Garbage City to Paradise

  Nuweiba, Red Sea and Sinai, Egypt
Tuesday, October 28, 2008

To fill you in...
After leaving Luxor we returned to Cairo via overnight seater train. We were told they upgraded to sleeper for next year, but besides the cold cabin it was not a bad way to travel. I put on the eye patch and brought out the neck pillow and slept pretty well besides the rude 2am awakening for ticket check. Unless we had hopped on and immediately pretended to be sound asleep I would say it was probably pretty obvious that we had been on the train from the beginning. Being away from the insane hustle and bustle of the city spoiled us and I was not really ready to be back in the dirtiness and chaos that characterizes Cairo. The idea that Cairo is dirty does not even compare to the place we went to with our guide Hend, back with us from the first week. Let your mind wonder about this for a moment......Garbage City.

Garbage City

Garbage City does indeed exist and it is just that...a city for the collection, seperation, and recycling of Cairo's garbage. Moved out of the city center in the 1950s, the location is a self contained city with housing for the inhabitants and schools, etc. They are Coptic Christians and have a 25,000 seat outdoor amphitheater like church set under a cliff, the largest in the world, where regularly on Sunday 5,000 people come to worship. There is a NGO where paper and cloth are recycled and made into some beautiful things that are then available for sale, it is the Association for the Protection of the Environment. (And of course we were taken in to buy what we liked.) I do not know how to really describe the experience of driving through this place. It was shocking to see the people living their lives around the trash of others. We saw women digging through bags of garbage and the streets are lined with huge bags of separated and organized recyclables that are sold by the ton to companies to reuse the material. The entire place was almost covered with a layer of flies (reminded me of the buttcrack flies in a way...if you know what I'm talking about :-)) that swarmed over everything. It smelled awful up at the church and Ahmed said if the windows had been open as we drove through the beginning of the city itself that it would have been too overwhelming. I believe him. Children were walking from school and playing in the streets, some in barefeet. The most shocking aspect of the whole situation was the fact that these people had shops and markets, food and fruit stands all right on the street just like in the rest of Egypt, but this was Garbage City. Literally a place of filth, but it was their home. I still can not believe the sight. It was a humbling experience to see it, but they were happy. The kids were smiling and playing and the people walking and living their lives normally for them. It was only to me, an outsider, that things appeared so shockingly wrong. Being a garbage collector is a well paying lifestyle. 5EGP per month from the poor families and 20 from the more wealthy is collected for picking up the garbage, they are all given a donkey (which they are absolutely overloading and I found it interesting that this and the Animal Care Egypt seemed to contradicted themselves completely in that way), and they are paid by the companies for the products to be reused. No overhead, just profit, but a lot of shit to dig through first.

The El-Azhar Mosque was our next visit. I had long sleeves and a past knee length skirt with a scarf to cover my head, but my skirt wasn't sufficient and so I had to also wear a full length cover all.

Covered Head to Toe

We all removed our shoes before entering the mosque constructed in 970. Hend told us the 5 pillars of Islam and other details about the Muslim religion; the choice to cover themselves in among the most intriguing to me. However, I can see that if I was to live in that environment I would absolutely cover up to avoid unwanted advances by the seemingly endless number of men. There are definitely woman around, perhaps many in the home caring for the I think it was 3.4 average children, but they are scarce especially at coffee shops or out and about in the evenings. (On my last night in Cairo Louise and I went to the 24 hour internet cafe late in the evening to finally check email and I think I saw one other woman, the coffee shops all around filled with men drinking teas, etc. and smoking shisha, but no women to be seen.)

Having been to markets in Aswan and Luxor the Khan el-Khalili bazaar was not the impressively huge place that I was sort of expecting. And as this was not really my day I was ready to get out of there pretty quickly. Already had my African continent souvenirs taken care of :-). Wondering why this wasn't my day...reasons:1. Well...we had traveled on an overnight seater train arriving in Cairo at 6am 2. I was not thrilled to be staying at the Capsis Hotel again instead of the Victoria as they are actually not of similar standards as Intrepid says they are; even though this time it turned out to be much better. There were only a few hairs that I removed from the bed after inspecting the sheets. (Yes...my level of cleanliness standards has significantly dropped.) 3. At GAD for lunch next to the bazaar I sort of lost my nerve when the workers told me that I had to pay the 10% service charge because we were eating there. But no one else from my group had to pay the service charge and I wasn't about to. They were obviously talking about me and laughing and probably commenting about my being a woman and being unwilling to give it to whatever they said. I was just over it. I have been so respective to their culture, and I was finally annoyed by their lack of respect for me.

The next day we traveled to Sinai and St. Katherine finishing the day with the climb and sunset on the summit of Mt. Sinai that I mentioned in my last brief message just to let you all know that I hadn't forgotten about the blog and that I was still alive and making it through Egypt!

On the Climb

Powerful Mt. Sinai Sunset

Me at the Top

Journeying continued to Nuweiba and the Sawa Camp the following afternoon after the Monastery visit.

Touching the Burning Bush

This was our 'paradise'! We drove past lots of little huts along the coast and I started to get concerned that the place we were on our way to was going to be run down and deserted and not very nice just like the other ones were looking, but it wasn't! It was actually very nice. The manager was not so nice, but the setting was amazing!! Our little huts were super cute.

My Little Hut!

I slept under the protected of a pick bug net with the moonlight seeping through the bamboo walls and (some type of tree) branch roof, so that when I opened my eyes at night it was like I had my own set of stars. I tried to capture this image in the morning after the sun rose, but it wasn't quite the same.

"Stars" in the Hut

I got up both mornings we spent there to see the sunrise. Yes...me, Althea, got up at 5:30 am two days in a row on my own even before my watch alarm to watch the sunrise. It was totally worth it, especially the first morning. What a beautiful thing that I take for granted at home.

Sunrise

I will have to get up sometime in NC or NYC and find a place to watch the sun rise and compare. Not sure it could possibly though as this was over the Gulf of Suez of the Red Sea waters rising from the mountains of Saudi Arabia! Yeah...awesome! We also went snorkeling as a group a couple of times on our second day at the camp. The best thing we saw...a sea turtle! It was incredible. It was a couple of feet at least in length and right there! That was definitely a highlight for me. Our ending on the Red Sea was an overall highlight to the trip.

Lightning in Egypt

One thing I was definitely not expecting to see what lightning, but our last night on the beach had some incredible lightning that I tried to capture on film. It didn't rain much, but I felt a few raindrops! Thank goodness because there was no shelter from the storm out there!

It was very hard to leave when the time came. We knew that the trip was coming to an end and we had really bonded as a group. Those 11 other people (we had 12 total with Ahmed) had become my family. The people that I was finally able to share my experiences with. I knew it was going to be sad to leave them, but at the same time, I knew I wasn't going home. I knew I was on to the next adventure, and I was really excited about that thought (and nervous about getting ready for the step after that too!) so I didn't have too much time to be too sad. And once we got back to Cairo on our last day it was right back into the chaos and dealing with that was enough to handle!
Enjoy the pictures too! :-)

Miss you and love you!

Love,Ali / Althea