Tomb Running

While here in Cyprus we went on an excursion to Ayia Napa beach. On our way there we visited two holy sites on the island. One was a Muslim mosque, and the other was an Orthodox Christian church. Both held the tombs of famous people from their respective religions.

Our first stop was the mosque; I have never been in a mosque before, so I was very interested to see what was on the inside. We had to take off our shoes before entering. I also noticed a large stone circle with water spigots radiating from it, I later learned that even if you’re not Muslim, you’re supposed to wash your hands and feet before entering. Being the well-informed American that I was, I skipped the spigots and entered the mosque in my socks.

The first room we entered was the room where I assumed that Muslims would worship and pray. The floor was covered with a hodgepodge of carpets, some with religious imagery. The mosque had a very high ceiling and while I was taking pictures I heard my friend Zaina say, “There are birds in here!” Zaina comes from a Muslim background, and she told us that one superstition is that birds inside a building bring very bad luck. There were three birds in this mosque, but I wasn’t too worried that the ceiling would cave in; the mosque had already thrice experienced some damage to its status, or bad luck as it were.

A door led from the prayer room into another room with a bed in the center. The bed was protected by an ornate gold colored barrier. This was the tomb that the mosque was built around. I learned that originally the body was fabled to be that of Mohamed’s mother and had enjoyed a great deal of popularity. Later the tomb was said to be only that of Mohamed’s aunt, naturally it decreased in popularity, but the final de-ranking of the tomb is what I think made our bus of students the only visitors to the mosque that day. The tomb’s resident was again questioned, the title of aunt retracted, and replaced, with that of Mohamed’s wet-nurse.

Despite the downgrades to the mosque’s title, I was impressed by the reverence given to the holy place. There was a respect to God that was requested by the mosque, that’s why we needed to take off our shoes and wash ourselves. Though my cultural ignorance prevented me from being properly respectful, I did appreciate that the Muslim culture held a reverence for God and also an openness that allowed others to see it.

Our next visit was to a Greek Orthodox church that housed the Tomb of Lazarus, a friend of Jesus whom He had resurrected. Like the mosque, the church requested some reverence and respect before we entered. The women had to cover their legs, and it was preferable that the men covered their legs as well, though it seemed less important for guys. I was about to dawn a long skirt, but there weren’t enough, so I gave mine to a female student, and then sporting a pair of shorts, I briskly walked into a tomb housing a man historical to my own faith.

Greek Orthodox churches are unique because they have a large amount of old and beautiful Christian artwork displayed in them, this church was no different in that respect. The difference in this church was the small stone staircase that led to the tomb.

The tomb was cramped and strange ornaments hung above the stone casket. I squeezed past a few people to get a closer look. There were two caskets, and both were open on one end, one looked like it had been broken open. I assumed that the reason for two caskets was because one had held Lazarus’s wife, but I did not know until later why the tombs were open and had no bodies.

I later discovered that the remains of Lazarus had been moved in 898 A.D. to Constantinople. Even in death this guy doesn’t get a break, in fact, in 1204 A.D. his remains were again moved, this time to France.

Lazarus was buried twice, died twice, and was moved twice after he was dead. All this moving around is a bit funny in retrospect. But I suppose Lazarus didn’t mind getting a second chance at everything, such is the opportunity provided by a resurrection.

His displacement to Cyprus was especially interesting to me because it was caused by the martyr from whom I get my name. After Stephen was stoned by angry religious leaders, there was a dispersion of Christians to several different nations. According to Acts 11:19, one of these places was Cyprus. This dispersion of Christians is also where I get my blogger name. The rocks that killed him also sent the Gospel to many nations, an excellent example of how God takes that which is painful and turns it into something good.

Island Traditions

Recently the Tennessee group set off to the Old City in Nicosia to have a meze and learn some traditional dancing.

We went to Xephotos. The restaurant was nicely put together for being in the old city and the owner had put up colorful Cypriot weaves all around on the walls. When we asked about them, we learned that only older women made them and they no longer made them with so many colors.

We sat down and the servers began to bring us our meze. This meze was one of the most fantastic food extravaganzas I have ever had, and well worth the 16 Euro. A meze is a traditional Cypriot meal style where somewhere around 32 small portions of Cypriot foods are brought to you over the course of the meal. Just when I thought I’d found a favorite, they would bring out more great tasting food! They had kebobs of chicken and pork, spreads of humus, veggies, and tomatoes, mushrooms, more chicken, extremely tender lamb, Greek salad, meatballs, couscous, halloumi cheese, and a whole bunch of food I didn’t even know the name for. This meal was good, real good.

After eating enough food to sustain a small kingdom, the restaurant owner turned on some music. It was a mix of traditional Cypriot music, Greek music, and Arabic music. A young man named Paul showed us some dance steps. The basic move was one where you took one foot and stepped it behind the other while your arms stuck out like a scarecrow.

After dancing we sat and talked with the restaurant owner and asked him about the dancing we had just done. Apparently we weren’t natural dance masters, but I wasn’t too surprised, I’ve never been one to catch on to dancing right away. Traditional Cyprian dancing was more complex that what we had just done, there were dancing schools that taught it.

As we continued to talk with him I noticed how he continued to refer back to the “young people” of Cyprus. They dictated a lot of what was available at Xephotos. The owner had recently started selling hookahs for smoking, an Arabic tradition that had caught on in Cyrpus. In addition one of his other restaurants, a Mexican restaurant called Chili’s had a big screen TV where people could watch the Soccer cup and other sports. He also mentioned how up until a few years ago, Cypriot coffee was the only kind of coffee they had on the island. But once the younger generation saw how iced coffee had caught on in Greece everyone on the island started drinking it.

It made me think of how technology and internet has shrunk borders between nations. I hear such complaints in the media all the time, but this was the first time I had actually seen and realized how a culture can be drastically affected by another country’s culture. The younger generations did not want to learn how to make traditional weaves, like the ones in the restaurant, they wanted to drink iced coffee like the Europeans. They did not want to dance like Cypriots, they wanted to dance like Arabs and Greeks.

I have no fear of Cypriot culture being completely consumed however; the people here take a certain pride in knowing their heritage. The restaurant owner told us of how the people from the dancing schools would come to his restaurant to show off what they knew. In addition, tourism is a large part of the economy on the island, and those people want to see things that are indigenous to the island –like the weaves, and eat things that are native to the culture—like the meze. Thus, technology both shrinks our borders, but also fuels our desires to maintain tradition, if not for pride, at least for profit.

Hock like an Egyptian

On Monday morning the “Tennessee Group” -as we have been dubbed by other Global Learning Semester students- took a bus to a cruise ship heading for Egypt. The price for the tour was surprisingly low and the cruise was my first. It wasn’t a legendary 5 star cruise; however, considering the price we paid, the provisions made by the ocean liner were excellent.

When we awoke on Tuesday morning, we had pulled into Said Harbor, I looked out one of the ship’s windows to see jellyfish swimming around the boat, presumably looking for small fish to paralyze and consume. At the end of the dock I saw men with various cheap souvenirs milling about, waiting for the stream of tourists to flow from the cruise ship.

When we exited the ship we were immediately approached by these men, who were very intent on getting us to buy something. I did my best to ignore them, avoid eye-contact, and look like a very mean 6’5” bearded American. After passing through a gauntlet of street vendors and Port Security we were herded onto a nice tour bus accompanied by a police escort and sometimes men in jeeps with AK47’s. After we were all situated a tour guide named Hannen boarded the bus, welcomed us to Egypt, informed us that the bus driver was selling drinks, and emphasized the importance of being punctual.

Once out of the city, the guide told us some basic national information about Egypt, like the population- 82 million and the literacy rate – 72%. She drew our attention the canal side of the road, and explained the history behind the massive man-made Suez Canal. Hannen explained how the construction of the canal had claimed over 100,000 lives.

To the right we saw farmland. The guide explained that 50% of the population is made up of farmers. They are also the main contributors to overpopulation in the country. On average they have 6 to 7 children, while city dwellers only have 2 to 3. One reason for larger number of children in farming communities was because of the help they provided when farming crops. The guide also told us how cheap gas was in Egypt. Since the Arab country has a wealth of oil, gas cost about 1/3 of a Euro per liter.

As I saw farmers pull produce with boney donkeys I thought one fix for the overpopulation caused by the farming district could be resolved in part if the farmers were educated in the use of farming machinery. The gas was cheap enough, but as the guide explained, most of the farmers were illiterate, so perhaps education was at the root of the problem.

As we moved into the city, our first stop was the Egyptian Museum of Antiquities. We had a very short time in the museum, but it was fascinating. We were packed in the building like sardines; there were so many other schools of tourists swimming about that we had to have earpieces in order to hear our guide. We learned all about the Ancient Egyptian view of the cycle of life and the after life and I was overwhelmed by the countless thousand year old artifacts.

Even inside the museum we could not escape people trying to sell us something. The guide introduced to us a friend who was involved in a project to photo-document the most prominent artifacts within the museum. He was selling CD’s that showed pictures and explanations of all the Ancient Egyptian wonders that we were whizzing by. It was four hours long, I didn’t buy one.

After the museum we congregated outside, returned the “whisperer” earpieces, and took off in our tour bus towards the pyramids. On our way there, our guide warned us about the vendors by the pyramids and told us to be very wary of the camel riders, who would try to coax us onto their camels to take photos and then refuse to let us down until we paid a dismount fee.

As soon as we exited the bus we were again plagued by dusty street vendors offering us more cheap souvenirs for 1 Euro. It was easier to ignore them with my sunglass on, that way they couldn’t see if I was looking at them or make eye contact with me. We took a 7 Euro trip into one of the Pyramids. While waiting in line to go in we were again harassed by vendors, one was very clever and knew a lot of famous American movies from the 1930s he tried to give us some of his stuff and asked for a tip right as we were about to enter the pyramid. He said he was the Lone Ranger, but looking back I imagine he was part of a larger group of vendors.

The walls of the inside of the pyramid were perfectly cut into a rectangular tunnel, one that my large frame had some trouble traversing. The cramped tunnel led us to a bare room with an open stone casket at one end. The tomb was hot, and we only stayed a few minutes. Like the museum, everything at the pyramids was rushed. We snapped photos of the pyramids as well as some of the camel riders, who tried to charge us for taking a photo.

Our next stop was the Sphinx. It was smaller than I had imagined, and we were again approached by more vendors. Only this time about half of them were children. The kids carried lighter things, like post cards and fake papyrus. At this point it hit me that these impoverished people in this overpopulated country had probably been forced to live parasitically off of these ancient ruins since childhood. I felt especially sorry for the children, whom I suspected would not be selling their wares for profit, but for someone else.

After the Sphinx I had about had my fill of Cairo, but the tour took us to an authentic papyrus shop which had a gift shop above it. As I shopped for some souvenirs I thought to myself that maybe one reason why the trip over to Egypt was so cheap was because the cruise liner made some sort of additional profit by taking us to places like the shop, where all of us would collectively spend several thousand dollars in under an hour.

As we boarded the cruise ship I looked again for the jellyfish that I had seen in the morning. The way a jelly fish catches and eats its prey reminded me of the paralysis that the lower classes in Egypt were experiencing. Like fish caught in the poisonous tentacles of a jellyfish, the lower classes of Egypt were paralyzed by the tentacles of the Nile. They were uneducated and immobile, unable to better their station and unable to move anywhere else. The farmers were caught in a stasis, too uneducated to use heavy farm equipment to increase profit, and too poor to afford education. The men hocking their wares by the pyramids and Sphinx were bound to the monuments made thousands of years ago. Together the farmers and poor city folk were being slowly devoured by the city of Cairo, and I did not detect much sympathy from the government. Their solution seemed to be increased military presence, as shown by our police escort. The whole excursion made me glad to be an American; it was my first real encounter with rampant poverty.

A short summary

Here I am in Cyprus! I'm about to leave on a cruise for Egypt. I have never been on a cruise so I am very excited!

I and the other UT students on this trip have been here in Cyprus for about a week and a half. Everything here has whitish or taupe hue. There is a lot of imitation of the American lifestyle in advertisements and the shops. But the island has it's on unique culture beyond that.

Everyone here is very friendly, and their accents are easy to pick up! Males greet female friends with a kiss on each cheek, and females greet all their friends as such.

The food uses lighter sauces and more salt and vinegar type bases for their foods. So far I've had Halloumi cheese, a rubbery and awesome cheese you can grill and it wont melt, a meze, which is a large multi course meal of local dishes, and other interesting foods. The best place I've eaten is a nice restaurant on the Turkish controlled side of the island. It's a small mom and pop type place with cheap large portions of meat, salad, and rice.

40% of the Island of Cyprus is controlled by the Country of Turkey. In 1974 the Turks invaded Cyprus, in defense of Turkish Cypriots who were being persecuted. I've heard some mixed things from my fellow students about the whole issue, but all the Greek Cypriots here have a heavy patriotism for their island and an even heavier hate for those that have taken part of their island from them. And rightly so I think, the 40% of the island that is occupied has prime agricultural land, beautiful beaches, and numerous opportunities to bolster the economy of the island. You can't really talk to a Cypriot without hearing a little of the spite they have for the Turks occupying their land.

On the student side I've mostly been working with the documentary stuff, which we will hopefully be posting soon!

So I'm in Cyprus

Here I am in Cyprus, having a great time. Let me tell you all about it. :)