He is a particular shopper but always looks great in his clothes so I guess it pays off. We just shop differently – I always want to go in to take a look but Mohamed just looks from the outside unless something sort of attracts him, I’m not quite sure what, and then he goes in to have a little look. We also visited the Virgin Megastore which stocks all sorts of good things. We can get movies there with Arabic subtitles although they are around 200 pounds which is pretty expensive. They have just started to stock what they call DCDs and these are movies on CDs, which only cost 25 pounds (about $6 at current exchange rates) and are good quality. So we got some movies and also some X-Box games (reduced from 550 pounds to 50 pounds – crazy) and I also got to get a new book at the bookstore. For which I am grateful as I’m reading a book for the 4th time right now. I’ve told the kids I need books to be on my Christmas list.

City Stars is full of designer label shops, big chain food outlets (Pizza Hut, McDonalds etc.), coffee shops like Costas and Starbucks and a cinema complex, with more big name shops opening soon, I notice for example, that Versace is opening next month. They have just opened a new section of 250 shops so there’s plenty to see. Prices are high though - to go with the big rents etc. I guess. Just like lots of shopping centres in Australia. There’s also a section called the Khan El Khalili (named after the big bazaar in Old Cairo) which has all sorts of traditional clothing, perfume and souvenirs.

Monday 17th

Sorry I got to take a break, longer than I intended, yesterday was the usual routine but we went out to the Dendy Mall last night and after looking again for clothes for Mohamed (without success) we sat and had coffee in one of the outdoor coffee shops which wa very pleasant. Today I’ve just been busy washing all the floors etc. Mohamed is out at the moment meeting with one of the companies we work for and I’m watching Grey’s Anatomy, a few seasons ago. I’ve got some bookwork to do yet so I’m going to finish off; sorry it’s a bit abruptly. I’m beginning to get excited about getting home – I fly out on the 1st December and arrive early on the 3rd in Brisbane. I’ve got just about a month and hope to get to Melbourne as well as staying in Brisbane and on the Sunny Coast. As far as I know Christmas is with Lahni and Ian and Logan for as many of us as can get there.

So I’ll go now and certainly hope to see some of you when I’m home. Take care, I’ll write again I’m sure before I get home,

Lots of love

Lyndall

Logan goes camping

2008-11-01T15:42:00.009+02:00

Great looking camp site

Logan and India, Anthony & Michelle's little girl

Good afternoon all - a beautiful Cairo Autumn day with the temperature at 28 and the sun shining in a blue sky. And to top it off Lahni has sent me some new Logan pictures. Lahni and Ian and their friends Anthony and Michelle have been camping for a week and a bit and Lahni says that Logan had a really great time - he must have, she says he was very good the whole time they were away. He looks like he had a good time.

Masr el Gadida

2008-10-25T21:29:00.019+02:00

Pronounced (sort of) Moss-ra-Gadeedah, or in English New Cairo, this is an area of Cairo on the north-east of the city beside Heliopolis, situated between the airport and the city centre (or Down Town). One way to get there is via Cairo's remnant and old tramway system which looks like the trams can barely stay upright (and if I believe what I read, is incrediby shabby and bumpy) but is also I understand incredibly cheap. But we go via the Ring Road, or the Round Road (take your pick of what sign you read and Mohamed always calls it the Round Road) and we did that today to go to Royal House (where we got the TV table/cabinet) to look at office furniture.

I took some photos on the way which were all from the moving car with my little point and shoot that has a mark on the lens I can’t get rid of but I will put a few on and you will see that this area is quite different from where we live on the Giza Plateau. Heliopolis was actually a planned development that occurred in the early part of the 20th century and was proposed by a Belgian called Baron Empian (who subsequently lived died and is buried in Cairo) who wanted to build a garden city in the desert to help solving Cairo’s intense demand for housing. Commuters would travel to work in the city each day by tram. Empian’s dream was brought to fruition by British planner Sir Reginald Oakes between 1905n and 1922 and is based on a grid of streets with greenery and open spaces and originally even a racecourse (which is now an amusement park, I’m pretty sure it’s the big one called Cairo Land).

The streets, with well-grown trees, older buildings with sort of Islamic-looking facades or very modern ones, have a variety of apartment complexes and modern shops, fast food restaurants, classy looking cafes and nightclubs, are quite wide and the traffic, at least today, was reasonably under control, although parking is still chaotic and 2-3 deep and hard to find. But often you look down a side street and see a mosque at the end of it, even though this area originally had a large Christian and Jewish population. I think it might still have a reasonable high Christian population as there’s definitely a higher proportion of women without scarves than elsewhere. (From an article I read there are now only about 200 Jews in Cairo, almost all elderly).

We had a meal at Tikka, a fast food chain that serves all sorts of stuff so we can both get something we like even though it’s mostly meat, we shared the salad bar (not quite like a western salad – we had potato salad and coleslaw, sliced cucumber, and green bean and white bean salad with onion and in a sort of sweet sauce (I wish I knew how to make it coz I really like it, they serve it at Pizza HWhile we were eating all the traffic stopped while a “VIP man” came through under police and army escort – Mohamed thinks the Minister of Defence as the Ministry is just around the corner from where we were. We went past it later and there were soldiers and special police everywhere in squads and singles. Several hundred at least I would have thought so I guess the Minister was indeed in residence.

Anyway it was nice outing, good weather and clear skies and we saw some good furniture although dearer than I had hoped but I think that it is what Mohamed would like, it certainly would make the office look good when the Ministry comes to inspect.

As I said I’ve given you some photos but they are not great quality as they were all taken while we were moving over the bumpy road. But they’ll give you an idea of what I saw today.

So it’s goodnight from me, take care

Lots of love

Lyndall

A load of bananas passes us on the Round Road

This one looks not quite finished but certainly occupied

One of the unfinished apartment buildings along the Round Road

One of the apartment buildings along the road where residents have chosen to decorate in different colours

A large mosque under construction in conjunction with a hospital

And only a couple of hundred metres away a large church is also under construction

A mosque at the end of the street and some residual water from yesterday's rain, it looked like they might have had more than we did

Looks like yet another fast food place is opening soon

The tramway but no tram, by the time I saw a tram my battery had gone flat

The shops along one of the main streets

The view from home is still great though

NEWS FLASH FROM CAIRO - AT LONG LAST

2008-10-24T23:24:00.002+02:00

Well at long last a couple of things have happened. As Mohamed would say, here is the first – today it RAINED! The forecast had said a 30% chance of rain in the morning but as it hasn’t rained at all since about February and it wasn’t too cloudy I felt sure we wouldn’t get any. But we did - for around 5 minutes and barely enough to dampen the ground. Mind you that was almost immediately followed by a small sandstorm when we had no hope of seeing the pyramids and Mohamed was rushing around the house raising all the awnings and shutting all the windows. It only lasted a little while however and now it’s back to just cloudy again. Mohamed was on his way back from Friday prayers and got caught in the rain and it was actually like mud spots all over his T-shirt. It would have been great to get some good rain to wash out the air as it has been extra bad lately but I’m not sure that it happens in Cairo.

Anyway enough about the weather – the other great news flash is that the Minister has signed off on our company application (well one of the 3) and although it will take 2-3 months to get everything done and make it happen, in the new year we will have our Class A travel company open for business. I can’t tell you the name yet, we have to submit 3 names after the weekend and we will be told what it will be after checks are made. Police checks will also be carried out in these early stages. We’ve also begun to make office fit-out lists and have been to the first shop to look at what’s available and what it costs. I am coming back to Oz for December and Mohamed will be able to buy once we have looked now and determined some preferences. We have been waiting all year for this so we are both very excited and happy that it’s coming into being at last.

And it means the end of my (relatively) idle life.

I am flying out of Cairo on 1st December and will arrive in Brisbane on 3rd. I leave again to come back on the 29th. I will spend some time with each of the kids and am very much looking forward to having a holiday this time around and to catching up with as many people as I can. (And of course getting in as much Logan time as I can while I’m there). I do expect to be in Melbourne for a few days with Linc and so hope to catch up with a few Victorians as well. Will keep you updated as the time draws closer and we work out when I am where. Christmas is at Lahni’s, Maroochydore.

Lahni and I have managed to speak a few times via Windows Live Messenger and it has been fabulous to see Logan on the screen, he’s certainly growing and doing well and looking so cute. I’ve also heard him laugh, a very infectious gurgle. Isn’t the Internet amazing?

I’m sorry I haven’t written for a while – don’t know where the time goes half the time. One other thing that I have done is to set up a gallery for photos on the National Geographic site – you are all welcome to go and have a look. It only takes 100 shots and there are 100 up, so what I will probably do is change a few each week or something. You can take a look if you want at http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/myshot/gallery/63570. The good thing for me is that people can log on and rate the photos, so it’s excellent to get comments and ratings from random viewers, hopefully it will help improve my photography in the long run.

I’ve also been continuing with my baking experiments. I got Lahni to dig out a few of my mother’s recipes – she is the keeper of all this stuff and my mother was an excellent baker and cook – and so I’ve made shortbread biscuits and a few other things, with reasonable success. I never used to cook biscuits or cakes or anything, I always preferred to make main course meals, but with Mohamed really only liking Egyptian type cooking for that, I’ve decided to branch out a bit. So far so good, although the oven is a bit weird with its temperatures and is taking some getting used to and getting the right results. SO I’ve only been baking biscuits until I get the hang of it and find all the ingredients to have in the cupboard (like SR flour, only found it once in the supermarket, things seem to be there one week and not the next). Presently we have peanut butter biscuits in the barrel and those are disappearing rapidly.

Can’t find vanilla essence anywhere (which has been holding up cake production also) and I realized why the other day as it is made with alcohol. But I can find vanilla pods and now just need to find out what the equivalencies are. If anyone has any idea I’d be glad to hear from you as I haven’t yet been able to track it down on the net. I have been making do with vanilla sugar but it’s not really strong enough.

About time to post as I’ve really not any more news just now, Mohamed is reading the paper in bed and I am watching Russell Crowe in Master & Commander which I’ve always really enjoyed so am happy to watch again. But I need to get a drink and a final snack and need to think about bed. For some reason neither of us could sleep last night, finally nodding off just before 4 am so an earlier night will be a good thing.

So until next time, which I will try and make a lot sooner than this, I hope you are well and happy,

Lots of love

Lyndall

Logan update

2008-10-01T16:33:00.009+02:00

"Baby of Steel"

G'day everyone - first day of Eid is well underway. We are going out to City Stars tonight and the movies (if there is anything on that we want to see) and I have declared that it's a real holiday for me and I'm rebelling and NOT doing any housework!! Well, I've already done the dishes and made the bed and done some ironing - but that's it!!!

Anyway, Lahni sent me some new pictures of Logan, so I thought that I'd share them with you - he's really growing and changing and gorgeous.

Take care

lots of love

Lyndall

It's almost time for Eid

2008-09-30T01:47:00.005+02:00

Feluccas on the Nile at Aswan

The small one-room house over the road

Tomorrow is the last day of Ramadan – finally after 29 days of fasting - tomorrow night the new moon will be visible for the first time in the night sky and we will see the beginning of the Eid el Fitr (mostly just called the Eid here) and the end of Ramadan. This will be a three day holiday which runs on to the weekend so we will really experience a holiday period until next Sunday. To tell the truth it has been a long month for me and tonight I am really tired for some reason, not that I’ve done anything out of the ordinary today. Maybe it is all just finally catching up. Or maybe it is because today was hot and uncomfortable and VERY thirsty as I did all my work around the house. Also windy, but not as bad as the other day. It’s supposed to be a little cooler for the next few days which will be great.

I have actually had a slightly more interesting few days with Hagar coming and staying for 2 days, helping me to cook the iftar meal for 25 that we provided on Friday night. It was good to see her again and have her company and to learn a few more words of Arabic. And with her help we managed to have all the food ready exactly on time. At the last moment Mohamed added another dish; I don’t know its Arabic name but it is zucchinis cut into thinnish slices length ways and fried then layered in a pan with a béchamel sauce and baked in the oven.

In the end all the drivers were working and Mohamed took the food by himself in the Honda. Except the food that was for the doorman and his family and the folks over the road. All the pans came back empty and Mohamed said the food was good so I can only hope that they all enjoyed it. I saw that the people over the road were all gathered around a carpet on the ground outside their small one room, they seemed to have guests as well. A small amount of generosity goes a long way in Egypt.

Obviously, now at some time when the drivers are not working we will need to give them a special meal as well. But the high season has started to kick in and so I don‘t know when that will be. And thank goodness really, work has been a bit scarce during Ramadan – many tourists are given the impression that nothing much can happen during the month and it’s a time to avoid, which is a false impression of course, and in fact many tourist hotels etc. make special deals, including special iftar meals at excellent prices.

Another special custom that marks the end of Ramadan is gift giving. We will give gifts of money to the doorman and to our drivers, and also to Hagar and to Rania’s boys. So – let me tell you a little about the Eid.

The word Eid is an Arabic name that means a festivity, a celebration, a recurring happiness, and a feast. In Islam, there are two major Eids namely Eid el-Fitr (Festival of Breaking the Fast) celebrating the end of Ramadan and Eid al-Adha (Festival of Sacrifice) which coincides with the Hajj (the main time for a pilgrimage to Mecca) and commemorates prophet Abraham’s sacrifice of a sheep in place of his son Ishmael. (Abraham is a figure of great significance to Muslims as well as to Jews and Christians)

Eid el-Fitr is celebrated by Muslims after Ramadan as a matter of thanks and gratitude to God. It takes place on the first day of Shawwal, the tenth month of the lunar calendar, and is a happy celebration with new clothes, gifts, and plenty of good food. Though technically the Eid is one day, festivities last three days in Egypt with public holidays for schools, universities and government offices. Some shops and restaurants are closed during Eid, too.

The Eid day starts with a small snack followed by Eid prayers (Salat al-Eid) in congregation in the mosque attended by men, women and children. Afterwards neighbours, friends and relatives start greeting each other. The most common greeting is Eid mubarak (Have a blessed Eid). Children are normally given gifts, which traditionally are new clothes to wear throughout the Eid. Also, women (particularly mothers, wives, sisters and daughters) are commonly given special gifts by their loved ones. (I wonder if there’ll be anything for me?)

It is customary for children to also receive an Eidyah from their adult relatives. This is a small sum of money that the children receive, to spend on all their activities throughout the Eid. Children wear their new clothes and go out to amusement parks, gardens or public courtyards based on how much their Eidyah affords. The amusement parks can range from the big ones on the outskirts of Cairo (just out past us there are two of them) to small mobile neighbourhood rides consisting of swings and small rides, much like a small carnival we might see at home. In other parts of the city, kids also gather around a storyteller, a puppeteer or a magician, entertained by Egyptian folktales or by a grown-up’s sleight of hand. It is also customary for kids to rent decorated bikes to ride around town I’m told.
This will be an unusual site as I don't think I've seen a kid on a bike here yet.

Eid is a time for family gatherings and since a lot of Egyptian city dwellers are first or second generation immigrants from towns and villages, those gatherings can involve travelling and therefore it is the busiest time of the year for roads and trains. Since most Egyptians live in close proximity to the Nile, felucca rides are one common feature of Eid celebration in Egyptian villages, towns and cities. For a lot of families from working neighbourhoods, Eid celebration also includes picnics in green areas including parks, zoos, botanical gardens and even green islands on major roads.

The doorman and his family have already left today to go to Faiyoum to celebrate the Eid, and the little house over the road is also locked up. I guess they have also headed to their home town. Walaa asked us to come to Kuwait to celebrate with the two sisters that live there but it really wasn’t feasible or affordable when we investigated.

Family gatherings involve cooking and eating all kinds of Egyptian food but the item most associated with Eid el-Fitr are kahk (singular is kahka) which are spicy cookies filled with nuts or dates and covered with sugar powder. Egyptians either bake them at home or buy it in the bakery. Thus, a bakery crowded in the last few days of Ramadan with kahk buyers is apparently a common scene. I don’t have to worry – Rania was kind and baked a big selection of them for us and sent them with Hagar. The biscuit itself seems a bit like shortbread to me.

I also understand that TV in Egypt celebrates Eid, too, with a continuous marathon of movies as well as programs featuring live interviews from all over Egypt of both public figures and everyday citizens, sharing their Eid celebrations. No doubt that will all be in Arabic and I’ll miss out on it. Mohamed may watch some it. I have no idea if he has anything in particular planned for Eid.

Tonight he is out with his friend Mohamed Elkardy the policeman who is back from Sharm El Sheikh. When he gets home I assume he will have another hour of prayer before our final meal and bed. In fact, it’s now 1.30 pm and he’s just arrived home. I’ve been trying to find a kahk recipe for you but one I found had a review that said it was terrible and another said you need a spicy mix called rihat el kahk that you can only buy in middle eastern stores.

Rihat el kahk is a spice mixture or essence used as part of the seasoning in Egypt. It contains aniseed, fennel seed, mahlab, and bay leaf. Mahlab is made from ground sour cherry stones, and it apparently lends a bitter almond fragrance to the dish. Rania’s biscuits don’t smell like that to me however. They have a crumbly texture.
Here’s one I found that uses a mixture of spices to make up for not having the rihat el kahk. However I haven’t tried them and they seem fairly fiddly – so maybe only you dedicated cooks will give them a try.

Makes approximately 40 biscuits

1 cup whole milk
3 bay leaves, fresh if possible
454 gms. unsalted butter
4 ½ cups all purpose flour
3 tsp ground aniseed
3 tsp ground fennel seed
1 tsp cinnamon
1 tsp ground ginger
1 tsp ground cardamom
½ tsp ground cloves
2 tbsp baking powder
1 tsp kosher salt
1 tsp active dry yeast
1 tsp granulated sugar
1 tsp almond extract
2 cups pitted dates
powdered sugar for dusting

Twist or crush the bay leaves to bruise them and heat with the milk in a small saucepan until very warm – do not allow to bubble or boil. Remove from the heat, cover, and let steep for 20 minutes.

Meanwhile, place the butter in a medium pot and heat over medium-high heat until it foams and bubbles. Continue to cook until the solids have separated to the bottom of the pan and the butter is lightly golden in color.

As the butter is cooking, whisk together the flour, 1 ½ tsps of the aniseed, 1 ½ tsps of the fennel seed, the cinnamon, ginger, cardamom, cloves, baking powder, and salt in a large bowl. Once the butter is clarified and golden, pour the liquid into the flour and spice mixture and mix thoroughly

Remove the bay leaves from the milk, and, once the mixture has cooled enough that it’s just warm to the touch, dissolve in the yeast and the sugar. Allow to bloom for 10 minutes and then add to the flour and butter mixture along with the almond extract. Knead or process until the mixture comes together, and then cover with plastic wrap and let rest in a warm place for 1 hour.

While the dough is resting, place the dates and the remaining aniseed and fennel seed into the bowl of a food processor. Pulse until the mixture comes together in a thick paste.

Preheat the oven to 175-180 degrees C.

Form a ball of dough and flatten it to a disk about 3 inches across. Form a 1-inch disk of date paste and place in the center of the dough. Fold up all 4 sides and pinch together to seal (see photo above). Allow the formed biscuits to rest for 15 - 20 minutes, and then bake for 25 minutes or until golden and cooked through. While they're still hot, transfer the biscuits to a rack and shake over icing sugar through a sieve until they're completely covered. Cool completely before storing in an airtight container.

I think you can also put other things in the middle like nuts or even a piece of turkish delight.

So that’s it for tonight folks – I hope that you enjoy your week. Will probably write again after Eid

Lots of love
Lyndall

Almost over

2008-09-25T23:29:00.008+02:00

Another partly cloudy day yesterday and the pyramids were at it again, ducking in and out of shadow and looking amazing. Taken through the bedroom window.

Hi everyone, Ramadan is now drawing to a close and although we don't know the exact date yet, it will be over and the Eid here in 4 or 5 days. That's not quite the end of the fasting - there will be 6 more days in the month that follows but you can choose how and when after the Eid you fast for those days. Mohamed says he thinks for him maybe 2 days a week, but I figure I'd rather get it all over at once. So we'll see after Eid. Muslims believe that if you do the extra 6 days it is as if you had fasted for a year.

Today has been a really nasty day with a very strong wind blowing and a temperature of 41 - there was so much sand in the air that we couldn't even see the pyramids when we went up to water the plants on the roof. It has looked like being in fog all day and the wind was really rattling the awnings. Very like the khamseen although that comes in March-April.

I hope it has cleared a little by tomorrow as I will be up reasonably early tomorrow (well, by 10.30 anyway) as tomorrow we provide an iftar meal to our drivers and the people at the park where the vehicles stay overnight, and for the doorman and his family and the family over the road in the little one room shop/house. Hagar is coming at around 11.00 am and thank goodness really as Masry has put in an order for a range of Egyptian dishes, most of which I know how to cook but have not cooked yet. The doorman's wife is also going to cook the rice - Masry says it's a farmer's dish - rice cooked in milk in the oven but with salt and butter, not sugar. SO that's one thing I don't have to do. The meal we'll provide is:
- dates
- toshi (pickled mixed vegetables)
- bread
- olives
- mixed salad of lettuce, cucumber, tomato, onion, carrot
- mulukhiyya, a soup made of a green leaf that I've never seen before and garlic and coriander and chicken (or rabbit) stock. Masry loves it. My little phrasebook says you'll either hate it or love it! Given the meat broth I have only barely tasted it, to me it doesn't taste much like anything except the garlic.
- maHshi koosa - zucchini and small eggplant and small peppers stuffed with a rice and tomato and dill mix and cooked in a tomato sauce (these are already made, a friend of Mohamed's sent them home with him tonight, along with a full meal for him)
- potatoes sliced and baked in the oven with sliced onion and garlic in a tomato sauce
- makarona bil beshamel - macaroni and mince layered with bechamel sauce and baked (sort of like lasagna but with ordinary penne or elbow or twist pasta)
- meat, chunks of rump, first boiled for about and hour and a half and then baked/browned in the oven
- juice

That's all to be prepared tomorrow and I guess with Hagar's guidance all will be well - insha'allah. The food has to be ready to leave here by 5.00 pm latest and when they get to the park it will all be spread out on carpets on the ground and all the men will sit round and eat and drink as soon as they are able. I won't be there to see it - it will be men only. Don't know if Hagar will be staying the night or not. So I might have iftar by myself tomorrow but that will be OK. Mohamed has been invited out to some of his friends for iftar a few times but he has always declined to be with me; I am sure one night eating by myself won't hurt. Mind you he has gone out often later to the cafe with his friends so it's not really as if he's been deprived.

We went out to the supermarket last night - another of my very rare evenings out in Ramadan. We were also asked out to one of Masry's friends house last night for iftar but preparations for the big meal took precedence. Instead, we will be going in the Eid to Osama's house. Osama doesn't have any English but I spoke to his wife on the phone and she and I should be able to communicate quite well I think. (Yes, Osama's house - I'll keep you posted) We went over to Carrfours in El Maadi, it's a bit of a department type store as well as supermarket and there's not a bad range of clothing stores in the same complex. One of the Ramadan customs is that you get new clothes as a gift before the Eid and we were looking for Mohamed but he didn't see anything he liked. We had been to City Stars earlier in the week but he didn't really find anything there either. Fingers crossed that he can see something he likes in the next few days.

It has been lovely being out on the streets and seeing the lights and the people out taking the evening air, the cafes full and the streets busy, even at 1.30 to 2.00 am when we come home. I think maybe now I can appreciate just a little the special atmosphere of Ramadan.

I don't really have too much else for now, it's 1.30 am and Mohamed is still at prayer, he will finish about 2.00 am and then we'll eat a little earlier tonight. After midnight he prays for an hour, a mixture of reading the Qu'uaran and praying - basically singing the Qu'uaran just as they do in the mosque. This is an important part of the extra religious rituals of the last 10 days of Ramadan for him.

I want to say a BIG thank you to everyone who has written, it's been great to get your letters and hear all the news from your part of Oz. I look forward to hearing more from you all. We are both fit and well. Sorry I don't have any new photos of Logan - news is that he's over 7 kg and laughs lots. I also know he's slept through the night and is being good. Sounds like a great baby, can't wait to see him again.

lots of love for now

Lyndall

رمضان كريم

2008-09-14T21:04:00.003+02:00

Yes, Ramadan kareem once again as we celebrate two weeks of Ramadan tomorrow and around 2 weeks and a day or two more to go. The moon is full and bright tonight, and at the moment (9.00 pm) still a very warm 32 degrees outside. The airconditioners in here in the hall are struggling to make it comfortable after another hot day. Being single brick, albeit covered with lots of plaster and a different coloured external facing, the walls really hold the heat for quite a while. I can’t seem to get enough liquid into me tonight and I’m very thankful for the perpetual ice-maker in the fridge.

When we were coming home one evening just before Ramadan, I saw a shop that had been converted to a lantern shop. It was totally decked out with magnificent coloured lanterns, or fanoos, of every shape and size, some plain colours and some with elaborate patterns. As you drive around you can see these lanterns hanging on balconies and in windows.

And since Ramadan is considered to be the most joyful month of the whole year, children also have their share of fun. A fawanees (said fanoos, so that’s how I’ll print it from now on, fanoos for one, fanooseen for plural) is a must for many kids. These are traditionally made of tin and coloured glass, with a candle inside. More modern examples are battery operated or plug into mains electricity. All mosques and streets during the whole month are full of colored lights in a festival fashion. Apparently in the past, children played in the streets with their lanterns, singing "wahawy ya wahawy" – metaphorically meaning the light of fire. This tradition is still practiced, though rarely now in the streets, except in middle class or poor neighborhoods, and in the countryside. I haven’t seen any around this area with kids, although there are coloured lights on some buildings and lanterns at the entrances.

So I’ve done some research about this colourful custom and thanks to Tour Egypt I can tell you a bit more about them.

Lanterns and lamps of various kinds, hues and degrees of brightness, have always been special to the Egyptians. Many stories of their origins have been told. One story has it that the Fatimid Caliph Al Hakim Bi-Amr Illah wanted to light the streets of Cairo during Ramadan nights, so he ordered all the sheikhs of mosques to hang fawanees that could be illuminated by candles. As a result, the fanoos became a custom that has never been abandoned.

Another story states that, during the time of the Caliph Al Hakim Bi-Amr Illah, women were not allowed to leave their houses except during Ramadan, but even then they had to be preceded by a little boy carrying a copper fanoos. The fanoos was then used to announce the arrival of a woman and to caution men in the street to move away. As the laws against women softened, women were allowed to go out as they wished but people liked the idea of the fanoos, and so it became a tradition that little children carry them in the streets everyday to play.

A third story relates that the lanterns came from a completely different religion. Some believe that the use of lanterns was originally a Coptic Christian tradition celebrated during Christmas time (Coptic version), when people used to celebrate with colourful candles. This story says that, as many Christians converted to Islam, they took this tradition with them in the form of lanterns made of tin and lit with candles.

Regardless of the truth of these stories, the fanoos remains a very unique symbol of Ramadan to Muslims and Christians alike. It has passed from generation to generation, and is today explicitly associated with children. Its popular image is children playing out in the streets during Ramadan, happily swinging their fanooseen and singing a rhyme in colloquial Egyptian Arabic.

During the few days before Ramadan arrives, children become excited and are more insistent about having a fanoos. In fact, most of them can hardly wait to start swinging and singing. That’s why, exactly one week before Ramadan, some Egyptian streets are transformed into workshops for tinsmiths to produce as many fanooseen as possible.
The fanooseen makers are usually very humble people. They; as many other craftsmen in Egypt; work in small areas, in any corner, in alcoves or just simply under corrugated iron shelters, to produce the tens of thousands of fanooseen needed to meet the demand during Ramadan. Actually the fanooseen makers usually start between six to nine months before Ramadan depending on the market forecasts.

In these days of globalization it appears that the Chinese have also made inroads into the fanooseen market, producing plastic lanterns that also play popular songs. While it was initially thought that these might destroy the local trade, reports say that the traditional fanoos is still sought after and the old tradition appreciated.

Another popular decoration is like alfoil cut into a deep fringe and strung like streamers. You see this in silver and sometimes in gold strung across streets and from house to house. Usually it stays in place until the weather brings it down, so you see it for quite some time afterwards. I’m sure there’s still some up since last Ramadan.

I haven’t much other news; again I have been basically in the house except for the supermarket trip and a look around one of the newer housing estates (very nice). We had a problem with one of the Coasters this week – it was parked in the parking lot where it is kept overnight and some small boys got into a Hiace that was parked nearby and started it up and drove it into the front of our Coaster. It’s still in the panel shop but hopefully will be finished tomorrow. So that has been taking most of Mohamed’s time, both day and night. No-one has any insurance of course and at least the child “driving” wasn’t hurt.

Anyway, it’s about 3.00 am and time for the final meal and off to bed. Mind you I’m not tired, didn’t wake up until 2.30 pm today!!! Mind you it was almost 5.00 am when I went to sleep.

So, from hot and sunny Cairo I bid you Ramadan kareem until next time

Lots of love

Lyndall

PS Judy – my very favourite cotton nightdress is getting a very good workout over here – it’s perfect!

Logan's progress

2008-09-11T00:59:00.005+02:00

These are the latest pictures sent by Lahni on Monday. Sunday was Father's Day of course and the 7th is also Ian's birthday so there was some celebrating happening. The picture of Ian and Logan enjoying a nap was taken on Father's Day. Very cute.

Ramadan is progressing well, we seem to be into the swing of it now although I dread to think how long it will take to get the biorhythms right again. Basically we sleep late, often until midday or very close to it, and then begin the day - usually going out for Mohamed to take care of business and doing the housework for me. Mohamed is back in time for the iftar meal, usually just hanging out the door waiting to hear the call from the mosque that tells us we can eat and drink. Today that was 6.09 pm. He's anxious to have the food ready right on the minute. Normally I manage it. I am not usually really hungry but I am always thirsty.

Once we've eaten it's relaxing time, or maybe doing bookwork, or going out to the cafe for Mohamed, or like last night, off to the supermarket about 10.00, and then we stay up to eat as close to 4.00 am as possible. Some nights we make it but sometimes it might be earlier, like 2.00 am or so. I have a normal breakfast of muesli but add some juice and water (as much as I can manage) and maybe even a piece of toast and Vegemite (I brought back a big jar this time). Mohamed has more of an Egyptian light meal or breakfast, bread, cheese, beans maybe, egg maybe, a little toshi (pickled vegetables) etc. Once we've had that and put the dishes in the sink it's off to bed. I don't usually like going to bed when I've just eaten but I'm so tired by then it's welcoming.

Today we had Rania and Hagar and the 3 boys to share the meal with us and in fact the ladies did the cooking for us and now I have 3 more dishes that Mohamed likes - a sort of spinach soup with lots of garlic and ground coriander called mulukhiyya, sliced potatoes done with onion and garlic in a tomato sauce in the oven and savoury rice made with milk. I would never have made that one - milk and salt and pepper, ghee and margarine, baked in the oven. It was fine but not my favourite. The potatoes were delicious however.

I have had an uneventful time, just in the house basically, one quick drive for coffee one night and a visit to the supermarket my only outings in 10 days. Such an enormous change for me and at times I find it very restricting. Thank goodness I now have the net.

Cairo suffered a significant disaster this week - you can read about it here

http://www.dailystaregypt.com/article.aspx?ArticleID=16381

Yes, I now have an Egyptian newspaper on line so I can keep up with what's happening around the country. But coincidental that I was just telling you about the Citadel last post and this major problem has occurred just behind it in Old Cairo. It's been so hot, I can't stop thinking about all the poor people and how they must be suffering. I would think it highly unlikely they will find any more alive and the death toll will be a great deal higher than it is now.

Anyway, sorry to end on a sombre note but it's time to think about getting food ready and then getting off to bed.

Looking forward to hearing from you guys, news from home is always welcome...

lots of love

Lyndall

Ramadan kareem

2008-09-02T12:32:00.007+02:00

Images of the Mosque at the Citadel. It has many names, one of which is the Blue Mosque.

Today has been the first day of Ramadan – a lunar month that is also one of the months in the Islamic calendar. So last night when the new moon was visible for the first time after sunset we knew that Ramadan began today (Monday, 1st September).

The Islamic calendar has an eleven-day offset from the Gregorian (western) calendar, so the exact timing of Ramadan during the year is variable, sometimes falling in summer and sometimes in winter. The first day of Ramadan too is variable, since Sha’aban, the preceding month, sometimes has 29 days and sometimes 30 days (don’t ask me how it all works, I’ve really no idea – shifting time like shifting sands under your feet - it is all a foreign concept to me, pardon the pun)... Ramadan lasts for 29 or 30 days, as do most lunar months. This year, for better or worse, Ramdan is in high summer. Daylight saving time officially ceased one month early a couple of days ago because of Ramadan.

For Muslims, the holiness of this month comes from the fact that it marks the day when Gabriel started the transmission of God’s message to the prophet Mohammad, fourteen centuries ago. The exact date has never been identified (and I gather Mohammed the Prophet didn’t ever reveal it), but it is believed to be on one of the last ten days of this month, a day which Muslims call Laylat el-Qadr and which is considered the holiest day of the year. According to Islam, the month is dedicated to prayers, as it is believed that it is an occasion “to wash one’s sins away and enjoy God’s unlimited mercy”.

The principal ritual during Ramadan is fasting. This entails abandoning eating, drinking, smoking or sinning, even if minor, throughout the whole day, from dawn to sunset. Also no kissing or “relations” of any sort between the sexes, even those who are married. This year, that means from 4.00 am until 6.20 pm.

Last night Mohamed had been out meeting with the drivers and then having coffee with friends so he didn’t get home until 1.30 am. I had been too tired to wait up so was asleep although I heard him tiptoe in to change, but he then stayed up resting and praying until 3.15 am when he woke me up. We quickly got a meal ready and finished it so that Mohamed fitted in one last cigarette right on 4.00 am. I was so stuffed with food, even though I just had cereal and juice and water, and more water, that I had trouble sleeping because my belly was so full it was hurting. Although we’d thought to sleep late, for some reason neither of us slept well and I got up just after 8.30 am with Mohamed about an hour later.

Mohamed was out and about for most of the day but I had my usual house cleaning to do and then we both worked at getting the iftar meal ready. We timed it perfectly so that as soon as we heard the call from the mosque we were able to begin. I was really fine and not hungry during the day but I did get very thirsty and dry in the mouth. So I found it easier than I thought but I suspect that was just the first day and maybe it won’t always be that easy. In fact I could only eat a small meal, although I have had plenty to drink.

Mohamed has had to go out again this evening to meet one of the drivers so he will pray at home tonight although on other nights I think he intends to go to the mosque.

Though the usual daily practice is in most ways normal, Muslims prefer to spend more time praying or reading the Qura’an, particularly at night, and Mohamed will normally go to the mosque at 9.00 pm. Most Muslims also aim to read the entire Qura’an during the month as well. The traditional practice starts immediately after sunset, which is announced to people through all mosques by the ritual azan, or the call for prayers. Because the new mosque opened just down the road from us on Friday we can hear the call loud and clear.

The daily meals become limited to two, the first of which is the iftar, when fasting is broken just after sunset. The timing of the second meal, sohour, is variable according to what you feel like or what your plans are, but is usually delayed as much as possible until just before dawn. In between iftar and sohour, people are allowed to eat as they choose. For me, I snacked on grapes and fruit juice and water and water.

What makes this month different in Egypt? Well, from everything I can gather, a long time ago, Egyptians adopted certain social habits during this month that are not directly related to religion. Officially, the working hours are lessened to allow more time for prayers. Tourist attractions and offices close earlier. People usually sleep very late and spend considerable time in the mosques. Mohamed says that traffic is even more chaos and congestion in the afternoon because EVERYONE is trying to get home at the same time to break their fast as soon as allowed.

Once, beginning in the 16th century, it was the habit of the Egyptian government to fire a canon which could be heard throughout Cairo to announce end of the daily fast. This was fired from the Citadel over the El Moqattam mountains. Technology has replaced this habit so that now announcements are made on radio and TV and of course from the mosque. The Citadel is now a tourist attraction and well worth the visit. It has a very large mosque in the huge compound that is very beautiful, also a palace, still furnished in some magnificence and there’s also a fort although we couldn’t go into that part when I went there. There’s an amazing view over the city as well.

Iftar is considered the main meal of the day during Ramadan and is often very rich. Any type of food might be served, but traditionally the dessert (if you have one and we don’t usually) almost always includes konafa or qatayef. The former is a cake-like food made of wheat with considerable sugar, honey, raisins and different types of nuts (which Mohamed doesn’t like he tells me so I probably won’t be trying that). The latter is almost the same, but takes the shape of a small circular cake, which is folded to include nuts and raisins. But although we don’t normally eat dessert I did make Om Ali yesterday and we did have that after our meal and he said it was good!!!! I’ll put the recipe in because it is SO delicious!

On the last day of Ramadan, observatories again check for the new moon. The month ends after the 29th or 30th day, when the "eid el fitr" or feast and 3 day holiday begins.

That’s enough for now – it’s midday on day 2, I woke up about 10.00 am and Mohamed is still in bed as he didn’t actually sleep until after 4.00. I try to keep the noise down while he’s still sleeping so it’s a nice quiet and peaceful time for me too – reading, writing etc. Again today is not quite so hot, it’s to be around 36 I think and I don’t need the aircon yet but no doubt will later.

Anyway – here’s your sweet treat

Om Ali (or Omm Ali or Umm Ali)

200 gm puff pastry
30 gm ground almonds
30 gm ground hazel-nuts
15 gm raisins or sultanas
15 gm coconut flakes (not desiccated, the proper flakes)
4 tablespoons sugar
2 large cups milk
1 cup cream, whipped with a little vanilla (measure before whipping)

(You could also add 30 gm of ground pistachios, but then you will need to add a little more milk)

Directions:

Brush the puff pastry sheets with butter and bake in a 200 degree C oven (or according to packet directions if you use a packet – I do, I never did learn to make pastry properly). Let them get fairly firm and a little golden on top. In my oven this takes about 10 minutes.

When cool enough to handle, break the puff pastry into bite-sized pieces.

Mix the pastry with the nuts, raisins and coconut and put in a deep casserole dish. Mix it up well so that everything is evenly spread through.

Put the sugar and milk in a pot and bring just to a boil. Pour this mixture over the pastry, nuts and raisins.

Spread the whipped cream evenly over mixture (try not to leave any gaps anywhere including around the sides or as it cooks the milk will boil up and spatter everywhere – the cream seems to keep it sealed).

Bake 25 minutes at 200 degrees – it should just start to go golden brown on top and not be sloppy, a “firmish” consistency.

Mohamed says it’s eaten cold but all the recipes I have found say eat it hot or warm – I think I prefer it hot although it is also delicious cold, even if not so moist. You can serve it with additional cream or ice-cream or just as it is – sweet, creamy, nut crunchy, heavenly.

Enjoy!

Love until next time

Lyndall

Something for you to try

2008-08-26T22:04:00.010+03:00

It's 10.00 pm and I'm still waiting for Mohamed to come home so we can have the final meal of the day. I've been researching Egyptian recipes on the net and decided to try and make hommus. There are many different recipes but I chose one that sounded like it might be what we're used to and gave it a whirl - don't know that it's exactly right but it's OK for me - not sure how Mohamed will like it.

I made fool madammas at lunch today - beans or fool it's usually called. It's very simple, at least the way that Mohamed likes it although there are probably as many recipes as there are houses in Egypt. For Mohamed you just need canned fava beans (although you can buy them dried and cook them), put them into a frying pan with some of the juice, some corn oil and mash the beans as they heat. Once they are mashed and hot add the juice of a lime and a little salt and pepper. It should have the consistency of porridge when made. That's it. He doesn't mind if you add just a little cumin sometimes (or maybe he doesn't notice if I do).

Anyway, I thought you might like to try kosheri. As I've said before it's a street food that's really popular and cheap. There are whole restaurants that serve nothing but - kosheri. It's also quite easy to make.

They say that kosheri is an Egyptian version of the kichri (kitchree, khitcherie) of India, which is always a combination of rice and lentils. Kichri is also the ancestor of the British/Scottish kedgeree which was a culinary by-product of the British-Indian experience.

Anyway, as I said it's quite straight-forward to make and even if you think it sounds a bit strange (yes a total carb feast - Mohamed told me the first time we ate it, in a kosheri restaurant, that they say you don't need to eat again for 3 days once you've had kosheri. You might really enjoy it - I know I do.

Ingredients
- two cups lentils (brown or black)
- one to two cups rice
- one to two cups elbow macaroni (or similar pasta, as long as the macaroni is very small to almost match the lentils and rice and not overpower them) (optional, Mohamed doesn't like to have it and I do, so it's a matter of personal taste)
- one cup vegetable oil (most Egyptians use corn oil) evenly divided into two portions
- one clove garlic, crushed
- one chilli, cleaned and chopped
- three or four ripe tomatoes, peeled and chopped ; or one large tin crushed tomatoes, or you can substitute tomato paste and enough water to make up the volume
- one-half cup water
- two tablespoons vinegar
- one onion, chopped fairly fine
- salt (to taste)

Method

Clean and rinse the lentils and place them in a large pot. Cover them with cold water, so that the water level is one inch above the lentils. Add salt if desired. Bring to a boil then reduce heat. Cover and simmer, stirring occasionally, until lentils are tender and water is almost completely absorbed (approximately 30 minutes). Add additional water if necessary. However, although the lentil should be soft don't let them get mushy.

While lentils are cooking, cook rice in normal manner, so that the grains are cooked but separated, dry not wet. (Egyptians cook it a particular way - I'll put the method at the bottom)

Prepare sauce while lentils and rice are cooking.

Heat oil in saucepan. Sauté garlic and chilli for a few minutes, until onion is clear. Add tomatoes, water, vinegar, and salt. Cook on high heat for a few minutes, then reduce heat and simmer.

While the lentils and rice are cooking and the sauce is simmering, heat the remaining oil in a frying pan. Sauté the onion until it is done to your liking (either lightly golden, or deeply browned and crispy). When done, remove onion from the frying pan and drain on absorbent paper or paper towels. (This makes a topping for the finished dish and is best when dark gold and very crispy)

While lentils and rice are cooking, sauce is simmering, and onion is sautéing, if macaroni is desired, bring a pot of water to a boil and cook macaroni in the normal manner.

When everything is done, assemble each serving of kosheri in a soup bowl. Alternate layers of lentils, rice, and macaroni, then top it all with the fried onions and tomato sauce. Optional additional toppings are more lentils, dry and crispy and chick peas (hommus) dry and cooked.

As I've said before, when you get kosheri in a restaurant you also aget a very hot sauce and a lemon type sauce but I've yet to find the recipes for those. I really love the hot sauce.

Egyptian method of cooking rice - let's say for 2 cups (always the same amount of water as rice and about one quarter of total is cooked in the ghee).

2 cups of rice, washed until water is clear
2 cups of water
about 2 good tablespoons of ghee

Heat ghee and add half a cup of washed rice. Cook until the rice is a darkish gold (don't let it get too brown or burn). Add the rest of the rice and stir until all grains are covered by the butter. Quickly add the water, cover and leave to cook for around 15-20 minutes. Check towards the end and make sure all water is absorbed and the rice has cooked. If more water is needed, add just a little at any time. The aim is to have all the water gone and the rice dry, fluffy and the grains separated. You should have a mixture of dark gold and white grains.

This method is for white short-grained (or basmati) rice, you could use it for other sorts such as brown rice but you would need to experiment with water and cooking times.

I really like it this way now.

So why not give kosheri a try while it's still winter and you need some comfort food occasionally?

Time to go, it's 11.00 now and Mohamed has rung to say he's on his way home and there's food to get ready.

Take care, enjoy

lots of lvoe

Lyndall

An entertaining week

2008-08-24T15:07:00.015+03:00

Baby update for everyone - he's really very cute and obviously and of course growing fast

Saturday night

I found it amusing when I opened my iGoogle just now and the picture for today’s “Places to See Before You Die” on my computer is the Pyramids.

Anyway, hello and how are you? Time seems to be flying by, I only just realized it’s now over a week since I wrote last (not, mind you, that I’ve had a letter from ANYONE) and that I should be sitting and typing another posting.

We are up on the roof – me with my computer and Mohamed with his phone, pacing up and down. It’s been so hot since I got back, even though I knew it would be, day after day at around 40 degrees or plus means that you take any possible opportunity to get some fresh, cooler air. And the roof is very pleasant tonight. Of course we have the air conditioners, thank goodness, but we got last month’s electricity bill (first month with the aircon going very much) and Mohamed is now very much on a power-saving kick. Must say we still sleep with it on all night however.

The one in the bedroom had developed a leak inside and we got the man to come and fix it and it still leaked so we got him to come again and he made it worse than it was before and so we couldn’t use it at all. That was Tuesday and he said he would come back on Saturday and fix it.

We therefore had one night without the bedroom air conditioner and Hagar staying with us so we couldn’t use the spare room. At 4.00 am Mohamed rang the air-conditioner man (we had had about 30 minutes sleep by then) but didn’t get an answer (I did protest but he told me "I am not sleeping, he is not sleeping!"). However, he rang enough times the next day that 3 men came at 2.30 in the afternoon and it has been fixed temporarily – they are supposed to be coming back in a week to finish it off. But at least we are sleeping OK again.

We had Hagar staying most of the week but she went back to Rania’s on Thursday night. It was great to have her here even though I get really worried at how bored she must get. She is not a great one for TV and doesn’t read, or didn’t have anything here to read anyway. We can’t do housework all day and Mohamed was out all day basically. Hagar has the most English of the sisters but still not a huge amount so conversation is not exactly easy.

Back down into the air-conditioning – it got too hot for Mohamed on the roof.

On Thursday night Mohamed told me around seven that we were having guests for an evening meal – his friend Mohamed Elkardy (a policeman, his best friend) and also his wife and two children, little boy about 4 and baby boy, who has been born since I’ve been living in Egypt. I was quite excited at the thought of meeting another woman. Anyway, we took Hagar to Rania’s and I went to the supermarket and got a few things and got organized when we got home – Mohamed also helping to clean and tidy.

As you might expect, it's all quite different, entertaining in Egypt. There are foods that are acceptable in the day or the night, and ways of serving and eating that are all so different to what I'm used to in Oz, and it's really easy for me to make a mistake. So the evening meal was lots of different sorts of cheese, fresh bread, mashed potatoes, hot chips, packet chips, salad of tomato, cucumber, onion, little grated carrot with lime juice, honey, white cheese mixed with chopped tomato and cucumber (it’s both salty and peppery – Istanboli - very soft white cheese), lettuce and then some grapes and bananas after. They didn’t arrive until about 11.30 so we ate around midnight. Still it was nice to meet another woman and she has a little English and seemed very nice.

It's not suitable to have meat at an evening meal, and Mohamed thought not beans either, so we had what he thought would be the right thing. All food goes into commuity bowls, you cover the table with plastic sheeting (you buy it specially) and you use the table as a plate or your bread as a plate. Most food is retrieved with a piece of bread held in the fingers or with your own spoon. Yes, everyone dips their bread or spoon into the one big bowl. Not what we are used to. Not just double dipping... I'm sort of getting used to it. I have explained this to Mohamed but he tells me when he's in Australia he will have to have his own bowl becase he will never remember to use a serving spoon.

However, I brought the bananas to the table in my hand and Mohamed tells me that is very bad. All food and drink must be presented on a tray or in a bowl, never in the hand. Now I understand why Hagar took one glass of water to the airconditioner man on a tray (I used to think they used a tray to serve drinks just because if you were serving a few people it was easier). I made a faux pas with the bananas. But it seems so back to front to me - everyone eats from the same bowl (and there's no hand washing ritual or anything before a meal) but you must serve food not in your hand even when it has a skin on it or is in a cup.... Different strokes I guess...

And the plastic sheeting - well you put all your food rubbish, like olive pits or other scraps, plus of course all your crumbs, onto the plastic and at the end of the meal you roll it up and put it in the bin. Perhaps not the most elegant but certainly practical.

The El Kardys brought a traditional "congratulations" gift - a wrapped tray of sweets and sweet biscuits, it's a very nice touch and gives us a huge sugar fix - they are always so sweet.

We tentatively arranged to go to Sokhana together next week but I don’t know what that will mean in terms of me going swimming – or maybe me not swimming, at least not in my Aussie cossie…. I thought it was all arranged but Mohamed tells me that Elkardy has been posted to Sharm El Sheikh for a month beginning today so not now at least. I eventually found out the wife’s name – Sabah. There was a strange moment when I introduced myself and she didn’t tell me her name. Mohamed didn’t know it - he had only met her twice before. But about an hour later at the table she did tell me here name, so not sure what that was about… Yet anoather social something I don't really understand.

Then on Friday we had Rania, Allaa and Hagar and the boys. I hadn’t seen Rania since I had arrived back and I was anxious to do so. Mohamed had decided they would have ringaa – that really smelly fermented fish I talked about before – so eating was on the roof, not in the house. The meal was pretty simple and seemed to be standard – the fish, fresh bread, an onion quartered and in a little vinegar. That’s it. I sat at a separate table (felt like I was at the kid’s table) coz the smell is nearly enough to make me vomit, and I had cheese and salad. Mohamed brought them back after he’d been to the mosque and the barber so lunch was around 4 pm again. Each day during the week we’d had lunch around 5 pm, waiting for Mohamed. I guess we’re almost getting into practice for Ramadan which begins on 1st September. No food or drink from sunrise until sunset. Apparently we get up around 4.00 am and have something to eat before the time of first prayer at 5.00 and then that’s it. Not even water until sunset (fourth prayer) which will be about 6.30 - 7.00 pm. Ramadan lasts for a month but I guess the first week or so is the hardest as you try to get used to it.

Went to the movies today and saw Hancock which was about 2 1/2 stars I guess. Not one of Will Smith’s best. We also ordered the bathroom cabinet and mirror for the big bathroom today, will take about a week I think and then we need to find a plumber to put it in. The rest of the week has been very quiet – just at home with Hagar and doing the house work with a couple of quick visits to the supermarket, otherwise watching the Olympics whenever I can, although I tried not to watch them all day when Hagar was here because I don’t think she was terribly interested. Occasionally yes but not always. Mind you it was very nice having help with the housework. Hagar also showed me a couple more dishes to cook and I tried a casserole recipe from one of the cookbooks I brought over and they both seemed to like it. That's one point for Aussie food.

What have you all been up to? How’s work for everyone? Are you all well and happy?

Anyway, it’s quarter to 11 and I need a little food and then bed probably although I was so tired last night – I slept for 12 hours. Mohamed actually woke me up at 11 am this morning; I was still very sound asleep. He says hello to everyone. He’s currently driving the Xbox time trial demo with which he has a great deal of fun. So did Rania's two oldest boys - they were very good at it too.

Looking forward to the closing ceremony of the Olympics - the opening ceremony certainly had its spectacular moments. We get a couple of stations with commentary in Arabic and otherwise mostly New Zealand commentary although we did have some Australian commentators, for the diving I particularly remember. We were lucky, Al Jezeerah had a high definition broadcast in English for the whole games. Didn't see all sports of course and missed some really good performances in order to see popular Middle East sports like wrestling (Egypt's only medal was a bronze in wrestling) but all in all it was pretty good.

So will write more soon, until then

lots of love

Lyndall

Home again and we have the net at last!

2008-08-18T16:42:00.013+03:00

Well hello at last

I’m so sorry that I haven’t written before now – I don’t know where the time has gone really and I have only been to the net once very quickly and then another trip to Honda to service the car where they have wi-fi. But I spent most of my time there trying to renew my security subscription and update security on the laptop with only time for a couple of quick emails.

We have had Mohamed’s sisters Walaa and Hagar and Walaa’s two children Khamsa and Mariam aged 2 and 2 months and 11 months respectively staying on and off. The kids were both extremely cute but Khamsa is EXCEPTIONALLY active and was awake from about 9.00 am until 1.00 am with maybe a tiny nap in the middle somewhere, around 5 pm. Both had chest infections, with Mariam the worst and a nasty cough. She was such a happy thing though and just on the verge of walking, she took her very first steps from the coffee table to Mohamed (about 3).

But anyway, back to the beginning.

The flight was fine, very smooth, I slept plenty really (business class - I hope never to fly anything else again, unless of course it is first), stayed on the plane in Singapore (why is it that you can stay on the plane going over but you MUST get off at Singapore for all of 20 minutes coming to Oz) and had a fairly quick break in Dubai, where I shopped and bought an X-Box for Mohamed.

There were a couple of surprises for me when I got home – Mohamed had bought the bedroom suite and it is very nice really. Probably not what I would have originally chosen but very good in the room, it really suits it and I like it a lot. It has a king size bed, two bedside tables, a big dressing table with a mirror, a very large wardrobe, a coat stand and another cabinet with a drawer and large cupboard. The dressing table and bedside tables and cabinet are topped in a dark red, white-veined marble.

He had also done a lot of work on the roof and had bought 50 trees and shrubs in pots that are now up there and it also looks very nice. It’s lovely up there in the evening and I really enjoy watering after the sun has gone down. We usually spend an hour or so up there fiddling with the plants. Tonight was magical, cooler than the house, full moon over the desert and the sound and light show (well I could only see the light show) on the pyramids. Pretty special.

We have also been and bought a dining room suite and a cabinet kind of like a large china cabinet with a glass-doored one on top and closed in cupboards on the bottom. It is made of a wood called zaan in Arabic but neither Mohamed nor the lady in the shop knew what it is in English. And I can’t tell by looking either. At the same shop we bought two bedside lamps for the bedroom tables that I really like, a sort of dark red and gold. We also bought some artificial flowers, again not usually my thing but Mohamed really wanted flowers so we went to a specialist shop for artificial flowers and got some that are quite good I think. Got some for the bedroom as well in dark red. They are still too long for the vases but I need a pair of clippers to get them right.

So the house is beginning to look a little more “full” although still lots to get.

We had two trips to Alexandria to sort out my boxes from Australia. A total cost of just over 3000 pounds to get them out and into the house. Terminal charges, payment for the man to do the paperwork and also customs duties. At first we had a phone call to say that there were many cds with naked pictures on them, but I said that I didn’t believe that was true and was either an attempt to explain why some disappeared or someone wanted more money. So Mohamed just told them it wasn’t true and when we got the boxes they all seemed to be there. I thought I couldn’t find one at all with a naked picture but Mohamed did find a Tom Waits one with a naked woman in the background on the cover.

Unfortunately not everything arrived intact with 4 crystal glasses broken, one of the crystal vases smashed to smithereens and about a dozen pieces of the dinner set broken. And Mohamed told me when we unpacked the silver cutlery that it is haram for Muslims to eat or serve food with gold or silver. So all of that was a waste to bring and it will sit in the cupboard. Actually under the main silver set was a whole lot of miscellaneous silver and cutlery, some of which was stainless so was OK. Can’t use all the silver teaspoons I brought over in my luggage either.

Nor was I meant to have any of mum’s crystal glasses – two days later the glass cupboard in the kitchen fell off the wall and smashed everything!

While the sisters Walaa and Hagar were here I have learned some more Egyptian dishes - white beans you might like (sort of like a spicy homemade baked beans) but I wonder if you’d enjoy the meat soup (basically boiled big chunks of meat with an onion in it and salt and pepper). Still they all think it is delicious. I think I also have the egg perfected and my mashed potatoes are considered good. And koshery I can now also make except for the lemon sauce – koshery is a really cheap dish you can buy on the street – rice, very tiny macaroni and lentils all cooked in together and then you get a tomato type sauce, just a little spicy, a very hot sauce, a lemon sauce, extra crispy lentils and very golden dry crispy onion and chick peas that you sprinkle on top. I only got the method for the tomato type sauce from Hagar but I can do the sprinkles although I would need a recipe for the hot sauce and the lemon sauce. Maybe the net will provide eventually. Mind you a huge dish of it costs 5 pounds (A$1) on the street – you would wonder why we would bother making it!

And the phone and the net is another story. The phone is here and is to be wireless. Yes, the phone will be some sort of wireless/mobile deal as will the net but it doesn’t work right now – we get to wait for them to build the tower for this area – they said a couple of months but goodness knows what that means. Mohamed got it to work the other night but he now tells me it can only make house to house calls, not to mobiles, and he doesn’t know if it will make international calls. So we have made one call to Rania,

Etisalat has a new deal for mobile net for 6 months – it costs 300 pounds per month and if you take 6 months you get your modem free – or something to that effect. At least that was what was advertised. And that was 3.75G with 3G about half that price. I wanted to faster speed, of course, but on further investigation Mohamed has phoned me tonight to say that the fast speed is only available in 2 areas in Cairo so it will be the slower speed. I think he’s organizing it tonight. I HOPE!

On our first trip to Alexandria about the boxes we had a bit of time and we went to the library – it is such an impressive building from the outside, so incredibly unique and unusual – I was a bit disappointed with the inside. It also costs you to get in which surprised me. Still I was pleased to have seen it. It’s renowned throughout the library world.

The new library at Alexandria replacing at last the ancient library that was destroyed by fire.

Have also had a new sort of mango which is just incredibly delicious – it’s called a foss –don’t know if that’s how you spell it but it’s how you say it – it’s very small and also has a tiny seed and is not at all stringy, very sweet and juicy. They are fabulous and so we’re eating lots of mangoes. At the moment most of the roadside donkey and horse carts have mangoes, probably about a dozen different varieties. And cucumbers are just starting to come and corn is getting ripe in the fields, there are food sellers with roasted cobs all around the streets. And guavas are also in season, we have a couple of kilos in the fridge – mind you now everything smells of guava!

Porto Sohkna - a huge new hotel and apartment complex being built

We took another trip to Sokhna and this time spent a day on a beach at one of the big hotels (cost us 300 pounds to use the beach) and we swam all day and had an excellent lunch (extra, not included). We could also have used the pool if we had wanted but the sea (the Red Sea below Suez) was much better. Lots of fish in it – they would sometimes nibble on you – a bit disconcerting. The sea was beautiful to swim in, fabulous temperature and very clean. Only problem where we were there were rocks with lots of sea urchins, Mohamed got some small spine pieces in his foot and it’s given him some problems but I think I finally got the last very tiny piece out last night as it seems at last to be not so sore. Not a lot of sand and very rocky in places to get into the water but beautiful once in. Not a wave in sight of course. Mohamed is very willing to learn to swim and mastered floating without much problem, I think he will be swimming in no time if we get to go back often enough. He’s just got to get the breathing thing happening, although while we’ve watched the Olympics he has seen how the swimmers breathe out through their nose. He’s very observant and has probably learned heaps just from watching.

The other night we took Walaa and the kids to the airport – she had 120 kg of luggage but she could take 100 for free. At last! Someone with more luggage than me! She also had a problem because the police wanted proof the children belonged to her and she hadn’t put Mariam into her passport yet. I asked Mohamed how she managed and he said that she cried and the policeman let her go. Different – it’s all so very different.

We also went back to the visa halls to get my visa renewed. Now I am married to an Egyptian I am entitled to a 5 year resident’s visa, renewable as many times as you like. So it was back to the first window we ever went to and again off to the other window to pay the fees, but this time I had a pen and we knew enough to have photographs with us and copies of my passport and the marriage contract etc. etc. But we were still caught out because we didn’t have copies of Mohamed’s passport. So it was still back down the stairs to the copy booths and shove through the crowd of dozens all shouting waving papers (well Mohamed shoving through the crowds) to get his passport copied. But eventually we had everything we needed and we went back to our original window and dropped it all off. It will take two weeks, which means that it is supposed to be ready on Monday. I HOPE!

Hagar has come back to stay with us for maybe a week – well as long as she likes really and as often as she likes. She has given up work and I am most concerned about her living alone without any work to do. She can work for us once the company is a reality but meanwhile I hope she stays as often as possible.

So off to wash the floors, talk to you again soon now that I can do it more easily

lots of love

Lyndall

PS - And just for Henry Kwaczynski – Henry when we were driving to the supermarket the other night I saw a whole new one – a truck with the load slipped and no rocks on the road – instead we had a fire on the road to warn everyone of the problem! There’s always something on the road to astound me!

Introducing Logan Steel

2008-07-08T18:29:00.007+03:00

Our baby boy got his name today - Logan Steel. He's growing so fast, almost 6 kilos, he has rolled over more than once already and is out of newborn nappies and 000 clothes. His eyes are now a very clear blue and he follows you when you are nursing him or bending over the bassinette. You always forget just how fast they grow and how every moment must be treasured.

Photos taken last Sunday

Lots of love

Lyndall

New photos, 2 weeks old yesterday

2008-07-02T12:33:00.014+03:00

Sharing the floor with mum

He's so cute

Ian holds him on his first "brunch" at Hot Pippis

Dad Ian looking pretty happy

Nana gets a cuddle

Mum Lahni and baby

Pa and baby boy

Micheal takes a turn

Lonni with her two babies

More pics another day. All I am doing is putting unwanted possessions on ebay, recovering form the surgery slowly and seeing the baby

lots of love

Lyndall

A couple of photos from today (Friday)

2008-06-20T16:58:00.007+03:00

Enjoy just a few of today's photos

Everyone is well and he seems like a good baby so far....

love

Lyndall

The new baby in the family

2008-06-18T17:27:00.016+03:00

Baby Steel made his appearance one week early at 8.16 am on Wednesday 17th June after a labour lasting roughly 10 hours. He is a BIG boy at 4.62 kilos and Lahni knows all about it, being very thankful he didn't go to term. It's very exciting for us all. Everyone is well and Lahni goes home tomorrow (Thursday). So here are the photos

All together at last

On mum's tummy

Very new

Dad Ian has his first cuddle

Three generations

Mum and Dad and baby makes three

Nana, Aunty Lonni and baby

Lahni relaxes while doting Dad Ian holds the baby

DAY 2

With Aunty Lonni

Day 2 and he's definitely getting cuter all the time

Will post more in a few days

love

Lyndall

Bread - the staff of life

2008-05-18T12:11:00.003+03:00

So, it’s Friday again and so Mohamed is out and I am at home and have some time to write. Two weeks today and by this time I will be safely tucked up in Lahni’s house in Maroochydore, having spent over 24 hours on the road and in the air and having kept a couple of appointments on the Sunnie Coast, hopefully managing to stay awake all day so that I can get over the jet lag a little quicker.

As I said it’s a long way home – I leave Cairo at 7.30 pm on Wednesday night and I get to Dubai at 5 minutes past midnight on Thursday (actually only a three hour flight but I’m moving forward through time). I get to spend a fabulous 8 hours at the Dubai terminal which, regardless of the fact that is it the middle of the night, will be packed and buzzing and I will be very lucky if I find a spare spot on the floor to catch some sleep. At 8.45 am (Dubai time) I take off for Brisbane via Singapore, a journey of around 16 hours flying time, landing me at Brisbane at 7.00 am on Friday 30th, seven hours ahead of Cairo time (now we are on daylight saving here). A quick trip up to Maroochydore in time to get me to my first appointment at 10.30 am I hope.

While one part of me gets more and more excited I must admit another part of me recognises that I will really miss Mohamed, I mean really miss him. He will go and stay with his sister Hagar so I know that he will be extremely well looked after, better than I look after him I’m sure (even though I am getting the cooking under control), and with the exception of the massages. Still, it’s amazing how quickly he’s become quite indispensable to me and it will be hard to leave him behind.

It’s been a pretty good week with a few ups and downs. First there was news that the Hyundais wouldn’t be available for 2 months, reversed later in the week by the news that we could have them in the next week, imported from Dubai. Then there was the office that was on the market and off the market. And there were the turtledoves nesting behind one of the air-conditioner units that we have been really enjoying watching and feeding. On Tuesday the mama vanished and on Tuesday night the first egg hatched. Unfortunately we’ve had to watch the poor little baby struggle and finally succumb. If I hadn’t been leaving I would have tried feeding it but it wouldn’t have been self-sufficient in any way in 2 weeks. And last but certainly not least for me was the realisation that Mohamed wouldn’t be able to come to Australia at all. By the time I leave we will have 5 cars and drivers all depending on him to find the work and keep the books, collect the accounts and pay the bills. Unfortunately, there just isn’t anyone else who can do it for us at this time. For a number of reasons I’m really very disappointed.

And of course world news has covered those two huge disasters in China and Burma. Such incredible loss of life and devastation, so much tragedy on such a grand scale.

Today we had a really nice day, after the mosque we met Rania and Hagar and the boys (and Allaa after he finished work) at Felfela, well one of the Felfela chain of restaurants. This one has a large area with a stage and on Friday afternoons and evenings it has a floor show of middle eastern music and dancing and a man with an excellent balancing act. It was sort of the first place Masry took me out when we were just beginning to discuss marriage, so it brought back some nice memories as well. It was so good to see the ladies again, even if we hardly share any conversations there’s something very pleasant just being in their company. Perhaps because it is the company of women. And the boys are so cute of course. When Omar fell asleep today I took him from Rania and I had a wonderful long snuggle – about an hour. Before that we played some hand games and I got lots of smiles. Before I leave for home I really want to take the camera to the house (or have them come here again) and do some portraits of the boys as they are all beautiful looking children with real character – ideal portrait subjects.

I’m sorry I can’t put any pictures of them with this – Masry has asked that I don’t put any photos of either his sisters or the children on the net.

This week I also found another copy of my favourite magazine – Egypt Today - and read some really interesting stuff about the Egyptian economy and society that surprised me. Here’s a quick recap of a few of the latest official statistics:

- inflation is running at 14.4% as at March (6.9% in December last year)
- bread and grain prices increased by almost 50% in the first 3 months of this year (UN figures)
- 20% of Egyptians live below the poverty line of US$2 per day and another 20% hover just above it
- approximately 50 million people eat subsidized bread every day at an average of 3.2 pieces per person (220 million loaves)
- smuggling, selling or hiding subsidized bread is now a crime
- 29% of GDP is spent on food subsidies (75 billion Egyptian pounds)
- the export of rice has been banned until October
- around 40% of Egyptian marriages end in divorce (this one was a big surprise)

There is a food crisis in many countries (particularly African countries) of course but I must admit, although I’ve seen the queues at the government bread outlets I hadn’t realized the extent of the problem, as I don’t see any news in English except on BBC World, for which both Egypt and Australia do not exist – unless George Bush visits Egypt or Australia is playing cricket. According to my magazine source there was a shooting in the queues in February and someone standing in the queue was also run over. They estimate the number of deaths attributable directly to the queuing problem to be between 7 and 15. Obviously the bread and grain shortage and sharply escalating food prices are serious national issues and although the government has put a number of strategies in place to fix some of this it may take a little while yet to significantly improve the bread situation and of course even longer to resolve the inflation issue.

What I do see on a day-to-day basis is that many Egyptians live on a tiny wage and add to their quality of life with the tips they receive for almost every service or transaction. Of course there’s the usual tip on top of your bill at restaurants or coffee shops. Every visit to a bathroom anywhere means a 1 pound tip for the attendant (and interestingly no-one minds if you just go into a shop or food outlet to use the toilets). When you sit in a parked car and the man sweeping the street comes along past you, it’s a 1 pound tip. You pay for your food at the street takeaway and add a 1 pound tip for the man who fills your order. There’s a 1 pound tip for the man who makes your coffee, packs your bags at the supermarket, fills your car with petrol or the child who wants to wipe over your windscreen when you stop (especially if your car has just been cleaned and you don’t want it done). There’s the one pound tip for any man who helps you park in the street or in a car park. There are bigger tips for the tradesmen, the men who install your appliances or come to fix them, who deliver your furniture or clean your car, who cut your hair or the women who wax your legs. At the current exchange rate for Oz dollars, one pound is equivalent to 20 cents. But if you live on around 5-12 pounds per day, one pound makes a huge and significant difference. But also over the course of a month it also makes a hidden difference to our cost of living by probably two or three hundred pounds. But it’s worth it and I’m glad each day that Mohamed has a good heart and is happy to share what we have with those who so obviously have less.

Time to go to bed – I’ll be in touch again as soon as I can

Love to everybody

Lyndall

The search goes on

2008-05-12T14:03:00.006+03:00

Taken at Sokhana - my first sightings of the Red Sea

Hi everyone

It’s Friday night and Mohamed is out with his friend at the café. Although as I've reported before Egyptian men are very used to "café" society and Masry certainly is, he has decided that one night a week will be fine for him if it is OK with me (much better than 3 or 4 or 5) so Friday night will often be the night I write …

Not a lot of news this time round as I have had some kind of stomach bug most of the week and have kept myself quiet in the house while Masry has been out and about seeing the companies for whom the Coasters have worked and presenting end of month accounts etc. and meeting with the drivers.

A few people have asked me about “the company” I write about and the vehicles. Here’s the story. Towards the end of last year the government announced that they wouldn’t approve any new company licenses for tourism companies in early 2008 and when they did begin to license companies again the fees would be significantly higher. Masry has long had a dream to own his own company working in tourism, beginning with a company that provides transport for tourists (a Level C company). So Masry duly made an application at the beginning of December, only to be told that the doors had already closed and they didn’t know when they would begin to approve applications again.

As well as fees to pay (quite substantial ones in the tens of thousands of US dollars) there are other requirements for a tourism transportation company. You must have a certain amount of money in the bank (200,000 Egyptian pounds) that must stay there for at least a year (I assume as a sort of guarantee), and you must have vehicles that provide over 100 seats. So once you do all this and can operate your company you must prove yourself for at least a year and then you can move up until you eventually can operate a Level A company, which can offer the full range of services, accepting tourists from outside Egypt, selling tickets, providing guided tours etc.

Now, the papers have been lodged with the Ministry of Tourism and the waiting goes on. But meantime there are other things that can be done. To begin with you can purchase vehicles and come to an arrangement with an existing company for them to be registered under their name and umbrella, so to speak. For this you pay several thousands of pounds each year. You also pay all costs associated with the vehicle and employ the driver and you are responsible for finding work for the vehicle. The vehicle wears the name and logos of the sponsoring company (and count towards their seat provision requirements). You take the money direct from the companies for the work done. If you get your own company at some stage the vehicles are then transferred to your name.

So that is what Masry is doing at the moment. To begin with he purchased two Toyota Coasters in January. They have been working since the beginning of March. There is also an order in with Toyota for a Hiace and with Hyundai for 2 H1s, all of which should be here soon, in a matter of a month. The Hiace will be placed with the same company (Mena) while the Hyundais will be placed with a different company (GITS – Gabry Inter Travel Service).

One of the other things that you can do is to buy an existing company (at any level) that someone wants to sell. This may be a company that has been operating as a going concern, or a company that has been approved but has never operated. In each case you really buy the “paper” from the owner. So that has been an ongoing search with the involvement of lawyers and people who work in the government and many others, usually men who know someone who knows someone. Or maybe with the help of a lawyer for an important man or the driver of a government official (or even the driver of the wife of a government official) – all at a price of course. This is Egypt after all.

Several companies have been located but each time Masry comes home and says “Congratulations (Mabrook), now you own a company”, there’s a problem in the next day or so. The seller changes his mind, or the lawyer finds that they owe taxes or have another problem with the government, or the price suddenly goes up out of reach. Masry’s search has been unsuccessful so far.

And there’s a third alternative. An application has been lodged with the lawyer (and government I think) with a fee paid to the lawyer of course, for a Level A company, which is (by all accounts) to be approved in a year’s time. Once the paper is in our hands a further substantial fee is paid to the lawyer along with the licensing fee to the Ministry. So that’s also in train.

To help fill in time while we wait we have also been looking for an office and trying to decide whether to buy now or to rent when the time comes. Currently we are looking on the estate at the new buildings going up on the first street facing the road.

Last weekend the government announced a 30% increase in salaries for those workers for whom it sets the salary scale. That was on the public holiday that as far as I could make out is a little like Labour Day in that it’s for workers. Two days later the government also announced significant increases in taxes and prices on many items, many of 30%+ increases but some less – petrol, oil and diesel, cigarettes, steel, cement, new vehicles, vehicle registration fees to name a few items. The office we looked at on Monday that was 350,000 pounds is today 400,000. We’re having a think about what to do. I’m afraid if we wait another year we’ll never afford to buy. The upside I guess is that the house has gone up significantly in value virtually overnight. It will take a little while to see what effect it will have on food prices and the cost of living in general.

I presume it makes the news in Oz but there is great consternation in many places about the cost of food. The UN has shortfalls in the monies promised to provide food relief in Africa. There were riots in Lebanon yesterday about food prices (although this seems to have now turned quite political between Hesbollah and the government) and there are problems across Africa. There was also a major demonstration in Cairo a few weeks ago about the same issue and about wages.

I don’t see enough news in English to know what the cause of this is exactly – is it all tied up with the situation in the States? I have noticed how the Ozzie dollar and the US dollar are neck and neck, as everything here revolves around US dollars I guess that’s a good thing for me for now. But any food crisis can’t be good for the world as a whole.

Looking forward to seeing some of you when I get home...

Lots of love for now

Lyndall

Yet more culinary disasters!

2008-04-29T14:13:00.007+03:00

Taken during the foam fight from the jacuzzi yesterday - I SO need a haircut!

Hi everyone

Hope that all is well with you wherever you are, if you are in Victoria you will be beginning to feel the autumn chill in the mornings by now I have no doubt. Egypt is still going well, life is kinda quiet at the moment what with the state of play with the search for a company, but that’s OK too – I’m looking on it as a holiday period (and if I get too bored there’s always housework!) Just joking. Masry is finding it difficult not going to work every day I think also. Yesterday we slept in until 11.30 am – unbelievable! Mind you, he stayed up until 4.00 am watching TV but I didn’t have that excuse, I was asleep by 1. I’m beginning to get excited about coming home – one month today until I leave. I have a 9-hour layover in Dubai which will be awful, I get in at midnight and leave at 3.15 I think it is – I hope there’s some spare floor somewhere. I leave to come back on 9th July, although if we needed to change it Emirates seem to be OK about that.

I am looking forward to seeing everyone and maybe having toast and Vegemite. Also looking forward to seeing what’s in the clothing stores although in the big malls here there is a good range of quality clothing, although often not for my size. Masry says for me to basically take an empty suitcase and bring back a couple of suitcases full of stuff and clothes and shoes etc. So hopefully I won’t have much luggage to worry about when I come.

Life is mostly taken up with Mohamed meeting with the lawyer in his search for a company or with the drivers or whatever. I am leading the quiet life mostly in the house. I was never a big TV watcher but now I really appreciate that big 46” of screen and all the channels (although there’s not too many in English).

Sunday we had Rania and Hagar and Rania’s husband Allaa and her boys Lewi, Mohamed and Omar over for lunch. I was up early, cleaned the floors and the bathrooms and then started cooking. Masry cleaned windows. The meal in the middle of the day is the main meal here, when you have meat (if you are having it at all that day) and I had bought meat and was attempting a couple of Egyptian dishes, kabsah, meat in rice and kofta – meatballs in a sort of almost curry sauce. I bought the spices in packs made up and the recipes were on the pack. Thought I couldn’t go wrong. WRONG!!!! The kofta was really a disaster but honestly I don’t know what went wrong. It had yoghurt in it and that sort of curdled but from the minute I added the spices it smelled really bad. I thought it smelled just like vomit but I kept thinking maybe it’s supposed to smell like this! WRONG!!!! Everyone was terribly polite, but Masry gave me the secret signal that told me it wasn’t good and not much of it got eaten. Except that I threw it into the rubbish and put it outside the door overnight for the doorman to collect and a stray cat got in and it was all over the doorstep because it ate all the meatballs and left the sauce everywhere. So the cats obviously liked it. Nearly made me ill to clean it up.

And as for the kabsah – I bought rib fillet to use for the meat and thought that should be excellent but it was SO tough. I have seen Australian meat to buy frozen but it is almost 3 times the price of local meat. I could tell as it cooked up it would be tough, and the rice part didn’t work properly either, the rice was supposed to be all separate grains and fluffy but it must have had too much liquid and so it went gluggy. (The recipe said use 6 cups and reduce it to 3 cups – but how do you tell that in the saucepan?) And it also said use 750 grams of rice and I don’t have a set of scales so I probably blew it on two counts. But everyone ate that (in desperation I suppose) and we did have vegetable soup (and I have that down OK) and cheese and salad and toshi (pickled vegetables, green chillis, olives and lemons, I think it’s delicious and it is eaten with almost every meal) and bread and fruit and juice and tea, so I hope that everyone was full enough. I’ll keep practising. I really need that recipe book and to stock the pantry with spices etc. Next time I’ll make the kofta from scratch if I can find a recipe on the net. (Found one today)

Maybe I need to bring a couple of recipe books back with me for casseroles etc. Mind you one of the big supermarkets has all the Women’s Weekly series of cook books but they are fairly expensive (for Egypt, probably cheap for Australia). But maybe I should pick up a couple.

The boys are beautiful (Omar is SO cute and this week he let me pick him up lots and I even got a kiss) but loud and they like to run and squeal and push each other around. They give Rania a bit of a hard time, Omar smacks her back if she gives him a tap and he’s only 2! I asked her was she going to have any more and she said no no no, these 3 were more than enough and gave her a headache. Mohamed says that the little Mohamed in particular is a problem in the street every day for something. He’s always laughing – I think he’s probably a "ratbag" rather than a bad boy.

It’s always a little bit of hard going as both sisters don’t speak very much English (Hagar speaks more than Rania) so we don’t talk a lot, but I like them both very much and I’m sure it will get better. This week they looked through the photo album of all the kids.

Allaa invited us to their house next Friday which will be nice. Hagar thinks her fiancé will visit her there and it would be good to also meet him. So I hope that works out. But one thing I am learning here is that you have to be very flexible. Yes means maybe and maybe means possibly and no means we’ll see what happens and maybe it will be yes. And if a meeting is set for 11.00 am then anything up to abouat 12.30 is very acceptable. So when Masry says his sisters will be here at 11.00 to 12 and they arrive at 1.30 then that’s all OK. Mind you I was grateful - there was lots of chopping and grating etc. to be done and I wouldn't have been ready on time anyway.

This weekend has been a holiday for Christians but Masry couldn’t tell me what for. But putting two and two together it may have been for Easter as I know that the weekend just gone was Easter for Ethiopians. Yesterday Mohamed went to get himself a special fish lunch – we ate on the roof. We ate on the roof not only because it was a really nice day but also because it was the vilest smelling stuff I think I’ve ever smelt. Even Masry admits it smells revolting but he says it tastes wonderful. It’s called Alte Fork – salt-fermented mugli fish. It looks like sort of a whole half-rotten raw fish in slimy oil stuff and I simply cannot describe the smell. Masry says his hands etc. will smell for about 2 days even though he soaked in the jacuzzi for about 45 minutes. And he had about 3 litres of water to drink – he says he’s still sooooo thirsty. But he did tell me that all Egyptians would be eating fish on this day so maybe that supports my Easter theory.

So here I am at the net café while Masry goes to the lawyer yet again about a company and then he says it’s City Stars and a movie which will be nice. We didn’t go to one last time we went coz there wasn’t one that appealed but I hope we can today. It's just be nice to be out.

I’ve got a really sore little finger – we had a foam fight while the jacuzzi was filling up yesterday and in the process I hit my little finger really hard straight on the end – you know how you can do that? It didn’t seem to do a lot of damage, just hurt a bit, but it’s getting harder and harder to bend it and it’s fairly swollen. Hope it’s OK.

Masry says to say hello. I still don’t know if he’s coming to Australia at any stage, but I’m hopeful, although I know it will be difficult. I keep telling him how upset everyone will be if he doesn’t come. But it really will depend on what is happening with the vehicles and the company.

Anyway, I‘d better go, sorry there’s not much exciting news. I expect Masry back at any time and as it's 2.30 we'll both be starving by the time we get to City Stars.

lots of love

Lyndall

The Beautiful Blue Red Sea

2008-04-29T12:41:00.031+03:00

Santa Caterina was an interesting side trip but the main intention of our trip was to visit Sharm El Sheikh for a few days. I wasn’t sure what to expect – Masry kept telling me “Wait til we go to Sharm, I know you will like it SO much.” I think he also thinks if ever we could afford it we might buy a unit at Sharm to have as a holiday house – just like President Mubarak. Our summer palace so to speak. Maybe we can be “in residence” when George Bush visits next – or Obama or Hilary or whoever.

We took the long road from Santa Caterina through mountains and more mountains, sand stretches, past what looked like abandoned military structures, past Bedouin camps and then more mountains. But finally we emerged to see the beautiful blue sea in the distance and a low-lying town fringing the ocean, every building white, and Masry announced we had arrived at Sharm. We were actually uncertain if we would get a hotel room as the drivers had told Masry that the town was packed. We did a drive through (the town ribbons along the edge of the sea and is long, not wide – a bit like the GC used to be) and checked it out from the main road. All the big chains are there – Hilton, Marriott, Sheraton, Novotel, Movenpick, etc. etc. – and there are pretty much new cars only, hardly any blowing horns, lawn and trees and flowers all over the place and NO rubbish anywhere. There are also police checks and a seemingly endless stream of aircraft going overhead to the airport. If we couldn’t find a hotel Plan B was to drive the 500 km back to Cairo after a look around.

We tried a few hotels without success but finally at the Coral Beach Rotana Resort we lucked out and got an all-inclusive 4 day/3 night stay. All inclusive means 3 meals, free food during the afternoon at the pool bar, free drinks as well. You get a wristband and that’s it. In fact they gave us two extra lunches as we got lunch before we checked in (check in time 2.00 pm) and after we checked out (check out time 12 noon). Well – coffee in the coffee shop wasn’t free I found out later – 12 pounds!!! Shows how I’m getting used to living in Egypt – that seemed so expensive (very good coffee at On the Run here is 7 pounds 50) and yet it is only about A$2. Tea in the other café was free and I think the best mint tea I’ve had. A shisha pipe wasn’t free but was about the same price as outside at 10 pounds. (Most westerners think that shisha has a narcotic in it but it is basically fruit flavoured tobacco. At this café it was very sweet smelling – apple flavoured. The tobacco is soaked in the juice and then dried again somehow). And Internet access was SO expensive – 85 pounds per hour!! There was wi-fi in the rooms and I did send some emails but that was just way too dear. At the net café I go to in Cairo it is 2 pounds per hour.

I would say the resort was about 4.5 stars; all inclusive was US$190 per day for the both of us.

Everything is quoted in US dollars or Euros (although you could pay for stuff in Egyptian pounds) and the resort was basically completely filled with Russian tourists. In fact, the town was full of Russian tourists. I heard a small sprinkling of other languages and only a couple of times when we were out for the night did I hear English. There were a very small number of Arab tourists; Masry says “the wealthy from Saudi Arabia”. Signs are in Russian and Italian, sometimes with English, sometimes with Arabic.

The view from the balcony of our room – the pool we spent our time at is the one in front here (the Splash Pool), complete with bar. The grounds were immaculate.

Otherwise, Sharm felt like a tourist town that you could come across anywhere, even if it didn’t totally look or sound like it. In looks it reminded me of pictures I’ve seen of Greek island towns but on reflection I figured that was the blue sea, the rocky beaches and the white buildings. There are virtually no residential areas, it’s all apartments and resorts and hotels. And a shopping strip plus a really big open air mall called Na’ama Bay that was packed the night we went there. There’s also an old market but we didn’t get there – but I was happy to save something for next time.

In this picture on the left are all the open air coffee shops, beautifully decorated with lights in all sorts of shapes, stars, traditional lanterns etc. They have low comfortable seats, carpets, colourful tapestries etc. and looked beautiful. No alcohol served - coffee, tea and shisha. (Sorry about the picture quality, we took these with the point and shoot which has marks on the lens from the boys in Ethiopia and their water trip to Lake Langano when a splashing competition marked the lens permanently)

Again, sorry for the quality. You can see the probably thousands of tourists who were walking in the balmy evening with us. Again, lots of big names here including a Hard Rock Cafe and all the designers; obviously tourists with a reasonable amount of money come to Sharm. We did a little shopping including a sarong for me (I left about 4 back in Oz, didn’t think I’d need one here)

Of course the diving is supposed to be spectacular. The coral and fish are accessible from any beachside resort usually from a floating jetty and you can hire snorkels, masks and flippers. Or you can hire glass-bottomed boats for two (US$75). You can also parasail (US$40 for one, $50 for a double), hire a kayak or a private boat (US$110). And you can take diving expeditions. A tour company can arrange a cruise for you for a few days also. I did take a swim from the end of the jetty – the water is a most beautiful sort of navy blue colour. But Masry doesn’t swim and although you can hire life jackets he also doesn’t like cold water, so I couldn’t get him in. He lounged comfortably on a beach chaise under the umbrella and watched.

Most of the time, except for the middle of the day, we spent at one of the pools – there are 2 at the resort. There was piped music – the best of the 70s and 80s I think so it was easy to sing along – a bar that opened for free drinks at 10.30 am, free food in the afternoon, including ice cream, and great staff. I also found the food excellent except for one day (maybe the last day before supplies came in?). There was a mixture of international cuisine, Egyptian food, hot food, salads and a whole bunch of great deserts. And the bread was fabulous. Only problem I had was that there was not quite enough fruit for me.

The water wasn’t really very cold – the days however were fairly hot at around 33-35 degrees so the water certainly felt cold initially. I noticed the sign said the ocean was 24 and the pool I think a bit cooler. It felt cold to begin but soon became just beautiful. I haven’t been swimming for a while and it was wonderful to have so much time to enjoy it. Sometimes I just paddled quietly and at other times had a good swim.

I also managed to improve my tan a little. Some of the Russians were SO burnt I don’t know how they walked around and almost every woman wore a bikini no matter her age or size, which made for “interesting” viewing sometimes. Masry tried to stay out of the sun; he says it makes him too dark. Now there’s a problem a few of us wouldn’t mind. I was careful enough not to get burnt.

The ocean was, as the ocean always is, wonderful to watch. The Red Sea is a beautiful colour – a gorgeous aquamarine when it’s shallow and an almost navy blue as it gets deeper. The images don’t really do it justice.

The stairs were also excellent exercise several times a day; I used to send Masry on ahead as my tired legs struggled up them at the end of the day. He can always bound up any stairs, at any time, two at a time. Once up past the waterfall you kept climbing up past the Roman Theatre and then up a few more to the units then another 20 or so up to our unit on the first floor.

The resort was beautifully lit at night with lighting effects on the trees and buildings and a couple of beautiful filigree domes on the main building.

The resort also had a small bazaar but it was definitely touristy and definitely pricey. Mohamed always refuses to shop at places like these. So do I now.

On the way to dinner

The view was really wonderful and at night was amazing when the sea was calm. However, without a tripod I didn’t get any decent photos.

So I found Sharm a very relaxing time. Swimming, reading, sleeping, occasionally TV, someone else to do all the cooking and a very welcome knock on the door each day as the man called out “housekeeping”. And the freedom of Sharm was a delightful break for me – I could wear all my Aussie clothes and my swimmers in public, swim, even hold hands in public. Masry was certainly relaxed about the whole public interaction deal and it felt like a honeymoon – romantic, comfortable, relaxing.

I think maybe Mohamed had had enough of the quiet life towards the end of our stay – he sat patiently beside the pool for hours at a time with mostly just his thoughts. I know that by the last night he was missing his friends. In Egyptian culture men are very bound up with their male friends. Masry visits with his friends at the coffee shop once or maybe twice a week and misses his closest friends when he has not spoken to them for a few days. And he loves Cairo – crowded, grubby in places, crazy at times, irritating, frustrating, full of life Cairo. He was so pleased to be back – as we came around the Round Road he said simply, “Cairo – it is…Cairo. It is like nowhere else.” And yes it is.

Lots of love until next time

Lyndall

The wedding ring and my jammed finger – sliding door to the balcony, two days after I jammed my thumb in the car door. I’ll try for another better shot some time.

The God-Trodden Mountain

2008-04-19T11:48:00.029+02:00

Last Friday we set off on a delayed honeymoon, well that’s how I thought of it anyway. We set out on Friday morning for the Sinai Peninsula, the south Sinai in particular.

Leaving Cairo via the Round Road we headed for Suez. As you can see you can’t miss the road, or if you did, just follow the power lines. All the power for Cairo comes from the Aswan High Dam and so from every road you can see the massive power lines everywhere, basically following the road. But I had never seen them as thick as they were along the Suez Road. I presume the lines go on to supply towns and industry along the Suez Canal.

I didn’t get to see the famous Suez Canal – you actually take a 2 km tunnel underneath the water. We got to the intersection before the tunnel just after noon and made a stop, along with many other travellers, at the mosque for Masry to attend Friday prayers. All men attending here although women do attend mosque as well. The mosque was not extra large and the crowd spilled out into the surrounds, but the sermon and prayers were broadcast over a loud speaker, as they are from many mosques. (Where I lived in Mohandessin I could hear 3 of them, all in competition at noon on Fridays.)

As you can maybe see it was a beautiful 25 degrees at 12.50 when we arrived at the tunnel. The tunnel is at the bottom end of the canal and the closest I came to seeing the canal itself was a quite incredible sight as we were coming back a few days later. On our approach you could see a ship that looked just like it was sailing along the desert. I’ve seen a similar effect along Golden Beach as the ships go up and down along the east side of Bribie but at least you are close to the ocean there. This just looked completely out of place and very surreal.

As we got onto the Sinai we were on a road that followed the edge of the Red Sea south. We passed many resorts both complete and incomplete including Golden Beach Resorts 1 and 2. None of the incomplete ones appeared to have any building activity going on. All of them were on the sand sort of in the middle of nowhere and many of them gave me the disconcerting feeling that they were not half built but rather half demolished. It looked like it could be the set for some SciFi movie where life on earth has basically come to an end and nature is taking the land back. And in the background you could see the big ships heading down or up the Red Sea, the oil platforms (with small refineries and wells also in the sand along the edge of the water) and fishing boats. And the Red Sea is an amazing blue.

We passed through a number of police and army check points as we travelled south. At each we needed to produce the car licence, Masry’s ID and his licence, my passport and our marriage certificate. As a man and a woman alone in a private car together we must be able to demonstrate that we are married. And with me a westerner we seemed to be under even more scrutiny. Sometimes we’d hand it all over together, sometimes Masry would decide to play a small game and just hand over a bit at a time. At one I didn’t need to know any Arabic to understand. The guy was plainclothes and armed (a number of the police were plainclothes, all armed) and he was the only one to come to my side of the vehicle. He checked the licences and ID and passport and then in Arabic he asked Masry why he had a tourist in a private car (not allowed, must be tourism registered vehicle). And Masry said (in Arabic) she’s not a tourist she’s my wife. And I just KNOW the guy said, “Come on, pull the other one.” And he said it with a smile. So Masry also smiled and pulled out the very impressive piece of paper that carries our photos and purple thumbprints which I handed over also with a smile. And with a small chuckle he handed it back with a BIG hand-on-heart apology and we all smiled as we went on our way.

As we got further south and in about the middle of the afternoon we made a left turn at yet another check point and headed into the Santa Caterina Protectorate, a large tract of mountains and desert peopled by scattered Bedouins. In its heart is the Greek Orthodox monastery of Santa Caterina (St. Catherine) and some of the big biblical sites. While the road had been fairly deserted it became almost completely empty now and we hardly saw a vehicle. But – perhaps this one is only in Egypt….

At times it seemed that there would be no way through the rugged mountains. The geology was really interesting with layered rocks and bands of what looked to me like a sort of dark rust-coloured ironstone, obviously harder than the rest of the stone as it often rimmed the ridges, projecting upwards like a row of teeth. And there was yellow and red and gray stone, sometimes in tilted layers. My guide book said the mountains of the southern Sinai are granitic, but they weren’t what I expected. It also says this is the home of the wolf, the hyena, the wild goat, the gazelle and the eagle; however I saw none of these. However, there were many wadis and even running along beside the road at times were what were obviously sand-filled watercourses, sometimes with acacia or date palms or other small bushes growing in them.

And we passed a few villages around oases, poor-looking, rough villages (although occasionally there were stone houses) which Masry says are peopled by Bedouin. We saw many men lounging around and occasionally women, fully covered, working around rough homes. Many children, playing in the sand. And when a vehicle without any registration passed us Masry explained that these cars and utes belong to Bedouin, who have no ID and therefore are unable to register their vehicles. The predominant clothing colour for the men was a beautiful jacaranda colour – sometimes pants, sometimes long shirts like gallibiya but most often head scarves. I didn’t see it on any of the women.

All-in-all, for such an apparently desolate land there was much to see and be fascinated by on the trip.

We arrived at the very small town of Santa Caterina in the late afternoon and found a room at the Catherine Plaza, a hotel full of Asian and European tourists. Many were wearing crosses and appeared to be Christians who were visiting this biblically significant place.

I think that this is Mt Horeb but it's difficult to tell in this rugged mountain range

A lone date palm grows at the foot of this mountain just near the monastery. It’s hard to see how it survives.

At the entrance to the grounds of the monastery, you can choose to take a camel ride, a taxi ride or walk up to the monastery itself. This is also the beginning of the hike to Mount Moses (as the locals call it). We walked, I can’t imagine that Masry would ever pay money to ride a camel. 

The monastery has been here for 1700 years and has both extensive gardens and an orchard.

Wall detail

According to the Bible, at the age of forty, Moses left Egypt and came to Mount Horeb, which sits behind the monastery. Here’ he found Jethro’s seven daughters watering their father’s flocks at the well, which is still visible to this day on the north side of the monastery’s Abbatical Church, the “Katholikon”, within the fortress precinct of the Holy Monastery. After marrying one of Jethro’s daughters, Moses then lived for forty years in the Sinai Desert, pasturing his flocks with his father-in-law. Here God revealed himself to Moses in the Miracle of the Burning Bush and ordered him to return to Egypt and to bring the Children of Israel to Mount Horeb. And of course there’s the whole Ten Commandments thing as well. Six hundred years later the Prophet Elijah also came to this area and on Mount Sinai you can still see the cave in which Elijah lived.

The Holy Peak of Mount Moses is situated a two hour walk from the monastery and can be climbed in one of two ways. The first entails going up 3,750 steps built with rocks by the pious monks. The other is a meandering road which was created and cut into the mountain in the nineteenth century by the Viceroy of Egypt. All in all it’s a significant climb and you commence around 2.00 am so that you experience sunrise on the mountain. I think much to Masry’s disappointment I declined to make the climb – I really didn’t want the sunrise to be the last I ever saw. He says it’s OK; he’ll wait until the kids visit and climb it with them. If I go on a really intensive fitness program before then maybe I’ll be able to attempt it next time.

On the top of the mountain is a chapel dedicated to the Trinity, built with rocks that had been previously used by the Emperor Justinian to build another church there. To the north of the chapel is the small cave where Moses, who saw God but not his face, entered and stayed for forty days and forty nights.

The Katholikon also houses the Chapel of the Burning Bush and the altar stands above the roots of the bush. My book says that the Bush flourishes several yards from the Chapel, where it has been transplanted in order that it was possible to consecrate the altar on its roots.

However, I didn’t see any of these biblical wonders. There was a large crowd when we went up to the monastery and although we stood in the first line for quite a long time to get into where we thought we would see the remains of St. Catherine, when we got through the door we saw we were just the last in an even much bigger line to get in so, as we had the drive to Sharm El Sheikh to make, we opted not to wait. Again, maybe we’ll organize ourselves better next time. However, the monastery is interesting even around the outside and I was pleased that we made the trip through this rugged but fascinating landscape.

From the monastery looking south (I think)

And I was on the road as well

And the road stretches on and on - no traffic worries here

These appeared to be abandoned military installations

A Bedouin camp we passed with camels and goats. I have no idea how they survive.

Saint Catherine, born in Alexandria in 294 AD was martyred in the 4th century AD by the Emperor Maximinus. Again, according to my book, following her decapitation, holy angels took her body and deposited it to rest at the peak of the highest mountain in Sinai, which now bears her name. About three centuries later, guided by a dream, the monks of the monastery which had already been erected by Justinian, found her body and brought it down from the mountain and laid it to rest in a marble casket in the choir of the Katholikon. I quote: “The sweet fragrance of her sacred remains is up to this day a continuous miracle.” The devotion of St. Catherine was promulgated in the west by the Crusaders and she became a major saint. Thus, ever since the 11th century the Monastery of The Saviour’s Transfiguration has been also known as Saint Catherine’s Monastery or the Monastery of Saint Catherine at the God-Trodden Mountain.

I must admit that I would be fascinated to see inside the monastery as it appears to be filled with amazing religious artifacts, art work, icons, mosaics and architectural features preserved since the building of the monastery so many centuries ago. Again, maybe next time.

When you come to Egypt, put Santa Caterina on your agenda.

This is enough to wade through for now. We had a pleasant and relaxed drive to Sharm El Sheikh, taking the long road, but I’ll tell you all about the beautiful Sharm next time.

Love to everyone

Lyndall

PPS Forgot to say that one of the most amazing things close to Suez is that you come upon these farms in the middle of the sand. Rich green crops and ripe grain, orchards etc. Once again I reminded of how rich the sand is obviously you just need to add water.

Two weeks on

2008-04-14T12:48:00.001+02:00

Today is an anniversary – two weeks today since we fronted up at the Ministry of Justice and got married. So how is married life in Egypt?

Well, in many ways I guess it’s like married life anywhere, but in other ways it’s very different and I’m still not sure sometimes if things are so different because I’ve married an Egyptian, I’ve married a Muslim or I’ve married Masry. When everything is not what you expect it can be tricky to sort out.

For example, when I had to stay in another part of the house for 6 hours because 5 men were here installing the kitchen, which was that? After much thought I think it was a bit of all three. Regardless of the reason it wasn’t a great day given the only room in which there was furniture was the bedroom.

And I still can’t get used to having to be covered up, even at home if there are visitors of any sort, especially men. And I mean covered, long sleeves, long pants or dress, shoes. And there’s some distinction of which I’m not sure, sometimes a gallibaya is OK and sometimes not, sometimes it should be western clothes. Maybe one day I’ll figure that one out as Masry doesn’t seem to be able to explain it. And it seems to be more important that I’m covered now that we’re married than it was before.

But on the whole we’re enjoying life as any newly married couple would I guess, getting to know each other better and enjoying each other’s company. Maybe even more so in this Muslim country where contact between a couple is so restricted before marriage. And remains very restricted in public even after marriage.

The kitchen is in and all working and so far I’ve cooked 3 times with 2 disasters. First of all there was the egg – stainless steel frying pan that everything stuck to and well… eggs have always been so simple but not this lot!

And today there was the pizza; again, they’re so simple. Everything looked set to go until I realized that the oven has no way of telling you what temperature it is. I thought that green light was it – off when the oven reached the right heat – no such luck. Actually, it’s there to show that the oven is in operation. So the pizza ended up burnt on the bottom and not properly cooked through. The other interesting thing about the gas here (as well as the fact that the gas bottle sits in a kitchen cupboard near the stove – Masry has at least bought us two decent fire extinguishers) is that the supply of gas is variable; you can turn it up or down. Oh, and there’s no indicator to show you that the bottle is empty. So when the pizza wasn’t cooking even though the oven was flat out we turned the gas up and in a couple of minutes the pizza was burnt on the bottom! And still not properly cooked on the top! Masry wouldn’t eat it so it’s all mine although he did find it exceptionally funny. I refuse to throw it out – it’s not really that burnt! I’m not sure how I’ll manage for the future; I guess it will be like an old wood stove - trial and error for starters – more disasters for me to eat and more cause for hilarity for Masry!.

Friday
Masry has gone to the mosque, to see his sister and collect more clothes and to the barber and I have done a few bits of housework and now have settled down for a while to relax. One thing about this house and this environment is that there is a great deal of housework to be done. I remember my mother talking about “the dust” and how everything needed to be done every day. And I used to think she was obsessed.  Maybe we really do turn into our mothers! Between the desert and the wind the sand roads and all the building activity around us, the floors, the kitchen (I’ll never have this much stainless again) and furniture need cleaning every day. So given that housework has never been my strong point – it is not a natural inclination, it’s a learned skill – sometimes I get a bit frustrated and I suspect that sooner or later we will have someone to help do some of this or I will go crazy. When I start work I suppose.

But apart from the housework, I really like living in the house. The roof is having some work done; the pergola poles are being painted as well as the door being finished for the bathroom up there, so I haven’t been up on the roof for ages. I’m looking forward to it being complete and being able to get up there, back to my pyramids view.

March has been and gone and the khamseen that Masry predicted didn’t come for 3 days but did for 1 day, one very miserable day when a strong and cold wind blew and the sand was thick in the air. It looks so miserable when it’s like that and you really wouldn’t want to be outside. The house didn’t seem to absorb any more dust than any other day but we certainly had to retract the awnings, I thought they might blow off the wall.

The house is still not quite finished but has relatively few teething problems. We need more power into the kitchen to run the water filter and the ensuite is up to leaking tap number 3 while the big bathroom had virtually no water to the shower to begin with. I think of all the workmanship the plumbing is the worst and the plumbers certainly did the most damage while they were working, things like cracked tiles etc. I still can’t get all the grout off the black floor and don’t really know what else to try to get it off. Hopefully it will wear off in time or I will find a miracle product.

We’ve had Masry’s family to visit to congratulate us on the new house, and to see it of course as they hadn’t been out at all. After my day of getting the house spick and span, helped by Masry after he came back from the mosque, we were ready to receive about 7.00 pm. Masry had told me they were coming for dinner so I had thought roast lamb etc. – Masry says “Meat for dinner? Where are you from?” So dinner is food like cheese, Arabic bread, salad, fruit, eggs and because it is a celebration there is juice and soft drink, for once not tea. (“What, they come to say congratulations and you would serve tea? Where are you from?” says Masry incredulously when I asked. One day I will get the nuances right I hope.) And I did a little Ozzie thing with potatoes and sweet potatoes in the oven with rosemary and garlic. Haga cooked the beans and the eggs and I watched, so at least I know exactly what I’m doing with the eggs now! And the beans (very simple – fava beans, a little corn oil, salt and pepper and lemon. It’s called “foul” and pronounced “fool”). There’s lots of ways to cook them, all different sorts of things to add in but this way seems pretty simple to me and Masry likes them this way. And we used the non-stick frying pan, which helped the eggs a great deal. (It’s a bit like fried eggs but you mash them around and soft cook them so that it looks like a damaged omelette - sort of.)

I told Hend I need an Egyptian cook book in English which I haven’t been able to find yet and she said she would take care of that and I will be very grateful if she finds one. I am kicking myself because I saw one in the airport when I was on my way home last time and I didn’t get it because I thought it would be easy to get it when I got back. I should know by now that when you’re travelling you get it when you see it! Hend was my guide when I was in Egypt the first time – she was such a delight and my first friend in Egypt.

Anyway, we had a really nice night with Rania and Allaa and the three boys and Haga. Omar, the two-year old, is so cute and finally got a bit comfortable with me, even sat on my knee for a while. My big surprise was that Haga was wearing rings on her right hand, what looked like a wedding ring and another band with sapphires and diamonds set into it. I asked her did it mean what I thought it meant and she said yes, that her boyfriend (also Mohammad) and his family had been to see Masry and Rania and Allaa two weeks before and it had been agreed that they would be married. I couldn’t believe he hadn’t told me! And neither could she. She tells me she will be married in about 2 years; Masry says it will not be the summer coming but the one after. When she is married the rings move to her left hand. I am very pleased for her as her future will be secure. Masry tells me that she met him in Aswan when she and Rania went down there just before Christmas. I hope that soon Haga will be able to come out to stay some of the time; I am counting on my new sisters to help me learn the language faster and I would really like to get to know them better.

I think that’s enough for now, Masry is out talking to yet another man about another company. Several have seemed promising but each time something happens to preclude the sale, most often a change of mind on the seller’s part, just as we found it when looking at real estate. Hopefully soon. I hope it is sorted out soon because the status of the company purchase (or establishment) will determine whether or not Masry comes with me for any part of my visit to Australia in May-June. Lahni is doing well and still on schedule to have Baby Bunting in the third week in June. Linc moves to Melbourne (where Lucy is already working) by 21st April so a trip to Oz will also mean a visit to Vic – who knows I might even get to make a trip for a day (or two) to Port Fairy! I really want him to meet the kids and to see Australia, so I am very hopeful that the timing will all work out.

Lots of love to all

Lyndall

The purple thumb of marriage

2008-04-05T11:41:00.003+02:00

Well folks, I know that I haven't posted for a while but I have been busy - moving in and settling in and doing other things! Here's the whole story. Oh and Judy - I can't return an email when you post to blogger so can you send me your email address in a post and I'll write to you direct as your old Caloundra address doesn't work any more!

So this is now a bit old but I haven't been to the net much so forgive me. Hopefully SOON I'll have the net at home (Telecom keep saying "in one week" and have been for almost 4 weeks now)and then I promise to be a better correspondent to you all! So here goes -

Thursday 20th March – The Prophet Mohammad’s birthday

My text message yesterday to all the kids read:

Well, when we left the house this morning it wasn’t with the thought that today would be our wedding day. But guess what? A visit to the Ministry, we thought to check out some paperwork, became a certified marriage agreement and now it is for real. Masry says hello to his new family. I am wearing the purple thumb of marriage…, am very dry in the mouth, and desperately need to go to the loo but I feel VERY happy. Lots of love, Mum, aka Lyndall El Masry.

Now pick yourself up. Shall I begin at the beginning?

For a few days over the past month or so we had done some of the things needed for us to get married. We had been to the Australian Embassy and got all the paperwork needed from there, basically a couple of documents that certify that I was free to marry etc. in both English and Arabic. We had also bought the wedding ring (for those ladies reading – wide band with a slight curve, 4 rows of diamonds (around the ring, not across), 1 row of tropez cut on the outside each side and 2 rows princess cut on the middle, about 2.5 carats all together, set in white gold) and we’d made arrangements about the marriage contract.

So yesterday we set out to go to the Ministry of Justice (the place you have to get married if you are a foreigner) to find out what else we needed for us to be able to get married and to see about making a time to do so. We were going to go shopping for an entertainment unit for the TV etc. after that, so we just dressed in ordinary clothes: jeans and a shirt each, no makeup for me and Masry hadn’t had a shave for a few days. So you can see we really didn’t have any intentions of getting married this day.

As always the traffic was awful and the parking situation even worse, but in one of the small side streets near the Ministry we jagged an excellent park and Masry left me in the car while he took all the paperwork and our passports to see what else was needed. He was back fairly soon, dropping our passports onto the seat and walking off. He eventually came back with a stamp valued at 50 pounds (LE) which we must have and copies of some of our documents and parts of our passports, including my visa. He also said that we needed 5 passport-sized photos each and we had to have 2 witnesses (2 men or 4 women - interesting in itself) with us and we could come back the next day, or any day they were open. Masry already had 5 photos in the car from when he got his new ID and by chance we’d parked in front of a photographer’s studio so we decided to get mine done straight away. That didn’t take long and then Masry made a phone call to his brother-in-law and said – tomorrow morning at 10.00am. Then he said as we drove off, as he often says about things, “Last choice. What do you say, yes or no?” So I said, “Last choice for you too. Yes or no?” “Yes for me,” he says and I say, “Yes for me too.”

I immediately feel nervous – maybe like waiting at the dentist. My mind is racing, thinking, I’ve nothing to wear. So soon? Am I really ready for this? And so on and so forth as perhaps you can imagine. As we slowly make our way round the block, Masry’s phone rings and he’s looking a little down and saying, “Oh, oh, OK.” When he hangs up he says – “It will be Sunday. Tomorrow is a holiday for the Prophet’s birthday, then Friday and Saturday all government is closed. So it will be Sunday. Unless it is today.” I can see him calculating how we might manage to get married today and not wait until Sunday. Strangely enough, my nerves have totally vanished; I must have really made a last choice. Masry’s brother-in-law is at work of course. So I ask do the witnesses have to know us. No, he doesn’t think so; we just have to have 2 witnesses. Surely there would be men willing to witness the marriage somewhere in there I ask? OK says Masry, we will go and see. By now we’ve nearly gone round the entire block and are back where we had parked, but the park is gone. Maybe there’s no park and it will be Sunday. But suddenly, there’s another one in front of us, double parked to be sure, but a gap in the double parking. So we park. I put on some lip gloss and off we go.

I hope that I can take you there, as if you were our guests on this important day. You’ll find yourself at no wedding like you have been to before (well, I think you’ve probably already guessed that) but I hope you’ll enjoy being with us regardless.

Let’s go up the stairs at the building entrance and through a small crowd of people gathered for no apparent good reason and to the two small lifts (very small) to wait for a ride to the 4th floor. I see tattered signs everywhere that forbid video or photography, so there’ll be no wedding photos here. All squeeze in to the lift – and yes it is a tight squeeze, one man in a galibaya and head scarf is a little upset at being unable to fit in. The 4th floor is the first stop and of course, we’re at the back of the lift but after everyone in front of us gets out to let us out, we can make our way from the lift lobby through a door with a sign in Arabic and into what looks like a waiting room.

The room, nothing very flash, a bit grubby and with chipped and fading paint, is about 10 metres by 10 metres, has benches and small tables and is already full. Immediately I can see some other western-looking faces both male and female, and I’m glad I didn’t get dressed up, everyone is dressed pretty much as we are, some daggier and some a little smarter, but not much. I take a seat on a spare bench and Masry tells his name to a man seated at a small desk and hands over some of the paperwork we have including our passports and Masry’s ID.

After a few minutes he joins me on the bench. I ask him how long he thinks we might wait given all these people in front of us. He shrugs but tells me he has given the man fifty pounds to help speed things up. Along comes a sort of waiter and we order tea and water, Masry’s tea with 4 sugars and mine with none. You can order one as well if you like, or a coffee or maybe a Coke. Meanwhile, let me tell you about some of the other people sharing this day with us.

To my immediate left are two older women and two older men. One of the women is crying and they are speaking in a language that sounds to me like Arabic. After a few minutes Masry tells me they are Iraqi. Next to them is a large party of veiled women, as well as children and men. They have come prepared. There’s a takeaway bag from a fish restaurant on their table and while I watch there’s the delivery of a box of meals, each individually wrapped. Sudanese says Masry. Directly in front there’s a group, bride in a scarf, western man, both young, and two men speaking in Arabic who I presume are the witnesses. There’s another young man with two women, one older, one younger. On my right there’s a western woman with 3 Egyptian men. The men are talking at a great rate in Arabic, the woman is reading a book – in English I notice. Another group arrives and also sits on my right, all the men older, the woman fully covered. They all look Egyptian to me but at least one person must be a foreigner. Could be from anywhere says Masry, Iraq, Kuwait, Libya, Sudan etc. etc. There are two other groups of men on the other side of the room and a few people standing around.

Meanwhile down the corridor to our right there’s quite a lot of coming and going and every now and again the man calls out a name (usually Mohammad). There is a series of small rooms down there with people milling outside the doors and lots of to-ing and fro-ing. Suddenly a young couple comes out and joins the group of older people on our left. The girl looks happy and excited and she and I share a smile. Two older men also come with them and there’s lots more smiling and excited chatter, I figure they are married now. We wait for about half to three quarters of an hour maybe, and Masry gets up to check. Come on, let’s go he says and we join all the others down the corridor. You have to stay in the waiting room I’m sorry, unless you’re one of our witnesses.

We go to Room 1 and wait outside the door. Inside there’s a man at a desk as well as a couch and a few chairs. And about 5 other people, all men. While we wait outside we are joined by another 2 couples and their witnesses. One couple is older; the man asks me if I am Italiano. No, German? No, Australian, I reply. He is overweight and perspiring heavily, he sounds maybe American to me. So now there’s a bit of a crowd gathered around Room 1 and as well, staff with files enter and leave on a regular basis. There also seem to be a few of what look like “helpers” who accompany a couple with their files and answer questions, or ask them. We stand for maybe 5 minutes before Masry says let’s go. While we wait I hear some ululating from the waiting room – my guess is it’s the Sudanese.

We get the two chairs at the desk while the man completes another file and clears his desk a bit, lining up his stamps etc. I can see my blue passport on the top of the heap of papers in front of him. After dealing with another file brought to him by a staff person, he gets out a fresh and thick wad of papers, A3 size that are folded in half, and a clean white cardboard folder. He writes something on the top of the papers in Arabic and red pen and then gets our ID to check it.

He speaks to Masry after looking at his ID and there seems to be some sort of problem. Masry digs out his wallet and another ID. The man turns to me and makes a gesture for a moustache. I understand. The ID Masry gave has a photo of him with short hair and a moustache, now he’s clean shaven and has a shaved head. I’ve told him before that I wouldn’t recognise him on his ID and obviously neither does the man. He pulls out another with a recent photo and after careful inspection the man starts to write. He asks me will I marry this man. Yes I say (wondering if this is it). He doesn’t do a great deal, although he attaches our 50 pound stamp, but puts all the papers in the folder and we pay him 30 pounds and he puts that in his drawer and gives us a receipt which also goes in the file.

“Let’s go”, says Masry. Then I know this isn’t it because our file doesn’t look like the others I’ve seen and we haven’t used our photos yet. We go to Room 4, over the corridor. There are 3 desks in here with 3 workers, two women and a man. We are directed to one of the women first. She’s using her mobile phone to text someone and it takes a minute for her to take our papers and do what she has to do, which seems very little. As soon as we are finished she goes back to her mobile. We take the file to the man at the next desk who fills in some of the spaces and takes more of our money and adds his receipt to the file. He and Masry have a quiet conversation but I’m not sure what it’s about. Meanwhile the lady at desk 3, with another couple, is having a loud discussion about the file she’s handling. I’ve got no idea of course but it eventually seems to be sorted out.

Out the door, file in hand, to Room 3. The man here slips his shoes on and moves to a second desk and we take seats and I suspect he has been at prayer. He takes the file and begins to complete the details, asking me something in Arabic. When I look blank and apologise he asks do I have any Arabic. I say no and so Masry gets to answer the questions. I sit quietly through a few things here; Masry goes to copy something else. People come and go and the man signs off on other files. One of the couples that come in is an Egyptian man and a western woman wearing a head scarf that looks very awkwardly arranged. I suspect (although I don’t really know) that this is something new to her. She too is asked if she has any Arabic and she says no. She has an American accent. She also looks very serious. I guess this is a serious business.

I look around the small room as the man writes. It has a window that I can’t see anything through. It has filing cabinets in two tone brown along 2 walls with dates on the front of them. There are two very grubby oriental rugs on the floor, one with holes, and none of the furniture matches anything and the chairs are battered. The man’s prayer rug is thrown over a spare chair, and although it’s fraying at the edges it’s the nicest thing in the room.

At one stage the man asks me in English will I marry this man? I say yes again. Our photos are fixed to all 5 copies of the papers. Our names are filled in. I am asked for my father’s first name and my mother’s first and second names. They are put down in Arabic somewhere on the papers.

Now everything is filled in and Masry is asked to sign all the copies of the papers and also two of the other pieces of paper that came from the Australian Embassy. He is asked to repeat some words in Arabic. And then his right thumb print is added to each photo, using an ordinary old-fashioned purple ink pad.

Next it’s my turn. I go through the same process. I write not my signature but my full name. As my thumb print is added to my photos I also get to repeat some words in Arabic. Goodness knows if I’ve said the words correctly but it seems to suffice. (I ask Masry later what I was required to say. He says it’s something like I am freely marrying this man.)

Two men that I’ve seen in the waiting room come in and also begin to sign our papers. Obviously these are our witnesses. Masry speaks with them and shakes hands with them and I say thank you in Arabic. One man seems concerned he’s missing something as he goes out of the room for a while in the middle of signing. But he’s back to finish off after the other man has completed his bits. Finally the Ministry man adds his signature, circles a few a things and then puts all the bits of paper into a file and puts it in his drawer. “Let’s go,” says Masry. And with that it’s over, we’re married.

Masry still has a paper to copy and he goes and does that while I wait near the windows, feeling like it’s all a little unreal. A woman beside me asks me if I’m German? American? I say no, Australian. And she is clearly a Scot. She asks am I here to get married. I say I just did, about 3 minutes ago. She tells me congratulations. She talks about her holiday romance that was supposed to end and didn’t. She tells me all her friends and family think she’s crazy, but that she knows this is right for her. I tell her it’s something I didn’t ever imagine me doing, but I know this is right for me too.

And then I hear Masry’s unmistakable footsteps. “Linda, let’s go,” he says. And I go, my purple thumb, a tangible sign of today’s events, going with me.

Love to all

Lyndall

PS. We get a copy of the papers in Arabic and one in English in about a week and then we can travel out of Cairo together – probably to Sharm El Sheik for a few days honeymoon. It’s on the Red Sea, it’s supposed to be beautiful.

PPS. We forgot all about the ring until today, but I have it on now.

PPPS. If you are an Egyptian couple a man comes to you and conducts a similar sort of paperwork signing. After that, either then or at a later date, you have a wedding party with friends and family when everyone is dressed as we would expect, gifts are given and the party goes all night long with food, music and dancing. When the house is fully completed it is likely that we will have one too. You’d all be welcome.

PPPPS. Masry has just come in and asked if I am writing another one of my stories. He asks if I have written his name. I say that all my stories have his name in them somewhere. “I am your hero?” he asks. “Absolutely” I reply.

Last days

2008-03-11T11:57:00.006+02:00

Today is Monday and it was to be the last day at the house for all the workmen. Mohammad has been counting down for at least a couple of weeks. But it is 5.45 pm and the news is that the painters need to come back tomorrow to finish some things and the electrician will be back after 3 days to put the lights in the hallway outside the front door and over the front door. But tonight he will finish all the inside work, so we will be here until he does.

Later the same night

Sorry, little break – we just went down to the local shopping centre and got some bread rolls and cheese and stuff for a sort of picnic meal (didn’t have lunch) with the electrician. The electrician is putting all the plates on the light switches and power points at the moment – am struggling to get them all on straight and I suspect that some of them won’t be which will likely drive me mad. Anyone who knows me knows how I am about crooked paintings etc.

The fly screens and outside awnings went up yesterday and last night we bought the bedroom lights we needed – Masry really did the choosing and I agreed although he chose the glass shades that I liked best for the lights in the main bedroom. They are all excellent and will do very nicely. So all the lights are now fitted (except for 2 wall lights in one bedroom, coz we couldn’t get any to match the main light and we think a wardrobe will have to go in front anyway). All this stuff doesn’t count the roof of course, there are many lights to go up there and the plumbing has to be finished up there also and the kitchen cupboard installed and the sink. So the roof has got a bit to do but the house is SO close. Oh yes, and most of the curtains go up on Wednesday. As long as it’s ready to live in next week – I must move on Monday at the latest.

When we went down to the shopping centre I noticed a sign on the first floor for a net café so tomorrow I will investigate and hopefully there will be one there, which of course will mean I do lots of cursing and looking back wishing I’d discovered it quite a few weeks ago – when I think of the time wasted sitting in traffic going to the other one in Dokki!!! But I guess that’s why looking back is a foolish pastime. So if there’s one there I’ll just be very grateful.

Mohammad must be exhausted – all day at the house he just walks around and around, helping out if he’s needed, fetching and carrying at times and just keeping an eye on everything. When we are here for 12 hours at a stretch he is basically standing and walking for all that time while I take my ease on the roof, sitting for all that time. I know he is looking forward to it being finished, so that he can concentrate on the company for one reason I’m sure, but maybe also because he is tired. He is very uncomplaining, stoic really, and rarely says he is weary or hungry or anything else that indicates discomfort. He is quite wonderful about everything, he will do anything I ask and often he thinks to do things anyway that I don’t ask about. All-in-all I think I’m pretty lucky to have found him.

The carpenter also has to come back to finish off the doors – locks, handles and the glass inserts. I have been quite intrigued by the process to stain and finish the doors. In Oz we would simply grab a can of wood stain or Estapol or something and give them 2 or 3 coats. But here it has already been more than a week and they are not finished yet and they do something to them every day. They are using some kind of vile smelling stuff that goes on with a small air compressor and the doors have already had many coats, being sanded off in between each. Whatever it is, it sort of bubbles on the surface after it is put on and is drying. I’m wondering if it is old-fashioned shellac but I don’t know and no-one can tell me of course. They brush something on to the door surrounds, but they are not yet as dark as the doors. And whatever happens I guess they have to be sealed with some sort of gloss something as this brown stuff comes off on your fingers if you rub them across the surface. And the men are spraying it in the kitchen, definitely a confined space and no-one wears a mask or goggles or any of that stuff. Not even shoes!

Speaking of OH & S, yesterday the plumbers needed to move where the toilet was going in the bathroom on the roof. That was another interesting exercise to watch as they got a very thick but rather frayed rope, a single circular piece of canvas that had one big hook to attach it to the rope and they tied the rope around one of the poles on the roof and then the man put the sling sort of around his waist and climbed over into the light and air well and down he went. I assume he sort of sat in the sling while he did what he had to do to move the pipes. Quite amazing.

Tuesday morning

Well, instead of being at the cafe in the estate Mohammad has dropped me off at the regular net cafe in Dokki while he attends to a business appointment Downtown. It's good because I am here for a few hours before we go out to the house. It's quite warm here today, about 25 I think, so I'm out of jeans at last although I'm sure I'll be back in them when the khamseen is here. That's Egypt's cold desert wind that comes in March sometime, I've read that sand can even be blown in through the keyholes so we'll see how the new house survives it. Masry says it's miserable and lasts for about 3 days.

Looks like the weekend will be for moving... No more daily traffic woes! I have made a second foray out to Felfela from the house, again without problem, so hopefully my confidence will slowly build in regards to driving myself around. And finally my sense of direction seems to be coming back - very odd, maybe it's being in the northern hemisphere or something but I have been totally turned around and clueless - and now I can recognise quite a few of the roads and streets. If all goes well for Masry today he soon won't be around to drive me soon, he'll be busy at his office running his company so it will be get in the car or be a stay at home!

Somehow I've nearly managed to while away my three hours on the net but thank you to everyone for your emails - I love hearing from "home" so please keep them coming. Was thinking of everyone in Port Fairy over the weekend - I bet Folkie was just amazing again!

Lots of love to all

Lyndall

More photos

2008-03-11T11:01:00.011+02:00

The pyramids in sunshine and in shadow

Looking back towards the Al Haram area and the city

The walls and floor have some inbuilt decoration as well as the huge variety of tiles used to finish them. This is an example.

The roof looking out over the pyramids reserve towards Cairo, kitchen and bathroom on the left

Sorry for the delay

2008-03-09T12:31:00.003+02:00

Tuesday

It’s been a real pain having the net café close down – I was actually feeling far more connected with the world there for a while and I miss it again. The weather is warming up, it’s quite warm up here on the roof today and lately I have spent a few days up here in short sleeves, although I have to put my jumper on again to leave – Masry says this is a traditional area and I can’t walk around in short sleeves – don’t know how that’s going to go when I live here and it’s the middle of summer. Guess I’m buying lots more of those fine cotton long sleeve shirts!

It’s all go at the house all of a sudden. Today there are painters, electricians, plumbers and the air-conditioning man all here working. Masry says it will all be finished by next Monday, kitchen excepted. That will take another week or so. And then it has to be cleaned up, our responsibility incidentally, not the tradesmen. At first Masry says that his sisters and I would do it but I told him I didn’t want his sisters’ first visit to the house to be to do work, so now it’s me and the wife of the doorman and maybe one of the other women from around the buildings nearby.

Mind you we still haven’t finished buying all the light fittings. The ones we chose for the main bedroom - they ended up only having one of them so we have to take something else. And there’s still one bedroom we haven’t chosen for. We went into the “electrical” area of Downtown last night but didn’t see anything we liked. Not sure what we will do, just know it has to be done by Sunday (the last day the electrician will be here). All the appliances and the jacuzzi bath got delivered yesterday and are sitting waiting to be installed by the plumber.

So, with the house being nearly finished and all it looks like I will be moving at the middle to end of next week, depends on when it is furnished I guess. At least once I am here, and as soon as it is connected, I will have the net at the house so that will be MUCH better.

One day next week Masry also has to go to Alex again to collect the two Toyota HiAce – Lahni he saw a picture of your van and says you can drive one if you like – come and stay and have a job, I’ll get to look after the baby – and get them organized onto the road. The two Coasters have both had work every day since he got them and have work lined up for the next couple of weeks. I’m sure that he will make a success of this; he’s very competent at everything he does so, insha’allah (God willing - in Egypt I must learn to say this a lot), the future looks fine.

I can hear lots of banging going on down beneath me – I hope that no-one is damaging the tiles or beautiful walls – might go down for a quick look shortly. The plumber was pretty rough yesterday and now around the taps we have chipped tiles that you can see – will have to get the ceramics man to do something about that I guess. We’re getting him back to make some repairs and finishing on the roof so maybe he will be able to make some small fixes to the damage as well. The electrician also managed to make a problem around a couple of switches; again, we’ll see what the ceramics man can do.

We’ve made some adjustments to colours, the main living area is now broken into 3 with one part pale grey (entryway etc.) one part white and one part that beige/string colour. One bedroom is green, one white and the main one is blue. Masry says if we don’t like it we’ll get it re-painted in a year or so. We’ll see how it goes.

Thursday

Well, as you can see, didn’t get to the net café yesterday – we were at the house for 12 hours – Masry likes to supervise the guys as I’ve said. We didn’t eat until almost 6.00 pm, must be what it’s like in Ramadan (the fasting month) when you don’t eat between sunrise and sunset. One loo visit in the day (can't wait until the plumbing is finished!)and we left at 10.30 pm.

Most of the electrical work is done and most of the painting and the air conditioners are all finished and the plumbing about one third done. Today the windows go in and more painting to be completed and more plumbing. Tomorrow will be a day of rest; I won’t see Masry as they are having people to visit in the afternoon.

Have had a break in the day – I just made my first drive by myself to go anywhere significant – I went down to the coffee shop at the servo and also to Felfela to get lunch, about 45 minutes to an hour what with the traffic and all although it’s really about 20 minutes max there and back if you had a clear run. I went by myself and wasn’t nearly as nervous as I am with Mohammad in the car and I didn’t have any problems so feel much better having achieved that once. I’m sure there were times when some of the horns were being blown at me but I just ignored all that; there are so many horns going how was I to know? At least that’s how I rationalised it. I’m sure I didn’t cause any accidents.

Most of the windows are in – very nice. The painters are still sanding and patching after the first coat in some places and two coats in others, doing some cover up after a few places the air con guys left marks etc. Couldn’t see that the plumbers had made much progress in the morning – Mohammad says “nothing new” even though there are 4 of them there. We’ll go out after the windows and doors are in I gather.

The lift is now working – which is a good thing and a bad thing. Mohammad came and got me when it was installed – “come, you will be the first” so we went for its first official trip up and down. It’s tiny but nice. So it’s a good thing that sometimes the lift is there but then I don’t get the exercise so I try to still go up and down the stairs a fair bit. But the lift is good late at night when the stairs are so dark you get to feel your way down – taking the lift is then an excellent option.

It’s hard to believe that next week I will be moving out here. Not that we have any furniture yet mind you – I think on Saturday we are going to get the first of it. We’ll begin for certain with one bedroom and all of the living area, then the other two bedrooms. Some things we have chosen, some not. I’m sure there will be a flurry of activity Saturday, Sunday and Monday.

It feels hot today – I think I am going to find summer VERY hot, given that we have just barely finished winter.

Saturday

Well, as you can see, I still haven’t been to the net but tomorrow morning I think.

Meanwhile, today we spent at the house all day again, the plumber is almost finished and the painter will finish on Monday. The electrician comes Monday to finish off and we still haven’t bought the lights. We went to two places on the way home tonight and couldn’t see anything. Will go to another 2 on the way tomorrow – there’s one right beside the net café (and it was closed when we got here!). The other one is where we got the other lights and I figure even though there wasn’t anything we loved (or liked) before we’ll just have to make some choices anyway.

The rest of the screens go on the doors and windows tomorrow. The carpenter will come after Monday to finish off the doors which are still being stained. The curtains for everywhere except the “reception” (well the outside ones, the blackouts are done) will be put up on Thursday. We didn’t get to go buying furniture today – soon I hope. As soon as Masry gets his head a bit clear of company matters I guess. But I have to move in one week’s time. So I hope I have a bed at least. It’s great to see the ensuite finished and the big bathroom mostly, just no bench for the basin yet or towel racks etc. Everything else is in. I think it is going to be a beautiful house, it’s already got a nice feel.

I was going to have a fairly early night but Saturday Night Fever has just come on TV so I might just have to watch it all over again. Mind you I think I like the older John Travolta better but I need to brush up on my disco skills…. Hmmm his body wasn’t half bad really…. And Ley – I think you have those moves just right….

Anyway, soon I’m sure I’ll have more news than house news…

Lots of love to everyone

Lyndall

A box of wood

2008-03-09T12:25:00.003+02:00

It’s Friday – a beautiful day, quite warm – and Masry has collected me at 2.00 pm after prayers at the mosque and there are a few things to do, hopefully to finish off a few things and bring a smile to everyone’s face!

Masry has been busy since I said goodnight to him yesterday evening – the car has been cleaned (mind you he gets it cleaned every few days and it’s always immaculate) – he’s bought the diaries for the Coasters and is ready for action. I notice the diary has a world map in the back; I can’t help but check out Australia and find it interesting that in this Egyptian diary, mostly in Arabic, the City of the Gold Coast is on the map. Masry notices me looking – “looking for your children” he says and he’s right of course. But the main thing I notice is that it’s a long way away.

I have finished Cloud Atlas this morning and now I really have nothing to read. I absolutely refuse to read anything I have yet AGAIN. I can nearly recite some of the handful of books I have by heart I think. After our abortive attempt to find La Maison Francaise in Degla Street yesterday, Masry had wanted me to bring the phone number so I have my copy of Egypt Today with all the bookshop phone numbers in it and sure enough the bookshop is supposed to be at 28 Degla.

So Masry says ring them and after I dial the number and get a recorded message – I’m supposed to put 02 in front of the number in the book, how am I supposed to know this I wonder – Masry dials it and gives it back to me. The conversation goes something like this:

Me: Hello, do you speak English?
Man on the other end of the phone: Yes, I speak English
Me: That’s great. Are you the bookshop in Degla Street?
Man: Degla Street Mohandaseen, yes
Me: So can you tell me please, do you have books in English?
Man: No – books?
Me: Yes books. So, only Arabic and French?
Man: Yes. Box?
Me: Books, you have books in Arabic and French?
Man: Box, you want a box? A box of wood.
Me: Books!
Man: Yes box, you want box? A box of wood?
Me: (Looking kind of bemused I think) Books! Books!
Masry: Give me the phone
Masry – some Arabic that I can basically understand as “Do you have books in English and French etc.”
A short conversation follows and Masry hangs up
Me: So no books in English? He kept asking me did I want a box of wood…
Masry: No, no books. I ask him about the books and he says – what are you talking about? This is a furniture shop!

Hysteria - well almost, tears at least. It’s not a bad way to start the day even if we still haven’t located a bookshop!

It’s been a good day. The voile was bought for the curtain sheers and all the lights except one bedroom also chosen and bought, a good price and very nice, although very classic in style and ornate with lots of gold and bulbs like candles. We delivered those to the house and checked out the ceilings again – they still look great!

And the first vehicle went out on its first job – the beginning of something grand and great I hope for Mohammad.

So now there’s hardly anything left to buy – drain covers, a doorbell, a peephole lens for the door, the big bathroom cabinet and some bits and bobs like soap holders and a mirror for the small bathroom. And then when all that’s done and the furniture has been bought the curtains for “reception” to be made. We’ve chosen the design but the fabric needs to be purchased and the curtains made. You’ll notice how I brush off buying the furniture so easily even though not all of it has been chosen.  But it will all work out. Today I am a total optimist. Like I said, it’s been a good day!

Love to everyone

Lyndall

Another 10 days gone!

2008-02-28T19:33:00.008+02:00

I was lucky enough to see this amazing sight the other day, but unlucky enough to only have my little point and shoot and not to be on the roof for once - we were just leaving because of the rain. Still it was quite incredible to see.... Hope you enjoy it too

Well here it is Thursday already and the last couple of weeks seem to have flown by. The house is progressing, painting being the order of the day and colours almost settled. Preparation of the walls has taken the longest time, but the ceilings are now completed and looking fabulous and the walls will be started on Saturday or Sunday. Only a couple of colours to choose.

Some of the curtain fabric has also been purchased at last and is with the maker, we have decided to leave the main reception curtains until last, they are expensive and we figured we'd wait until all the furniture etc. was in and make a final choice.

The last of the plumber's requirements have been bought, the jacuzzi bath will be delivered on Saturday and the plumber will commence work then too. We'll go looking for lights on Sunday. The windows and glass doors have been delivered and are awaiting installation when the painter finishes. The carpenter has mostly finished will be back to put the door handles on when the painter has completed staining them etc.

All the appliances are also being delivered on the weekend to await the plumber and then the kitchen installation. So there will be a huge amount happening in the next 2 weeks if all is to be finished for me to move in. I only have my place in Mohandaseen until the 15th March.

This week has been a big week for Masry as he has taken delivery of the first two vehicles as a beginning for the new tour company and they are now all ready to begin work tomorrow. It's wonderful to see him so happy and excited. This also meant that I didn't see him for 2 days this week and a fairly boring two days they were - I am out of reading material and am reading David Mitchell's Cloud Atlas for the third time! It's a great book but really.... We tried to find a bookshop today near my place but like many things one tries to find in Egypt it was a failed attempt even though we drove the entire length of the street in peak traffic... There are 5 TV channels in English and sometmes there are good things but quite a few of the shows have seasons behind Oz and the movies have been seen before. I must admit that occasionally I get something really good however, it's just pot luck. Masry says when I go back to Australia in May I can bring back heaps of books - he might be sorry he said that when he sees the bill for the excess baggage!!!

Anyway, have been here a couple of hours now and better go, Friday tomorrow so it's mosque day for Mohammad and I won't see him until after 2.00 pm. So I get to do my housework and washing - lucky me!

Hope all is well at home

love to everyone

Lyndall

Mohandaseen

2008-02-26T20:39:00.011+02:00

The hairdresser over the road

Out my kitchen window

The living area

The living area, classic style Egyptian furniture included

My bedroom

Net the doorman cleaning a car outside the front gate. Taken from my bedroom window so you can see what I mean about being on the footpath,almost literally!

The house - next stage

2008-02-24T21:22:00.020+02:00

Looking from the dining area back towards the entryway - all the ceramic down and beautiful

Looking towards the dining and office areas

Main living area looking towards the balcony

The toilet off the main living area

The main or "big" bathroom

The ensuite

Looking from the bedroom down the hall to the kitchen

The bedroom looking towards the pyramids from the doorway

My "office" in the main bedroom now the tiles are down

House pictures stage 2

2008-02-21T16:52:00.008+02:00

There's more to come but blogger has just died on me for today and won't upload any more images....

The tiles go up in the "big bathroom"

The big bathroom without the floor etc. but the walls done

The tiler and his offsider at work in the living area - known as reception or the hall in Egypt

The ceramics man's offsider makes us some tea

House photos at last - beginning at the beginning

2008-02-20T18:43:00.015+02:00

The main entrance is at the side of the building

The living area looking out to the balcony

The bare kitchen entrance - without ceramics...

The men have set up a very makeshift kitchen for brewing the Egyptian essential - tea

The cement and bricks and tiles (and sand of course) all sit and wait in the entryway

The kitchen walls are done and the fancy glass rests while it waits for the doors to be made

The view from the roof towards the southwest back across the estate

The doorman's little girl - very cute

Across the road and up one is my local general store...

Our side of the building from the outside - the top two balconies are ours

More photos from Egypt

2008-02-19T22:18:00.018+02:00

Headed home through the back streets after a hard day's work at the pyramids

On the street beside the car wash (all done by hand for next to nothing. The bananas are grown between Cairo and Alex and are excellent.

A glimpse of a tok tok as it buzzed by - note the decorations on the windscreen

The building sort of next door goes up floor by floor - this is how they do it in Egypt - each floor is hand mixed and poured by the way...

Roasted sweet potato - delicious!

McDelivery? Yes McDonalds comes home delivered and it really is called McDelivery!

One of the main intersections along El Nil Corniche, taken from high up in the Ramses Hilton. Note the traffic on the flyover

The more the merrier

Traffic in Faysal Street , Al Haram (Pyramids) area

Cafe life - men only usually - enjoying the sheesha

The bazaar (yes, a market really is called a bazaar.) Seeing the guys ride around on pushbikes with the trays of bread on their heads is incredible - amazing balance as they weave quickly through the traffic and pedestrians.

Egypt - photos

2008-02-18T20:17:00.012+02:00

Just as I sometimes see them

My view of the pyramids from the roof - in sunshine and shadow - it's ever-changing and yet never-changing

Watching the world go by

At the front of the new library of Alexandria

The Nile by night

The pyramids are everything you imagine

Near the pyramids - there's lots of donkeys used for carts and as personal transportation in this area. My feeling is that this young lady was fetching water.

More pictures later

2008-02-17T20:27:00.004+02:00

I've finally found a net cafe near home so I can come and do stuff without fighting the traffic!!! However, image upload is really slow so not many up tonight. Will probably come each evening and do a bit now it's simpler, so stay tuned for more images.

Love to all

Lyndall

House photos

2008-02-17T19:21:00.007+02:00

Taking it easy on the bedroom balcony

The doorman's wife with a friend and chilren

Saturday

2008-02-17T10:18:00.003+02:00

Today at the house it was really nice in the early morning – beautiful day and no tradesmen – just Masry and me in the house with all the tiling completed, so it actually feels a bit like a house and you can begin to imagine it with all the furniture etc. It was a pleasure just to walk around and look lots, getting the feeling of ownership. We were there to meet a whole lot of tradesmen, none of whom arrived so after an hour or so we headed back into town.

Yesterday we got the quote for the curtains – LE 42,000 which is a lot of money for curtains. So we’re not sure what we will do, there are a few options: choose something different and simpler, only get some of them done for now, buy the fabric and trims elsewhere if the designer will still make them. Don’t know yet.

And Egypt won the semi final so on Sunday night they play Cameroon in the final. Although my TV had died (it does that when it gets hot) I could tell whenever Egypt scored by the huge roar from people in their houses and gathered around TVs in all the shops – like being in Qld when State of Origin is on. And when they won the street indeed erupted – there were fireworks, a series of 8 sounds that I swear was gunfire, horns blaring, people thronging the streets and shouting and cheering, all of which went on for quite some time. Now there are flag sellers everywhere and the excitement is building for the final on Sunday night at 7.00 pm. We’ll be having an early day on Sunday so that Mohammed can be at home in plenty of time.

Saturday 16th (how time flies)

And the winner is…

Well yes, Egypt won their semi final and I thought there were big street celebrations that night. The following few days there were flag sellers on every street corner (very entrepreneurial, some Egyptians), flags flying from taxis and all sorts of vehicles and a great sense of anticipation everywhere you went. Egypt went on to be the winner of the ANC and then the city went COMPLETELY crazy.

I live in an inner suburb called Mohandaseen, an upmarket suburb, a semi-rich area, some parts of it really quite rich, although don’t go thinking Toorak. There’s a very big major street that runs through it called Gamm’ea el Dowal el Arabia and my street, Jeddah (pronounced Gadda) runs off el Dowal. I only live around 200 metres max from the main street. El Dowal is full of high rise, shops, restaurants, banks etc., and on Cup night every shop of any description, including my tiny hole-in-the-wall supermarket in Jeddah and also my building, had a TV going and a crowd around it. Coffee shops had plastic chairs in the street so as many people as possible could watch together. Imagine grand final night or State of Origin night (and then multiply by “n” Cairo has 17 million people!) The result was 1-0 with Egypt’s goal being scored latish in the second half.

When the whistle sounded the roar that I heard from my place was like being in the MCG or the Gabba. Then there were fireworks, drums, more of what sounded like gunshots, car horns, singing, shouting, screaming – you name it, any possible sort of noise was being made with wave after wave of sound from what was obviously a lot of human voices. Masry told me that he saw it on TV and there must have been almost 500,000 people in El Dowal. I could believe it from the sound, which went on and on. I did finally sleep, but I woke again at 4.00 am and it still sounded the same. Even the next day cars were sounding their horns in a particular pattern that was more than the usual “here I am get out of my way!”

Another week has seen the house move on even further, the painter is in now although he is preparing surfaces and we haven’t chosen any colours yet. The airconditioners (all 7 of them) have arrived and are being installed outside before the windows go in. The welder has completed the strengthening of the pergolas and also installed the grills on the 3 windows accessible from the airshaft that is just down from the roof. The carpenter comes in the morning to begin his work – all the door surrounds, doors etc. including the 3 with special glass inserts) – and the painter will take until the end of the month Masry tells me. Unfortunately the welders broke one of the ornate glass inserts for the bedroom doors and that will take another week or so to have replaced (and 450 pounds as well!) I asked Masry was he going to make the welder pay, but he said: “He only gets maybe 50 pounds for the job, how can I make him pay 500?” So he didn’t tip him as much because he covered the break up and didn’t own up. A fair man is my Mohammad I think.

Only windows (being manufactured offsite along with the awnings) and plumbing to do, lights and curtains to choose and install and then the house will be finished – as soon as the kitchen is installed (also being manufactured offsite). We have chosen some lights, many are once again perhaps more ornate than I would have picked alone but it’s all in keeping with everything else. Not sure what day we’ll choose the big lights – maybe next week or the week after although we have been to a couple of shops to have a look – or to “make a check” as Mohammad says. Also just a few taps to pick out. I don’t think the electrician is in until the painter is almost finished. And Masry says the plumber is last because otherwise the men will use the toilets! So the timeframe remains about 3 weeks Masry says but I reckon another 5 at least. Maybe I’ll be pleasantly surprised however. We still haven’t decided what to do about the curtains – Mohammad says we must settle today or tomorrow however as they may take a month to make.

The first two vehicles (Toyota Coasters) for Masry’s new tour company also arrive next week, he will take the two drivers he has employed up to Alexandria to collect them sometime after Monday. Two Toyota Hiace are next and he just got word that they will be at least another month – it’s already more than a month since they were ordered. Not sure what the holdup is but they are all imported so who knows. But at least the Coasters will be out and on the road in another week maximum (they have to be fitted with luggage racks and sign written), and he will be on the way to fulfilling a long-held dream. It’s actually pretty special seeing someone’s BIG dreams come true.

I am thinking of going to Ethiopia next week (or sometime soon), once the Coasters have arrived, for about a week. Masry really doesn’t want me to go – he tells me he must see me every day - “why do you want to leave me?” And there’s no doubt I would miss him. But there’s a little break in what’s happening with the house and he will be busy enough and I won’t be needed for the house and I would really love to see all the kids for a few days – still I haven’t finally decided, will suss out flights when next I’m on the net and see what’s available and how much it is. If I go I’m going to make it a big surprise – just arrive….

So the last week has been more of the same really – Friday yesterday of course and Masry not at the house to collect me until 2.00 pm after the mosque and prayers. Given that I have nothing to read (am now reading a book for the THIRD time) and the TV keeps losing sound and finally dying as soon as it warms up it’s a long night and day! Thursday was very cold at the house and windy and threatening rain so I came home early. But today is once again magnificent. The BBC forecast said 18 degrees today but sitting here in the car, while I wait for Masry to do some business at what I think I understand is a motor registry and licensing place in 6th October City, it is beautifully warm and we’ve left the pollution of Cairo behind so the sky is blue and the birds are singing – well I’m sure they are if I could hear them over the traffic.

Once we leave here it’s to the house for a while, the painter will be back again today (holiday on Friday so we had the house to ourselves again yesterday for a while) and maybe the carpenter will show up today – said Thursday, then Friday but didn’t show, so maybe today. Went to the net café yesterday but couldn’t get connected well enough to post or to send emails but I did read some so will try and answer everyone soon and will post some photos of the house and also of Mohammad for those ladies who asked. I thought I’d try and find the net somewhere near home on Thursday night but after getting two sets of directions and walking around several blocks completely for almost an hour I gave up. Either I am blind or nobody knew what they were talking about. It would be much simpler if I could find one near home so will try again at some time when I’m home early enough.

I’m not sure why I say early enough – the night seems to only begin at around 10.00 pm in Egypt and I certainly never get to bed before midnight. If I ever do it’s only to read as the noise levels would preclude sleep unless you were absolutely and completely exhausted. And I don’t do enough in my day to be that, even though climbing the stairs to the house is very good for me. There is a lift but it’s not working yet. I think that maybe we will be the first to move into the building and the owners (and doorman) don’t want the lift used by the workmen to carry all the cement and stuff upstairs while they are working on other apartments.

There’s lots of tok toks around here, of course Valentine’s Day has just passed so many are decorated all over the windscreen with fluffy red hearts, dolls, mirrors, all sorts of cuties with glitter and fur and also stickers – some of them have so much on the windscreen that I am unsure how they see where to go. I’d love to get some photos but they are so busy buzzing around that it’s not possible here, maybe some day when I am in Giza. Our doorman owns a tok tok, sometimes it’s parked at the house but it’s not so elaborate. Sometimes he seems to drive it and sometimes he must employ a driver. I’ve just seen a tok tok go past that Lonni would love – every available inch inside covered in teddy bears! And there goes another that I swear is being driven by a 12-year old, maximum! You are supposed to be 18 to get a license…There’s no mandatory schooling age for children as far as I can ascertain, on the estate I certainly see many very young boys working alongside the men, bending metal, using hammers and fetching and carrying. It seems they have already begun their life’s work.

Egyptians have a love of ornate and profuse decoration, the more gold and glitter, flowers, curlicues and arabesques, hearts, Arabic script etc. the better it seems. They love rich colours and rich fabrics. Everywhere – houses, cars, shops, clothing. Sometimes it takes some getting used to.

Some things I see as I sit here that you won’t see in Australia – at least I don’t think so:
- an old red Lada has just reversed across the intersection in front of me being narrowly avoided by trucks, cars, motorbikes, tok toks etc.
- a man cycles nonchalantly across the same intersection whilst deep in conversation on his mobile
- two cars come down the wrong way of a one way street, madly honking to everyone else to get out of the way
- a donkey cart laden with oranges ambles across the intersection; also, this is perhaps the first donkey I’ve seen that’s not being continually whacked with a stick…

The traffic still amazes and confuses me. During the week I took the car and drove around the estate for an hour or so, I need to get used to sitting on the other side – at the moment I still look in all the wrong directions etc. and personally I think I’m dangerous. Anyway Mohammed called and asked me to come back as we had to get some plaster pieces for the ceiling. So I came back and he got me to drive and suddenly we were headed for the main road. I couldn’t believe how nervous I was, my heart was actually pounding and I REALLY didn’t want to do it. I did manage to get us the kilometer or so safely to the other gate and inside, making two u-turns in the process without too much drama. But I didn’t drive back. I’ve never felt like this about driving anywhere before. I’m just afraid, I guess, of having an accident, we certainly see plenty and a number of them fatal – it’s hard to convey just how chaotic it is – you must expect EVERYONE to do the unexpected – change lanes without warning, come at you the wrong way up a one way street, blow their horns at you for EVERYTHING, suddenly speed up, suddenly stop, leave a roundabout from the inside lane, go all the way around in the outside lane, use the white line between lanes simply as something to aim the middle of the car at, go through red traffic lights (we actually saw a red light last night that people stopped at, first time for me, usually they are working and there’s police on the intersections so you ignore the lights and obey the police), or you may suddenly come across a donkey cart in the fast lane that everyone must swerve around. There’s no way I can figure out who is supposed to give way to whom or anything else. Mohammad says can’t I see, you just go. And you do. I’m just having trouble leaving behind all those years of road rules being so important. I suspect that what will happen is that I won’t be able to forget enough so I’ll always be a terrible driver in Egypt and when I go home to Australia I will have forgotten enough so that I’m a terrible driver in Australia as well!!!

I don’t think I have much more news for now – lots of things happen every day but they are small things and sometimes in Egypt even small things are fascinating, but at the moment lots of it is the same old same old.

Hope you enjoy the pictures,

Lots of love to all

Lyndall

On the roof again

2008-02-17T10:16:00.003+02:00

First news – the visit with Masry’s sisters went well I thought, hopefully from their point of view it was also fine.

We actually didn’t go to Rania’s but to Masry’s house that he shares with his sister Hager. Up to the 7th floor with no lift is a little challenge that ensures I arrive red faced and out of breath. An aroma of mouth-watering food greets me at the door as does Hager. I discover she has a little English so that’s a good thing and better than I hoped. We sit and after a few minutes Rania emerges from the kitchen and we also shake hands and exchange a kiss on both cheeks. I’m delighted to meet them at last and they say likewise. Rania’s two oldest boys are in another room watching TV but Mohammed gets them and introduces them – Lewi (pronounced Lew-eye) and Mohammed. We shake hands and exchange a greeting but they don’t have any English so that’s it for the boys – they look about 7 and 5. Omar, the youngest at maybe just under 2 is asleep. The boys quickly head back to the TV and Masry takes them the Smarties I bought. I’m not sure how many westerners they’ve seen; the youngest seems a little awed or maybe even frightened. Masry tells me they are “crazy tommy boys” – I presume he means what we would call tom boys, loud and active, but today they are quiet and not seen in front of the TV.

Almost as soon as we are settled (it is almost 4 pm by now and getting a little late even for Egyptian lunch) Hager draws up the coffee table and starts to lay out a large amount of delicious-looking food. Masry says to begin so he and I start on delicious vegetable soup. There’s no ceremony for starting a meal – Muslims rather complete their meal by saying “Thanks God”. All the dishes are vegetable except for a small plate of meat for Mohammed. There’s stuffed okra and stuffed chillis and a delicious rice mix wrapped in cabbage leaves. There’s a lovely flaky pastry sort of thing with salty cheese and vegetables in it that’s soooo good. And also a hot (not spicy hot) soupy broth that they tell me they have no English for but I figure it’s very finely chopped spinach, oil, onion, salt and water, it’s very tasty. It’s almost boiling and you take a piece of your bread and dip it in – Masry says it’s always served very hot. There are potato chips (not French fries), Arabic bread and also a salad of finely chopped tomatoes, cucumber, peppers and parsley and onion I think, with oil and I’m sure a little vinegar but no one knows that word so I can’t confirm.

Rania also has some English so we can talk a little. I have to compliment the food and also ask for cooking lessons. The ladies assure me that they will not only teach me to cook but also teach me Arabic. They both seem delightful even though we can’t say a great deal to each other. Masry sends Lewi down to the car for the laptop and we look at photos of the house and of my kids. Everyone agrees that both are beautiful. I tell them when the house is finished they must also come for a meal but they will have to have some Egyptian food and some Australian dishes. And I’m not thinking of a meat pie and a vegemite sandwich either, although I’m not sure what I do mean – maybe roast lamb will do it.

While speaking of food – there’s a food outlet here called Malkys that specializes in rice and cous-cous – Mohammed tells me crossly it’s Egyptian (not Moroccan or from anywhere else) and it’s called cous cousy. So baked rice hot (just like mum used to make), baked rice with ice-cream and fruit, cold or hot rice with milk in all sorts of combinations and it is delicious! The first night we called in – you park in front and the man comes to your car – we had cous cousy – you get a large bowl of hot, dry cous cousy, a cup of hot milk, a container of icing sugar and three packets of additions – nuts, dried fruit and coconut all in separate packets. You put it all in and mix – it is very sweet but SO good! But it also makes a huge amount – I could only eat about half of mine and I was completely stuffed. To fill me up like that – LE9 (LE = Egyptian pounds) or just over A$2. I’ve also had cold baked rice and ice-cream and fresh fruit, also delicious and the same price. And an excellent rice custard and ice cream (almost my favourite).

Where was I? The rest of the week has been house again – we’ve bought door handles and light switch plates and looked at curtains and ordered shower cabinets and bought the satellite dish cable and chosen metal work to make the grilles over the windows that may be accessible from the roof and all the small downlights – all 110 of them - (but not the major light fittings) and toilets and hand basins and the sink for the roof kitchen etc. etc. It all seems a bit back to front to me at times, there’s no such thing as a plan or a drawing, but I’m sure it will work out in the end and be beautiful. There’s still a lot to go but every day now sees something else completed. All the ceramic work is to be done by Friday night and then the painter and plasterer moves in to complete his work. The electrician is here today, the man has been here to measure the shower cabinets and the metalwork man will be here to start work on adding some struts to the pergolas on the roof.

Thursday
At the moment the ceramics man is busy putting in the equivalent of skirting boards, also ceramic, the same tiles as the floor. Once he does that everywhere then he grouts and all is completed. Given that he is the only one laying the tiles and he has two offsiders mixing mortar and cutting tiles and sweeping etc., he moves pretty quickly. And he seems to have good attention to detail which seems to be lacking in a lot of things – that and an ability to finish off properly. Still, I’ll see when it is all complete everywhere, maybe I’m misjudging in regards to the finishing off thing.

I had a nice surprise today. I had spoken to Masry about dimmer switches and he told me that they didn’t have them in Egypt and I was having trouble explaining exactly what they did anyway, or he was having trouble understanding, so I figured that was not going to happen. Then we saw one when we went to look in all the lighting shops down town and I guess that the man in the shop explained what it did. He tried to get one there but it all seemed too hard and I told him not to worry, they weren’t essential (and of course they’re not). Today when I came to the house I found that he had located some in another shop and now on the main lights in the living area we have dimmer switches. He is very good about things like that and often when I think he hasn’t been listening or doesn’t care, I find that he later has taken it all in and has found an answer that he thinks I will like. I sometimes forget that the whole cultural differences thing must be as difficult for him as it is for me even though I jokingly call him Mohammed “No problem” El Masry at times. When I was here the first time one of my guides told me that in English the word Egypt means “no problem”. It’s certainly something you hear a lot – even when you can tell that it really is a big problem.

So now that the ceramics will be finished the next main player will be in on Saturday for us to choose paint colours – I hope that will be fairly simple – something neutral – there will be a lot of strong colour in the curtains and furniture – dark red, gold etc. and rich woods. Maybe the ceiling detail will have a colour but I’m not sure yet. We’ll see on Saturday.

Egypt plays in the semi-final of the African Nations Cup (football) tonight – so there’s excitement building all around Cairo, including lots of flag sellers on the streets, and flags being flown from taxis, buses etc. We’re going to City Stars today and hopefully I can finally get a haircut (which I am really wanting but dreading at the same time, I hate going to a new hairdresser) but I think it will be an early day so that Masry can be home in time, or we may have to find a café in City Stars for the duration of the match. Tomorrow of course, being Friday, is a holiday and Thursday night is usually busy (like Friday night in Australia) but if Egypt wins tonight I’m guessing it will really be a big night on the streets.

Battery is running low and no way of charging it up here yet, soon I will be able to access power but not yet. Hope everyone is well,

Love to all

Lyndall

Winter is here

2008-02-04T10:25:00.002+02:00

Today is four weeks since I landed (about this time I was collecting my luggage and looking forward with great anticipation and a little nervousness to seeing Mohamed again) and it is a very cold, windy and rainy day. The sky looks like an ageing bruise; clouds are grey and rain-filled while the air is also full of sand and dust whipped up by the strong winds, making visibility limited. The weather forecast said 13 degrees and I can believe that it might be about that. Whoever would have thought that Egypt – land of ancient tombs baking under the desert sun could be so cold and miserable? This is the most unpleasant day we’ve had so far, although Masry keeps warning me that the end of January and February are uncomfortable and so, so cold. I guess when we go to the house later today I won’t be on the roof.

The house is beginning to take shape a little more. The ceramics man (what we in Australia call a tiler) has now finished the kitchen walls and the toilet off the hall and has started on the ensuite. The tiles have arrived for the large central bathroom and hopefully the ensuite will take 2 days or so and then he can begin on the final job for the walls. Once the walls are finished then there are the floors, which will take about 10 days as it’s the entire place. The cost for the tiler is LE 15 per square metre – or about A$3 per sq. m. And from that he has to pay his offsider and his travel costs etc. We buy all the materials.

Almost everything we do is tied up with the house, although today we went to get me a new visa and that was an interesting experience. At least there was parking! We headed for a big building downtown, two lots of security and up the stairs with hoards of others, all the signs in Arabic, so thank goodness Masry was there. Finally after asking the way a few times, we arrive at a long curving hall with many windows, fortunately labelled in English as well as Arabic. Visas for Arab nations residents, visas for non-Arab nations residents, visas for those whose visa has expired, etc. etc., windows for paying fees, windows for refugees and finally right down the end, residents visas for tourists purposes. All seem to be staffed by women (not the usual).

We wait in a sort of a queue and after a couple of men pushing in front of me (our concept of queuing is not seemingly understood in Egypt) we finally present my passport. Please take this 4-page form and come back with the passport, the stamps to show you have paid the fee and a photo – no wait, I don’t need an original photo, I just need some pages of my passport photocopied. Masry says did I bring a pen? I say “No. Remember I asked in the car what I needed and you said passport and money”. He says, “We are at the government, why didn’t you bring a pen, you must always bring a pen”. So back down to the ground floor where for a small fee we get the pages photocopied. Back up to the first floor and find the window for paying fees and Masry swaps 11LE for some stamps which must be affixed to the form. No pens anywhere so we ask a man in the queue and he lends me a pen. I quickly fill in the front of the form (the only bit in English) and we head back down to Window 14 to present all the paperwork. We give back the pen – the man is still in the same place in the queue.

At Window 14 the lady checks everything over and asks Masry my address, she can’t read my writing. The visa will be ready in two hours and we can collect it from Window 38 she tells us and we look at each other and say “Now what we will do?” A quick discussion shows there’s really nothing to do but sit and wait. To venture out of the car park won’t be at all productive; we’d basically only go round in a slow circle or two and have to be back and then may not get another park. So we take two of the hard plastic orange seats and wait. A man comes past with a tray of goodies for sale. Masry hasn’t had breakfast so I have water and he chooses what I at first thought was a packet of chips but turns out to be bite–sized croissants filled with chocolate. Yum! I force myself to stop at one. Masry also asks for tea so away goes the man and comes back with a cup of sweet tea (he takes 4 sugars in both tea and coffee). Payment seems small. Masry’s phone rings and he heads off to take the call and have a cigarette in what seems to be a designated smoking area in one of the corridors. We’d passed through the blue haze on our way up and (very surprisingly) there are actually No Smoking signs along the other corridors. There are police everywhere in the building so perhaps people actually adhere to the signs here.

While he’s gone I end up in conversation with a French girl on one side (sorry woman, I discover she has a doctorate in anthropology) and an Afghani man on the other, who has lived in Cairo for 6 years studying. He’s now doing his Masters in Economics and will return to Afghanistan to live when he’s finished. The French lady and her American travelling companion had their passports stolen at the train station and so are here trying to get the paperwork done so that they can leave the country tomorrow. This is the first time I’ve spoken to anyone who has had a problem like this. She says the Embassies have been fabulous but they have been back several times to the visa place. Each time they are sent away to get something else they need. They’ve been waiting 45 minutes now after being told it would take one minute. Almost every process in Egypt generates huge amounts of paperwork all of which must be treated most carefully and retained and makes things take an extra long time. (I’ll tell you about shopping in some stores some time when you buy on one floor, collect your paperwork, go to the cashier on another floor, pay and get more paperwork and finally collect your goods on another floor, making sure you have your paperwork! Is it better or worse than at home? It’s slower and sometimes frustrating, but then it also employs a lot more people, so I guess it’s horses for courses.)

The women behind the counter don’t seem to be getting through much of the processing. Trying to fix one of the black light machines has taken up quite a deal of the hour we’ve been sitting here and there’s a lot of conversation with a little paper shuffling. Finally someone else goes up to ask if their visa is ready and they get theirs so Masry also goes to ask for mine and lo and behold I can have my passport back. So there’s more work happening than there appears to be. This time my visa is for 4 months and cost 11 pounds – at the airport I got one without any paperwork in about 10 seconds and it’s for one month and cost US$15. I’m not sure why one is so simple and one so complex. Anyway, I’m legal still and that’s the most important thing. I wish the French doctor “bonne chance” and we are free once more.

PS – I wrote this last Wednesday sitting in the car at the house – after a quick look at the work in progress I was happy to sit in the car given the appalling weather. Since we had those couple of days of rain the weather has been much nicer, sort of like a Sunny Coast winter, much warmer with blue skies and the roof has been once more a very pleasant place to sit and relax when we are at the house.

There is progress. The kitchen has been ordered (will take at least a month) and all the appliances purchased, the TV cabling is in, all the wall ceramics are completed and the tiler started today on the floor of the living area (reception hall). Most of the bathroom fittings have been purchased and tomorrow they will be delivered ready for installation when the tiling is finished. The carpenter and electrician have given us lists of stuff to buy (tomorrow). Also tomorrow the kitchen manufacturer comes for one last measure up now the wall tiling is finished and the curtain maker will come to also measure up and look at the house so he can have some ideas about what we might have, we will choose fabrics and colours but he will suggest styles. The curtains will also take a month. So it looks like everything might be ready in about 5-6 weeks; it will fly by I’m sure.

PPS – Tomorrow (Monday) I also get to meet two of Masry’s sisters after a couple of postponements. Wish I’d been able to get a haircut. Here’s hoping it all goes well. We’ll be having dinner at Rania’s (his oldest sister, pronounced Runya) with Hager (his youngest sister who lives with him) and Rania’s family (husband and 3 boys). I hope it all goes well. I don’t think that anyone has very much English so it might be a little awkward but I hope it’s OK anyway and I don’t make any major Egyptian social gaffes. Will let you know.

Love to all

Lyndall

Pyramid Heights

2008-02-04T10:24:00.002+02:00

It’s two o’clock on Sunday afternoon (the first day of the working week) and we have just paid the final money to the owner of the house and signed contracts. Mohamed and the lawyer and the building owner are now in the government office registering the contracts and so I thought I’d take the opportunity to tell you that at last “one thing is finished”. I have been very excited ever since we realized we could complete the house today and not having bought a house for a long time, or ever having bought a new house, it’s a really exciting feeling and a very happy day. I can’t keep the smile off my face.

Still it’s a different feeling to what it would be in Oz I think, again I think it’s because I don’t understand the language or quite how business is conducted so I feel very peripheral to the whole process, even the doorman and the plumber seem to have bigger roles than I do. Still I refuse to let that put any sort of dampener on today, it’s very exciting to be moving towards making a far more long-term home here in Cairo.

Monday night
All the house papers are here safe and sound and things are starting to be finished even more. After all the formalities yesterday we went back to the house and met with a couple of tradesmen hoping to soon get things started. After that we went to Cleopatra Ceramics and made some final choices, ordering the tiles for all the hallway, living areas, entrance etc., for the bedroom floors, the ensuite bathroom and the kitchen walls (not that I knew they were being ordered at the time!) We ended up with the second choice for all the living areas, another tile entirely for the three bedrooms (grey), as the man didn’t have 80 sq. metres at all of the other tile (Masry told me he wouldn’t have, don’t know how he knew), a very nice black & white combo for the ensuite and plain white for the kitchen walls. The small toilet off reception is a sort of golden brown marble type deal, they didn’t have the trim tiles I wanted so we have others. A total of LE 18,000.

When we got to the car Masry asked me why I chose the tile I did for the floor of the small toilet and then we got into something of a heated discussion, all based on a language misunderstanding. It’s very frustrating when that happens and it happened twice yesterday, today I have tried to make sure I knew what Masry was saying and vice versa. We went to Kabnoury the kitchen and window design people after we ordered the ceramics. Another major misunderstanding that made Masry “very sad”. Sometimes I get so tired of just sitting or standing listening to all these men talk in Arabic and not understanding any of it – well occasionally getting the general drift. Last night because I wanted lots of changes to the design there was lots of smiling and joking – I suspect (rightly or wrongly) some of it about the woman who couldn’t be satisfied, but maybe I was wrong about that, you know what they say about making assumptions (Masry says that sometimes “I just think bad things” and maybe I do). But all I want is a functional kitchen!!

The quotes for the windows and kitchen were really expensive (LE 50,000 each) so even after quite a bit of re-jigging (taking until after 11.00 pm) and price reduction we said we’d think about it and let him know. Today we had another man come sent by the man (another Mohamed) from whom we bought the house. Masry likes him enormously, saying he has integrity (“When he says one plus one it is always two, not three, not one”). Anyway, this man has quoted on the windows, balcony doors and insect screens (all double glazed windows) and awnings at around half the price and will also come back and work out the kitchen when the ceramic has been finished. We had discussions with the plumber today and the kitchen design was re-done by Mohamed and Ibrahim the plumber so it has some elements I wanted and some I didn’t. The answer I get if I press is “I think this is the best”. The washing machine is indeed in the kitchen and right beside the stove, at least at this point!

All the ceramic that we had ordered yesterday was delivered today and two men carried it all up the five flights of stairs for the total sum of LE300 (around $65) and I reckon there was a couple of tons of it. The cement was also delivered, and there was three tons of that, and the man and his crew will begin to lay it all the day after tomorrow. Tonight we went to Mahgoub and chose the kitchen floor – I wanted dark grey but have ended up with pale blue and light grey as a compromise . However, we seem to have also settled on the final bathroom although yes, you guessed it, I believe the floor will still be white. We also got the two bases for the showers, shower cabinets seem to be a rarity here so I’m struggling a bit with these. But there will be separate showers in each bathroom and I hope Masry understands how important a good shower is to me now. We’ve had slight ups and downs over that one too.

Most of the shower cabinets seem to be super deluxe, huge things that include a jacuzzi shower with about 20 nozzles, radio, telephone and all sorts of other electronic gadgetry that I simply can’t imagine one using in the shower. All I really want is a decent shower head and room to move!

Mohamed (the house man) also is sending a carpenter who will make all the doors, hopefully also at a good price, including the ones that will have the glass inserts. Today I stood for 3 hours at the house while all the coming and going happened with the plumber, ceramics delivery, carpenter, windows man, doorman, painter and plasterer. I think I spoke about 100 words the whole time (although I did have an excellent game with one of the doorman’s children, a very cute little boy called Omar, about 3 I think who was very ticklish and loved to be chased. It didn’t seem to matter that he spoke Arabic and I spoke English, we got on fine). So this is what I mean by being very peripheral to the process. I simply can’t wait until I can speak the language properly. At least I can read numbers now and so I can tell the prices of things and I recognise some spoken words. I know how to say “no” as well, also handy.

Regardless, I am very pleased that Masry is doing so much, he’s a very sharp negotiator and certainly has an eye to keeping costs contained, while trying hard to give me mostly what I want. He handles talking to half a dozen tradesmen at once very calmly, all the while taking what seems like a hundred phone calls a day. But he’s also very determined to get what he thinks is best, although I’m not sure that he thinks of it that way, I think he’s just used to being deferred to and treated as if he always does know best. Often he says: “Just trust me please Lyndall – you will see, it will be beautiful. I only want the best for you.”

There’s still so much to choose, I’m hoping it will get easier as it goes – I’m learning lots of life lessons in this process I can assure you.

Will we ever finish?

2008-01-21T11:22:00.002+02:00

“Another day and nothing finished!”

That’s the usual cry at the end of every day. At the moment our luck seems bad, with nothing being easy, and I mean nothing. Today was all about more ceramic. Most of it had been chosen and we were going back to make a “final choice”, that is really just to confirm things and then place some orders. Straight off there was a problem. The main tiles, those that will go all through the entranceway, reception, hallway etc. were not available and would not be able to come from the factory for one month minimum, two months maximum. So there’s the first decision – do we want to wait two months until we begin to finish the house (all the ceramic work, especially the floor needs to be completed first) – or do we go back to the drawing board? We decided first to check some of the other choices only to find that everything except the small toilet has the same time frame. So there’s no starting even the bathrooms.

Feeling rather deflated we had something of a look for some others without really finding anything that took our fancy, although we did find one floor tile in stock that could be OK. And found another that might be fine for one of the bedrooms. So putting off a decision we headed off to a couple of the other really big ceramic places to see if they had any stocks. We found 80 sq. m. of the main tiles at one, unfortunately we need 140. So that has prompted a big rethink – 80 sq. m. of the original choice will be fine for the bedrooms and the new choice will also be fine for the rest. One bathroom we can still have the original tiles with a different one on the floor, we’ve managed to choose, finally, something we can live with for the big bathroom and it’s in stock, although Masry would like white on the floor and I need to try and talk him out of it if I can.

We’ve also decided on plain white for the kitchen which will suit me fine (although again we’re talking white floor but I think I have convinced him that this will not be OK). I seem to be always harping about how easy (or rather difficult) things will be to clean but I suspect that Masry has never had to clean, ever, so he just doesn’t get it. And given how much I hate housework it’s pretty high on my list of priorities!

We’ve also been and chosen some fancy glass inserts to make the 3 bedroom doors (Masry’s idea and a nice one, the doors will look beautiful and not see through), and yes, the glass will take a month! Then a carpenter has to make the doors as well, but hopefully we can get those measured once the floors are done and then made just waiting for the glass. So one thing has started to be finished.

Usually by the end of the day we’re beginning to find everything pretty funny, often almost hysterical at times. The glass shop was quite late so the usual routine of Masry saying “You choose it’s no problem for me”, and then me choosing and him saying “This is your choice? You like this? This? This is very bad” and me saying “Fine, what’s your choice?” and the whole routine being reversed while the shop assistant, in this case female, just looks at us with some bewilderment. However, last night Masry said – no you choose - and went out for a cigarette. Once he’d gone the girl and I were talking (she had some English) and she said to me in all seriousness “You must remember, the woman comes first, first always!” That caused the day’s near hysteria in the car as I argued vehemently for her being the wisest woman in Cairo and Masry argued on the side of her being completely crazy. But somehow I didn’t exactly end up with my choice…. Maybe I need to go back to the glass shop for another conversation.

We’ve also looked at furniture, re-visiting some of the same shops but making a final choice on one really nice blondwood bedroom suite for one bedroom and a dining room setting with buffet. We’ve also looked at appliances of all sorts over and over. There are a number of brands that I’m not familiar with and they’re made in all sorts of odd places like Turkey. Better quality brands (say like Bosch, made in Germany) are quite expensive. I figure some of that will be sheer chance if I choose something good at a reasonable cost. Maybe it will take 3 months.

And today the kitchen design man didn’t keep his appointment so that went nowhere as well. Add to that the fact that we couldn’t get a park anywhere near a couple of places we wanted to go and you’ll understand that it seems like it might take forever to finish!

Lyndall

House hunting in Cairo - 2

2008-01-21T11:20:00.001+02:00

The last week we’ve been house hunting Cairo style – take 2.

This is one of the high priorities on each day’s “to do” list. This time we’re looking for a house, or rather an apartment, to buy. There are in Cairo, like anywhere else, “used” houses and new houses. We haven’t looked yet at existing houses but rather new houses and once again I’m way out of my depth – every aspect of this process has elements that amaze and astound me, and not always in a good way.

The most difficult part for me of the conduct of any sort of business or transaction is that women are excluded from the process. At first I thought it was just because I couldn’t speak the language, but I am learning that it is because often, in many ways, it’s considered not really my affair. This may be one of the hardest things for me to get used to in Egypt. Mohamed tries to include me as often as possible and at times apologises for “talking to the man”. At other times (and I’m not sure what the difference is) he simply goes with the other man to talk and I actually have to ask what’s going on. But he’s thorough in his discussions and finds out far more than I would think to ask. I really have to make the language one of my priorities, at least then even if I wasn’t officially included I would understand what was going on.

However, in saying that about women and “business”, Mohamed has decided that I will have an office and desk (or maybe we will share one) at the company, even though all the business will be conducted in Arabic and often he won’t be there. I can work on whatever I like while I’m there and will have internet access he says. I will also work for the company finding and creating tour business. Also designing a website I think and maybe other things. And when we are discussing offices and things, he always insists that we must make the decision together. He always remembers if I talk about something being difficult for me and later he will do or say something to show that he understands and will try to improve or change it. So I think, given Mohamed’s cultural environment and upbringing, he’s doing pretty well. He does work hard to make me feel happy and is always delighted if I say I am happy.

A week on….

Finally, we’ve found a house and made a deposit! I can’t tell you what a big step this seems to be for both of us, remembering that I have also never owned a brand new house, always bought from another owner. There’s a huge amount of work ahead to get it ready to live in but Mohamed thinks maybe 2 - 3 months.

We did decide on a place previously, in a new area with a view of the pyramids unable to be built out under current law, top floor and including the roof, new 7 star hotel (yes 7) going in about 600 metres away so property values would be sure to increase and the price was excellent for what we were getting. The house was large with 4 bedrooms and a study and felt really good as soon as we went inside. However, as we began to negotiate (or should I say as Masry began talking to “the man”) the price began to go up and up, then there was talk of not being able to take the roof and finally, the house was withdrawn as the man’s wife said they needed to keep it for themselves!

This highlights for me another one of the big things in Egypt, certainly in property dealings – if you can, have the cash in hand and close the deal immediately! This seems to be the only way to guarantee that people won’t continuously change their minds. We had exactly the same experience with the office – the price went up and up and finally the owner changed his mind and decided not to sell. And some places we went back to see again we discovered the price had risen. I am quite convinced that if you were buying unfinished new property you could turn a profit in Egypt with your money barely coming out of the bank.

Dubai may have 50% (or was it 25%?, whatever) of the world’s cranes working on buildings there and China may have most of the rest, but in Egypt the building rate is stupendous also, it’s just done without cranes – all by hand. There are new and partially completed buildings and new suburbs everywhere.

We looked at quite a few other apartments in the same new estate (between Pyramid Heights and Dreamland) without seeing anything that grabbed us. And we did look at one property right near the pyramids very close to what would have been the office. We call it the dog house. (All the houses have these sort of names given I don’t know the names of any of “the men” and their names are quite likely to all be Mohamed anyway, so we have the Friday house, the dog house etc. The 4 bedroom plus roof house was the dream house). But it was very expensive for what it was both size wise and finish wise. It was on the first floor and did have a garden at the back. However, I found it hard to get past the smell of dog (one large and one small). After not a lot of discussion we decided that the dog house was not for us, even if it did have the advantage of being able to walk to work, shops etc. So back to looking at new buildings.

Looking at apartments in new buildings requires stamina and caution and great imagination. Basically you are just walking freely into a building site, over piles of sand and rubbish in all the rooms, up stairways cluttered with debris and not a rail or a light in sight, sometimes out onto unfinished floors completely open, some even without walls. Sometimes there’s a man to accompany you and sometimes not. And sometimes you get to visit the apartment that’s been used as the site’s toilet area so then you really have to watch your step (not a porta loo in sight and the letters OH & S would probably stand for Omar, Hassan and Sherif). The walls are just one brick thickness, there’s no floor except the base with pipes laid all over it etc., no windows, no doors, plumbing and electricity all exposed. For an Australian, it’s a mind boggling experience. My conversation was usually limited to “What, up here?” or “You mean, follow you there? Are you positive?” or “We can just walk in?”

Still, the plumber working in the building block in which we saw the dream house called again and told us that the house on the top floor but the other side of the building was also for sale, with the roof. Not quite as large (3 bedrooms, no study and one less bathroom) but more finished, all the electricity in and working and ceilings and walls finished to undercoat and the roof completed (with a very large pergola) except for the kitchen and bathroom up there. And cheaper too by a fair margin. So we went back and saw it three times, each time with the plumber talking non-stop and once to measure it up so we could get an idea of how much to finish it off, especially for all the ceramic tiles.

Yesterday we met with the owner and paid a deposit and we now have a very rough hand-written paper on a sheet torn out of a notebook (a “small paper”) to say that we have paid a deposit and now have two weeks to pay the rest of the price. Already the man has rung twice to see if we have changed our minds. I suspect he has another buyer at a higher price. The paper is interesting: if you don’t pay when you say you will you lose everything you have already paid – he will know nothing about your money. But although the man wanted cash (of course) he has agreed to wait those two weeks for us to pay the rest. However, if I lose the paper then he also knows nothing about my money! Once we pay the rest we will get a “big paper” that is lodged with the government to assign new ownership.

So the new house has 3 bedrooms, one with ensuite and balcony, another big bathroom, very large entranceway and what the Egyptians call reception, or hall, and what Australians call the lounge or living room. It is L-shaped with a balcony and the short leg of the L will accommodate a large dining table and also the office/study. There’s another separate toilet off the reception. There’s also quite a decent sized kitchen. No laundry – originally it was designed with the washing machine in the ensuite but it’s going in the kitchen. There’s 250 sq. metres of roof area with another kitchen and bathroom area, mostly covered by pergolas. Oh yes, and there’s the view of the pyramids. Total cost for everything, including all new furniture and appliances, will be around that of a small two-bedroom unit at home (Sunshine Coast) without a water view, maybe a little less.

So the house is settled in that respect and now the hard work starts. The kitchen design man has been to visit and measure and I have some definite ideas on how I want the bathrooms laid out at least (which will require some extra plumbing for the separate showers). I’m already just about “ceramicked out” and there’s still a LONG way to go.

And somehow, with an office still to acquire, I suspect I’ll be stepping carefully through a few more building sites yet.

Lyndall