Favorite things....

No...not raindrops on roses and whiskers on kittens....but a couple of my favorite things and photos from the trip to Egypt. This is, I think, my favorite photo. It was taken at Giza and just has a feel to it I particularly like. Sort of wraps a lot of it all up...camel, donkey, horse, desert, people in arab dress.....great sky.

I didn't take pictures of some of my favorite things though...like the lavender mosquito netting over my bed. Suspended from a hoop hanging from the ceiling it made me feel part princess and part kid-at-camp. Every night as I snuggled up under its purpleness I just grinned. Strange things please me.



This is another of my favorite photos. Well, it could be one of a million favorites because I could fill entire albums with pictures of the kids that came out to "allo" us as we rode through the villages and farms.



And here is Maryanne...my favorite thing (well..person!...)being blown off a camel. It was really WINDY up there! She may not love this picture but I do. Damn we had fun!

The local tack store...of sorts

One of the major blessings we had on this trip was the company and guidance of two Arabic speaking guides in Maryanne, and her driver/right hand man Mohammed. With them we could go to places western tourists don't generally see...and the mobile horse souk was certainly one of those! It began with Maryanne accosting a carriage driver in Cairo, asking him where he bought the harness decorations and tack on his horse. Horse sales move around, and whether he lied or was just wrong, he did send us in the right direction...a direction that we then pursued with Mohammed at the wheel stopping every few minutes to ask the locals in a very non-tour-type-town outside of Cairo, for directions. Finally, a tuck tuck driver (three wheeled covered taxis) offered to take us there if we'd follow him, and off we went through back streets and narrow alleys until we found ourselves in a sort of vacant lot behind the buildings of the town...the horse souk!



There were some horses being shown for sale, a lot of donkeys, and some sheep. We particularly liked this mare with her mule-son at her side.





Vendors sold harness, the decorations I was looking for, and everything from farm tools to rope on their carpets on the ground.





I doubt that they had ever had three western women poking throught their wares before, and we were a source of great interest, especially when a vendor would start trying to sell us something and Maryanne would respond in fluent Arabic. "You speak Arabic!?" one said in amazement..."yes, I have a horse farm..." "A horse farm!? Where!?" "Near Abu Sir." "You have a horses near Abu Sir?" "Yes...25 of them.." Pure amazement. :-)

In the end, with Mohammed bargaining for us we left with a bag filled with tassles and pom poms and bells and jingly things....silver hands of Fatma, decorations to mount on harness saddles in the shapes of rearing horses and crescent moons...but no...no donkeys or horses or even the adorable baby mule.

Telling our stories

So now at last we are back in the states, with stories to tell and pictures (lots of pictures) to share. Taking a cue from our Egyptian host, Maryanne Stroud, I will post a picture or two every morning with some commentary...and by the way, I enabled the comment field; feel free to respond to my ramblings!

This picture (taken by Mohammed aka The Photography Elf aka Shutterbug) represents a couple of things all at once to me. First of all, Egypt runs on donkeys. Farmers, vendors, the everyday folk, all use donkeys to pull loads, carry items, as riding animals and everything else possible. Sometimes impossible. As Maryanne has noted, if you waved a wand and made all the donkeys disappear, Egypt would come to a total, grinding, inoperable halt. This particular longear is pulling a load of berseem (alfalfa) while his handlers laugh and stand on the shafts for the Shutterbug. Which leads me to thought #2: the country and village women and children are beautiful. In the areas around Al Sorat Farm they are accustomed to seeing Maryanne and her riders, and as we passed through their fields and towns we were greeted with open smiles and friendly laughter. The children call "'allo! 'allo!" By western standards these people are "poor," but look if you will at the faces as I post pictures; they are happy, well-fed and overall healthy people. One needs to put ones "western eyes" away here and see instead, families living lives as they have for generations.