Egypt!

That Pyramid

Within 12 hours of arriving in Cairo, we have already been out to see the Pyramids at Giza and the Sphinx and had a ride on a camel. It would have taken us days to screw up courage to go there on our own, but our time of arrival here has unwittingly been amazing. At the Guest House, there is a group of students from the USA led by Chris, a professor of Middle Eastern Studies. They are doing voluntary work here with the Sudanese refugees, and since today is their first day here well and so was set aside for sight-seeing, they invited us to come along with them to the Pyramids. It was such a wonderful opportunity to do it with an experienced guide and to get all the history from someone who knows it well.

The Pyramids at Giza are only a short distance out of Cairo (the NZ troops had to pass them to get back to their camps when they were stationed here during the war). Suddenly, through the early morning smog, there it was - the Pyramid of Cheops. Hawkers are everywhere, offering headdresses, pyramid models and postcards, but they were not nearly as pushy as the hawkers in Beijing, and their are tourist police everywhere (just as likely to shout angrily at a tourist climbing too far up on the pyramid as at a hawker!) Anyway, we had a wonderful time with Chris' group walking around the Pyramids and hearing about the history. It was big in those days to be buried with all your paraphernalia, and big shots like Cheops had their ships buried near them too, in a huge pit dug out of the earth and stone near the pyramid. The ship, made out of Lebanese Cedar and tied together by rope, has been unearthed and re-constructed in a nearby museum. The Sphinx is quite small compared with the three pyramids here, but is impressive because it is carved out of bedrock rather than built of stacked stone blocks. The pyramids and Sphinx are all rather crumbling, but the scale of them seems to prevent them falling to oblivion, and there is some effort apparent in preserving them.

"Gee up" didn't seem to work in this case

The other fantastic thing about tagging along with Chris and his group was that we didn't have to haggle prices, so we had a camel ride without having to worry about whether we were being ripped off. It really was great - it must look so stupid to the Egyptians, all these squawking tourists getting kicks from riding what, for them, is like a bus! But we thoroughly enjoyed the whole thing and we managed to stay on and hopefully not look too undignified.

The Guest House is run by the Anglican Cathedral here and is a very friendly place. We have already met another Kiwi, Rosie from Wellington, who works for the diocese, and there is apparently a group from Adelaide arriving tomorrow. It promises to be a very interesting few weeks. Tomorrow we hope to meet with Mike, our contact guy here, and discuss what we can do to help in the computer area. I have already been able to assist today in a small way - the Guest House manager asked me to help her tweak the website so that it looks better. It seems likely that we will be useful in some capacity.

The recent suicide bombing in Alexandria has caused a lot of worry, as it involved tensions between the Coptic Christians and the Moslems. We are yet to hear whether there is any cause to be concerned here in Cairo, and it seems to be an issue with the Coptics (the majority of the 10% Christians here), not the Anglicans, but it is clear that all is not well in relations between the two groups in Egypt.