Egypt -- Jim & Donna's Excellent Adventures, Pt.6

     

     Our day of tourism had several more elements that made a long day even longer, namely, a visit in the late afternoon to a cafe for Turkish coffee to keep us going and food that no one was hungry for-- but which we ate anyway -- before rushing off to see a light show involving the Sphinx and the Pyramids. 

 

     After a long day under hot sun and steady wind, the cool of evening, carried by that same steady wind, felt chilly. 

    At one point, the wind carried sand as well so we had to mask up. We had expected to use our masks a lot, but discovered there was little need except for occasions such as this when we needed protection from sand.

 

    The programmed commentary accompanying the light show essentially covered information we had heard from our tour guide earlier in the day.

    But photographs I tried to take that might have made the light show of some interest to readers of this blog did not come out well.

    At the end of the light show we reboarded the van for a trip from Giza to our last destination of the day, Nagy's home in Cairo. We consider it great good fortune to have been afforded the opportunity to visit a number of homes in Egypt -- pastors' homes mostly and, on this occasion, Nagy's home. 

Here we met his wife, three daughters, and 14 year old son, the youngest.

Danil, pictured here, felt particularly at home with Nagy's family since two of his daughters and his son had learned French at school. Danil, born and raised in Haiti, carried on long conversations with them in his first language, French, and reported that their French skills were very good.

 

Nagy, standing, is a brother from Dr. Atef's Wesleyan Church in Cairo. He now lives, works, and worships in Cairo; but he grew up in Asyut, where his parents and grandparents attended the first Wesleyan-Standard Church established in Egypt.

    Our team leader, Matt, carried on a conversation with Nagy and Nagy's younger daughters, exercising his Arabic. They in turn used their English, at which they were quite proficient, with us. It is quite impressive for those of us who are, sadly, mono-lingual to hear these young people shift effortlessly among several languages.

    When we learned we would be going to Nagy's home after the light show, we suggested that we were quite full from our late lunch; and that it would be "OK by us" as guests to have something less filling instead. Customary hospitality would have dictated that we be served dinner, but  Nagy accommodated us. He said he would make sahlab for us, shown here as the white drink. It has golden raisins and crushed pistachios sprinkled on the top. Matt, who had tried it on previous trips to Egypt, had already given glowing recommendations. 

Sahlab proved to be outstanding. Just what we needed after a long day of touring.

    Before we left, I went out onto the balcony to view what I could of the neighborhood. There is no way for me to tell from the outside of the neighboring buildings what the apartments were like given the darkness, the narrow streets, the uniformly unrevealing exteriors of the high rise apartment buildings.

    Even in daylight I am not sure these building exteriors would give much away -- despite my curiosity about such things.

    What I do know from our visit to Nagy's home is the warmth of welcome we received from his family. The opportunity to see where and how they live and experience the fellowship of conversation were exactly what we needed to highlight our long day.

    We got back into the van for an hour's ride back to the hotel sometime after midnight where we fell straight into dreamless sleep.

Egypt--Jim & Donna's Excellent Adventures, Pt 5

     If your way of visualizing the great pyramids has been, like mine, established partly by photographs and partly by Old Testament Hollywood movie-spectaculars like The Ten Commandments, then trust me when I tell you that your visualization doesn't come close to the real thing. 

Seeing the pyramids didn't surprise me, consequently, because they look exactly like the dozens or maybe hundreds of photographs I have seen over the years.

    But, for the record, standing before or beside them is awe inspiring. They are first of all huge, they are astonishing works of engineering and art, and they are unspeakably impressive. 

    And they speak to me, in a way that is hard to express, of the human cost of their construction. The labor required and the lives consumed -- as well as the obviously brilliant ingenuity -- is unimaginable.

     The Great Pyramids rise up hundreds of feet from elevated ground on hard, sun baked, absolutely lifeless desert. Every sign of life lies down hill. As you walk closer, because one must approach on foot, the immensity of these structures makes itself felt. One feels a weight that is both grand and oppressive in a way that, again, does not feel overstated.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

    One hundred yards away, traders in traditional dress had lined up to offer various souvenirs. My understanding is that they are restricted to this area so that tourists are free to approach the pyramid without interference.

     We did not ride camels, nor investigate the wares here, largely because when time is limited to absorb this moment by the Great Pyramids, that's what one needs to do. Let the moment sink in.

    Looking up, the size and complexity of these "simple" structures becomes more apparent. They rise like mountains with perfectly regulated sides and angles. The fact that they were constructed by human labor, block by measured block, brought to this place from elsewhere, fitted together without mortar, and absolutely dedicated to a singular purpose leaves one virtually speechless.     

 

    From the Great Pyramids we drove downhill a short distance to view the famous Sphinx, a different experience altogether. The Sphinx cannot be approached very closely, and there is scaffolding for restoration work. And after the immense presence of the Pyramids, it feels almost small..

 

    On the day we visited, birds had settled on the famous head and in the process tarnishing its dignity. All told, it does not look exactly like the photographs we have seen that enhance its majesty.

    Still, I am glad to have seem it in person. After a few minutes we were back in the van weaving our way around the camels, to a shop where we could watch papyrus being made into paper. Yes, paper-making from papyrus is still a thing.

 

 

 

 

 

 

    This young woman demonstrated the various stages of paper-making for us. Here, she is slicing a papyrus stem by hand into predetermined lengths, which will then be soaked for a number of hours in the bin to her left. Then the strips are laid out both horizontally and vertically in the desired size, the water is pressed out, and the paper set out to dry. It is the sugar in the papyrus itself that binds the dried strips together.

   All the paintings in the shop depict traditional scenes. Like other ancient forms of paper, papyrus folds badly but rolls well -- a characteristic that I had not considered before. We had opportunity to see and/or purchase items in the shop before climbing back into the van. By this point it was late afternoon and time for lunch. 

    But our day of tourism was not over. We still had miles to go before we slept.

Egypt -- Jim & Donna's Excellent Adventures, Pt. 4

    Now for something completely different:  a day of tourism!

    Keeping pretty much to our get-up-and-go, hold-on-tight and pay-attention schedule, we met our first friendly tour guide, Amena, whose mastery of English and information proved extensive and reassuring. This was the day Matt, our team leader and the only one of us with previous experience in Egypt, went back into the hotel as we were boarding our van and reemerged through a different entrance. He thought we had left without him. We sat in the van wondering aloud whether he might have, somehow, gotten lost -- not a happy experience on either end! 

    After 15 puzzling minutes and an exchange of text messages with his wife, Chandra, he found us -- and we were off.

    We headed in the direction of Giza: our first stop, Memphis, now a ruin but significant as the first capital of ancient Egypt, where we walked through the outdoor museum that bears many artifacts of Ramses II.

Here we encountered our first set of persistent traders, lined up beyond this, our first sphinx -- whose nose remain intact, unlike the more famous sphinx in Giza, although he shows damage in other ways. We saw our first hieroglyphic relief fragments, had our first extended exposure to serious heat, and discovered the undeniably related fact that shade will save our skins. For those who like to know, these first days in Cairo were in the 90s; in Asyut and especially Luxor it was incrementally hotter. I will comment further on the oft-noted benefit of "dry" (as opposed to "humid") heat in a later episode.

 

    From Memphis we traveled to see the Step Pyramid in Saqqara, thought to be the oldest extant pyramid. There are many pyramids in Egypt, although most often we see photographs of the Great Pyramids in Giza and the Step Pyramid. The importance of the Step Pyramid is that it reveals some of the thought processes of the ancient architects and engineers, as well as of the oldest building techniques in their developmental stages. The famous pyramids show how designs and techniques evolved and improved.

    For the record, I find brick and stone work fascinating, especially when the stones or patterns of a structure change unexpectedly. These changes speak to architecture, technology, and art, yes, but also to human efforts to construct, reconstruct, repair, and alter features --  although I am not usually able to say what those alterations tell me.

    We discovered on our first overseas trip years ago that unless the venue is very small, a visitor can't see everything -- so it's OK -- or, even, better to be selective, to avoid long waits in lines, and to recognize that learning will happen through gradual accumulation of information rather than through immersion. 

    Then we drove on in the direction of the famous Great Pyramids.

    On the way we stopped at a carpet factory where (mostly) young women come to learn the fine art of weaving carpets by hand on looms. 

Depending on the size and complexity of each design, the carpets could take up to six or eight months of steady work to complete. There were perhaps a dozen looms on the ground floor. 

    We were taken upstairs to the showroom to see the dozens and dozens of finished rugs hanging on the walls. I wanted to photograph some of these spectacular and skillfully made scenes, but was told quickly and directly to put the camera away. Right.

    Perhaps the theft of design ideas is at issue, who knows.

    We did not purchase any carpets but exposure to this labor intensive process was very interesting. Well worth the short stop. 

  

       I would not think it necessary to show where we had lunch, ordinarily, were it not for this woman baking bread in an open oven near the entrance to the restaurant where we stopped. The flat breads she was baking were primarily for use in the open air restaurant, but this woman was selling them to tourists as well. The flat table in front of her oven is filled with flour used to coat the outside of the bread before baking.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

    This lunch stop proved to be rare for us in that we arrived somewhere between 2 and 3 -- early for our time here.

    Lunch was identified for us as "Egyptian Bar-B-Q," which I suspect was a convenient category to offer people who were not going to hear, learn, or remember the particular names anyway.

    The Great Pyramids at Giza, our next stop, require a space of their own, so I suggest we take a break here, consider what we have seen so far, and cool off under the fans while we enjoy the food -- before we get return to the van to head back into the desert.

  

 

Egypt -- Jim & Donna's Excellent Adventures, Pt. 3

    Badr City is a city under construction. It has literally been rising from the desert Northeast or Cairo since the Egyptian government approved the idea in 1982. If I understand the numbers correctly, it has a resident population of 160,000 -- a little less than 25% of what it has been designed for. It has and will have medical centers, universities, and industry -- all modern with a modern infrastructure.

    It took about an hour to drive out of Cairo from Dr. Atef's church to the Badr City Wesleyan Church that Houghton Wesleyan has been specifically partnering with. The new highway from Cairo to Badr City is very nice but there is literally nothing to see to either side except sand. Eventually, of course, there will be.

    Having climbed into the van at the end of the Bible School sessions in the late afternoon, we arrived at Badr City in the early evening for a tour of the building before the service that was scheduled for 7:30.

    The shape of the church, the entryway, and the general look of the exterior is imaginable from what has already been constructed. Rebar extending upwards suggest what the planned third floor will look like. Due to government regulations, the third floor and the roof have to be completed before interior improvements can be made. Additionally, regulations specify a fairly tight time frame to compound sequencing regulations, so there is no opportunity to finish off one area before attending the next. The current pressure point is to finish the third floor and roof before doing more with what will be the sanctuary or putting in bathrooms.

 

The sanctuary floor is a concrete cavern, apart from the immediate area where worship takes place, for which folding chairs, large throw rugs, a wooden stage/platform, and temporary flood lights have been arranged.

A view of the worship space from the unfinished balcony provide a broad view of the area where services are held. We were given seats front row right because we were honored guests. When it was time to get up and speak we had to be watchful of the power cables snaking in from the service panel.

    We were taken up an interior concrete staircase without stair rails that circled an open shaft to see what had been done for the third floor. I might have photographed this feature were it not for the fact that I had to pray urgently that I would not topple down into the pit -- or, worse, find myself somehow unable to move mid-way. Oh, the perils of mission work!

    

    By now you should have concluded that I did not, in fact, topple down the shaft onto the concrete floor far beneath, but I will confess that the passage up and down was terrifying.

    Pastor Atef was eager to show us what had already been accomplished and what remained to be done, both of which are impressive.

    For the detail nerds among us, like me, most of the construction I observed in Egypt was of the sort seen here -- straightforward brickwork, usually rectangular, with poured concrete support columns of various sizes and shapes.

    This construction method and the fact that much of Egypt gets no rain accounts for the boxlike buildings that can be stacked or lined up in a variety of ways and for the flat roofs. Visible rebar means the building is not yet complete. 

    After our tour, we were driven to the Pastor's home for a quick "facilities break" prior to the evening service.

Our team, less Danil, gathered with Dr. Atef, and our hosts for the requisite photo opportunity. I am not sure where Danil was at this point; but he had rejoined us in time for the church service, so we did not have launch a search.

 

   Back at the church, I had opportunity to bring specific greetings from Houghton Wesleyan to the Brothers and Sisters in Badr City. It was my first experience with a translator, which was, I imagine, harder on him than on me. I referenced that little anecdote in Matthew 12:46-50 to contextualize my brief comments.

    We sang a number of loud and energetic praise songs in Arabic, we listened to a few other speakers, and we heard selection from the children's choir.

   

 

    At the end of the service, we greeted many of the congregation, stood for photographs, and prayed with some before making our way to a local restaurant for a big late night meal. This proved to be the pattern for our stay.

 [Here, right to left, Pastor Kamal, a leader in the Badr City church, Dr. Atef, and his son Martin.]

 

 

 I seem to have hit it off particularly well with this little boy, the pastor's son, who seemed to think it cool that I would give him fist bumps. And with his little sisters, who were tickled to pose even late at night for the camera.

 

 

    But of course by this time, having hit the ground running, our batteries were on life support. So back to Cairo to the hotel around midnight, where we fell into bed and slept, again, like babies.

Egypt -- Jim & Donna's Excellent Adventures, Pt.2

     On our first day in Cairo, after a short night of dreamless sleep, we hit the ground running. That overused phrase, "hit the ground running," took on new meaning for me when I saw a man step off a moving bus in front of us and run four or five steps to stay upright. When I commented on this to our tour guide, she said, "The bus doesn't have stops there. He wanted to get off. It's common."

    So we figuratively hit the ground running. Our whole team, five of us, traveled together, always. Our van took us down increasingly narrow and increasingly crowded streets to visit the Egyptian Bible College, which meets on the third floor of Dr. Atef's church. It is the norm, as far as we were able to discern, for the pastor to live above the church and sometimes for a church related set of activities to take place above the pastor's home on the third floor. In this case, it was the Bible College.

I attempted to photograph many street scenes, most of which came out as a blur of color and melting shapes. This one is not particularly typical because it is blocked off and devoid of human and vehicle traffic. But it is reasonably clear. It is notable for the presence of a mobile police unit on the left hand side, just to the right of the flag. Such units were not uncommon.

 

 

Here is the entryway to the church pastored by Dr. Atef, which is also the location of his home and of the Bible College. Out front are Pastor Kamal, new Superintendent of the Wesleyan Churches in Egypt, Dr. Matthew Friedman, our team leader and Professor from Kingswood University in New Brunswick, and Nagy to the right.

We were greeted by the caretaker of the church and his son, who was entirely unsure what to make of these visitors, especially of the grandfatherly man with the white beard who tried to engage him with smiles and wanted to take his picture.

 

 

Before venturing to the third floor for the teaching sessions, we stopped at Dr. Atef's office on the second floor just outside of his home where we presented him and Pastor Kamal with a gift from our church, a vivid reproduction of the watercolor of Houghton Wesleyan by Roselyn Danner. I read for them the inscription expressing our desire for a growing bond between our church in North America and the Egyptian churches.

 Upstairs, Dr. Friedman conducted two hour-long class sessions in this room for Bible College students on the history of world Christianity. We were told that there were a number of students absent because they don't usually hold classes on Friday and these students had other obligations. These students were all pastors, men from various places in Africa and the Middle East. While varying from person to person, their conversational English seemed to be quite good to my ears and their experience both as pastors and with Scripture was extensive.

 

After a lunch break provided by the staff, I taught for an hour session before Dr. Friedman returned for the last hour. My lecture, which was not sequenced with the other lectures as to specific subject, dealt with Psalm 121. I described a method for using the English text in multiple ways -- as a tool for improving one's English, as a way of using the form and structure of the Psalm for structuring sermons, and so forth -- that I adapted from the first chapter of my book Words That Move Us. [Forgive, please, the shameless self-promotion here.] 

    At the end of the school sessions, it was pressing on 4 p.m., and we got back into the van for the second half of our day -- at Badr City. We had apparently hit the ground in order to keep running!

Egypt: Jim & Donna's Excellent Adventures, Pt. 1

         We arrived in Cairo mid-afternoon on Thursday, May 12, about 36 hours from leaving Houghton, having had brief periods of dozing. At the Cairo airport we bought a tourist visa on site, met Nagi, our man on the ground. Nagi "took care" of things that clueless travelers from North American needed help with. That is to say, Nagi, a Christian brother who is a friend to everyone and who has friends everywhere, took care of every thing big and small.   

    As it is my custom to take photographs as a source of information and as an aid to memory, I tried taking pictures out the van window. Digital photography allows one the luxury to take many and then choose. On this trip into the city most of my photographs are unsalvageable blurs.

    But tellingly for me from the few that remain are the crosses on domes, crosses that I had not expected. In this way the first cracks in my American preconceptions of Egypt appeared.

    At street level, once off the super-highway, our view reminded me a great deal of cities we had seen in China.

    Initial impressions can change, of course, but it is pretty typical from my observations for wares to be displayed out front as well as in the stores. The buildings, too, are often tan or grey, wires and electrical units visible.

    This photo has no traffic and few people and relatively few wires strung about, perhaps because we had just exited the highway and were only beginning our way into the city.

    By the time we reached the hotel, checked into our rooms, and brushed our teeth, it was pushing 8 p.m., getting dark, and time to reboard the van for a ride to the restaurant for our first authentic Egyptian meal, Koshari.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

   A bit of research on Google will reveal that Koshari is the Egyptian national dish. It is also a popular "street food" apparently, although how one would manage on the street is a bit beyond my powers of imagination.

    We were told ahead of time that it was vegetarian and delicious.

    We were seriously tired from travel and might have voted to go straight to bed if that had been an option. But for the record, missing this meal would have been a serious mistake. It was beyond good. A great way to be introduced to Egyptian foods, and a great welcome to Egypt!

    Our waiter performed some theatrics in pouring the sauces and sprinkling the toppings over the rice, pasta, and lentil base, which added to the fun.

    We returned to the hotel close to midnight and slept like babies.

Egypt -- Going? Going? Gone!

   Although we were given several pages of Arabic conversational phrases to ease us through the language and culture barriers a North American traveler to Egypt might encounter, what we discovered --  invested with newer, profound meaning -- were terms we already knew: The Lord will provide. God is Good. Thanks be to God!

    On this our third attempt in the last 18 months to make the journey to Egypt, we were able to satisfy all the Covid-19 requirements and protocols and to board the plane for Cairo. Since we were flying out of Toronto, that meant, satisfying Canadian rules, Egyptian rules, and U.S. government rules. No small task.

    Our original commission had been to represent Houghton Wesleyan Church at the Centennial Celebration of the Wesleyan-Standard of Egypt. The original anniversary date passed without any delegation from North America. The first alternative date, early December 2021, passed without the Houghton delegation, Donna and me, although a few veteran travelers from the Atlantic District (Canada) of the Wesleyan Church did go. When we were eventually invited to join a small group of those had also found the door closed in December, led by Dr. Matthew Friedman of Kingswood University, we began repacking our bags. Here, I believe, the phrase "God's timing" is appropriate. For a number of reasons this was a better trip for us to join, in our view, than the one that went in December.

 

 

    During our nine days in Egypt, book-ended by two very long travel periods,we brought greetings from Houghton Wesleyan to Wesleyan churches in Cairo and Badhr City (lower Egypt), Asyut (middle Egypt), and Luxor (upper Egypt). And we returned with specific greeting from those churches.

    We met with pastors in all three places to hear their particular stories and to broaden our understanding of what God is doing in and through the Wesleyan Church in Egypt. In addition we worshiped with the congregations of numerous church. In and around these church visits, we were able to "do" the tourist things one would hope to do on a trip to Egypt, notably visit the pyramids and Sphynx in Giza and visit sites in the Valley of the Kings in Luxor.

    There is much to tell and report and show about all of these things, both in church and in conversation as well as further posts on this blog. But for now this brief report will need to be sufficient.

    As has often happened, our experience is that the best part of the trip was the people we met. We have brought them with us in our hearts and memories, along with a few tangible reminders and a deeper understanding of those little things we say. The Lord did provide. God is Good.

    Thanks be to God.