Categories
Cultural Differences

Bye Bye piggies

Swine flu paranoia strikes Cairo, Egypt.

Pigs to be slaughtered.

and

Slaughtering has already started

Yes there are pigs in Egypt. Many of them. They are usually raised by the Christian garbage recyclers. They are used to turn garbage into protein.

The meat is available in some stores, butchers and restaurants. It isn’t the best pork I have ever had, but it is tolerable. Except the bacon. The bacon, from at least one store, tastes like fishmeal wrapped in saran wrap.

Anyway…

It is unclear to me whether or not the meat will be destroyed or just butchered and sold as it normally is.

I doubt with the paranoia about this that the meat will be sold. Especially since the government has closed at least one pig butchery in Alexandria.

It will be interesting to see if all the pigs are butchered and if this overwhelmingly Muslim state will allow pigs back into Egypt or if this will be used as an excuse to ban the animals.

Edit: May 2nd. Yesterday, we went to our favorite pizza place, Maison Thomas. It is own and operated by Coptic Christians and normally sells pork products, both as groceries (ie: a rack of pork chops, sliced ham etc) and on pizza. We were told “No pork products.”

I was unable to determine if this was a voluntary withdrawal of their pork offerings or if they were ordered to do so, or  if they were just unable to obtain pork.

I find it hard to believe that pork is no longer available due to the slaughter.

Categories
Packing

Again with the 3 “S”es

About 3 years ago I posted this intro to our blog

One of the topics in that blog is what I termed the 3 S’es.

  1. Sell
  2. Ship
  3. Store

It involved every single god-damn thing in the house. It all had to fit in one of those 3 categories.

Going home, it is “same-same, but different”:

  • we don’t have to worry about furniture here. it was all provided by AUC. (Well except for the office chair I bought. Oh, and that comfy rocking chair I bought. Oh and..)
  • There is no “store”. It has got to be sold, shipped or shit-canned.

The process begins again.

Oy.

Categories
Maudlin Planning

Redux: The beginning of Goodbye

About 3 years ago, I posted this

The Beginning of GoodBye

It is happening again.

We were in our favorite place in Egypt, Dahab last month.

We were staying with our dear friends, Nina and Mikas, at their extremely cozy guest house, Dahab Coach House.

We dive with Sinai Divers Backpackers and have loads of friends there: Pritesh, Kasia, Yvonne, Vivienne, Shadi, Khaled, Synthia.

And we realized that, well, we have to start saying good-bye to people. Again.  I am not good at this. I like to just slink off.

There is a Seinfeld episode that goes something like this:

George decides he wants to break up with his girlfriend. He finally works up the courage to sit her down and explain that it just isn’t working out.

He goes through a lot of the cliches: “it’s not you, it’s me” “time to move one” etc.

She stops for a minute and says: “No”.

She does not allow him to break up with her.

As we were attempting to say good-bye, our friends in Dahab said “”No, this isn’t good bye. You must come back one more time before you leave”

I felt like George, in that episode.

And so it goes.

We are trying to figure out how, in the next 8 weeks, we are going to pack everything up, wrap up all the loose ends for both our jobs,  co-ordinate a cross-the-world-relocation, AND sneak in at least another long weekend with our friends in Dahab.

It seems that the dust in my eye here is just as bad as the dust on that street in Vancouver.

Categories
Photographs Travel

I like monkeys

We just got back from Zanzibar and I posted a couple of photos on my facebook page.

Those monkeys crack me up.