Hays Travelogue

Some of you have noticed the link in the sidebar to Laughing Dove Poems. This is a static page on my blog with no archive and no comment. I’m using it as a place to air out some poems I have written this year while I decide what to do with them. It’s amazing what hanging a poem out in public does for my editing skills. So each week, a different poem has been aired out on the page. Mom suggested keeping all of them available, so I’ve put an archive on another blog, Laughing Dove Archive. You can link to it from the bottom of the Laughing Dove page.

If this is the Pic of the Week, well, it wasn’t much of a week. This is the view from our bedroom with its nice French doors and shutters. We have a narrow balcony, too narrow to sit on, but the clotheslines are here. From this angle, the view is of the apartment building catty-corner from us. That is the best view. The other view, directly next door, looks straight into the neighbors’ balconies and rooms. There is no privacy for any of us, and it is pretty uncomfortable.

Mr. Abu Bakr, our guide in Siwa, is a tall man in his mid to late 40s. In addition to being a guide, he is a member of the Siwa Town Council and curator at The House of Siwa Museum. He is an avid reader and reads any books he can get. His list includes Unamuno, Cela, Dostoyevsky, Alex Haley. Each October 5000 men and children attend a three-day event that is aimed at restoring relations that might have gone amiss during the previous year and preserving peace in the village. We were sitting with Mr. Abu Bakr on a concrete bench on Gebel Dakrur overlooking the campground where the Reconciliation Festival takes place when he told the following story.

“It was an American movie that changed my life. I was a very good student in school, number one in my class, and I was sent to university at Matrouh. This was my first taste of freedom. At this time, there was no paved road between Siwa and Matrouh, so I would not go home for 9 months at a time, only in the summers.  For the first time in my life, I was not an A student. I spent my time playing soccer and watching movies with my friends.

“One night, we watched a movie about people who were trying to cross the border between the United States and Mexico. They wanted a better life, and it looked like a fine adventure. Of course, there were some hard things that happened to them, but it gave me an idea. I wanted to have this adventure, and I came up with a plan to cross the border into Libya to work for the summer. At this time, Libya was wealthy and Egypt was poor. There was more work in Libya. If I came back to Siwa for the summer, I could only work in the garden.

“I convinced one of my friends to go with me. Our plan was to hire a car to drive us to the border, and when we reached the border, we would jump out of the car into Libya. As we approached the border, Egyptian soldiers fired at us, but we used the car as a shield, jumped out and ran into Libya straight into the guns of Libyan soldiers. “I am a Siwa boy!” I said. People from Siwa have a reputation for being honest and hard-working, so the soldiers took us to a nearby town where we both found jobs for the summer.

“Meanwhile, my father heard about what I had done. When I came to Siwa at the end of the summer, he was very angry and threatened to beat me. Here, fathers beat their children by flogging them across the soles of their feet. I asked my grandmother to intercede. My father would have to abide by her wishes, and so I did not receive a beating.

“However, he did not allow me to return to the university. Instead, he insisted that I join the army where I was sent to serve three years on the Egypt-Libya border, exactly where I had crossed the border that summer. So you see, I never finished the university. My life might have been different, but I am happy here. I enjoy working with tourists and explaining our culture and traditions to them. I learn many languages this way. I read and I try to improve my mind, and I work as a volunteer with the Reconciliation Festival.”

See those rocks beneath the water? One of my favorite parts of our trip to Aswan was sailing with Captain Gelal through the Nile Cataracts. He lives in a village near Aswan and knows these waters like you know the streets in your neighborhood. He taught Mike a little bit about sailing a felucca, and he sailed right up to a waterfall so that we could take pictures. Along the way, he taught us about the flora and fauna of the Nile, the history of his people, and how to read the river. For instance, there is a kind of fish, no longer found in this part of the Nile, that used its rough nose to grind hollows into the rocks. These hollows became egg beds. Besides short trips like ours, just under 4 hours, he also takes people on overnight trips to Kom Ombo and Esma.

The second day we went to south to the temples at Abu Simbel. There are three ways to get there: land, lake, and air. We took the less expensive, three hour land option through the emptiest desert ever. Land travel in this part of Egypt is done in a police escorted convoy of buses, vans, and private cars. Our driver had a suicide wish that he endulged by driving the entire way in the left hand lane. These two temples to Ramses and his favorite wife, Nefertari, were threatened with submersion when th High Dam was built. UNESCO saved them by carving them out of the mountain and relocating them to higher ground.

We were in Aswan during the Prophet Mohamed’s birthday celebration and saw our first moulid, or celebration of a saint. All of the Aswan photos (including some from last year and some from the Nubian Museum) are here.

This man sells seeds, maybe small chickpeas, with a twist of lime. It’s a tasty afternoon snack. The paper cones are made of half sheets of paper that are rolled and stacked together. They don’t seem to be used for anything other than an advertisement that he is in the neighborhood. We haven’t seen him since we returned from spring break.

Siwa Oasis, Egypt’s westernmost oasis, is so isolated that it retains its own language, culture, and traditions. The current town surrounds the ruins of the old fortress town of Shali. Our guide, Mr. Abu Bakr, is a member of the town council and runs the House of Siwa Museum. He taught us a lot about Siwan culture (below). More photos are here.

• The people here are descended from the Berbers. They speak their own language. All children learn Arabic at school.
• There were donkeys but no donkey carts in Siwa until WWII when the people pulled the wheels from vehicles that had been left by the armies.
• All of the donkeys in Siwa are males, bought or traded for in Alexandria or Marsa Matruh. This signifies that women should never have to do the hauling, carrying, or fetching.
• When women leave their homes, they are completely covered in a blue robe. In the old days, they also wore a blue veil over their faces. It has become fashionable to wear the Saudi black veil because of the increased visibility afforded by the slit for the eyes. The women need the visibility because of increased traffic in the town.
• The Temple of Amun was badly damaged in an earthquake in the 1800s. A provincial official then had the idea of dynamiting the remaining stones and columns to make building materials.
• Once a year, at the full moon in October, there is a Peace Festival attended by men and children. The purposes of the festival are to purify one’s heart, reconcile with one’s enemies, and live a peaceful life. Women, whose hearts are already pure, have no need to attend.
• Grandmothers used to tell moral stories to the children in the evening. But when the first television arrived in the 1980s, children began to prefer the violence of television to the right and wrong of the grandmother stories. Here is a story that Mr. Abu Bakr remembers from his grandmother, The Wolf and the Hyena. The wolf was very thirsty, but he could find no water. He searched and search and finally found a deep well, too deep for him to reach the water. He jumped into the bucket and sank to the bottom where he drank to his heart’s content. Then he realized his predicament. He had no way to get out of the well. He could only wait to be rescued or to die. Then came along a thirsty hyena. He looked into the well and saw the wolf. “Hello! What are you doing down there?” “I’m enjoying my time,” said the wolf. “The water is sweet and there is food as well. Grab the end of the rope and pull me up so that you can enjoy it, too.” The hyena took the end of the rope and being heavier than the wolf, he slowly sank into the well. Midway, they passed each other. “It’s just like life,” said the wolf to the hyena. “Some of us rise, and some fall.”
• When strangers, traders, and visitors come, give them a place to stay and food for 3 days. After 3 days, they must move on, because “a man without work is trouble.”
• It’s a sin to sell fruit. Siwans share their surplus with their neighbors.
• Siwans are healthy and live long lives. They use traditional medicines, sand baths and sweat lodges to cure their ailments.

Goethe said: “I have come to the frightening conclusion that I am the decisive element. It is my personal approach that creates the climate. It is my daily mood that makes the weather. I possess tremendous power to make life miserable or joyous.”

I wonder how much the morning light on these stairs helps to create my daily weather.

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Originally uploaded by tamra hays

The job fair season is about half over, but there are a few fairs coming up in Istanbul, Bangkok, London, and Bethesda. Meanwhile, many of us know where we will be next year. Here’s a sample.

• Robert College in Istanbul
• Dulwich College in Shanghai
• Munich International Schools in Germany
• Swiss International School in Basel
• American International School in Mozambique
• Jakarta International School in Indonesia
• Taipei American School in Taiwan
• The American School in Switzerland (TASIS)
• Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates

Some are returning to North America for graduate school and work. Everyone returns home with a deeper understanding of and appreciation for life in the Middle East.

• Tucson, AZ
• Charlotte, NC
• Richmond, VA
• Houston, TX

Finally, one of us will become a tea shop owner in Cape Town, South Africa.

For the teachers who stay with AISE, these departures open up lots of opportunities to move up and around the organization. Department chairmanships, IB teaching positions, program directorships and other coaching and leadership roles open up more frequently than they do in more sedate schools.

So, where do we go from here?

All over the world.

Last weekend, we went to Zamalek to shop for Ali’s birthday, and this is a little detail from one of her gifts. On the way back to Heliopolis, the taxi driver had to stop for gas, so I entertained myself by taking pictures of the things I bought. The pretty teal blue background is just the seat cover.
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Originally uploaded by tamra hays