Sailing on a Felucca
Trip Start
Jan 06, 2006
1
43
120
Trip End
Sep 02, 2008
Direction Kom Ombo,
Egypt
Monday, March 20, 2006
Justin and I found no one and we ended up joining a felucca that had sailed from Aswan a few hours before. We took a taxi ten miles down the Nile and the driver shouted at the felucca, which sailed over to us to pick us up.
On board we joined three Aussies, a Porto Rican and a Japanese Guy. I had a bit of trouble on board with the sanitary conditions, as I suspected that I would. The Nile is a Great Dishwasher for plates and glasses, and a Great Porcelain Bowl for other needs.(if you need to, skip the rest of the paragraph; it's a description of the latter). I will forever remember a long piss off of the back of the boat, watching the ripples get farther and farther away. I was standing feet away from everyone else (the entire length of the boat was perhaps 20 feet) and letting it go. I tried to ignore everyone behind me as much as they too were trying to ignore me.
The dynamic in the boat was amusing enough. I read Agatha Cristie's _Death on the Nile_ and the Aussies argued with each other. One of them was on his first trip ever out of Australia and was coping pretty poorly. His support mechanism was to make racist comments about Egyptians and use profanities while trying to fish with a shoelace. This lout and another Aussie, a lady, took exception to the profanities and they argued for a while. The lout lost by general consensus.
Justin pulled out a tape of Koranic recitations he had bought for fun and the Captain put it on but then turned it off because it wasn't quite appropriate for the occasion. He put some other Koranic recitations on, apparently more appropriate for the moment. He and his crew were very devout and someone was always praying on the bow (they did it in shifts of forty minutes at a time).
Justin was no Muslim and he seemed to think the whole religion was quite novel. He had a little skull cap and he had a red crescent shirt like the Turkish flag. He made a comment that was pure blasphemy, which doesn't deserve repetition. The captain understood some English, but not quite enough to realise was Justin was saying. The rest of us who understood what he said held our breath to see if the Captain and the crew would lynch Justin that very moment. But nothing happened and we burst out laughing once the tension subsided.
The sun set and the captain said we would go to shore soon. As we lay on the deck, somewhere in the distance some people on the shore were singing. They finished something intelligible, and then they started singing that famous tune "In the Jungle." They were local voices (ie ones that didn't seem to normally speak in English) and we couldn't fathom why they would sing the song, but we were in Africa and "in the mighty jungle the lion sleeps tonight." So it surely did.
The next morning Justin and I had an argument with the Captain about where we were and he hadn't got us anywhere toward Kom Ombo as he had promised the day before. He rowed us ashore though, and hailed a truck for us that took us to the nearest train station. We rode thirty kilometers in the back with a few local farmers. Justin showed them his digital camera and they were friendly. Two of middle aged women who rode the most of the distance with us were very communicative for people who spoke no English. It was a lot of fun.
We passed through a dozen police checkpoints. They never checked the truck, and we wondered why they would bother with the checkpoints. We decided that in an emergency, they could probably shut down the road in the time it takes to make a phone call. At Kom Ombo we were let of by the train station and I paid the driver the equivalent of a Canadian dollar.
We waited for the train to Luxor and Justin made some friends with the local men also waiting for the train. Some were pretty friendly but others were a bit suspicious of us. Justin showed a few of them his Koranic tape. He also showed the ones more interested in us a funny shape that four hands can make when they are joined in a specific way. They laughed. Apparently sexual humour can cross linguistic boundaries.
We rode the train to Luxor in third class. Westerners are never actually allowed to ride third class, but virtually no Westerners get on any train in Kom Ombo (there was no English anywhere there; I had to do with my basic Arabic skills). Had any official seen us, we would probably have been thrown off, "for our own protection," but this train ride is also my best memory of Egypt. It cost us five pounds (one Canadian dollar) for the 300km ride.
We sat with a some great souls. The fellow across from me was a mute with a brilliant smile. He had hilarious miming skills that he used to entertain the people around him. Two of his slapstick jokes linger in my mind. The window was open (there was no AC) and he was looking at an older fellow's ID card. With a slight of hand, it seemed that the ID flew out the window. The older man had a complete cow and everyone nearby laughed when the mute pulled the card out of his outfit. The other joke was less complicated: one of dozens of peddlers throughout the train was selling small packages of mixed nuts for ten cents a piece. The mute bought a pack and found that it was a bit limp. But then he showed the peole around him that, with a bit of pressure, it could me made properly erect. Everyone laughed at this.
Up in Luxor Justin and I had some noodles (a very edible Egyptian pasta) and then we parted ways. I toured the temple of Luxor and ate dinner at McDonalds where they had AC (it was 30 C). They played nineties dance hits and the servers spoke polite English. They have to. There was a help wanted sign by the cash registers. To apply, one requires: English Fluency and a four-year University Degree. I think I might have had the best-assembled burger I've ever had at McD's.
