Greetings From Estonia

Sorry I haven't posted recently but I'm at our cabin in Estonia.

BBC News: Egypt bans 92-year-old's marriage

The Egyptian authorities have banned a 92-year-old man from marrying a 17-year-old girl, the Egyptian al-Akhbar newspaper has reported.

The ministry of justice invoked a law which says the age gap between spouses should not exceed 25 years.

Egypt brought in the law prohibiting the marriage of elderly men to very young girls during the Gulf oil boom.

It was an effort to prevent wealthy men from the Gulf states seeking young poor brides from the Egyptian countryside.

Not much is known about the 92-year-old man who tried to marry an Egyptian girl of 17 except that he is an Arab from the Gulf.

An Egyptian justice official said by refusing to endorse their marriage it would now be impossible for the girl to travel abroad with her husband.

However, in special cases, the justice ministry does allow foreign men to marry Egyptian women more than 25 years their junior if they deposit a very large sum of money in the name of their wife at the Egyptian National Bank.

Both husband and wife also have to report in person to the ministry which checks their marriage is genuine to prevent any kind of trafficking in women.

According to the al-Akhbar newspaper, 173 such marriages were allowed in the past year after the foreign husband deposited a sum equivalent to about US $8,000 and was screened.

Link

National Geographic: "Lost" Pyramid Found Buried in Egypt

The long-lost foundations of an ancient Egyptian pyramid (pictured) have been found at the royal burial grounds of Saqqara, archaeologists announced on June 5, 2008. Hidden by sand for generations, the newly excavated structure may hold the tomb of a pharaoh, Menkauhor, who ruled more than 4,000 years ago.

The discovery of a ceremonial avenue called the Way of the Sphinxes was also announced.

Link, photos and video.

Goodbyeee ...

The going away party aboard a felucca along the Nile for four of our number. All those leaving are sitting on the left in the picture or on the starboard side of the felucca.

Pictures by Liesbeth and stitching done by Peter.

Newsweek: The Last Egyptian Belly Dancer

Rich Saudis are transforming Cairo's entertainment scene.

Abir Sabri, celebrated for her alabaster skin, ebony hair, pouting lips and full figure, used to star in racy Egyptian TV shows and movies. Then, at the peak of her career a few years ago, she disappeared—at least her face did. She began performing on Saudi-owned religious TV channels, with her face covered, chanting verses from the Qur'an. Conservative Saudi Arabian financiers promised her plenty of work, she says, as long as she cleaned up her act. "It's the Wahhabi investors," she says, referring to the strict form of Sunni Islam prevalent in Saudi Arabia. "Before, they invested in terrorism—and now they put their money in culture and the arts."

Egyptians deplore what they call the Saudization of their culture. Egypt has long dominated the performing arts from Morocco to Iraq, but now petrodollar-flush Saudi investors are buying up the contracts of singers and actors, reshaping the TV and film industries and setting a media agenda rooted more in strict Saudi values than in those of freewheeling Egypt. "As far as I'm concerned, this is the biggest problem in the Middle East right now," says mobile-phone billionaire Naquib Sawiris. "Egypt was always very liberal, very secular and very modern. Now ..." He gestures from the window of his 26th-floor Cairo office: "I'm looking at my country, and it's not my country any longer. I feel like an alien here."

At the Grand Hyatt Cairo, a mile upstream along the Nile, the five-star hotel's Saudi owner banned alcohol as of May 1 and ostentatiously ordered its $1.4 million inventory of booze flushed down the drains. "A hotel in Egypt without alcohol is like a beach without a sea," says Aly Mourad, chairman of Studio Masr, the country's oldest film outfit. He says Saudis—who don't even have movie theaters in their own country—now finance 95 percent of the films made in Egypt. "They say, here, you can have our money, but there are just a few little conditions." More than a few, actually; the 35 Rules, as moviemakers call them, go far beyond predictable bans against on-screen hugging, kissing or drinking. Even to show an empty bed is forbidden, lest it hint that someone might do something on it. Saudi-owned satellite channels are buying up Egyptian film libraries, heavily censoring some old movies while keeping others off the air entirely.

Some Egyptians say the new prudishness isn't entirely the Saudis' fault. "Films are becoming more conservative because the whole society is becoming more conservative," says filmmaker Marianne Khoury, who says Saudi cash has been a lifeline to the 80-year-old industry. From a peak of more than 100 films yearly in the 1960s and '70s, Egyptian studios' output plunged to only a half dozen a year in the '90s. Thanks to Saudi investors, it's now about 40. "If they stopped, there would be no Egyptian films," says Khoury.

At least a few Egyptians say Saudi Arabia is the country that's ultimately going to change. "Egypt will be back to what it used to be," predicts the single-named Dina, one of Egypt's few remaining native-born belly dancers. And it was a Saudi production company that financed a 2006 drama that frankly discusses homosexuality, "The Yacoubian Building." Sawiris has launched a popular satellite-TV channel of his own, showing uncensored American movies. He's determined to win—but he's only one billionaire, and Saudi Arabia is swarming with them.

link

Egypte April 2008

This is the video from our April Desert Trip, big thanks to Femke for this.

Update: The video below is from the November '07 Desert Trip. Again thanks to Femke and Wouter.

Quickbird: The Pyramids

This is why I've not post anything recently

As well we only have any sort of connect for around 2 hours each day.

I so fucking hate this place.

Karaoke Night In Kairo

The going away party for José.

AFP: Egypt raises fuel and diesel prices amid public anger

CAIRO (AFP) — Egypt's parliament on Monday voted in favour of a set of tax and duty increases including on fuel, diesel and cigarettes amid public anger at price hikes and the state of the economy.

According to the proposal presented by the ruling National Democratic Party, the price of diesel -- used by most public transport -- will rise by 46 percent to reach 1.10 Egyptian pounds (20 US cents) per litre.

Natural gas will go up by 58 percent for heavy industry from 36 piastres (six cents) to 57 piastres (10 cents).

Local cigarettes will increase by no more than 25 piastres while imported cigarettes will go up by 33 percent.

Petrol will go up by between 30 to 40 percent, except for the commonly used 80 octane petrol which will remain subsidised.

Tax breaks will be removed from private schools and educational institutions, while vehicle licence fees will also see a sharp rise especially for large capacity engines.

Around 120 opposition and independent MPs, including those representing the Muslim Brotherhood, voted against the proposal.

Parliament spent Monday discussing the proposal which is aimed at covering the 12.5-billion pound (2.3-billion dollar) cost of a rise in public sector salaries promised by President Hosni Mubarak.

Mubarak vowed last Wednesday to raise public sector salaries by 30 percent to combat rises in food prices.

Speaking to parliament, Prime Minister Ahmed Nazif said the new measures were aimed at "taking money from the rich and giving it to the poor."

In recent months, Egypt has seen a number of strikes and demonstrations against low salaries and price rises that have seen the cost of cereals leap by nearly 50 percent over the past year.

The price of cooking oil rose by 45.2 percent, while foodstuffs generally rose by an average of 23.5 percent.

Egypt is also in the grip of a serious bread crisis brought on by a combination of the rising cost of wheat on world markets and sky-rocketing inflation.

The price of bread has increased fivefold in private bakeries, creating panic in state-run bakeries that the staple may run out.

A day of nationwide action called for April 6 saw riots erupt in the Nile Delta industrial city of Mahalla in which three people were killed after demonstrators pulled down posters of Mubarak.

link

Dad has been made redundant

Over the years my Dad has kindly sent us 'care packages' of americana junk food that we couldn't find locally, but this isn't something he'll need to do while we're posted here in Cairo. We made a large effort today and hit all the shops in a 25 kilometer radius and we think we've found all the junk one could want, or not want, that is for sale here in Egypt. We even found pool noodles! We are extremely pleased about that as we've been looking for them for a very long time. And if you don't know what they are, well, you're just going to have to come and see for yourself. Now if you will excuse this short post, I don't feel so good and need to find the alka seltzer.

Queens Day

Not the best shot but it's the only one we have.

Los Angeles Times - Babylon & Beyond

EGYPT: Not your '70s movie

Men were humming verses from the Koran, gently moving their heads back and forth. Others were murmuring prayers while fumbling with strands of beads to keep count. The scene in Cairo's metro, on my first ride to the office here, was revelatory of the wave of religious fervor that Egypt has known in the last few years.

The contrast with an Egyptian movie from the 1970s I had seen in Beirut last week was staggering. The film featured women wearing miniskirts and dancing disco extravagantly. It was set at a time when the society in Cairo was embracing modernity and opening up to the West.

But witnessing the crowds of veiled women and bearded men on the metro, that permissive, open Cairo seems a distant recollection. In fact, Cairo does not resemble at all that idyllic image of the glamorous glitzy city we, in the rest of the Arab world, have repeatedly seen on our movie and TV screens.

Another stunning aspect was the characteristic bruise on the forehead of many men here. These marks are supposedly formed by the repeated contact between the forehead and the floor during prayers. These prayer bumps have become like fashion statements and are derisively referred to as "Zebiba," the Arabic word for a raisin.

—Raed Rafei in Cairo

Photo: Man reading the Koran. Credit: AFP

Why I Hate This Place: Reason #64

Of course this is when the internet does work, which isn't all that often.

SPIEGEL ONLINE: The Daily Struggle for Food

CRISIS IN EGYPT

Rising global food prices have plunged Egyptians into a desparate daily struggle for survival. Many are unable to feed their families, and the hungry have taken to the streets. Is more violent unrest to come?

Link

Space Imaging Middle East: The Pyramids

National Geographic: Giant Statue of Ancient Egypt Queen Found

Archaeologists have uncovered a pristinely preserved statue of a powerful Egyptian queen at the sprawling mortuary temple of Amenhotep III on Luxor's West Bank.

A joint European-Egyptian team found the 12-foot-tall (3.6-meter-tall) quartzite figure attached to the broken-off leg of a much larger colossus of Amenhotep III, who ruled from about 1390 to 1350 B.C.

Experts say the newfound statue is of Queen Tiye—Amenhotep III's favorite wife and the most influential woman of his 38-year reign—bolstering theories that female royalty were gaining in prominence and influence during the time period. (See photos of the discovery.)

Link

Picasa: The April 2008 Desert Trip

I've posted some pictures from the desert trip here.

News-Medical.Net : Another bird flu death in Egypt - death toll now 22

Officials in Egypt have reported another death in the country from bird flu.

This latest death brings the country's death toll from the deadly virus to 22 and makes Egypt the worst hit country outside of Asia.

Link

New York Times - A City Where You Can’t Hear Yourself Scream

CAIRO — Egyptians in this capital city say it is harder and harder to be heard and to have a voice, but they are not talking politics. Well, not only politics.

What they are talking about, or rather yelling about, is noise, the incredible background noise of a city crammed with 18 million people, and millions of drivers who always have one hand on the horn and a rules-free way of thinking.

“Whenever I talk to people, they always say, ‘Why are you screaming?’ ” said Salah Abdul Hamid, 56, a barber whose two-chair shop is on the corner of a busy street on the north side.

Mr. Hamid was, of course, screaming.

It was 4 p.m. in Rhode al Farag, a typical Cairo neighborhood teeming with people and shops and cars and trucks and buses and horse-drawn carts. From his shop, the landscape of sound revealed a chorus of people struggling to make a living, trying to assert themselves in a city, and in a country, where they often feel invisible.

Noise — outrageous, unceasing, pounding noise — is the unnerving backdrop to a tense time in Egypt, as inflation and low wages have people worried about basic survival, prompting strikes and protests. We’re not just talking typical city noise, but what scientists here say is more like living inside a factory.

“It’s not enough to make you crazy, but it is very tiring,” said Essam Muhammad Hussein, as he sat in a cracked plastic chair outside the corner food shop his family has owned for 50 years. He was shouting as he talked about the noise, though he did not seem to realize it.

“What are we going to do?” he asked. “Where is the way out?”

This is not like London or New York, or even Tehran, another car-clogged Middle Eastern capital. It is literally like living day in and day out with a lawn mower running next to your head, according to scientists with the National Research Center. They spent five years studying noise levels across the city and concluded in a report issued this year that the average noise from 7 a.m. to 10 p.m. is 85 decibels, a bit louder than a freight train 15 feet away, said Mustafa el Sayyid, an engineer who helped carry out the study.

But that 85 decibels, while “clearly unacceptable,” is only the average across the day and across the city. At other locations, it is far worse, he said. In Tahrir Square, or Ramsis Square, or the road leading to the pyramids, the noise often reaches 95 decibels, he said, which is only slightly quieter than standing next to a jackhammer.

“All of greater Cairo is in the range of unacceptable noise levels from 7 a.m. to 10 p.m.,” Mr. Sayyid said.

By comparison, normal conversation ranges from 45 to 60 decibels, a chain saw registers 100 decibels and a gunshot 140. Because the decibel scale is logarithmic, every 10 decibels equals a tenfold increase in intensity.

Noise at the levels commonly found in Cairo affects the body. It can cause elevated blood pressure and other stress-related diseases. It can interfere with sleep, which almost always makes people more irritable. “People need a chance to sleep, to have a chance to think, in quiet,” said Dr. Nagat Amer, a physician and researcher with the national center.

But quiet is in short supply, especially in densely packed neighborhoods like Rhode al Farag, where the streets are alive 24 hours a day with people struggling with one another to eke out a living. In the last six weeks, 11 people have been killed in fights in lines to buy some of the cheap subsidized bread many rely on to feed their families.

While noise is never cited as a reason for the spasms of violence, it is a silent enemy that makes the pressures of life that much harder to cope with, people on the streets here said.

“The noise bothers me and I know it bothers people,” said Abdel Khaleq, driver of a battered black and white taxi, as he paused from honking his horn to stop for passengers.

“So why do you do it?” he was asked.

“Well, to tell you I’m here,” he said. “There is no such thing as logic in this country.”

And then he drove off, honking.

In general terms, the noise is a symptom of an increasingly unmanageable city, crowded far beyond its original capacity, officials at the National Research Center said. The main culprit is the two million cars, and drivers who jam the city roads every day.

But Egyptians also like to live loud, preferring community to private space, mourning a death and celebrating a wedding with a good dose of noise. Muezzins’ calls to prayer wail from loudspeakers in the minarets of thousands of mosques in the city. The problem is there are more people now, more cars, more competition for a sale, more jockeying for a spot on the road. And with that much more, there is less consideration for the person behind or next door, social commentators said.

“We like to live our life with people around us — there is no privacy,” said Ahmed El-Kholei, a professor of urban planning at Monufiya University in the Nile Delta north of the city. “This is not a bad thing in itself, but the way it is expressed is wrong. Before, when someone held a funeral, the neighbors would postpone a wedding out of consideration. Today, you see the funeral and the wedding all howling in the microphones at the same time.”

Still, Egyptians do not, as a rule, complain about noise.

“What noise?” asked Madbouly Omran, who has run a small nut stand on Rhode al Farag Street since 1970.

The trucks rumbled by. A pickup truck hit its air horn. Taxis honked.

Moustafa Abdel Aleem, who works in the booth with Mr. Omran, said, “The noise is not something I want, but I can’t do anything about it; it’s forced on me.” So he turned on the radio in search of a song he liked, and of course, turned the volume up.

In a nation where about 40 percent of the population survives on about $2 a day, people understand the struggle to feed a family. In Rhode al Farag, men worked on cars in the street, butchered meat in the street, blasted radios and turned up television sets. Like shellshocked war veterans, residents sat out on the street, sipping tea, oblivious to the cacophony.

Even when it came to the shop run by Mahmoud Faheem, people did not complain. Mr. Faheem rents out concert-sized speakers, and he displayed his speakers on the street, offering the entire block a never ending thump-thump of dance music. “Let him eat bread,” said Atef Ali, 45, the owner of a food shop next door, using an Arabic phrase to explain why he did not complain, even while he detested the music.

And so the people shout, and shrug.

They shout to be heard, and shrug because they say there is nothing they can do but join in, honking, banging, screaming, whatever they need to do to make it through the day — or the intersection. The noise is the cause and the reaction, they say.

“Life is like this,” said Ahmed Muhammad, 23, who makes his living delivering metal tanks of propane to homes. He hangs four tanks off the back of a rusted bicycle, then rides with one hand on the handlebars, the other slamming a wrench into one of the tanks to announce his arrival to the neighborhood. “Making money is like this,” he said. “What am I going to do? This is how it is.”

Link

I'm Back

I've been to the desert this past week and had more fun than I deserve. More later, need coffee.

Saying Good Bye To The Kids

I'm off to the desert for a week or so.

Brian en Doortje en Kids

Our driver took a picture of us it this afternoon, just for a laugh.

The Hendrie Clan

My Uncle, Tante, Cousins and their families.

Roof Rack / Diesel Tank

I've been to the fabricator today and he installed the roof rack and the 2nd fuel tank for our desert trip later this week. The top two pictures are at his shop (the smoke in the top right is just your average every day air pollution rolling by). The bottom two are of our driver Ali and I trying out the secondary fuel tank. It's a 200 liter monster but I wanted to try it with just 60 liters in case it leaked or something. But it did work and how it works is pretty simple, there's a filler cap on the top of the tank with an air valve in it, you fill the tank up and when you need to pump diesel into the main tank there's a pipe on the side and I just use my air pump to pump air into the tank and that pushes the diesel out and down the hose to the main tank. Pretty slick.

And a couple of shots of the street outside the fabricators shop. Never mind the goats, a lady came out of the building to the left and shooed them into the house after I took the picture.