Month: April 2012

cave church

The last item to round out our tour of Egypt so we could leave with No Regrets was a trip to Garbage City. If you ask Carter to describe Egypt in one word, he will say, “trashy” since the piles of garbage all over are pretty unforgettable (and thankfully he doesn’t know the real meaning of “trashy” yet). 
There’s an area of Cairo called Garbage City, inhabited primarily by Christians who survive by sorting and recycling garbage. On our way there, we stopped by the cave church that serves this Christian community.

 


close-up of the carving in the photo above

This is the street level entrance — we walked through the arches and down a long hill to get to the front of the church.  

A local guide told us the place seats 20,000 people
 

The “miracle” of the cave church is that this carving of Mary and Jesus appeared on the roof of the cave out of nowhere. It was not carved by human hands. Supposedly another miracle also happened on this site — the mountain/cave moved several kilometers from somewhere else to this current location. I wasn’t exactly following what the guide was saying. I’m not much into guided tours. 

There was a big funeral right before we arrived and another one as we were leaving

No clue what they’re measuring with their hands. It might be when the guide (striped sweater) is explaining that the sculpture of Mary was a miracle. This is around the time I was looking to get off the stage because I saw the next group coming in with a coffin. 
 

Carved into the side of the mountain. There are several similar carvings depicting scenes from the Bible on the walls of the cave above where people are seated to worship.
 

view from 1/2 way up

Coptic Christians all have cross tattoos on their wrists (men and women). Josh said most Christians get them when they are kids, sometimes even as babies.  

This guy was getting a large cross on his arm. Josh said the tattoo gun looked very primitive. Ouch!
When I was looking for more info on the tattoo crosses, I found this great blog post by an expat family currently living in Cairo that explains more about the Coptic Christians living in Garbage City and about the tattoo shop in the above photo: tattoo crosses


Local kids, asking everyone’s name.
Next stop: Garbage

Alabaster

Next on the list — Egyptian souvenirs. The first time we left with nothing except Caleb’s pyramid-shaped ashtray. This time we were looking for something we couldn’t buy locally at the souk here. Alabaster is locally mined and candle holders, vases, and other alabaster objects are sold everywhere in Cairo. 

We cut out the middle man and went straight to the source — the shop where they take the raw stone and turn it into works of art.
 

checking out pieces of the stone
  

Inside the shop — finished vases and tea lights waiting to be polished

Different shaped sconces. The cool thing about alabaster stone is it’s translucent. If you put a candle or a light inside, the entire thing glows. It’s really pretty. 

Alabaster dust covered everything — lung cancer waiting to happen

Double whammy — smoke a little shisha while inhaling the alabaster dust

The most recent development is they are now mining the black onyx. Pre-revolution they weren’t allowed to do that so all the alabaster sold was the creamy yellow and white. Now they are selling pieces made of the black onyx alabaster (while supplies last).

This piece is a partially completed vase mounted on one of their machines that grinds away the unwanted parts of the stone. 


the raw stone with the black onyx

up close

what it looks like when polished — amazing!

Across the street from the shop is the store where they sell the finished pieces

I love the tall “lanterns” that glow (they have a lightbulb inside). I had to settle for a small candle holder for myself since that’s all the space I had in my suitcase.

bowls, lampshades, platters, urns . . . large decorative pyramids (where would you put one of those?!)

Wrapping up my purchases

Carter chose a pyramid made out of the onyx — he finally got a souvenir from Egypt. 

photo bomb: Nile cruise

Busy weekend — finishing up the boys’ rugby season with a mini tournament with a visiting team from Abu Dhabi. I think I have one more Egypt post to come (about our trip to Garbage City). 

One of the things that most tourists do when they come to Egypt is take a sunset felucca ride on the Nile River. (A felucca is a traditional wooden sailboat). It was one of the items on our No Regrets list so one evening we walked down along the Nile and found a boat to take us out for 1/2 an hour. We could have gone for an hour (or longer), but I wasn’t sure how much everyone was going to enjoy it (Carter didn’t want to go at first) and I didn’t want to be stuck up river with a screaming baby so I requested a shorter ride. 

The boat behind Calvin isn’t a felucca, but one of the many party boats that cruise in the evenings packed with young people, blaring loud music, and lit by flashing neon lights. Hmm, that description makes me sound like a cranky old lady, doesn’t it? 
 
 


Our captain let the boys pretend to “drive”

 

Carter finally getting his sea legs 
 
 

Out on the water it was relaxing and peaceful as the breeze muffled the constant honking of traffic
 

From the middle of the river, looking back toward the shore — the US embassy is the domed building in the background between the two big hotels.
 

After getting off the boat, we walked along the Nile until sunset
 

protest

I wrote an awesome post today, but I wasn’t sure if it was blog appropriate so I ran it by Josh before posting. My instincts were right. He thought it wasn’t fit for public consumption, so I guess it will have to marinate for a few years until it becomes part of Chartier family lore before sharing it publicly. I’m not saying that to tease, but so that you know I’m not slacking in my job.

So what can I talk about? How about famous Tahrir square? We could see the square from our hotel room and on April 6th there was a big demonstration. It looks like there were a lot of people, but these numbers are nothing compared to the million plus that sometimes gather there. We weren’t sure what was going on — Josh thought it might have been the April 6th Youth Movement (since it was April 6th), but it turned out to be a group a little more extreme than that. 

We had plans to go to Maadi that day and meet up with friends. The only problem was that the Metro station is in the area of Tahrir square. Since we’ve been advised to stay away from all large gatherings of people, we ended up catching a cab to stay out of the fray.
It turns out that that was a good choice since the group that was in the square turned out to be supporters of a super conservative presidential candidate Abu Ismail. We’ve seen his face plastered all over cars and billboards downtown and I asked Josh if he was one of the Muslim Brotherhood guys and he replied, “He’s way more conservative than that — way, way right.” Who knew there were groups that were further right than the MB? I guess they don’t cover that stuff on TMZ. According to Josh, this guy thinks that all women should wear a veil/hijab. Awesome. That’s just what Egypt needs. Talk about tanking tourism . . . Ironically, Josh says they call themselves the Noor party which means “light.” 

I found some articles online that were talking about the protest. Here’s a photo from that day on the square. These guys are all wearing cardstock masks of a Abu Ismail’s face. Creepy, huh? 
Photo credits (this and photo above): arabist.net
His group also wears these stickers with this logo on them. It’s a hand with the thumb pointed down and the pointer finger stretched out — I’m not sure what it means, but it looks like it’s saying, “thumbs down with you.” Not the most welcoming looking logo. 
When we got home from visiting friends we found out that the reason the group was in the square was because they were protesting their beloved candidate’s probable disqualification. Why was he being disqualified? Because according to Egyptian law, you can’t be president if either of your parents are citizens of another country and it was just discovered that dude’s mom was a dual citizen of Egypt/America. Oops. It’s pretty safe to say most of the people in that demonstration were not loving on America at that moment. It’s a good thing we steered clear. 
Other than being a little nervous about being near Tahrir square (me, not Josh — I’m sure he’d want me to make that clear to you all), we didn’t encounter any anti-Americanism. Everyone was very friendly, wanted to know where we came from, and welcomed us to Egypt enthusiastically. Thankfully we’ve found that even if people don’t like America’s policies, they like us as Americans, especially all of our kids. 

mummies!

I finally got to see the mummies. Of course you can’t take your camera inside the museum, so I didn’t get any photos of the mummies, but I got to cross it off my list. All I could think of when I was watching the looting of the museum on TV at my parents’ house last year was, “I never even made it there!” Now I have. 

The grounds in front have some interesting sculptures. Not sure where they’re from, since I’m not a detail-oriented museum goer. I’m more of the “ooh, that looks cool . . . moving on” variety. 
 
 
  

The building that was burned last year. The initial reports were that the museum was on fire. Thankfully people banded together to protect the museum from fire and looters. 
The mummies were amazing — the idea that the Egyptians developed these preserving techniques, obviously having no idea how successful they would actually be. It was a good reminder to the kids — see these kings? They were once great, but now they’re just bones and tufts of hair. Nothing on this earth is eternal. 
I also may have uttered a few threats like, “Pay attention because when you study this stuff or read about it in books someday, I want you to remember that I took you here and you saw these things in person!”
The other great exhibit was the King Tut room with all of his gold and the big face mask thing (that looks even better in person) and his many different coffins, gold body ornaments, and the things he “took to the afterlife with him.” 

Leaving the museum — we stopped to buy some Tahrir square T-shirts and the guy gave the boys (and baby) flags. 
 
   

funny graffiti 

We came back to the hotel to find that housekeeping had turned the towels into sculptures.