Christmas in Egypt

               Christmas in Egypt 

When our kids were 14 and 16 we wanted to give then an educational winter break, so we decided to spend the kid’s Christmas vacation in Egypt.

As we made our plans, we talked to an Egyptian Doctor who was working in El Dorado, and Dr. Robbie was extremely helpful. His family still lived in Cairo and his brother-in-law was an attorney admitted to practice before the Egyptian Supreme Court.

Of course, in order to really see the antiquities of ancient Egypt a trip up the Nile to Aswan and then down the river to Luxor was a must.  No tours for us. We had lived Libya so we knew the ropes.

On December 22 we left El Dorado in a small plane I had rented because of icy roads. We took off for Little Rock with sleet pounding the windshield, and a white-knuckle hour later, we landed in Little Rock to catch our flight to New York. Then after an overnight flight to Cairo, we stepped out into warm sunshine.

At customs we were in a long line when a well-dressed Egyptian approached us and asked, “Are you the Mason Family?” “Yes,” I said. He was Dr. Robbie’s brother-in-law, and he said, “Just follow me.” And we walked around the long custom’s line as he waved to the customs agent.

Our time in Cairo was high-lighted by a day spent in the Egyptian National Museums where we marveled over the bust of Queen Nefertiti. Dr. Robbie’s Brother-in-law took us to see the pyramids where he requested I wear a suit and tie. Yes, we looked as if we were going to a state funeral, but just a word from him to any of the workers and guides was enough to move us into any place we wanted to see. A trip to the old bazaar and a few days of very different food was giving our kids a terrific educational experience, but they seemed to relish the adventure.

The next day was Christmas Day, and it was on to Aswan to stay in the Cataract Hotel where Agatha Christi wrote Murder on the Nile, and after settling in, we headed to the Nile River where, after a little haggling, I rented a felucca, a small sail-motor boat the Egyptian use on the river to take small trips across the river to where the ancient tombs and temples are located. The river was clear and the boat ride was fun. As the boat docked in front of a very long set of steps leading up to several ancient tombs, Lara, our artist child, who had seen hundreds of picture of Egyptian art, jumped off the front of the boat and, as our mouths dropped open, ran up the hundreds of steps to the tomb. She was excited. We came back to the hotel and had Christmas dinner in the Agatha Christi Dining Room where the kids kept asking, “What are we eating?”

“Camel” I said. The kids thought I was kidding, but I wasn’t

A couple of days later we headed down the Nile to ancient capital of Egypt, Luxor and the temples of Karnack and across the river to the Valley of the Kings. We would need transportation to see all the sights, and Dr. Robbie had told up to bring some small U. S. dollars because dollars were eagerly sought. With that in mind I started checking cabs at the airport until I found a cab driver who spoke English.

“How much to take our family around Luxor and to the Valley of the Kings?----in American dollars?”

A few minutes and $20 dollars later, we had a cab and driver for a day. That turned out to be the best $20 I have spent in a long time.  His first suggestion was:

“We should stay on this side of the river in the morning and go to Karnack Temples because the tour buses go over to the Valley of the Kings in the morning and come back at noon.”

He was right, and that next day we had the ancient temple city of Karnack almost to ourselves. I can still visualize the long row of granite lions leading into the temple area. Then at noon, we headed for the Valley of the Kings, when we came to a small village.

“This is a tomb robber’s village,” our driver said. He said for centuries the villagers had made a living robbing the ancient Egyptian tombs.

Minutes later, a man ran up to the car and waved the head of an Egyptian statue. It was about five inches tall, and I thought it looked real, but our driver said, “It’s a fake. It has been buried to look old.”  I told the man I wasn’t interested, and after he tossed out a several hundred dollar figure, I was ready just trying to get rid of him, and I waved a twenty dollar bill.

“I’ll give you twenty dollar American,” I said

Well, he acted insulted and said $250 was his bottom price.

I told our driver to go, but the man with the fake head ran along beside the cap until we stopped at an intersection.

“Here,” he said. “For twenty dollars American.”

We drove off with me holding a “fake” head thinking I had just bought a trinket to take home. However, back home a friend, who is an archeologist, took a hard look and nodded, “It’s real.”

Then it was on to The Valley of the Kings, which was the highlight of the trip. We ventured into tomb after tomb. Going into the tomb of King Tutankhamun was breathtaking. Our flashlights turned out to me a valuable addition, since some tombs were lit by young boys with a mirror shining it into a dark tomb.

But the highlight or as Vertis put it the lowlight were the tombs that were not open to viewing. However, our cab driver, took a few dollar bills and …presto; closed tombs were opened for a private tour. Then one of the guards told the cab driver a newly opened tomb could be seen, but we would have crawl into the lower chamber where there were still mummies. We did, for a few more dollars, and when we raised up in the lower chamber it was a sight I haven’t forgotten.

Hundreds of years ago tomb robbers had looted the tomb, and since many ancient mummies were wrapped and put in the tomb with precious jewelry on their bodies, the tomb robbers had ripped off the gauze wrapping and after taking anything of value, had thrown the wrapping and bare skeletons into an adjoin chamber. It was a ghastly sight and that’s when Vertis left, but both kids started taking pictures.

Our kids, who are now middle-age, still talk about that tomb, and so does Vertis, but her comments aren’t exactly fit to print.

The two weeks we spent in Egypt gave our kids a hands-on educational experience that would be hard to duplicate. It was a history lesson, but so much more because of all the interactions with the Egyptian people. Truly a trip of a lifetime.

           

thenorphletpaperboy: Goodbye Houston.....

thenorphletpaperboy: Goodbye Houston.....: Goodbye Houston…New Orleans…Miami The inhabitants of our planet cannot continue along the same path we are now treading. If we do, t...

Goodbye Houston.....

Goodbye Houston…New Orleans…Miami

The inhabitants of our planet cannot continue along the same path we are now treading. If we do, there will be such a reduction in the quality of life for the peoples on Earth that life for huge numbers of the Earth’s population will be at risk, but as the 16 year-old young lady from Sweden, Greta Thunberg said, ”Adults don’t care.” Of course she was right and as one reporter wrote about her address to the United Nations, “She called them a bunch of jerks.” That exactly right and if you’re sitting on your hands doing nothing about global warming, you are at risk of being a jerk! And as Greta said to that bunch of bureaucrats, "People are dying and dying ecosystems are collapsing. We are in the beginning of a mass extinction, and all you can talk about is the money and fairy tales of eternal economic growth," she said, as she fought back tears. "How dare you!"  

It seem to me, prophesy is being fulfilled, as just in Sweden, over 100,000 schoolchildren have joined her crusade with thousands more school age kids around the world joining every day…..”And a child will lead them.”

It’s hard to separate science from politics, but in spite of what you hear and read, basic science should be a non-political item. Anyone who doubts settled science in place of political rhetoric should rethink their position in the light of the obvious, and climate change caused by global warming is as certain as gravity.

As multiple 500 year storms tear Houston apart, are we seeing one of the countries great cities becoming unlivable? I’ve lost count of how many 500-year-storms the city has suffered through in the past 5 years. How many more will it take before there is a mass exodus? Of course, New Orleans and Miami will also become inhabitable and the Bahamas will be history, and what is even more unthinkable is the worst is yet to come! That’s right, and after another 20 years, when only a few flat earth non-believers are remaining, it will be too late. The atmosphere will be so carbon-dioxide toxic that large areas of the world will suffer from extreme drought while other parts of the globe have constant torrential rain. The remnants of our coastal cities will be under constant flooding and evacuations to the interior of the country will send a torrent of refugees into the center of countries around the world. Venice will only be a memory.

The hottest September on record tells us that global warming is only getting worse; and tornadoes, where they haven’t had them in years, are sweeping the country. But we are not only asleep at the wheel, we are cascading off into the ditch as fast as we can. We pulled out of the Paris Climate Accord stating, “We don’t want to do anything that would harm our economy.”  And then to pile stupidity upon stupidity our government is suing California because its new pollution standards are tougher than the recently drastically reduced Federal Standards. Yes, instead of going forward in trying to combat the inevitable warming of the Earth’s Atmosphere, we are doing everything we can to increase the problem.

The California wildfires have destroyed thousands of houses, and of course a big part of the annual wildfire problem this year is because of record hurricane winds. Just consider 80 mile per hour winds on top of an exceptional dry season and add flames to that. The record hurricane force winds are a direct result of global warming, and the extreme drought in California, which is contributing to the disaster, is also caused by global warming. On the flip side, Colorado and Wyoming set October records for low temperatures, and the recent November cold snap set hundreds of low temperature records nationwide. Huh? Yes, that is exactly what scientists have predicted as side effects of our plant’s warming. We can look forward to a winter where one week we will set a record for the warmest January day on record, and before the month is out, a record low-temperature snowfall will pound us----and it will only get worse.

Yes, our severe weather will only get worse, and what’s even scarier is, the scientists who predicted this global disaster are stating that the situation is deteriorating much faster and with more severe weather than they expected. With that in mind, and considering the past five years of weather events, as soon as 20 years from now, we can expect an exodus of Biblical proportions to begin from coastal cities, and within another 15 years after that these coastal cities will become uninhabitable. Yes, that does sound like a doomsday scenario, but consider, if someone had predicted exactly the weather we have encountered recently, ten years ago, we would have dismissed them as an alarmist.

Of course, while isolated weather events such as flooding, hurricanes, and tornadoes are terrible for the local inhabitants, they really don’t affect the majority of the world’s citizens. However, the overall result of global warming, which is more sinister and is not as noticeable, is the real danger confronting us. The population of the Earth is currently around 7.7 billion people and it is increasing yearly. As it stands right now, just trying to provide food for that many people is taxing the arable land available for food production. If the scientists are right, and as the earth’s temperature increases, the amount of land available for food crop production will dramatically be reduced as droughts eliminate huge swaths of land, and in other areas torrential rains will make food production difficult. The world will face a tremendous shortage of food supplies, and as coastal residents abandon the cities and lands that will be submerged by rising sea levels and record storms, the world will face frantic people by the millions who won’t be able to find food. Chaos will ensue and the world’s civilizations will be reduced to a constant economic war of the haves and haves nots.

Is this the world we want to give our grandchildren? Actually, is this the world we want to give our children? The clock is ticking and every minute wasted in denying global warming will contribute to the impending disaster. 

Of course what we need are more Greta Thunbergs’ who just received a major environmental prize. She turned down the $52,000 prize money with this statement: “The climate movement does not need any more prizes. What we need is for our rulers and politicians to listen to the research,” 

She should have been invited to the White House, but instead our President, who walked right by her and snubbed her at the United Nations, invited a “hero” dog to the White House. It was slightly wounded in the Special Forces attack that killed Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi the ISIS leader. I’m all for hero dogs, but to snub a 16 year-old hero girl, who is trying to do what she can to keep our world a better place in which to live, shows us we have our priorities in the wrong place.

God help us!