Whales and other rubbish

Have you ever wondered how you would deal with fame? Here's a simple test: try being an obvious foreigner in Egypt, and see how much you miss being able to walk on the street unnoticed. If the answer is "a whole damn lot", then maybe you should reconsider your desire to be famous.

Aaaaaanyway, I spent last weekend in Cairo with Flynne and Ant, and we started off with a very Egyptian experience, when we suddenly found ourselves tricked into a perfume shop by a new-won friend who might or might not have worked at the Egyptian Museum.

We thereafter went to meet a couple of friends of Flynne and Ant, and headed to Manshiyat Naser, an area more widely known by the less charming name "Garbage City". It is a traditionally Coptic area, where all the rubbish from Cairo is brought for the families there to sort through it and remove anything which can be reused or recycled. Some of them own small shops where they sell these recycled things, whereas other items are sold to bigger factories. It was quite a contrast seeing all the garbage in the street, next to pictures of Jesus and the late Coptic Pope. We stopped at a small, lcoal church which was swarming with kids. It was quite charming and some of the kids were very confident in talking to us. We had wondered how we as foreigners would be received here, but everyone was really friendly.

Maybe we should have expected that - I guess the inhabitants of Manshiyat Naser are used to people passing through their neighbourhood, as it houses the biggest church in the Middle East, Deir Sama'an. It is a modern cave church, built next to the mountain Mokattam, which due to Coptic tradition was moved by some Christian saint in order to prove a saying from the Bible. The church consists of several different church rooms, all built into the mountain. Many stone sculptures depicting different scenes from the Bible are carved into the stone. It was such a breathtaking sight when we came up there - it is really the last thing you would have expected in the midst of Garbage City. We got a free guided tour by a very enthusiastic Copt who relayed all the stories tied to the church with excessive gestures. Before we left we were provided with the business card of the church, containing its web address where we can watch miracles like excorcism live almost every Thursday. There are many miracles on Thursdays, you see.

Deir Sama'an

Inside the main church room

The relics of the late Coptic Pope, I think

Us and our guide inside the church

It's a Coptic tradition to tattoo crosses on your arms. I'm not sure I would've gotten it done at this booth, however

Stone sculptures in the mountain

The next day my namesake Hannah (minus the tiny spelling error in her name) who also goes to the ACL joined us for a trip to the oasis Al-Fayoum a few hours away from Cairo. I had been there once before in October, which you can read about here. This time the police insisted on escorting us, like they sometimes do here - they all seemed very eager to go on a day trip rather than standing by the road inspecting the cars passing by.

We first visited the lakes and the tiny waterfall in Wadi Rayyan where I went last time, but then we ventured into unknown territory: Valley of the Whales. It is a valley far into the desert, conatining whale fossiles from 40 million years ago. Makes the pyramids seem young, huh? As it turned out, you need a jeep to get to Valley of the Whales, and we were in a normal car. Luckily the police came to our rescue, and took us there in their jeep.

The fossiles in themselves were kinda disappointing - silly us for thinking that there would be huge whale skeletons lying in the desert after 40 million years. But even though the fossiles were quite tiny, there is something cool about seeing something so old. Even so, I would say that what was most impressive to look at was the astonishing rock formations there.

The police had asked us to be back after half an hour, and we walked as quickly as we could and only saw about half the fossiles, but somehow by the time we got back an hour had ended up passing.The policemen seemed to be a bit grumpy about that, and their presence soon proved to be a mixed blessing. When we got back to our own driver, they were clearly tired of driving behind our slow car, and sped off in front of us. We got out of our car once in order to take pictures of a beautiful lake which had come into sight - after being in the desert even the sight of water is refreshing. A while after, we caught up with the police who were waiting for us, asking us if we've stopped, making it out as though we'd lost each other due to our two-minute-stop, and not due to the fact that they had raced off, leaving us behind. They managed to thoroughly terrify our driver, and until we were out of Al-Fayoum again we were not allowed to make any further stops. We had to give up on some of the sightseeing we had planned, but what is worse is that we had run out of water, and that a pastry each for breakfast was all we had eaten that day, and we couldn't stop to eat or drink. I think you can imagine how great the mood was in the car for a while, as we were all  extremely hungry and thirsty as we had been walking in the desert and it had been a long day. I guess the good news was that none of us had enough energy to be properly grumpy. It came as a relief when our driver had to stop for gas, and we could get some Coke's to quench our thirst.

A little while ago we had been so happy that we had the police escorting us, taking us to the Valley of the Whales, and now we were cursing their presence. Egypt is a country of extremes - you go from having great experiences and feeling immensely excited, to feeling utterly miserable and being so frustrated that you don't know what to do with yourselves. Life here is never boring.

It felt like we had been rushing around all day, which kinda defeats the point of a visit to Al-Fayoum: the charm of the place lies in its tranquility and peacefulness. We had an interesting and mostly good day, but if I ever go again, I will do my best to do as little as absolutely possible, and take as long as possible to do it. Then I will fully enjoy it.

Flynne, Hannah and me

Flynne and Ant in Valley of the Whales

This used to be part of  a whale's jaw

I'm sorry if this post is a bit rubbish.

...

Pun intended.

Easter homesickness

Every Easter we would go to the mountains, as many Norwegians do. We would overload our car with luggage and in the earlier years we would fill the five hours' drive with communal singing, until we reached the cottage of my mum's parents in a mountain range in Southern Norway, a cottage with a turf roof and no running water or electricity, heated and lit by kerosene, and with a lovely little outhouse we had to dig away the snow to get to. As Norwegians like it when they go on holiday.

The days would be spent skiing, cross-country skiing that is, basically meaning we would walk into the mountains with our skis on, normally trying to reach some peak or other. My father and grandfather would always say that if we sat down we would become cold, so our breaks would be taken standing up, and last only long enough for us to gulp down some squash and devour the Penguin and Caramel bars my uncle had brought from Scotland. Removing the wrapping of the chocolate with mittons on is unfortunately an art form I've never quite mastered. But if we were lucky, there would be what we call "Easter Weather", with strong, warm sun, and we would gradually take off mittons and scarfs and hats, and maybe even our anorak jackets, which we would tie around our waists. Then the mountains would be full of people from the South Coast, digging  seats in the snow where they would sit and enjoy the sun and eat oranges, watching their kids building ski jumps out of snow and trying to actually jump on them, with varying luck. Old habits die hard, though, and even if it was more than warm enough, we would hardly ever sit down - you can't sit around all day if you want to reach the peaks -, and it's only in the last years my father and grandfather have softened a bit and let us sit down from time to time. We've even tried to bring oranges, but never quite warmed to them - why would anyone want to ski with sticky hands?

I would normally lag a little bit behind, where I could concentrate on my thoughts uninterruptedly, making up some story in my head. The others would maybe stop for a minute or two, and just as I caught up with them, they would start again. I would rest a bit and start later than them, and my father would get annoyed and ask why I always had to do that, whereupon I would complain that I would have gotten no rest otherwise. I never told them I would have walked behind them anyway - I didn't want anyone to distract me from my story.  Usually we would have a lot of energy and reach the peaks without major problems, but if my mum came skiing with us, all us kids would suddenly feel extremely tired and she would have to walk behind with us listening to us complaining, and she would resort to telling stories or promise us that there would be trees full of candy by the next lake to coax us into keeping on.

The sun is extremely bright in the mountains, as it is reflected by the snow, and we would have to wear sun glasses in order not to go snow blind. If the weather was good we would work up quite a tan, but be completely white around the eyes due to the sun glasses, making us look like owls.

Before returning to the cottage someone would have to go to the hole made in the ice on the lake and fetch water. Our grandmother would be waiting for us at the cottage, and after changing from our wet woolen underwear into our indoor clothing, we would all sit down for coffee and cake. My mum would often have made her chocolate cake, which is the best in the world, and brought it with her for this purpose. It would taste absolutely delicious after skiing, but if there was ever anything left over after Easter which we would try to eat in the car on the way home, we would discover that it had acquired a strong taste of kerosene.

In the evenings we would play card games, and everyone would join in except my father and grandmother, who both hate playing cards. They would instead try to read in the dim light from the kerosene lamps, while the rest of us would be arguing over our card games, gloating when we won, sulking when we lost, and always disagreeing on what to play next. My grandmother would always comment on how extremely unprofessional we were: one is supposed to be silent while playing cards.

On Good Friday we would meet with some friends of my grandparents, either at their cottage or ours. There would be tons of cake, and one of my grandparents' friends would always talk twice as much as everyone else, exaggerating wildly as he was telling stories, while his wife corrected him mildly.

At the beginning of the week we would decorate the cottage for Easter, with eggs and chickens and all things yellow. Starting Palm Sunday, my mum would read the appropriate passages from the Bible for us throughout the week. On Easter Eve she and my uncle would fill pâpier-maché eggs with candy, each of them containing a rebus explaining to whom it belonged, and we would then hunt for them around the cottage. Come Easter Sunday we would boil eggs with onion to make them yellow, and sing psalms over breakfast. We would never quite agree on the lyrics, so at times some genius would decide to get the old psalm book out of the book shelf, and would then be singing tons of obscure verses no one else even knew existed.

If we were lucky, the sun would have been strong in the city as well, so that the snow would have melted away prior to our return. When we were small, our friends who had been home over Easter would come running over as quickly as we came home, eager to see us. It felt absolutely wonderful to walk with light summer shoes on bare asphalt again, and we could finally begin playing Chinese jump rope after winter. My mum would tell us off for taking off our jackets, as the spring sun is treacherous, saying we would get ill from the air which was still quite cold. After such a long winter, though, how were we to resist taking off our jackets at the first opportunity?

Some things have changed over the last years. Of course I don't have any mum to scold me for taking off my jacket anymore, and I have probably grown too sensible now to do it anyway. My grandparents and uncle have not been going to the mountains the last few Easters, and we now have electric lights powered by a solar panel, so the food we take home doesn't taste as strongly of kerosene anymore. But my father and siblings and I have still been going skiing in the mountains every Easter, keeping to the traditions as much as we can. This year, however, I will be spending my Easter doing a language course in Cairo. It will definitely be different. But good, I hope. However, as Easter approaches, you might have to put up with a little homesickness on my part.

Me skiing

My parents in the mountains