To Egypt with Love

In 1984, as I prepared to fly to Ireland for a work-study exchange, many people warned me of the dangers I would encounter.

"Are you bringing a bullet-proof vest?!" one untravelled co-worker asked.

"Aren't you scared?!" another inquired, "it's really dangerous over there!"

Well, I went to Egypt in 2005 with many of the same, well-intentioned warnings from people who hardly get out of the Midwest. People who, while secure in their American homes and American lifestyle, will probably never understand the human commonality we all share, regardless of our dress sense or language.

News media is good, because it brings us understanding of events around us, but in this channel's attempts to outdraw the other channel, news media errs on the side of the overblown and the sensational, rather than the circumspect and the measured.


Those people who warning me against all they'd been programmed to "know" as the truth in Ireland or the Middle East, are being kept from experiencing it by the hypnotic attraction of fear. Unfortunately, our politics holds the same trappings of Us-against-themism. It serves noone but those profiteering from those left paralyzed.



Well, I for one refuse to listen and believe. I refuse to be kept from all that other cultures have to say and share.

On the streets of Aswan, a man heard me speaking to my travel companions and made a bee-line to us with his hand stretched out, asking "Where are you from?"

Gauging the man's friendly intent, I answered "The United States."

"Ahhh!" he said with a bigger smile than before. "Government's bad, people good..." shaking my hand vigorously to say what he couldn't convey in the little English he had.

There are beautiful women all over the world, shopping for oranges


And men do it, too!

I love patterns created by how things are stacked or displayed



Indigo, turmeric, hibiscus flowers, chili powders and sumac


Cairo, near one of the oldest churches in the world

I was continually caught by textures and street scenes

on a stop near the Valley of the Kings

Ancient floodlines marking past seasonal activity of the Nile

Falluka voyage near Elephantine Island


Abu Simbel, the temple moved 100 feet up to the top of the river bank and rebuilt, saved from the rising Nile waters caused the Aswan Dam.

I worry about the treasures of Egypt held in this building in Cairo. I hear that citizens created an impromptu barrier to protect it from looters, but were not entirely successful.

And I worry about our friends who watched over us and helped us see Egypt for the history and the cultural significance that it holds.


Our guide and friend, Osama, who named our group "Familie" of which he was certainly one.

And Nassar, who with really no English whatsoever, kept us safe as we walked his streets.

This trip was taken the year before I went to New Zealand and begun this blog. I felt that I should dig back in my office and find some of my favorite photos to post in honor and the hope that Egypt will quickly regain its calm and its new democratic structure.