OK I am ready to come home now. We have seen all of the monumental points of interest in both Israel & Egypt. The Nile cruise enabled us to see most of the tombs & temples along the Nile, for example the Valley of the Kings, Luxor & Abu Simbel. It turned out that the revolution made it the best time to come to Egypt because there are hardly any tourists & the prices are very good. Three days ago we arrived in Cairo to see the pyramids, the Citadel, go to the sooq & the Egyptian Antiquities Museum. Ending the tour in Cairo is really great because I am officially longing for normalcy.
Neither my dad nor I had been on a cruise before. The St. George Sonnesta was very nice, more like a riverboat than a ship. The food was amazing & the staff wonderful. Best of all it was an interesting social study! Because of the drop in tourism, the Egyptians have been encouraged to travel within the country & so there were a lot of nice local families on board. It seemed like the rest of the people were expats working in the oil & gas industry. All of them live in Cairo so we have had the opportunity to meet them again in the city.
The contrast of Israel to the Egyptian countryside to Cairo is intense. When I am on vacation I often have fantasies of picking up & moving to the destination. While I had that a bit in Israel...I do not have it in Egypt. People are more friendly & gracious than in Israel but it just doesn't seem like they are very.... efficient? The running joke is: How many Egyptians does it take to... ________ (fill in the blank)? The amount of incoherent waiting, misunderstandings, pollution & traffic is enough to make me loose my mind. The fact that they lost my luggage (twice) & then it took 7 days to figure out that it was in a city one hour away, definitely exposed me to a side of business that I wouldn't normally see. Even the Egyptian guide would refer to things as '5 minutes Egyptian time'...meaning we had an hour. The strange part is that the Egyptians once ruled the world, not to mention doing lobotomies in 2,000 BC.
Regardless of my complaints I have loved coming to see it for myself. It is a very interesting time in Egyptian history. We saw people protesting in the streets, burned down government buildings, army soldiers fighting with cops & a tourist guard who carried a huge oozy accompanied us.
With this there are many stories of hope. The revolution has evoked a sense of brotherhood amongst its people. When the cops fled & released the criminals from the prisons to scare people off the streets, neighbors joined forces to guard their families. When the Museum of Antiquity was being looted, it was civilians who stopped the thieves from taking the artifacts. Seeing what could happen when joining together, the Egyptian youth feel empowered for the first time in their lives. They are proud of their country & feel motivated to take care of it.
While things are changing politically it may take longer for the modernization of their social beliefs. Most women cover their hair, some wear a partial veil & others a full veil. Marriage is still arranged by the parents. Today I asked a man how long a girl has to wait to show her boyfriend her hair, he said "Boyfriend? We don't do boyfriends". Apparently if the parents find a good match, the families get together & the boy is shown the girl's hair, her hands & her legs. If the boy approves of these body parts they are engaged & soon after married. I asked this man if he had an arranged marriage, he said he did, and then I asked if he was happy & he silently shook his head no. He said that he was married very young & they don't talk much; she does things with her woman friends & he does stuff with his man friends (the segregation of the sexes is very clear here). Then he said, "it’s OK, I will do better next time"...after spending hours looking at mummies I asked if he meant his next lifetime? The man looked at me & said "No. My next marriage, we are allowed four wives here." Before I heard that in Islam it was considered a sin to take on more wives unless there is a good reason - I mentioned this to him & he said, "I am unhappy, that is a good enough reason for me." Fair enough.
...Pictures to follow.
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