Shattered (updated)

When I was asked a few years ago what my favorite place to visit was, I was quick to answer: Dahab.

A backpacker’s paradise on the Red Sea. A cheaper, more rustic, less superficial version of Sharm el Sheik. Restaurants parked right next to the sea. Cushions to recline on. Bedouin children selling bracelets, demanding, “Buy me coke!" and willing to play backgammon—“if I win you buy, if you win I give.” Fried Mars bars, fresh fish, fruit cocktails, big breakfasts. A lovely breeze and always a pink or purple sunset. People worth people watching. Nights full of dancing. Some of the best snorkeling and scuba diving in the world.

And men. Lots of Egyptian men working along the promenade, each trying to lure you into his restaurant, which really isn’t any different from the last one you passed or the next one you’ll come to. It’s these men’s attitudes, their jokes, their come-ons that pull you in or send you scurrying. Most of the men are good time boys, used to a never-ending supply of foreign women who are also looking to have a little fun. Some of the men are charming, some swarmy, some funny, but all are flirts. The men are both a blessing and a plague in Dahab.

I’ve been there many times before, often on my own, so I got to know a lot of the workers. I was surprised, though, that they remembered me by name when I was there in August, more than two years since my last visit. It was a month after the bombings in Sharm El Sheik, just a short distance to the south, but Dahab was as it had always been. I spent the days at various restaurants, playing backgammon, practicing Arabic, napping, snorkeling, trekking to a Bedouin village. I danced the nights away at the boat-shaped bar Tota with the same guys I’d know before, as if years hadn’t passed by since my last visit.

This was the first time I remember meeting Hamada. I didn’t get to know him well, but his name brings to mind a memory. He was short and thin, with a moustache and fox-like features. He was like the younger brother of the group I already knew—a little pesky, a little troublesome. He was on the peripheral, trying to get in. On the dance floor, I remember his persistence, always worrying me. It’s not clear to me now if I was really annoyed or if that was all just part of the game.

Hamada was killed on Monday when three bombs exploded in Dahab.

The first time terrorism has touched me personally.


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28 April 2006

I just received an email from Adam, a Sudanese friend I know from Dahab. Luckily, he's been resettled to Baltimore and is safe, but he relayed more bad news. Two of the workers at Moon Valley, a place where I spent many afternoons the last time I visited, were killed. He tells me that I knew Mouafi and Hasham. Mouafi is a name I remember (and not as common a name as Ahmed or Mohamed). I can't put a face to it, as much as I strain to, but I remember getting along well with the guys there. Jane reminded me that we had some ongoing joke about names; I think Mouafi had given us each an Egyptian name, though that, too, I can't recall.

When I talked to Hassan and Mohamed on the telephone a few days ago, Mohamed surprised me with what he said. "Shit happens, but ilhumdolilah we're okay." The first part seemed too cavalier, too flippant. But maybe it expresses a helplessness, a surrender to forces he can't control. He said they hoped to see me in Dahab again soon.

The bombings won't scare me away. The next time I go to Egypt, I'll go to Dahab, as I always used to. But as I walk up and down that promenade, it won't be with the same carefree spirit. I will be walking to see the faces, to know the names, to remember.

Prepare to be amazed!

Toggle on over to have your mind read HERE.

No Need for an Alarm Clock

I'm always waking up to sounds outside my window.

A couple of weeks ago, a car full of guys staring parking outside the internet cafe, opening their windows and doors and cranking their music to full blast. Luckily, I liked the music. Unfortunately, they chose to do it at 2am.

These guys just leaned on the car hood, thinking they were hot stuff.

One day, they arrived before 6 AM to play their music and flex their muscles.

Some mornings funerals pass by, which involve chanting. Sometimes packs of runners, who shout cadences.

Roosters don't really know what time they're supposed to be crowing.

This morning a group of about 15 wearing all white were marching down the deserted, dark streets. One guy had a megaphone, 'singing' a non-English song as someone else hit a cow bell. They shouldn't allow people with bad voices to have megaphones---and certainly not at 5 am! They stopped their parade at the intersection just outside my window and formed a cicle, continuing to pray and sing (for Holy Thursday, I assume).

I guess there's no such thing as a sound ordiance in Ghana!

Twist Turned Upside Down

My mind has been spinning with logisitcs for the last week.

I was planning to go to Benin for Easter. Then at the end of April, overland through Burkina Faso and Mali (including Timbuktu) with friends for holiday.

But I found out yesterday that I'm going to Senegal for work next Tuesday for a week... I'm not sure if I should be happy (to be going to Senegal) or sad (the other trips are off)! And it also leaves me up in the air about what to do for the 4 day Easter weekend...

I've also been planning a trip back to the US for mid-May for about a month. I want to make sure I see my brother and sister, who are both in California but have conflicting schedules to try to accomodate.

My brain is going to explode!

Transit

We shared the IOM chartered plane out of Kigoma, Tanzania with about 25 refugees who were being resettled to Canada. They were Congolese, Burundian, Rwandan and none had ever been on a plane. I'd never been on a plane like this before, either. It was a 'face-me' plane, with two long benches along the edges, luggage at our feet, pilot on the other side of a curtain. These old Russian planes were the same kind that the Sudanese government used to drop bombs on the South.

The refugees were in their Sunday best. The man next to me buckled his seatbelt across his chest, like in a car. I handed out chewing gum I'd bought with my last Tanzanian shillings, gesturing that it would be good for the ears during the pressure change. Whenever there was turbulence, we laughed so that the refugees wouldn't be scared. Only one beautiful old woman, with tribal scarification marks down the center of her face, got sick. A coworker shared her Bopper game (a series of buttons light up and you have to repeat the pattern) with the men next to her, including one in a 2Pac t-shirt. They were happily distracted.

These refugees had stayed at the transit center where we worked, along with the refugees we had come to interview. They were given beds raised on wooden crates in a huge room without partitions. There must have been over 400 people in that warehouse. Six truckloads of Congolese also passed through on their way to being voluntarily repatriated. Refugees in three very different phases of refugeedom all under one roof.

Photos HERE (same link as to safari pictures).

Morning Ritual

I had myself a long distance relationship while I was in Tanzania.

Each day a bus would take us to work, following the same route. These were some of the worst roads I've seen. It took us about 30 minutes to go what was probably less than 5 miles because of the deep dirt ruts. The people we drove by all wore flip flops. The women had an extra piece of bright patterned cloth, called a kanga, tied around their waists.

Near to our worksite was a petrol storage place with giant round tanks. Each morning a group of men gathered at that corner.

That's where I met my boyfriend.

He waved and I think I just smiled that first day from my bus window, maybe I did a farmer's nod in acknowledgement. I make it a point to return waves, especially to children, though I rarely initiate them. This man--or perhaps it was my coworkers--made me shy, however.

My man always waved, day after day; some of his friends did as well, but not with the same level of dedication or enthusiasm.

One morning I ended up on the wrong side of the bus. Until this point, I felt our connection was private, personal. Those waves were mine. But now that I wasn't positioned correctly, I had to tell my coworker who was in my seat, to prepare her. We could see my man stand up as he saw our bus approach, to ready himself for the morning ritual, which was also increasingly accompanied by jumping. You could see he was looking directly at the seat I always sat in, that his efforts were meant for me. I stood from where I'd been forced to sit that day and waved largely so he wouldn't miss it. That was the first time I really made an effort and that's when our secret was out. My coworkers laughed, perhaps aware of this man's dramatics for the first time. They followed our love affair closely after that.

I managed to keep my seat from that day forward and faithfully returned his greetings. When I boarded that bus, I wasn't going to work; I was going toward that wave. It brightened my day. I was reminded of the Bob, the old crossing guard near our high school--my sister and I knew it was going to be a good day if he waved to us. On the other end of my Tanzanian workday was a cute older man at our hotel gate. He wore an oversized guard's hat and uniform and unnecessarily pointed our bus in the direction of the hotel (there was only one way to go). He was the Tanzanian Barney Fife.

As our departure from Tanzania drew closer, I thought about the sadness my man would have when I suddenly just stopped coming. I knew I needed to mark the occassion of my last day and share my appreciation with him.

I picked two red flowers from a bush at the hotel, not sure I'd have the guts to do what I wanted to in front of my coworkers. Encouraged by my two colleguages from Ghana, I decided I had nothing to lose. And every romance needs an appropriate ending. As he waved that last time, I threw the flowers to him from the bus window and shouted good bye.

The only words we ever exchanged.