Siwa Round Two

You have to admit, this is a very welcoming taxi. And yes, this is a taxi. As I have said before, the city is run by little kids whipping donkeys. 

On another note, the desert is a lot colder in January. Bring a North Face.

Some Siwa Pics

The desert near Siwa

The old and the new

Just a kid riding his bike

Ping pong at two in the morning

Even in Egypt

About an hour away from any paved roads in the middle of the desert lies an oasis with a nice bilingual sign.

There were plenty of springs in Siwa and below is a picture of the normal spring activities... they don't have lifeguards yelling at you to walk.

Sand Boarding

Where in the world do you find a town that rents snowboards and bikes at the same time? A small oasis called Siwa in the middle of the desert. Snowboard and bike rentals aren't a seasonal business like they are in Tahoe. You can come to Siwa all year long and rent a snowboard, but looks can be deceiving. What you thought was used for snowboarding is actually used for another sport: sand boarding. 

Here's the deal: You drive around in the desert in a jeep until you find a nice steep slope. Then, you take the sand boards off the roof rack and proceed to the top of the slope. Sand boarding is simple; you slip your feet into the two straps just like  snowboard, make a couple hops to get going, and then use your edges to control yourself. 

Here's a pros and cons list for anyone debating between going on a skiing vacation or sand boarding vacation.

Pros: Wear just your swim suit as you board down a mountain of sand.

Cons: The first law of conservation of energy... once you go down, you have to come back up... a steep hill made up of only sand means a short joy ride down and a long journey back to the top.

And one more piece of advice, I wouldn't suggest the typical snowboard stop on your heels... the sand isn't as soft as snow.

The Real Teddy Roosevelt

This kid from Siwa carries a big stick too. And, you really should see the way these guys whip their donkeys with sticks. They just wail on them.

It might not be "Morning in America" as McCain would like, but it's 3 AM when the debates start here. Last night's debate was boring to say the least, but it's nice to stay connected to what's going on. The election is not really a hot topic among Egyptians. Many people whom I've talked to haven't even heard of McCain and a lot of people think that Obama is Muslim. I am rarely asked questions about the election, but in the few (less than 10) discussions I've had with taxi drivers, students, and dorm supervisors I've found everyone supports Obama. Unlike Americans, I don't think the Egyptian support comes from Obama's tax cut to 95% of working families or his pledge to implement a policy to reduce greenhouse gases by 80% by 2050. I have to talk to more people about the election to get a greater sense of the root of his support, but I'm pretty sure Obama's support in Egypt comes from the reasons outlined in Friedman's New York Times article from the past summer.

And now for some fun, here's a snippet from the latest taxi ride. I'm in the taxi with two other Americans and the taxi driver and we're talking for 15 minutes about traveling to Sharm Al Sheikh. At a pause in the conversation, the taxi driver asked us if he could ask us just one question about America. I love this part because these questions usually get at the basic cultural differences between our cultures, but his question was a little different. He asked, Is the WWF real? And more specifically, is the Undertaker real? 

Guns... wtf

I’m not talking about biceps. I’m talking about rifles and pistols. It’s illegal to pack heat in Egypt without a license. But, you can skill scare someone without a license. None of the toy guns look like the picture above; they all look absolutely real. There is no orange tip or any indication that these guns are fake.

It's a normal site to see kids play with guns in the middle of the street. Today, I walked passed a thirteen-year-old boy loading a cartridge into his gun. I have no clue if it was a bb gun or airsoft gun or whatnot, but it looked real enough to keep my attention half focused on this kid until he was fully out of view.

Here's where the wtf comes in: As I was biking back to my hotel in Siwa, I felt a sharp pinch on the back of my head. I turned around to see an eight-year-old boy pointing a gun at me. He had just shot me with an airsoft gun. I was startled and yelled at him to stop immediately. He didn’t shoot me again, but he didn’t smile or laugh or anything. This was not a game to this little kid. He had never seen me before in his life, but he was willing to shoot me because I must’ve represented something that he really disliked. And, now that I’m thinking more about this, he has probably shot many foreigners because he was dead accurate: right in the back of the head.

After my anger settled down a little bit, I was left in a curious state. Why does this kid shoot foreigners? Why do his parents let him carry a gun and shoot foreigners? Why doesn’t this kid laugh?

If he laughed, I would have been pissed off, but I would understood what just happened: some Big Daddy roller blading humor. But, this was nothing like Adam Sandler. This little boy was serious. I know most of Egyptian society would condemn this kid’s actions, but what is it exactly that triggered that gun.

 

A Day Ago in a Galaxy Far, Far Away

These houses are all from the time of "Alexander," the fourth century BCE. The town is definitely a sight to see. It's out of this world, and I have no idea how to explain something like the whole planet of Tatooween in one blog post, but here are some snippets.

It's not a big town by any means, but it has its own language. The language has Arabic roots, yet no one in the world except a Siwan can understand it. Almost everybody in Siwa speaks Arabic fluently except for some of the older men (I don't know about the women because they are kept inside all day, but that is for another blog post). English is pretty pervasive too. The kids seemed to only know the "Welcome in Egypt" or "Hello" phrases, but many of the shop keepers and waiters spoke English very well. Needless to say, I was pretty impressed that many of them had three languages down cold.

This is definitely a tourist town. We didn't go at a crowded time, but everything seemed to revolve around a couple tourist activities. The Siwan tribal dance during the sunset, biking around town, taxi rides by mules, climbing the mountains overlooking the town, swimming in hot springs, and a safari in the desert that consists of driving up and down vast mountains of sand, swimming in a movie-like oasis, and sandboarding. 

In addition to their tourism industry, they export great bottled water and possibly the best dates in the world (the price: 4 Egyptian pounds for 1 kilogram). With such great economic resources, I was awestruck to find that Siwa was so different than anything I've ever seen. 

Siwa has definitely started to modernize (and it's only at the beginning), but that doesn't mean it has westernized. There's a difference that I'll explain further in the future, but here are some examples for now. They have the first world necessities such as a hospital, police station, gas station, hotels, pharmacies, restaurants, and even a sports club, but they don't have a supermarket and internet access is limited mostly to tourism. There was one shop where you could play playstation, but I didn't see any kids playing Alexandria's favorite game: FIFA '08. The kids were all outside swimming in pools or dancing at night. Some ten-year-olds even drove around tourists on their mule wagons. All the Siwans whom I met had cell phones (nice ones with video cameras and mp3 players), yet they all wear very traditional robes. Most people had motorcycles, yet most of the college aged Siwans whom I talked with had only left Siwa two or three times in their entire lives. Before I visited Siwa, the Siwans had never seen a Westerner beat a Siwan in ping pong... well, let's say I was more than happy to show them something new.

More to come on Siwa in upcoming posts.  Five days without the internet means a lot of catching up to do with the world.