Today we went to the Step, Red, and Bent Pyramids. We visited Saqqar, and saw the burial tomb of
Te. Those who were so inclined climbed
up and went inside the Red pyramid. Interestingly, no one who’d ever been there
before chose to go up. The group who came down didn’t find it as horrible
smelling as I did last year.
While I was sitting outside waiting for the group to come
down, a fat Egyptian guard (national park guard) on foot came up, positioned
himself between me and the guys in the van, and surreptitiously asked me to
give him money. I smiled and waved him
off. Then another guard came up on a
camel. He sort of parked himself in
front of me, posing. I ignored him. He paraded his camel back and forth in front
of me. I watched him. Finally, when it became clear I wasn’t going
to ask him, he motioned and asked me if I wanted to take a picture. I declined.
He hung out for a few minutes, then was on his way.
That story repeated itself at Darshur (where the Bent
Pyramid is). That would actually have
been a great photo op, since the camel had an automatic weapon in the gear on
its side. I could not, of course,
resist, and took a picture anyway; I just didn’t pay for it. The same thing happened inside the Tomb of
Te. The guy (who last year forbade us
from taking pictures) this year said we could, for a fee. We declined, and proceeded to take pictures
anyway.
Look, I get it that 20% of the country’s revenue comes from
tourism, and that tourism has dropped some 90% since the uprising. I get that.
I feel for people. But I resent
being extorted. At the end of the day, it seems, if tourism is your business
and you want people to come back to your country, you need to offer them some
sort of service that they actually need, instead of offering to polish people’s
sneakers in the desert. More on that
later. But you can’t just beg and extort
money from people and have any expectation they’ll want to return to your
country. Egypt
I know people think Americans are rich, but I’m not. I had to save all year to come on this
trip. We are required to pay for an
entry visa. We are required to have tour
guides and an armed guard. All this is
added into the cost of our trip. And I
spoke yesterday about the 25LE cappuccino.
Everybody tries to get money from you at every turn, and at some point,
you just have to stop it. My money’s not limitless. Go hit up your Saudi
brothers.
We went back to Khan el-Khalili bazaar. You literally cannot walk down the streets
without people running up to you -- I
wear leather sneakers, and no less than 10 guys approached me today, wanting to
shine my sneakers. Really? And when I told them my sneakers were fine,
they tried to tell me they weren’t.
OK. I’ve been walking through the
desert all day. You have one box of
polish, no water, and you want to shine my shoes? My sneakers?
Are you serious, dude? It’s a big
feast day here, and the Bazaar has a mosque on the corner. It’s full of people coming, I guess for the
feast day. But along with the mosque are
people looking for others to make zakat (alms giving, one of the five pillars
of Islam). Which means you are faced on
every side with people desperately trying to sell things and people
begging. While it’s annoying, it’s also
heart-wrenching. It’s heart-wrenching to see the little children being used as
props for their parents’ begging. It’s
heart-wrenching to see grown men throwing away common decency trying to get you
to buy something. I wanted some little
statuettes of the pyramids. They were
going for a dollar at the Great Pyramids.
There’s 6 Egyptian Pounds to the dollar.
So I walk into a shop and ask a guy for one. He quotes me 250 LE (Egyptian Pounds). I of
course, walked out. No conversation.
He calls back, $10.00. I told him
he was nuts. Finally he went down to ten
pounds. I told him ok. Then he wanted $10.00. I walked away again. He came after me. I gave him his 10 pounds
and got my statue. I later went back and
got another one, and we laughed about it.
But if I hadn’t known what I wanted to pay, I coulda gotten hit for
250LE. In general, we’re told to start
bargaining with them at 1/10 of the price they suggest. You always know you’ve lowballed them if you
try to walk away and they let you. And
since every vendor is selling the same thing, if you do happen to lowball
somebody, you just go to the next one and make a better offer.
I actually bought some more papyrus. The quality varies, but I got it from the
same guy, Tony, that I got them from last year.
I got 10 or 12 papyrii, plus a couple of Eye of Horus papyri, plus a
bigger one. And I paid him a bit more
than half of his first “good deal for you my friend” offer. I have pictures this year just like last
year, of me sitting in his shop going through the papyrii. Only this year, he brought us all tea and
sodas. And this year we also bought some
very nice myrrh and lotus flower oils, for a very good price. Tony’s cool.
After the bazaar, we came back and met for a while. We’re looking at what happens as we discover
a disconnect between what we discover archaeologically and the history as told
in the Scriptures. I won’t go so far as
Peter and suggest that the Bible is “wrong;”
I believe that as we grow in wisdom, knowledge, and understanding, that
we learn more about the environment in which the Scriptures were written. This wisdom, knowledge and understanding
helps to better inform our Biblical scholarship. The Bible is not a literal document. It is, however, a true document. The fact that we may not always have the
necessary keys to unlock its truths does not make it any less true.
So we sat and talked about that, as well as about all the
things we’ve seen and how they’ve impacted us.
We talked about the devastating poverty, about Egypt ’s political future, about Egypt ’s social services, about US
The conversation continued on into the evening, with us
coming to agreement that the Holy Spirit has to inform our work and our
witness.
I’m sure the conversation will continue on.
Last night we crossed the street in Cairo
I’m going to pack; tomorrow we do the Egyptian Museum
No comments:
Post a Comment