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.