Day Three

Part Two

April 9, 2008

"The Social Program"

Our host, ZAD Group, took great care to show us some of the more tourist-laden areas of this part of Egypt today. Mohammed Rashed, our main contact here, took the day off to ride along with us and keep us out of trouble - which I'll describe later for you is not a task taken lightly here. Proving this point further Mohammed, a life long resident of Cairo, hired a private tour guide and a car to take us adventuring. This is something I'd strongly recommend to anyone coming to Egypt. Finding a respectable tour guide can make a huge difference in the type of reception you get in public places and can dramatically lessen the tourist-sniping that local traders and purveyors excel at. Our guide, Rafek, was our protector and instructor. He would simultaneously lecture on the history of ancient Egypt while fending off the hoards of vendors of trinkets and hawkers of services. If either one of us stepped as much as ten feet away from him, we'd instantly be entreated to "take picture me?" or "see my camel sir?" Nice line, eh? Here's one such guy who's just convinced Greg he should come closer to his camel. In the kind words of my Egyptian host, "no, no, he's just trying to make with you business."

Sure enough, as soon as Greg got a safe distance away from Rafek the guy just bluntly said something like, "O.K. America Great! Now give to me American dollars."

Here's Rafek diving in to save Greg.

And here's Greg counting his Egyptian pounds with the Camel guy making a break for it out the left side of the frame.

And here's the first offending Camel guy, all bright eyed and thumbs up with American spirit.

With due respect to these guys, this is how they make their money. So who am I to judge that? Rafek had already made arrangements with an entire family of Camel guys to take us riding around the pyramids.

Greg, Mohammed, and I, all got a camel led by one or another of Abdul's family. His cousin, his father, his brother? Who knows. It was difficult to keep track. Here's Abdul measuring up Greg with a Camel twitch. Just before we mount up, each Camel guy... to a one... all said exactly the same line when they started to lead us out. "Hiyo Silver! America forever!" I kept waiting for them to call me "John Wayne" or "American G.I."

And not to be outdone, (or under hawked to,) here's your fearless leader looking scarily like a poster for why middle-eastern peoples should dislike Americans. Check out those bony white legs and dorky sunglasses. At home these didn't look all that out of place, but here? And the turban.... Oy!

Anyhow.... the Camel guys quickly found reason to take us each running across the desert... in different directions so as to get us each alone and... you guessed it, ask for some good 'ol American greenbacks. I had only Egyptian pounds with me, but figured every service deserves some kind of gratuity right? So I hand him a fifty pound note. That's about $10.00 US. Then he pushes the bill back in my hand and says, "This?, this is not enough to feed my family for one day. I have manys (sic.) family. You have American money?" Well, having grown up in the Bronx, I know a thing or two about street, (...um, desert,) negotiation, so I stick the tenner back in my dopey looking tourist shorts and say, "Cool." Of course Abdul then pleads forgiveness and says, "you can just more give me when we gets (sic.) back with others. You say Abdul makes you very happy. You happy now?"

This last little piece about making us happy was not necessarily said in jest. They take it seriously. There's a level of responsibility here regarding hospitality. We often hear people say to us something like, "My wish is for to make you happy today." From doormen, to waiters, to yes even Camel guys. We have some things to learn from this culture.

Oh, and Greg and I and Mohammed took the tour of the second pyramid. This was a true test of my claustrophobia. The movies have it all wrong! The entries to these tombs start at ground level, then the ramps leading into the interior are actually more like limestone culverts about three feet wide and four feet high. While negotiating this squared off pipe, the whole thing is sloping downhill at a good 30 degree angle. And it was loaded with people speaking all sorts of languages moving in both directions! No cameras allowed down there.