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Odds and Ends 5

Saturday, February 16th, 2008

I was browsing through some old files and realized that I wrote quite a few notes from various parts of the world for my O & E section that were never posted. So, consider this an O & E “international edition.” (Notes from Italy are coming soon.)

•    In Hyderabad, India, there appears to be a trend of photographing your baby/toddler in a variety of costumes, such as a doctor, a god(dess), a policeman, or even (my favorite) Gandhi. Some people put all of the images together to create giant posters to hang in their homes. Very, very funny.

•    I passed by a kindergarten in Kenya that had painted the alphabet, and images that corresponded with each letter, on its exterior walls. What image do you think they used for the letter “G”? A giraffe? Nope. They used a gun.

•    While a friend and I lounged on a beach in Lamu, a Kenyan man told us a nice story about the baobab trees that can be found around the country. One legend says when a god gave each animal a tree or bush to plant into the ground, the hyena planted the baobab tree upside down (which is why its branches appear to be roots). When the hyena realized his mistake, he began laughing and continues to laugh to this day.

•    A friend I traveled with in Tanzania had a Swahili phrasebook that provided sentences for interactions with market vendors, waiters, taxi drivers, and so on. One of the sections was for sexual interactions. Phrases that you could murmur to your Swahili lover whilst in the throes of passion included “Easy lion!” and “It helps if you have a sense of humor about it.”

•    In Kigali, Rwanda, you can make a “cell phone call” by stopping one of the young men and women wandering the streets with full-sized desk phones that are somehow wired to the mobile network.

•    Pigeon is a popular dish in Egypt. I consider myself an adventurous eater, but I couldn’t bring myself to try pigeon, a bird that I believe is popularly known in the US as a “sewer rat with wings.” I am also amused (and a little disgusted) by the similarity between the Arabic words for “pigeon” (hamam) and “toilet” (hammam). Coincidence? Probably not.

•    Cairenes have an awesome(ly scary) way of asking for directions: rather than safely pulling over and directing their question to one of the thousand pedestrians on the street, they will drive alongside another car and, as the two vehicles weave unsteadily down the road, converse with the other driver for a minute or two.

                Deserts of Soot and Snow

                Sunday, December 9th, 2007

                I wrote this entry a few weeks ago, but I haven’t been able to post it online until now. Sorry. My current location: Rome, Italy.

                Bahariyya Oasis is one of five major oases located in western Egypt’s vast deserts and, less than one week ago, it was our departure point for an overnight safari with a Bedouin guide named Mehur. (We spent a day and night in the oasis itself and were bored within an hour of wandering the streets—it was a too-simple, too-quiet town of concrete-block apartments, sand, and palm trees.) Upon learning our names, Mehur decided that “Taea” and “Matteo” were too complicated to pronounce and re-named us “Yasmin” and “Mohammed.” I, in turn, christened him “John.” And so we began our journey.

                Our first stop was the Black Desert, where layers of black sand stretched for miles and freestanding, scorched-looking mountains rose from the earth. Gorgeous. Standing on top of one of the mountains, I looked down on an otherworldly landscape.

                Leaving the Black Desert, we continued on to a cold spring. Along the way, I envisioned a clear pool of water in the sand, surrounded by palms and perhaps a thirsty camel or two. What I actually saw was a concrete box filled with water gushing from a large metal pipe, and yet another of my romantic dreams was crushed.

                Our next stop, “Crystal Mountain” was decidedly more exciting. At the edge of a new stretch of desert, named the White Desert for its snow-white rocks, was an area filled with crystals on boulders and in millions of pieces on the sands. Gathering huge chunks of smooth, glittering clear crystals in my hands, I had a little girl princess moment and began giggling at my thoughts of being surrounded by “free diamonds.”

                We stopped for lunch after we moved deeper into the desert, to a place filled with sand dunes. As Mehur prepared a delicious meal of mashed eggplant, cucumber and tomato salad, bread, feta cheese, and sweet mint tea, I wandered into the dunes and laid down to take a short nap on the warm, yellow-white sand, under the unbelievably blue sky.

                After lunch, we continued on Agabat, a region of larger sand dunes and deep valleys punctuated by enormous free-standing rocks. We stopped our jeep at the top of one large dune to take photos and, lured by the emptiness and soft sand, Matteo and I (and a French-Canadian girl named Anna who had joined us on the safari) ran barefoot and arms-outstretched to the valley below.

                As the sun began to dip towards the horizon, we entered the White Desert, where we would camp for the night. The landscape was, without a doubt, one of the most magical I’ve seen. Hundreds, if not thousands, of perfectly white rocks resembling animals and plants like chickens, camels, and mushrooms rose from white sands; traveling through them was like experiencing a harder, earthly version of watching clouds in the sky.

                And it got better. As I mentioned before, our guide was a Bedouin man, and as he set up our campsite, it quickly became clear that the Bedouin know how to camp in the desert in style. First, Mehur stretched out a large canvas screen decorated with colorful designs. Then, within these “walls,” we laid down several woven rugs on the sand and topped them with a low wooden table and mattresses covered with thick blankets. A few feet away, our fire pit warmed a kettle of tea and cooked kofta and tomato stew.

                After dinner, the four of us sat around the fire, talking and drinking endless cups of tea. Mehur’s knowledge of English was limited, which created several amusing moments. I tried to describe the importance of scary stories on camping trips to Mehur, for instance, but he didn’t know the words for “scary” and “story.” As I mimed “scary” and pointing to the dark landscape, he began laughing and teasingly asked, “Oh, Yasmin, you scared of the desert?!?” Then, lured by the smell of kofta, a desert fox entered our campsite. When Anna asked Mehur if the fox was dangerous, Mehur told a scary story of his own—no, he said, the fox won’t eat you, but, he continued in halting English and mimed gestures, it may claw your face and chew your arm. Oh, ok. (And, later, we asked him if he was going to sleep with us outside. No, he replied—I’m going to sleep in the car.)

                Luckily, I was able to put aside fears of being clawed by a fox and snuggled comfortably into a warm pile of thick blankets, for a night under a sky filled with so many stars that it looked more white than black.

                The next morning, after watching the sunrise (well, after Matteo and Anna did—I periodically squinted at the rays from my pile of blankets), we broke camp, drove out of the White Desert, and entered the Western Desert, where more dunes and an immense valley reminiscent of a lunar landscape awaited us. More photos, more gawking, more running barefoot through the warm sand. And then we returned from the desert to the urban streets of Cairo, where we would wrap up our trip in Egypt and head off to new adventures on a new continent.

                Leaving One Overseas Home for Another

                Thursday, November 22nd, 2007
                Remember when I said that I'd be traveling until the money ran out? Well, the money ran out. (But I'm still not returning to the US!) As usual, my blog is a little behind--I'm in Cairo now, but I will leave ... [Continue reading this entry]

                By the Sea

                Wednesday, November 21st, 2007
                When we first arrived in Egypt, Matteo and I had planned to travel straight from Cairo to Alexandria to wait out the summer heat near the breezy Mediterranean coast. Our plans fell apart, however, on our first night in Cairo, ... [Continue reading this entry]

                Temples, Tombs, and Tourists

                Wednesday, November 21st, 2007
                From Hurgada we continued on to Luxor. The ride was unusually eventful; I was seated next to a deceptively demure veiled woman in her 50s who broke the ice 30 minutes into the journey by showing me a film clip ... [Continue reading this entry]

                Wait– It’s Been How Many Days Since I Last Posted?

                Wednesday, November 14th, 2007
                I don't even know where to begin. I've pretty much traveled the whole of Egypt at this point, and now I'm cursing myself for my procrastination and trying to figure out how to put together a nice, succinct posting ... [Continue reading this entry]

                True Story

                Friday, November 2nd, 2007
                Today I saw a man hoist an unwrapped, skinned lamb carcass into the trunk of an idling taxi with his bare hands. So that's where my meat comes from.

                …and We’re Back!

                Saturday, October 27th, 2007
                Dearest family, friends, and random readers, I apologize for abandoning you for the last month. I was caught up in Cairene life, teaching English at a local American school, preparing for graduate school applications, and dealing with day-to-day activities that ... [Continue reading this entry]

                A Moment in Cairo

                Monday, October 15th, 2007
                Today, on my way to a coffeeshop, I passed two Egyptian girls and a boy around 8 or 9 years old. The boy was carrying a fake AK-47 (at least I assume it was fake, given its lurid red and ... [Continue reading this entry]

                !رمضان مبارك

                Friday, September 14th, 2007
                For those of you who don't read Arabic, Ramadan mubarak! And for those of you who don't speak Arabic either, Happy Ramadan!Yesterday was the first day of Ramadan, the ninth month of the Islamic calendar and a month-long religious period ... [Continue reading this entry]