Today I begin my research on complementary medicine in Egypt. I did sign a paper saying I would not do any private research while studying under American Councils for International Education's umbrella so I will rephrase and call this exploration a highly contextualized language learning environment. My context is healing arts, and I am collecting vocabulary on this specific topic because international health care is of vital importance.
Now, the above image is of a guy collecting something green out under my window. Yes, this barren concrete mess below that is as strewn with litter as a Baltimore gutter, is what I see when I hang my laundry. See below a picture of my building. This fellow came with a friend and gathered from a vine-like plant for twenty minutes. He was selective and careful as though he was choosing only the best leaves.
The administrators at the Bait-al-Talibat(بيت الطالبات)or 'girl's dorms' essentially, are on one hand hyper concerned with health and healthy things. The natural use of lines to dry clothing is highly appropriate to the available sunny resources. There are no cloudy days. I was so suprised to see a cloud when zooming in on google earth to an area south of Lake Mareotis, that I thought I was seeing a fire. There is less wasted energy with fewer gas and electric appliances in use although I am pretty sure that is not anything different than the way of life as always in Egypt.
Also, the night guards of the dorm I am staying in wake me up at all hours to take my temperature to see if I have H1N1 flu virus. A few people have been diagnosed in the city, who are unrelated to the American group studying at the TAFL center in Alexandria University's College of Literature. Minor stomach irritation has been the only reported illness among us. I heard that they will be ceasing the temperature taking on Thursday.
But the food here blanches nutrients from its landscape like foreigners after the revolution of 1952. The food we are served seems to be based on a pyramid of bread, rice, and pasta with a cream cheese peak. Kosherie, a meal mixing pasta rice, and vermicelli with some onion and oil is a well known Egyptian dish. We joke around about it, but we really are offered bread and jam for two out of every three meals. I have been told that I will be getting some fish twice a week but I will have to see it to believe it. One day we went out to Balba, a pretty high class restaurant and I got to pick out my shrimp. An hour later I got to eat it. It was grilled and seasoned with cumin and very delicious. Valerie Montes ate a cooked pidgeon.
I am very curious to learn more in depth about the plant down below my window and why it was being harvested into a yellow plastic bag.
Though I have only been in country for a little over a week, broad strokes have been made. I have boldly walked through nervous fear into the night to see the sea despite overly cautious warnings. I figured the elements of city include darkness, light, traffic, strangers, exchanges, and my own mind alert.
I took myself to see the world just beyond the narrow limits of my mind. The water smells salty and remind me of sitting on the rocks on the Naval Academy grounds where I used to go and sit and look out over Annapolis harbor, and crossing through the tunnel under the highway that girts the edge of Alexandria against the Mediterranean, there is the same green glow of subterranean light that you find in any subway system and the unfortunate someone who tends to be slumped in the corner. Sand crunch under heat stretched leather and people hurry.
Should I be afraid of pidgeons, plants that grow from cracks in concrete, prayers that bellow at regular times, or nurses coming to see if I am a host to epidemic disease? Beyond the hissing, The sweet ladies downstairs include Rasha, a woman who studied agricultural engineering, born in the chinese year of the dragon, but who spends her days on the constant beat of feeding students until she gets back into school, how, I don't know. I imagine it is difficult to pick back up that engineering degree. Perhaps I will ask her about the plants behind the building.
If you ask the women in Saudia Arabia if the would like to drive,
most of them would say I don't want to, why?
In Egypt a woman can be a captain on a plane, a doctor, the president of the University, If you(feminine singular) want to do something, do it."
