Moving On

In our last day in Egypt we had time to visit the last of the monuments on our list and take some time to relax and reflect. Because we were so incredibly tight with our money we were able to splurge on our last night. We went to a trendy bar on top of the Hilton hotel and sat for three hours smoking sheesha on the terrace overlooking the Nile and the west side of Cairo. We could afford it because the exchage rate is very much in our favor, but it still felt like a huge luxury. I haven't been comfortable smoking in public as a woman, but since this was a more "Western" establishment, I didn't get any funny looks. It's kind of surreal to consider all that we've seen in the last two weeks -- a lot of really old and really big things. Now we're in Europe, a very dramatic change after only a day of travel. Even though I've never even been on this continent, walking the streets of Brussles is much more comfortable/familiar than any of the cities we visited in Egypt.

Living with the Dead

In the past week Ben and I have made it around several of the more significant landmarks in Cairo, and I think it's safe to say that death is a major theme. The pyramids are a huge memorials, and the tombs that they hid were more lavish than any ornaments I've ever seen for the living.

The first and third day of our trip was dedicated to the pyramids as Giza and those at Saqqura/Dashur respectively. On our second day, after looking at dozens of sarcophagi, caskets, and mummies, we headed to the Cristian quarter. In Coptic Cairo, where most of the inhabitants are Greek Orthodox, we spent a large portion of our time walking around a Greek cemetery. The graves were huge and lavish, and some of them looked like houses. A long row of cottage-like mausoleums lined the outside edge of the cemetery and eerily resembled a row of houses for the living. I thought this was a little odd, but I like cemeteries, and this is one I'll remember. The oddity of those graves hardly compared to my amazement at the Cities of the Dead, which we visited on Sunday.

There are neighborhoods in Islamic Cairo literally referred to as "Cities of the Dead." Huge spans of Islamic cemeteries are inhabited by squatters, usually relatives of the deceased. I read about them in our guide book, and we naively wandered into one at the end of a long day. It was one of the strangest and most interesting sites I've ever seen. Houses leaned between grave sites and tombs, and at some points it was difficult to distinguish where the living and the dead slept. Sometimes, I believe, they stayed in the same houses. It was pretty bizarre.

I don't think any other grave sites will match the oddity of out trip to the Cities of the Dead, but I know we're not done seeing crypts. We've now been in Alexandria for two days, and we made a trip to some ancient Roman catacombs. We walked 35 meters underground, through old passageways lined with excavated graves. Most of the sites were rectangular holes, but we also found rooms that were used to host parties, so families of the dead could drink in remembrance of the deceased. It's kind of creepy to see so much attention to the dead, but the monuments are amazing and ornate and they are making me think about death in a new way.

This is where being frugal gets you

As a student, or recent graduate, I'm travelling on a tight budget, and Ben and I have found as many corners to cut as possible. Our hostels are amazingly cheap by American standards ($5-10 per night!), and we also registered for student cards so we get 50% off all entrance fees. To limit transportation costs, we have now mastered the metro here, now we can move around Cairo for about 20 cents a ride. Not a bad deal.

Today, our plan was to visit two sites with pyramids, more obscure and farther away than the Great Pyramids at Giza. We decided to avoid taxis because they have proved relatively expensive, and pretty unreliable. (On our first day, our cab broke down on the highway, and we had to wait an hour for another). Our guide book suggested taking a series of public buses, but that means navigating a system almost exclusively in Arabic -which we don't speak- and finding the correct bus at the "station." The buses load in something like a parking lot with no discernible order.

So, we decided to take the metro as far south as it would go and then try to find a cheaper cab. We figured the price would be down because we were closer to out destination and we were out of the busiest part of the city. We got off the train and found ourselves in an area much rougher than the tourist hot spots. The streets were dirtier than downtown and there we not as many police. We finally found a driver who agreed to a reasonable price, and he swept us off on an interesting adventure.

To be honest, I was not sure that the driver would take us to the correct destination, and if he did, I assumed he would demand more money than the agreed amount. Our first half hour with him did not set my mind at ease. After about 5 minutes he made a rough U-turn and stopped at a gas station. (Gas, by the way, is unbelievably cheap -- about 8 cents a litre). I started to fiddle with my door to roll down the window, and the driver reached around and locked my door! Being locked in began a string of exaggerated worries; like, maybe we were about to be kidnapped or driven and left in the middle of the desert.

I started to feel better when we saw the Nile and reoriented to the area. But, instead of heading for the bridge to cross he drove down a dead-end road towards the river itself. The language barrier made it difficult for him to explain anything, and when we stopped on the bank, he didn't even try to explain. We sat in silence until he pointed to an approaching ferry. I breather a sigh of relief to know that we were at least crossing to the right side of the river.

As the ferry pulled up, I saw a very random assortment of vehicles. In addition to several pedestrians, the boat unloaded bikes, cars, a donkey cart, and a tractor. So we eased our way across the Nile. When our driver got out to walk around, he left his radio on for us, and we listened to prayers and religious discussion in Arabic for most of the ride. It was only when we got back to busy roads that I started to trust him, who turned out to be a great help most of the day.

We negotiated a pretty low fare to be driven around each of the sites and back to Cairo, and our driver stayed with us all morning. If we had not decided to take a chance with him, we would have wandered around, found even sketchier transportation, and walked too much under the midday African sun. We spent more than we planned, but it's hard not to when your initial budget is as small as ours.

PS- Sorry to the people who checked my blog when I was in Haiti, and even after I got back. The technology deficiency made it difficult to post while I was gone, but I dropped the ball in writing my reflections. Sorry!

Incommunicado

It's hard to believe that I've finished my time in Haiti. The computer that I'm on now seems amazingly fast, and it is considering the time I've spent staring at blank screens in cyber cafes over the last several weeks. I've learned a lot about patience waiting more than 5 minutes for a page to load, or 20 minutes to pull up Gmail. Needless to say I was essentially incommunicado. No one could reach me, and I could only make infrequent contact to let my parents and boyfriend know I was still alive.

Anyway, my summer was challenging and rich, and I still plan on posting about it. Writing with the hindsight I have now means my observations are not totally fresh, but I have certainly not come to terms with my experiences. I am only now starting to put together the rush of emotional and physical stress that accompanied my days in Leogone and Jacmel. More later.

Haiti is not Senegal

If it isn't obvious in my other posts, I'm constantly referring to my experience in Senegal to prepare myself for Haiti. There are certain similarities, for instance they are both francophone countries with another more localized language/dialect that is spoken in unofficial settings. Both countries are also developing nations with evident poverty. These two things, language and socio-economic state, are significant, but I can only imagine how different the experiences will be.

In Dakar I lived with a family and studied and toured with several other American students. My primary concerns were language/culture immersion and comprehension. For the next several weeks I'll be teaching at a music camp. This experience should challenge me in an entirely different way, as I don't have much experience in music as anything but a student. I'll be forced to articulate myself in a music theory classroom and in private flute lessons. I will also probably have to perform in various contexts. I've done an excellent job avoiding many performance pressures (I get stage fright), but this should push me out of my artistic and intellectual comfort zones, in addition to my geographic and cultural ones.

Anti-Malaria

I started to take my anti-malarial last week, and I thought that would be a good reality check. I've taken my two weeks of preventative medication and I still haven't grasped that I am leaving tomorrow. Chloroquine comes in a bright pink pill to be taken once a week and works to protect the body against the Malaria parasite. The malaria strands in Haiti are not the worst in the world, though only this specific drug works in that region. I am grateful that I'm not taking the kind that causes extreme sun sensitivity. That seems counter intuitive to me considering mosquitoes thrive in tropical areas where people suffer the sun anyway.

Larium, the anti-malarial I took in Senegal was an experience in itself. One of the prominent side effects is vivid and lucid dreaming, which a stoner friend of mine was particularly excited about before we left. I had the privilege (misfortune?) to experience these effects and enjoyed the added variety to my sleep, though it was disconcerting to wake up with ghosts in my wall (or so I thought) and memories of recurring meetings with a talking wolf.

All joking aside, I realized the importance of my medicine when my four-year-old host sister contracted malaria. My family there slept with nets over their beds, but it's not practical to take preventative drugs when they can also serve as treatments. Natacha (my sister) was out of school for a week with a fever though she recovered fully. Not every family has that fortune. I lived in an urban center, in a middle class neighborhood, with an educated family and we all had the resources to prevent or treat malaria.

National Geographic's cover story for July was about Malaria as a global crisis and caught my attention for obvious reasons. I went to a few fundraisers in Dakar "pour combattre le pilu" (to combat malaria), and now, for the first time in a few decades, the international community is taking steps to slow down this disease. The images and stories in the article were eye-opening since I didn't realize how wide spread, diverse, and resilient the parasite is. This powerful and invisible creature is killing in the third world, because more affluent nations can afford preventative measures (as evidenced in my weekly dose of chlorquine).

The article reminded me of the privilege that I'll carry with the rest of my baggage when I leave tomorrow, and I imagine that will be reiterated when I arrive in Port-au-Prince on Friday morning and though out the next seven weeks. I guess my anti-malarial did lead to a reality check about it's medical and international significance. With the chloroquine my body is almost ready to experience Haiti, though I'm still not sure I'm emotionally prepared.

Pressure to be Clever

I've now changed the title of this blog twice, and I'm struggling to find something witty and significant. The first title was "Everywhere and Beyond," the rational being that this is essentially a travel blog. This explains the heading for my first post. While I am traveling to many places this year, "everywhere" and/or "beyond" are both too exaggerated.

Title number two: Corners of the Globe. Title three: Here and There. I seem to be preoccupied with the theme of place. I nabbed the first for the URL, but "Here and There" was already taken. The idea is basically that, wherever I go, there I am and writing about it to keep people updated on my adventures.

I don't know how important the title is for my purposes, but since the only three blogs I read have interesting names I felt I should put forth a little more effort. I'm leaving for Haiti in three days and still reeling from the move back to Indy from school. While I should be preparing for my trip and sorting through all of my possessions, I'm only preoccupied with finding the right blog title before I leave, even though it will probably change several more times in the coming months.