My Birthday!

I went on a SAS trip to Rural Cairo and a Children's Hospital for the whole day. Along the way our guide told us a wide range of information about Egypt. I learned that ancient Egyptians began to settle the area in 3100 BCE and that Cairo is so overpopulated now that all of the city is filled with apartment buildings because there is no room for anything else. Their bases have the grocery and necessity stores. Only eight percent of Egypt is occupied (the area along the Nile) and this number is expected to increase up to 15-20 percent due to the construction of dams and canals. Education is free and compulsory in Egypt, but if they want a more complete education students can attend private "language schools" for a relatively large sum of money. They start with their first language (e.g. English) immediately, and four years later learn another language (e.g. German, French)! In rural Egypt the farmers have between six and fifteen children. After the parents pass on the children inherit the unfinished buildings and add on to them to fit their families in. This made the small "villages" that I saw on my trip from Alexandria to Cairo, the compounds surrounded by trash and topped with shanty houses. Since it was Monday Cairo was one big traffic jam with people returning from their weekend getaways.

We visited the Ramses Wissa Wassef Art Center which serves as a workshop for female and male artisans who weave tapestries out of wool and cotton threads. The cool garden filled with birdsong was a stark difference from the dusty road outside the gates of the center. The woman in charge, Wassef's daughter, described the center as a place for artistic talents to be found and flourish. The artists start as children usually when they are given thread and no patterns or instructions and are asked to create artwork; some of the artists have been there for over fifty years. She said that they have no quota that they are expected to reach and they are allowed to work whenever they want to, that it is a place for art, not work. It was beautiful to watch the colorful flowers, animals, and people be created by the flying hands of the artists.

Lunch was amazing. We ate on "La Pacha" (The Prince) a riverboat on the Nile in the fashion of the boats used by Egyptian royalty in the early 1900s. Fresh pitas were piled steaming in a basket in the middle of the table. Bowls of veggie and bean dips were arranged around the basket. I had fresh mango juice, perfectly chilled with sweet mango chunks. It was delicious.