Saturday, July 15, 2006

Riots in Amman

Yesterday at church we were given a security briefing. We were told that this weekend is a very pivotal weekend and that:
· Protests can erupt sporadically, especially around the University of Jordan depending on current state of political affairs. If caught in a disturbance, BYU personnel should seek safe haven inside buildings such as shops, restaurants, etc., until the incident has passed.
· Because spontaneously violent and planned protests are possible following Friday prayers, BYU faculty and students should stay clear of mosques and other areas where protest activities may occur on Fridays.

That pretty much takes away everything that we can do in the city. We aren't supposed to go to downtown, near mosques, the university, any place American...

It's all with good reason. Here's what happened downtown yesterday:

Newspapers here are full of pictures of the riots. You can look at al-Dustour and al-Ra'i (more al-Ra'i pictures)

We were also told to:
· Avoid all Palestinian camps and areas close to Palestinian refugee camps. Limit or cancel travel if necessary.

That means that we can't go explore outside of the city...which means that we are pretty much on lockdown. That's probably okay because Andrew has some homework that he needs to catch up on and I need to do some things, too. So...we'll be here all day.

Considering that Hezbollah has basically declared open war on Israel (not that I can blame them for that declaration), things have escalated quite a bit this weekend!

I'll have to wait for Andrew to get up so that he can translate the paper for me. Even though I now have a pretty good grasp on the alphabet and can follow along in Arabic when someone is reading, I have no clue what anything means. My vocabulary is very limited!

Andrew is up now...

The newspapers all pretty much say the same stuff - Yesterday, outside of the King Hussein mosque in downtown Amman, thousands of protesters gathered after Friday prayers and filled the streets and chanted against Israel's agression against the Palestinian and Lebanese people. They also called on King Abdullah II to officially condemn Israel's actions and call upon the world community to do so as well.

The university riots last week were probably more violent, with the flag burning and all. Riots will probably continue this week as Israel continues to attack Gaza and Lebanon.

Fun stuff!
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Friday, July 14, 2006

Drinking from the Nile...



When I told President Doug and Sister Christa Bradford that I loved Egypt, perhaps even more than Jordan, they all but fell flat on their faces. "You did? Why!?!" Sister Bradford asked when she recovered from her shock and regained the ability to speak. "Because," I stammered, "It's green...and pretty...and I really liked the ward..." I was just as shocked at them for being shocked at me as they were shocked that I liked Egypt.

How could I go away not liking it? There is an old saying in Egypt that once you've drunk from the Nile, you will return. And I drank from the Nile, so I have to go back. (No, I did not pick up any icky parasite...let me explain).



Kirk told us a funny story about when he was young and in Egypt, oh so long ago. A native friend of his asked if he had drunk from the Nile. Kirk, outwardly disgusted, goes, "No! Who would drink from the Nile?" His friend then explained that it is a figure of speech that means that once you've had a taste of Egypt you will want to go back.



So, I want to go back. I realize that not everything in Egypt is green...once you stray too far away from the Nile it gets really dry, really fast. But I really do like all the trees that they have there. They even have lawns at some places. Can you believe it? A lawn. They water it...

I liked how open the people were. Granted, a lot of them tried to baksheesh us, but a lot of them really were just interested in us and wanted to talk with us. They were really patient with me while I tried to speak Arabic to them. They wanted to talk with me. In Jordan that rarely happens. People either want to ignore you or speak English to you.



I really liked the ward there. There were a ton of young families and it was really welcoming. They even arranged a special sacrament meeting for the BYU group because we were so late! They involved us right away, having us help out with music and so forth. It seemed like a lot of fun. Our branch here in Jordan is really good, too, but I just felt at home in the Egypt branch our first week there and that hasn't happened in a long time (I've felt at home in most of my wards, just not the first week).

There is so much to see in Cairo. We didn't see half the stuff we could have. There is so much history right around Cairo. I just felt that if I lived there I would never be bored. Here in Amman we've pretty much done everything to do within the city that is mentioned in the travel book. There is still more for us to do outside the city...but Cairo is just so huge that it would take many weekends of day trips before we'd run out of things to do.

Things are a lot cheaper in Egypt. That's just the way it is. We probably could have lived the whole summer in Cairo for what we spent in one month in Amman. Egypt was simply a lot kinder to our bank account than Jordan has been.

I've decided that if Andrew gets a job in the Middle East I'll be crossing my fingers for a Cairo assignment. (Well, for now...I haven't yet been to Dubai or Turkey, so we'll see how I like those...)


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Welcome to the Land of Confusion!

When Andrew and I arrived in Khan al-Khalili, we were greeted with, "Welcome to the Land of Confusion!" I thus came to the conclusion that people must teach these poor street vendors random bits of English and that they are innocently going around repeating them. We heard things such as:

"How can I help you spend your money quickly?"

"How can I take your money?"

"I don't know what you are looking for, but I have it."

"Everything free today..."

"99% off today."

And so forth. I really hope that they don't honestly know what they are saying because when a merchant comes up to me and asks, "How can I take your money?" I really don't want to buy anything from his store and tend to keep a closer eye on my purse.

Everyone in Egypt is out to get an extra dollar. Taxi cab drivers will say that your ride costs 20 EGP when giving them 5 is too generous. If you run into a street sweeper, school child, or nearly anyone else...they will always end the conversation with, "Baksheesh?" Like they actually deserve something from you for giving you the time of day. It is quite amazing how many times we got baksheeshed for absolutely nothing. Often we refused to give the little "tip" they were asking for because it was absolutely ridiculous.

Egyptian economy, according to a local Luxor resident, revolves around agriculture, government work (such as policemen), and tourism. I would say that tourism probably gives them the most income since they rip off so many people. For example, an Egyptian buying a bottle of water gets charged 2 EGP (or less) but a foreigner would get charged 8 EGP. It really isn't that big of a difference, but you can tell that they earn a lot of money from tourisits.


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Shopping at Khan al-Khalili



On our last full day in Cairo we went shopping for souvenirs at the Khan al-Khalili Suq. Apparently this is one of the hardest places to barter at: a fact that we found to be true. The shopkeepers would give us a price and we would give them ours and they would laugh at us, tsk at us, or just repeat their price to us. It was very frustrating. We did end up getting some good deals but it took a long time. For example, to get Andrew's gallabiya -a common dress for men- at a good price, we had to barter with the guy for about 20 minutes and then leave for about an hour and wander by again. He called us back over. We went and bartered some more, told him he was cheating us, and then left. We wandered by again and he almost gave us the price we were willing to pay (5 EGP more, but that's like a dollar so wasn't really a big deal).


We also got some shirts for a good deal. The starting price was 75 - 95 EGP. We got them down to 15 each after quite some time. The shirts (and scarves as well as a bunch of other things) are quite easy to barter down since almost everyone in the street sells them. So, while Andrew was talking to the salesman, I would say that the price was too expensive and then walk down to the next vendor. Because I was moving on, the vendor that Andrew was working with would be more willing to give him a lower price. It was really hard and Andrew got in a lot of Arabic practice. Not as many Egyptians seem as eager to speak English as Jordanians are.

For lunch we went to the nicest-looking restaurant we could find to get Kosheri. It was delicious and looked pretty easy to make. We'll have to try making it when we get home.



After lunch we went exploring in some smaller streets. We didn't find too many interesting things...but did run across an old Pasha leader's house who was Jewish. Apparently Egypt used to have quite the community of Jews--the house was fairly run-down so I'm assuming that was quite a while ago!






After getting bored with this street we headed back to the main Khan al-Khalili street. The police were making an announcement and people were scurrying to close their shops and head into the alleys. We are assuming that the same thing was happening there that often happens in Italy, as well as other places with high rates of illegal immigrants: The shopkeepers don't actually have permits so the police are coming to clean-house. They announce it first so that it gives people time to scatter (no one really wants to arrest all those people...) and then they do inspections. Interesting.

It was either that or it was siesta time. We doubt the latter considering the rate at which people were closing shop, but a lot more children were tending shops when we walked down Khan al-Khalili. They would call out, "This scarf...one guinea!" So we'd stop to look and an adult would call from the back of the shop, "It's not one, it's twenty!" I started "Ya-haram!"-ing children left and right and telling them they shouldn't lie. A lot of children looked rather apologetic, but only after my telling them that they were liars. I suppose if someone told me, "Oh, shame on you. You liar!" I would be a little upset...but that's really what they were doing and I really didn't appreciate it. Plus, it's one of the only things I know how to say.

Once when I said it to a child who pulled that same trick on us, his brother came out and said, "He's not lying. It's joke...funny." And I said, "It's not funny. It's lying." Andrew translated that to Arabic as, "It's not funny. He's a liar!" To which the Egyptian teen got really concerned and said, "Are you a Muslim? You can't say that...can you say that if you're not a Muslim?" Apparently it's a pretty harsh insult to call someone a liar because the Qu'ran speaks out against it. But since they were in fact lying, I don't see what they were so upset about. I suppose it didn't really offend anyone--it just shocked them and made them feel bad. In fact, I even made a few friends out of some of the little kids I reprimanded. It's a tough job, but somebody's got to do it.

At long last, we headed back to our hotel, went swimming, and then headed to Pizza hut to spend the rest of our money. We came back to our hotel room and watched the World Cup final game. It was pretty exciting...even with all the excitement, I fell asleep before the game was over.

We woke up the next morning and headed off to the airport where, once again, we got random names on our tickets and no one cared. Security definitely won't be that lax when we go back to the states!
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Thursday, July 13, 2006

Extra, Extra, read all about it: Acts of WAR

...or acts of Whiney Arab-Resenters! Crazy Israelis! Just grow up! So, 3 soldiers get kidnapped... I think that was in the fine print of their soldier contracts - you put yourself at risk, you risk getting hurt. So, they got hurt. Oops... Americans get hurt every day in Iraq. We're not blowing up Iraqis in retaliation...wait...yes we are! Even so, dozens of Lebanese casualties aren't a fair trade for 2 kidnapped soldiers, and killing the entire infrastructure of Gaza isn't a fair trade for one soldier.

So, life out here is getting pretty intense. We're still safe though. Don't worry. Jordan won't be implicated in this war thing if it escalates even more (which it probably will...). Jordan has a long standing peace treaty with Israel, plus Jordan doesn't have any paramilitary groups like Hamas, al-Aqsa, or Hizbollah that are shooting old Russian missiles into Israel.

The only threat we have here is riots. There was one yesterday on campus. Our afternoon classes were cancelled so that we wouldn't have to be on campus during the violent riot, which was probably a good idea, since the mob burned American and Israeli flags while chanting the ubiquitous "Death to [insert name here - America, Bush, Israel, Olmert, etc.]." There have been more helicopter and fighter jet patrols over Amman recently too. Other than that, we're safe.

So, don't worry. We're nowhere close to Gaza, Beirut, or Haifa. Amman is a nice, calm place. Whew!
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Islamic Cairo - A Three Hour Tour!

We signed up to go on the Intensive Islamic Cairo Tour. We thought that it would be a half-day tour...boy, were we ever wrong! Our tour ended up lasting 7 hours and 40 minutes! We were exhausted by the end of it. We learned a lot of interesting new things though!

Before you can go into a mosque you need to take off your shoes. The next thing is to make sure that the girls are modest. At some places we had to wear full robes. At other places we just had to cover our heads with a scarf. And I even had to tie a scarf around my stomach because my midriff was "immodest" (I had a layered shirt on...so since my undershirt was showing we had to cover it...). Sometimes instead of taking off our shoes we put on shoe coverings, but this was only at mosques that are no longer used for worship.


We learned the origin of the word "chair" as used in "department chair." I'm not sure that it necessarily evolved from Arabic, but when mosques were used for places of instruction the teacher would sit on a chair and all the students would sit on the floor around them. We learned this while sitting on the floor around Mohammed Eissa, the professor who gave our tour.


Andrew was excited that he could recognize different types of architecture. Most of the minarats that we've seen in both Egypt and Jordan have been a solid tower. However, we saw one mosque, Ibn Touloun's, which was done Iraqi style, with the staircase on the outside.



The cherry on our Islamic Tour cake was the Mosque of Muhammad Ali Pasha. It was based on the Blue Mosque in Turkey and had a lot more decoration than the other mosques that we had seen. The acoustics in this mosque were amazing! Inside there are 365 lamps to represent the days of the year.





We also went to some rather fancy houses. One was the house of Gayer Anderson: a very wealthy British man who left his house to the Egyptian government. His whole house was amazing. There was a huge collection of Islamic art, and the house was huge! It just kept going and going. If I had to make a "list of things to do in Cairo" this would definitely be on there. It was really cool.


We also went into some of "Old Cairo" which is still surrounded by the city wall. It really isn't too bad, but there is a lot of garbage on the streets and they were replacing the water lines so the road was a little torn up. We had to walk through an old gateway and through all that garbage to get to the torn up road. After we passed the construction the roads were fine...the construction went almost all the way through the center of Old Cairo so I'm not sure that we ever officially "passed" it unless we were on one of the side streets.







Another fancy house that we went to was an old schoolmaster's house. It had a series of wings that were used to house students, teachers, the headmaster's family and so forth. We had a tour guide that was taking us through the rooms one by one and explaining things to everyone in Arabic. At this point we were all so fatigued that no one was really paying attention. Gayer Anderson's house was cooler, but I think that was just because we got to explore it on our own.

This is the ticket to get into the above explained house (al Darb el Asfar). These tickets are pretty much uniform throughout Egypt.



When we got out of Old Cairo, we really were tired. It was past 2 in the afternoon and we had not eaten since breakfast. Many people were out of water. We were not a happy group. We wanted food. We wandered out onto the street and all these restaurant workers started trying to get us to eat at their place. They were moving tables out in front of us while we were walking, pushing us into their restaurants and continuously telling us to eat at their store. One guy even arm wrestled Wade, promising us all free beverages if Wade won. Wade lost. We didn't eat lunch (there was no time! we had to keep going!) because we were on a slave-drive tour again, so we all filed onto the bus after getting our water.



Kirk did end up buying us all pita bread while we were on our way to the last mosque we visited (the Muhammed-ali Mosque) from a pita seller. It was probably the best-tasting pita bread I've ever had in my life. That, or I was absolutely famished. There are bread-sellers everywhere. They carry their bread with them. We caught a guy on a bicycle...impressive, no?



Also around this area of the neighbourhood is the City of the Dead. It is actually a graveyard but people have begun to live there. So many, in fact, that the city government has gone in to put in water pipes. It is pretty crazy how desperate people are for housing and really sad that they are too poor to live elsewhere. You can't see it too well in this shot, but behind that wall is a nice mix of tombs and make-shift houses.

After finally heading home, Andrew and I went swimming to relax and then went to dinner and straight to bed. We were exhausted and rather glad that our 3 hour tour (aka 7 hour and 40 minute tour) was over!
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Cairo Metro



The Cairo Metro is nice but it definitely doesn't hold a candle to the Moscow Metro. The stations are all pretty boring, unlike Moscow's stations, many of which are built like castles!

The metro, like in any city with enough populace to require a metro, was crowded. Even on a Friday morning it was pretty busy and just got busier as the day went on. What is interesting about the metro station is that the first two cars are reserved for women only, which comes in handy if the trains are too crazily filled with men. There is also a family car. Anyone is allowed on the other cars, but it is nice to have some "less dangerous" places for a woman to be.

In keeping tradition with all the metros I have been in, I took a nice tumble just as we were heading home. A group of us were walking down the stairs at the Mar Girgis station. The marble stairs used to have weather strips on them but those had long since finished serving their purpose. Just as Alison was about to tell me, "These stairs are kind of slippery..." I biffed it. I fell down really hard and then slid down a few more stairs. Don't worry...I had a few bruises and could hardly move an arm for a day but am all better now. Perhaps the stairs weren't as much to blame as my shoes...





They have been replaced...by some $3 shoes we found at the Suq.
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Church and Coptic Cairo - July 7

Another early morning... It actually wasn't too early and really should have been earlier. As it is we completely missed sacrament and were only there for about half of testimony meeting. We had to walk from the hotel to the Dokki metro station (it reminds me of Andrew's cat...) and take it to the Sakanat al-Maadi station. Since we were already almost late for church, Kirk wanted some of us to take taxis to the church and some of us to walk so that we wouldn't all walk in late at the same time. He had told us the address of the church and then gave directions to the taxi driver. The roads in this area of Cairo were set up rather easily. In theory the streets were numbered consecutively (though not all streets were marked...) and the villas were also numbered in an orderly fashion. But our taxi driver could not find the street we were looking for so just dropped us off and tried to get us to pay him 5 EGP for our pre-bargained 3 EGP ride. We gave him 3 and then left. We didn't really know where we were so we walked up and down the streets looking for the right one. It didn't exist. We did see a man wearing a white shirt and tie carrying what looked suspiciously like a scripture case. We started going that direction but then noticed this huge group of Americans all dressed up marching around...we joined them (apparently we stick out!) and marched around with Kirk trying to find this unknown street.

Arabs are so willing to give directions, even if they are faulty ones, so we ended up getting a lot of dead-end leads...finally Kirk realized that he had switched the villa number with the street number so we were looking for a non-existent street. Oops! We did eventually make it to church and the it was wonderful. There were so many families there...and they even did a special sacrament service for us.

After church we headed into Coptic Cairo. We took the Metro from Maadi to the Mar Girgis stop. Here a huge wall is built around a highly concentrated Coptic population.




Shortly after getting to Coptic Cairo, you will notice signs all over the place stating:



If is traditionally believed that this is where Mary and Joseph fled to hide the baby Jesus from King Herod. They had to have hid somewhere, and apparently it is down that staircase.

Coptic Cairo is certainly has an interesting mix of worship places. We went into the oldest known synagogue in Cairo. We visited a Greek Orthodox Cathedral. There were many other represented religions as well. It was very interesting to see how the art was all the same. The Star of David was used in Islamic art as well as Jewish art, and believe it or not, the Arabs and Jews used to get along! The art was all very Islamic in all the different churches we visited.



After exploring the churches for a while we went to look at some gardens. As we were just entering the garden, we were stopped by a Coptic Egyptian family. I was immediately swarmed by women and children while Andrew was taken off, once more, to have serious conversations with them menfolk. I had a good time introducing myself a million times over. It was great! The kids knew how to say a few key phrases: "What's your name?" (which is pretty much all I can say in Arabic, so no one felt dumb), "How old are you?" and "Do you love Jesus.". I did hair and played catch and reassured the children many times that I love Jesus...



Andrew talked about religion. These were some really devoted Coptics. They had crosses tattooed on the underside of their wrists. They were also determined to have religious conversation and the conversation that took place may have strayed into being moderately illegal. There are no missionaries in Egypt and it is illegal to preach so, although Andrew wasn't preaching, per se...it could have been bearing testimony, which is also pretty much illegal. But they had heard that we had a prophet and wanted to know if we actually believe in him, which we do. Their conversation got pretty heated, but it ended on good terms.

Oh, we also got some "presents" from an Egyptian Jew who thought that we were cool because Andrew said he was of Jewish descent.
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Wednesday, July 12, 2006

The Great Pyramids -- Giza

Well, we did it. We saw the only remaining wonder of the Seven Wonders of the World. Now we can quit traveling (just kidding!).

2,400,000 stones were used to make this pyramid, and not just any stones but huge blocks. They are pretty tall -- they reach just below my shoulders!



Nancy Standing by a block of the Great Pyramid


We had only about 45 minutes to spend at this wonder, which is okay because they only sell 150 tickets to get inside each day, and they pyramid is really rather big so it would take a long time to walk around it. After climbing around the area you're allowed to climb on we were all sent back to the bus.

We went to the "panoramic outlook point" so that we could actually fit the pyramid into our camera lens. The Great Pyramid (on the far right) is so huge that you can't fit it into your frame at the base of the camera. The pyramid that looks the biggest in our panoramic shot is actually smaller than The Great Pyramid. It is shorter and uses fewer blocks but it was built on a higher piece of ground in order to make it appear taller.



And The Sphynx. Rather a sphynx that happens to be very famous, and like most famous things it was a mistake. When the second pyramid was being built (not the Great Pyramid but the one built to look bigger than it), they were carving an alley and ran into a big rock. Instead of removing the rock they decided to make a statue. Probably a good idea considering how big it is!




We went to the Museum of Egyptian Antiquities after the Sphynx (we were allowed only 20 minutes at the Sphynx, 2 1/2 minutes at the panoramic view, and 45 minutes at the Great Pyramid). We were there for 3 hours or so. It was a pretty good museum but not very well organized or documented. We did, however visit both King Tut's treasury room and the mummy room. It was really pretty cool. I wish that we had been allowed cameras...but then again, I did have nightmares that involved those very mummies just a few days ago, so maybe I'm glad we didn't have a camera so that I don't have to sort those pictures later!

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Saqqara

Because we got into Cairo so early in the morning we couldn't check into our hotel; thus, we had a whole day of activities laid out for us. We first headed to Saqqara. Saqqara is the oldest-known step pyramid in Egypt. It was kind of an experiment in pyramid building. Rulers would build their tomb and then build a roof over it (the first step). This particular ruler (Djoser) decided that he would just continue putting roofs on his tomb, and thus, the first pyramid was born. It is solid rock, unlike the Great Pyramids, which are hollow and have rooms inside.




Shortly after entering the park, we were surrounded by people trying to sell us things. "POSTCARDS!" "CAMEL!" "DONKEY!" "NECKLACE!" "HATS!" Andrew calls it "running the gauntlet" because you just have to plow your way through them. In the midst of our plowing through I was snatched up by an Egyptian man and plopped on a donkey. I was mad. I didn't want to be on the donkey. I didn't want to pay to be on the donkey. And I certainly didn't want some random man tossing me up on a donkey. (Ezra was tossed onto a donkey as well, but he's 2. I'm 21. People don't pick me up and toss me in the air anymore. At least, they shouldn't). The whole time I'm saying, "No! No! Laa! Laa!..." and trying to get off the donkey (except here where Andrew is like, "Smile." I think he thought it was funny). Well, I finally did get off that donkey and when I did, the guy baksheeshed me! I told him that I didn't have any money for him and that he should have asked before he put me on the donkey. Perhaps I should have given him a tip...but I didn't really enjoy myself (especially when he put his sweaty headdress on my head!) and I didn't have any money. Andrew had it.



While I was busy making Egyptian donkey-ride sellers mad, Andrew was off making new friends.





I think the fly was trying to either eat something off his shirt, or eat the shirt itself. Either way, we couldn't get him to leave. He just walked all around Andrew's shoulder and every time we'd try to wave him off, he'd just relocate. The fly was on Andrew for about 10 minutes or so. Andrew was flapping his arms and blowing on him to see if he would leave, but he stuck it out. Eventually I gave him a good hard flick (taking all my anger at the donkey man out on the fly).

Besides being harassed by donkey-ride sellers, Ezra and I had a good time chasing each other between all the columns.



After Saqqara we went to a nearby carpet weaving school (so that Fauzi could try to get us to buy stuff again). Their presentation was not quite as comedic as the alabaster factory we visited, but we did learn that we didn't want to buy anything there. A little carpet the size of a standard textbook costs around 300 USD. Instead of going up to the store at the end of their presentation, Andrew and I stayed down in the workshop and watched them weave. Some of the girls invited me to weave and so I sat down and weaved with them for a while. Remember that...the next time you go to Egypt to purchase a rug, I might have worked on it. Andrew was pretty popular as well. He had about 10 young ladies around him who were very upset when they found out he was married. They gave him some strands of silk as a memoir.





We ate lunch at a really fancy restaurant. It cost 30 EGP per person (that's a pretty outrageous price considering Andrew and I ate for 10 EGP for both of us at other places). The food was good, but I'm not sure it was completely worth it...we think that Fauzi got another cut here because no one would tell us what the actual prices were. Hmmmmm...



After lunch we were herded back on the bus again to head to the Great Pyramids. The trip so far has seemed more like a slave-driving experience than a fun-filled journey...but it does slow down soon...Ezra had had enough of getting on and off the bus so we were playing games on the bus. One of his favorites is getting stuck. I don't know why that is one of his favorites, but who can fully understand the mind of a 2-year-old? Besides, it kept us both entertained.


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