Reflections on our second day of Pyramids
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, if you’re going to be self-sufficient, you’re going to have to realize that. So I didn’t pay to take pictures; I took them anyway.
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 government and its social services, about generational dependency, and about how we can motivate/encourage/teach/train people to do better.
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! Kristen and I ventured across the street. The doorman from the hotel took us by the hand and helped us cross, but we came back on our own. Tonight Peter and I went out after dinner. We both got Vodafone recharge cards. I also got another of the little pyramid thingies, and Peter got oils.
I’m going to pack; tomorrow we do the Egyptian Museum, then head to the Sinai. It will be an evening trip. That should be interesting….
No comments:
Post a Comment