A Lonely Sarcophagus

...and a sad comment on pollution. Roughy ten or fifteen years ago a friend of mine was visiting the antiquities at Sakkara and took this photo except that in hers you could see the pyramids of Giza as well as the pyramids of Abu Sir. As little as six years ago the Giza pyramids were visible from Abu Sir more often than not, but it is no longer true. 

When Is A Cloud Not A Cloud?

Riding back from Dahshur today with friends we found the sky full of black and silver rainclouds that, happily for us, did not end up soaking us thoroughly. Looking to the southeast, I noticed a thick black cloud roiling across the cities on the other side of the Nile. It was the cloud of pollution from the brick kilns and cement factories of Helwan and the pressure of the clouds above was keeping it low to the ground.

Wake Up Call!!

I really hate posting ugly pictures of Egypt when there is so much beauty here, but every now and then I have to in hopes of helping people care for our country. The government (old government) built an extension of the Ring Road to connect the end of the Moneeb coming from Kattameya to the part of the ring road that circled around to the north of the city. Originally the road was intended to go around behind the Giza Plateau but UNESCO blocked that route arguing that the construction was not good in an antiquities area. Just last fall someone put up some tent material along the canal just where the extension took off from ground level and began dumping garbage there. Now every day trucks come and dump load after load of smelly gross garbage under the overpass while bulldozers dig it up again and put it in big trucks to move somewhere else instead.

All of this is incredibly stupid. Instead of investing money in the Zebaleen who recycle roughly 80% of the waste they collect, we are paying people to move it around in trucks, using gasoline and polluting the air further. And it goes to landfills, which as might be expected, FILL UP!

Looking for Blue Skies

Cairo is at the very least the second most polluted city in the world. One of the problems with pollution is the fact that from the ground you can't see the blue sky to remember what it looks like and to remind yourself of the quality (or lack thereof) of the air that you are breathing. Get out into the desert on a windy day when the pollution has been blown to the other side of the valley and the world has a way of reminding you what you are missing.

Cleaning Up After Work?

I ride in the desert a lot and I try to respect the rules of the Antiquities Council. We avoid areas where the archaeologists are working, we don't mess about with the antiquities and we never, never leave trash behind if we are riding. Lunch trash goes out with the horses. I just wish the Antiquities Council had the same respect for the desert that we do. These are piles of debris from excavations as well as piles of simple garbage that people at the Sakkara pyramids area have seen fit to dump in the desert. Maybe they figure that since it isn't by the road inside the tourist area it doesn't count? I think that it does.

Smoke in the Wind

Cairo has the unfortunate honour of being one of the most polluted cities in the world, which is one reason that I live on the edge of the western desert. Oddly enough, one of the reasons for the pollution can't be seen easily unless the wind is blowing enough of the crud out of the valley for the chimneys of the cement factories of Helwan to be made out....like today.

So nice to be back. I really missed having a camera.

Astonishing House 1

I think it has to do with a lack of housing codes? Or an excess of cash? Or maybe it's that aliens abducted someone's sense of taste and propriety. At the end of the day 99% of Egyptians don't have the money to buy the front door of a place like this, so what on earth is the point of building it? I've "admired" this amazing construction for years. Don't know who it belongs to, but I've been told that this is foreign money that created this whatever. I can't even figure out to what architectural style it alludes...maybe 1001 Nights meets The Taj Mahal?

Trash Collection Take Two

If the government of a city believes that having a group of people whose lives are devoted to the collection and recycling of trash is old fashioned, even if the Ford Foundation believes otherwise, they will likely bring in "modern" techniques. In our case, the city of Giza took a large section of desert between Giza and Sakkara and moved in a dump and recycling plant. Now thanks to willy nilly modernisation we have to put up with enormous trucks hauling in massive loads of refuse along our country roads, a road into the desert cutting the old trails from Giza to Sakkara and making life for riders that much more hazardous, a black pile of refuse that is creeping up to the wadi leading to the Sakkara complex, (a valley still unexplored and containing a number of antiquities sites), and the various aerial byproducts of a dump for a few million people. These include armies of plastic bags that roll inflated in ranks across the desert on windy days and the occasional smoke cloud when something goes wrong and catches fire.

I think I like the old ways better.