Ramadan is Over!

As always, pictures from my adventures are here:http://picasaweb.google.com/joel.veldkamp/

And it’s time for another un-proofread ridiculously long blog entry.

Yes, the time of fasting is finally done, as of last Wednesday. You couldn’t not notice it. The 5:30 AM call to prayer that issues from the mosque down the street every day, reminding us that “prayer is better than sleep,” was accompanied by a half-hour sermon over the loudspeakers, which did not inspire feelings of piety in either me or my roommate Brian. If we had been up and about at that un-Allah-ly hour, we could have seen hundreds of thousands of people packed in the streets praying to mark the kickoff of the three-day Feast of Ayd – but we were tired.

The feast is only the beginning of a six-day vacation for Egyptians. It’s followed by the Friday-Saturday weekend, plus yesterday and today, which are set aside as a holiday commemorating Egypt’s Totally Glorious Victory over Israel in the October 6, 1973 War. So we have a week off of Arabic classes, we can go out to eat anytime we like, and this weekend, we got to take our best roadtrip yet – to the Siwa Oasis in western Egypt, an hour’s drive from the Libyan border.

I think the western desert is pretty undeveloped, because it was the bumpiest bus ride I’ve ever been on. But as usual, we entertained ourselves with games and the occasional iPod South Park episode. At around 1:00 in the morning, we made it to the Desert Rose Hotel, which is a few miles outside of the town of Siwa – basically, in the middle of the Sahara Desert. There was no electricity, but there was running water, thankfully (even if the toilets had less than reliable flushers.) The hotel consisted of a bunch of buildings in a sandy courtyard surrounded by a stone wall. The girls had a big building to themselves, and the guys were split into cabins. We were all completely exhausted, and settled into our beds for the night.

The two best parts of leaving Cairo are 1) getting to breathe air that you can see through, and 2) getting to see the stars again. The stars at Siwa are the best I’ve ever seen (with the possible exception of Lake Powell, Utah.) Venus, the Milky Way, the moon, the Pleides, all the constellations – it’s all up there, in brilliant detail.

The next day, the hotel staff served us an amazing, yet simple breakfast – pitas (bread pockets that you can stuff delicious things inside), fig jam, spreadable cheese, eggs, coffee and tea. By the way, if you haven’t had Egyptian tea, you haven’t had tea at all. Back in the states, I always felt like tea was missing something. Whatever it is, Egyptian tea has it. (It might be the mint leaf branches you stir into it with massive amounts of sugar – just a guess).

After that, we went into Siwa proper, rented super-ghetto bicycles, and went riding around the city. Because it’s an oasis, it’s been a really important place for a really long time. The city is thousands of years old, and has a bunch of temples, ancient wells, and a whole termite-hill-like structure at the center called the Old Town – essentially a bunch of ancient mud houses stacked on top of each other. Some people still live there, though almost certainly not by choice.

Unlike Cairo, Siwa has almost no tall buildings, and all the streets have ornamental lampposts, in a futile attempt to look classy, because all of the other buildings are pretty decrepit. There are some great restaurants though. Chicken curry, pizza margarita, apple soda – exquisite.

The oasis itself, which the town is built into, is just incredible. I haven’t seen so much green since I flew out of Iowa. There is a forest of palm trees in Siwa – and hot and cold springs galore, and lakes with a higher salt content than the Dead Sea. In terms of sheer natural beauty – desert dunes, bright greenery, and cool swimming places – Siwa edges out Dahab as my favorite place on Earth so far.

The first thing we saw was an ancient temple to the oracle of Amon, the chief Egyptian god. Apparently, Alexander the Great went there to seek advice soon before he died. It’s decayed a lot, but you can still see where the structures were, and from the top, you have an amazing view of the palm tree forests, salt lakes, and sand dunes surrounding Siwa.

After that, we stopped at Cleopatra’s Bath, an ancient cold spring that, I surmise, was once used by Cleopatra. It’s just sitting in the middle of an intersection, surrounded by trees, shops and a two-story restaurant. Those of us who had brought swimsuits went swimming. The rest of us (including myself) went up to the open air roof of the restaurant and played cards for a while.

The highlight of the day was our bike ride to an island in the middle of one of the salt lakes. We got completely out of the city and rode through the forest and farm fields that are fed by the water. Eventually, we got to a point where there was water all around the path. (For those of you who haven’t lived in a desert country for the past six weeks – this was pretty exciting.) Finally, we crossed a filled-in section of the lake to get to the tiny island in time to watch the sunset. The lake is huge and ringed by desert buttes, sand dunes and palm trees. The view was magnificent. If my photos don’t make you sigh at the beauty, then my photographic skills don’t do the place justice, and I apologize.

The lake was also incredibly salty. Again, those of us with swimsuits jumped into the water and just floated around effortlessly. The water was really shallow – like two feet all the way across – which made the sight doubly weird. (Like the Red Sea, the water was very clear.) I envied the swimsuit-bearing, until Thomas got some saltwater in his eye, and the rest of them complained of chafing. To top off the island experience, there was a freshwater spring in the middle of our tiny island where the swimmers jumped into to rinse off afterwards. Who would think?

That night back at the hotel was terrific. We went for a night swim in the glorious, chlorine- and health code-free pool, and then sat around a bonfire drinking tea and telling riddles until our trusty guide Joseph finished preparing supper – pitas with super-hot fuhl (Egyptian beans) sauce. After that, a native Siwan band of musicians came and entertained us with their desert songs, which weren’t that complicated (a flute line, a steady rhythm and improvised off-key singing), but really fun to listen and dance to. They sat in a big circle on the blanket, and I got a spot in the circle along with Barrett (the MESP intern), Sarah, our Siwan guide Ismail. Predictably, they made me dance in the center. Everyone complimented me afterwards, but you all know they were lying. Eventually, Brian and Thomas got everyone in our group to dance around the blankets in a huge, chaotic, rhythmic mass. It was so much fun. To top it all off, I had a heated but friendly political discussion with Scott and Andrew afterwards. The perfect Egyptian night. (Barrett, our intern and my cabin-mate along with Austin, told me concernedly later that night, “You guys were really getting into it!” I reassured him that we were still friends, and that we had enjoyed it – and then proceeded to get into a friendly debate with him. Good times.)

The next day in Siwa was even better. We had a few hours to explore the city, so I went to climb the Old Town with some other people. There were some great views from up there, not to mention a ton of history – and a well built partially with animal bones. Go figure.

After that, we piled into some rickety old jeeps and went cruising out of Siwa into the Sahara. Don’t let the southwestern US fool you. The Sahara is a real desert – huge rolling dunes in every direction. It’s like a much slower-moving ocean. The dunes dot the horizon like massive waves, slowly moving across the ground over the years. Climbing a dune is a challenge, because the sand is always dragging you down. Aaron actually lost one of his new sandals running down a dune – it just got sucked in, like he had dropped it in a lake.

To add the experience, our jeeps were driven by Siwans who took the providence of Allah very seriously. We would go hurtling up hills and down cliffs of sand at roller coaster speeds. It was great fun in the day, and exhilarating at night, when only the headlights illuminated the endless desert sands. The high point came when the malfunctioning back doors on our jeep blew open as the driver took us up a particularly steep dune, and Jeff and I were sorta-kinda-close to falling out into the sand. (Brian grabbed onto me – you can thank him over at his blog site, which I have conveniently linked to on the right.)

Our journeys through the desert took us to an ancient seabed where we could see hundreds of shells embedded in the ground, and to hot and cold springs in the middle of the sandy nothingness. The hot spring was my favorite. After climbing around in the sand, it felt so good to climb into hottub temperature water and just chill – even if it did smell like sulfur (i.e., spoiled eggs.) Mistakenly thinking the water was knee-deep all the way through, I fell into the waist-deep water with my shirt on, which was embarrassing, but so refreshing.

After the hot spring, we got out some sandboards and went boarding down a nearby dunes, which is a lot like snowboarding, except you can’t steer, and the walk back up the hill is a lot harder. Still, it was a lot of fun. You’ll all be glad to know I didn’t fall over.

At the bottom of the boarding hill was the cold spring. The hot and cold springs were pretty close together. The hot spring was surrounded by trees and grasses, and fairly small. The cold spring was surrounded by reeds and pretty big. (I’ll let you biology majors work on that.) In any case, seeing them both in the middle of the endless sands was pretty crazy. All of us had a great time swimming and playing chicken in the cold spring.

Finally, after the sun had set, our jeep drivers took us to a campsite at the edge of the oasis – pretty much still in the middle of the desert. There was a shack set up for us, and a bonfire, and the camp owners cooked chicken for us underneath the sand. I don’t understand the reason for that, but it was pretty good chicken.

Before we ate, CJ and Josh went out on a walk in the night desert, and came back saying they had been followed by a coyote. So naturally, Austin, CJ and I decided to go out and find it. We found it, threw sticks at it, and (some of us) peed on the ground as a warning.

So naturally, a big group of us later went out into the same area to lay on the ground, look at the stars, talk about the theory of relativity, and tell scary stories. Thomas scared the living daylights out of us twice – once by running towards us on all fours in a really demented way, and once by screaming unexpectedly at the height of a story Austin told about his haunted house in Washington. Later, Josh, lying on the ground, told Thomas to stop licking his toe. “I’m not licking your toe,” Thomas said. Josh looked up, jumped up and yelled, causing all of us to do the same. The coyote was back.

We scared it away, but it kept coming back. So naturally, Thomas went to get closer. We eventually realized that the “coyote” was a super, super-tame jackal. It made pawing motions towards Thomas, and Thomas petted it on the head, establishing a rapport. It started following Thomas all around. So naturally, Thomas decided to run full-speed towards Julie Andree, bringing the jackal along with him. That Julie has some vocal chords, let me tell you.

By the time the nighthawks among us wanted to go to sleep, our shack was full, so we put down some blankets on the sand, pulled out our sleep sheets, and slept underneath the stars.

The only downside of the camping part were the other groups there. The four other shacks in close proximity to ours were occupied by an Egyptian family, who kept to themselves, an Egyptian junior high group, who enjoyed drinking alcohol (!) and swearing up a storm in perfect English right next to our shack, and a group of Egyptians who did something all night that produces bad odors and carries the death penalty in Egypt. The one cool group was a group of students from Vermont who had studied Arabic for two years and was required to speak Arabic, and nothing else, on their stay. I could kinda-sorta understand them. I’m making progress. Anyway, it was very loud all night, and I only fell asleep from exhaustion.

I woke up with the sunrise, and, not wanting to go back to sleep on the hard sand, got up and walked around, taking a lot of pictures of the beautiful desert morning. Eventually Andrew and Tim joined me, and we found the jackal again. (He had been barking at the outskirts of the camp for two hours that morning – no doubt wanting Thomas to come and play with him.)

The bus ride back was pretty uneventful. You’ll be happy to know that the combined skills of myself, Julie Andree and Ashley Kaspar, all of Dordt College, triumphed over the abilities of West Coast representatives Brian, Austin and Danielle, in a two-team six-man rook match that will not soon be forgotten. 770 to 85. Also, I had a good heart-to-heart conversation with Jon Kuik, an awesome guy from Northwestern College who you will all have to meet next semester.

In short, if you’re ever in Africa or the Middle East, I heartily recommend visiting Siwa.

So that was last weekend. I realize I haven’t really blogged since our trip to Dahab, which means there’s a ton of stuff I haven’t told you, stuff that’s all jumbled in my mind. But I just started my homestay last night, so I'll be spending the rest of the week getting to know my Egyptian family instead of blogging. I’ll be sure to give you the rundown later, along with everything else that’s been going on.

Salaam, everybody. Take care, and be careful where you get your housing loans.