The Pain of Finding Internet in Egypt

nWe're sitting in an internet cafe in Aswan Egypt. Next to us sits a five year old Egyptian boy playing Counter Strike online against someone from who knows where. He can barely see over the counter top to see the screen. Interesting sight.

We sailed to Aswan (from Luxor) over the past four days. We sailed in a caravan of cruise "ships". There are 300 odd ships that sail the short distance from Luxor to Aswan. They vary in their quality - some are five star hotels on the water - others look quite shabby. Ours was somewhere in the middle. It was nice enough but not something you would want to live on for the rest of forever.

It has been an interesting trip. We've loved the Egyptian sites. They are more than we imagined and worth seeing sometime in your lifetime. Actually worth seeing more than once. We vacation poorly, however. Everywhere we go Swell and I note the poverty rather than just the historical stuff. It is a surreal experience to float down the Nile in a relatively luxurious boat with all the food and drink you can eat. We have 70 or so staff on the boat - there are probably 50 tourists. On either side of the Nile sit hovels barely fit for habitation. So the wealth of the world floats idly by the poor on either side of the Nile. The passengers on the boats do their best to ignore the poverty. Instead of saying: "Oh my! Look at these poor people washing their clothes in the polluted Nile/look at them collect water to take back to their homes/look at them fishing for food/look at their unfinished homes" the tourists visit while drinking $5 beers wearing nothing but their underwear.

That was quite a site. Women of the world your bra is not an outdoor outfit especially in a Muslim country where the women are covered from head to toe. Women who weigh more than 200 pounds please invest in a nice one piece swim suit rather than your jeans and a bra.

We do a good job of ignoring the poor. While in Egypt we ignore them as we walk past their shops, we ignore them as we walk past them trying to sell us flowers they just picked from the side of the road. We ignore their offers to show us the "best picture" all for the hopes of baksheesh (tip). On a grander scale the poor are ignored by our governments and in our day to day purchasing/lifestyle choices.

I haven't travelled a lot - let alone in such a touristy fashion as we are this week - but everywhere I've travelled I've seen more of the same. People just trying to eek out a life. Growing their food in rural Romania even at the age of 70, suffering - even in childbirth in very rural Honduras for lack of transportation.

Its interesting to make these observations but even when you make them while visiting the country it is difficult - I would say impossible - to truly understand what the people experience. It takes "walking a mile" in their shoes to see what it is like to live after the ravages of communism, to live in an area ignored by world leaders, to live with under $2 a day, to live without access to an improved water source/sanitation. While we won't be doing these things in our time in Nablus it is one step closer to experiencing life the way the vast majority of our brothers and sisters live - poor and hopeless but content in their community experience. Perhaps living this life will give us the knowledge of how better to pursue equality and justice for all when we move back home. Perhaps it will give us the knowledge to make better life choices so next time we visit an underdeveloped country we will see progress rather than economic/health care stagnation.

We promise to post about our trip (the sites) but want to do so with pictures and that will have to wait until we have access to our own computers.

'Till then I'm going to go get a little more sun.

Sheepie

P.S. It seems to me that my title makes no sense to the post. I was going to write something different because the above post was written much better yesterday in my journal. I forgot said journal at the boat and I was going to wait to write it later. I couldn't so the title doesn't match. "Why didn't you just change the title then?" Shut up.