| Submitted by: Evelyn C. Leeper, United States |
| Submission Date: 04 February 2005 |
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We worked until 3:30 PM, then went home, turned down the heat, turned off the water, and waited for the 4:30 limo. At 4:30 we got the usual call: 'How do I get to Lakeridge Drive? It's not on my Matawan map.' So I explained it was really in Old Bridge and how to get to it. This is why I always ask for an earlier pick-up time than they suggest--it gives us time for this routine. Anyway, we were on the road by 5. Traffic was good, with only a couple of what are called 'rubbernecking delays,' and we got to JFK by 6:15 or so. We checked in (naturally the line we picked stopped moving as soon as we got into it, so we had a chance to talk to a couple from Holland who were returning home--they think the capitalism in the United States is much better than the socialism in Holland). Then we stood around waiting for the Travcoa representative. While we were waiting a woman came up to us and asked, 'Travcoa?' At first we thought she was the guide, but no, she was a fellow tour member, Pansee Chong, who was traveling with her sister Lillian. They're from British Columbia and have traveled all over the world. It turned out when we got to talking that they would be with us only in Egypt and then branching off to Yemen. So we may have a much smaller group in Kenya if others do likewise.
After standing around the ticket area, we decided to proceed to the gate. The metal detector was extremely sensitive and everyone had to empty their pockets, etc., making it quite chaotic. The guards seemed friendlier, though, and actually smiled.
At the gate area we met a few more tour members. Margaret Zolliker, a retired doctor from Atlanta, is traveling with Ann Cook from Michigan. And Tom Stama is from San Francisco and is a bit of a character. He apparently doesn't have a regular job--Margaret called him at various points an 'artiste' and an entrepreneur. He's also going to Yemen, then on his own to Ethiopia, then to Rome. All in all, he's taking eight weeks. It must be nice.
A Travcoa representative did show up to greet us and tell us the name of our guide, who would meet us at the Cairo airport. Then he came back to say no, she won't be meeting us as the airport. A travel service would pick us up at the airport and take us to the hotel where she would join us in the evening--some change in flight schedule, apparently.
Our flight, which boarded on time, but left fifty minutes late (at 9:20), was not a non-stop, but stopped in Paris. What can you say about a flight? The plane was cold and the seats uncomfortable for sleeping. It's a 2-5-2 arrangement so Mark and I weren't sitting right next to anyone else. For dinner I had a vegetarian lasagna. It was okay, and looked better (to me, anyway) than the meat lasagna Mark had.
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We landed in Paris and everyone had to get off the plane for about an hour. So we stood around the departure lounge talking to Tom and the Chongs. Then back on the plane for the flight to Cairo. Lunch was chicken (they forgot to load a vegetarian meal for me) and I slept most of the rest of the time.
We landed in Cairo at about 3:30 PM, finally establishing that Cairo is six hours ahead of Eastern Daylight Time. The Travcoa representative was there and directed us through the various lines. This took only about an hour, and was not nearly as chaotic as the guidebooks say.
On the way in we flew past the Pyramids as well as some lesser pyramids including (we think) the Step Pyramid of Zoser. And of course we saw the Nile. Along the Nile on either side is a green strip of vegetation and then boom! the desert. No gradual blending from one to the other.
We got our Egypt schedule. It was changed around a lot but everything was still there. Instead of splitting our Cairo time into two short stays on either side of the cruise, it's all before the cruise. This means we see the Egyptian Museum first instead of last--a good thing. The cruise goes down the Nile instead of up. The downside of this is that we stay at the Semiramis instead of the Mena House, but we get dinner at the Mena House so we do get to see it. (The Mena House is a historic hotel; the Semiramis just a hotel, albeit a deluxe one.)
On the way we saw a lot of interesting sights. Billboards, for example. Billboards are always interesting in foreign countries-- different products, different styles. Television ads are the same in being different.
Also I started learning the digits. We may call them Arabic numerals, but here they use different ones, which this machine does not have the ability to reproduce typographically so I will explain them:
0 - a raised dot
1 - a vertical bar
2 - a vertical bar with a horizontal bar from
the top to the right (like a Greek gamma)
3 - similar to 2, but the horizontal bar is
'scalloped'
4 - something like a Greek sigma, but all the
lines are at 45 8o 9 angles
5 - 0 (and boy, is this confusing!)
6 - similar to the digit for 2, but
mirror-image (looks like a 7)
7 - a downward-pointing V
8 - an upward-pointing V
9 - 9 (same as here)
We passed various mosques (which I think have a more pleasing style than cathedrals or churches). We drove by Sadat's tomb and passed a couple of massive statues of Rameses II (copies). We went through Heliopolis, a newer suburb of Cairo and supposedly the ritzy section. However, the concrete construction blackened by pollution doesn't look very ritzy by American standards.
We saw people in all sorts of garb--Arabian, Egyptian, and modern Western. We also saw horse-drawn carts as well as automobiles.
We got checked into the hotel (the Semiramis) and spent some time writing our logs. Our room has a view of Cairo Tower and the Nile. At 7 PM we sent down to dinner with Tom. Mark had the buffet; I had the hamam (pigeon) stuffed with rice and pine nuts. I also had lentil soup. It was good (though a pigeon has very little meat--the standard portion is two, which is enough for small eaters, but big eaters should be aware), but I was falling asleep over it. (I should say that the quantity of stuffing made up for the lack of meat.) Dinner was slow--traditional in the Middle East--and we finished and returned to the room about 9:30. Mark wrote some more; I fell asleep.
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I woke up at 5:30, having set my alarm wrong. I went back to sleep until 6:45, then got up, dressed, and went to breakfast (the best order to do those things in). We had continental breakfast with orange juice and American-style coffee. Then I changed $50--normally you need a passport but mine was still being registered so they took my American Express card as identification. Each time you change money there is a thirty- piaster fee for stamps, but that's only about twelve cents, since it's 2.3 pounds to the dollar and one hundred piasters to the pound.
At 8 AM we had a talk by Dr. Gohary, an Egyptologist from England who has moved permanently to Egypt. Her education was entirely in England for two reasons. First, in Egypt everything foreign, even degrees, is considered better. Second, the lack of hard currency means that universities in Egypt have difficulty subscribing to many foreign journals.
Dr. Gohary talked about the geography of Egypt, in particular the Nile Valley and how it is the only really habitable part of Egypt, the other 96% being desert. Since the building of the Aswan High Dam the water level has been more predictable and Egypt has been spared the droughts and floods occurring in the Sudan, but the dam has also raised the water table, salinating the soil and causing the decay of many Upper Egypt monuments. It also blocks the flow of floodwater full of silt to enrich the soil and hence chemical fertilizers must now be used.
She also gave some of the history (available elsewhere so I won't bore you here) and current social climate. The population growth is a major problem--one million are added every nine months and half the population is under fifteen. Any government mandate on family size would only provide resentment that the fundamentalist movement could capitalize on, so they are working on education instead, both in general and aimed toward family planning. The former works because the more educated see advantages in smaller families. The family is very important in Egypt--women traditionally have at least one child as soon as possible after marriage (to prove they can) and are after that called 'The Mother of [first-born's name].' The lecturer, for example, is called 'Uma Kareem' ('The Mother of Kareem').
At 9:30 we went by bus to the Egyptian Museum. It's close by but walking across busy streets in Cairo is taking your life in your hands. The courtyard of the Museum--after getting past all the vendors--has a lotus and papyrus pool as well as various statues and obelisks. The front lobby inside the Museum has three statues of Rameses II and one of Amon-ho-tep. It's fairly easy to find statues of Rameses II--he went around replacing the heads on other statues with his own. He also built many temples during his reign (1250 BC or so) and is sort of the 'Architect Pharaoh.'
We then saw various sarcophagi, during which time Hoda (our Cairo guide) told us how bodies were mummified, a process which took seventy days (the mummification, not the telling). The internal organs were removed and saved in canopic jars; the body was packed with linen bags of salt and natron. After forty days, these were removed and fresh bags put in which also contained cinnamon, myrrh, various aromatic spices, and occasionally onions (but no garlic, Hoda said). Then the body was sewn up, the stitches sealed with beeswax, then the entire body sealed in resin and pitch and finally wrapped in linen. The coffins were of various materials depending on the fortunes of the deceased.
The last sarcophagus/coffin we saw had images of Isis, Osiris, Horus, and Nephthys and provided Hoda with the opportunity to tell what is perhaps the basic myth of ancient Egypt. Osiris was a king whose brother Set was jealous of him. First Set tricked Osiris into a coffin which he sealed up and threw into the Nile. It eventually washed ashore and a tree grew above it. Isis (Osiris' wife) found the tree but couldn't extract the coffin from it, so sat by the tree weeping. Then Set cut down the tree (no mention of where Isis was when this was going on), chopped up Osiris' body into fourteen parts, and scattered it (them) over the earth. Isis, with the help of her sister Nephthys, found thirteen of the fourteen parts. She asked Anubis, god of mummification, to rejoin the parts, which he did. Then Isis and Nephthys prayed over the body and it was restored to life. After this death and rebirth, Isis miraculously bore Osiris a son (Mark points out that this was all the more miraculous considering the one part they didn't find). |
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