Next morning up at the crack of dawn (well, before that to be honest) to catch the bus convoy to Abou Simbel, an amazing temple south of Aswan. Egyptian law says you must travel in a convoy for security reasons, and the convoy leaves early to ensure you’re not out at Abou Simbel in the unbearable midday heat. We slept most of the bus ride to be honest, and woke up when we’d arrived. There are actually two temples there, one for the King Ramses and one next door for his wife, Nefertary. Sam suggested we check out the queen’s temple first, and he was right. Nefertary’s temple was beautiful, but next to the awesome colossus that is Ramses’s temple it kind of pales in comparison. The façade features four enormous statues of Ramses, the second of which is partially destroyed. The statues show the progress of his life – in the first he is young and looks happy, in the second (before it was destroyed) he was a little older, a little wiser, prosperous and even happier, but in the last two he is getting older and begins to look sad. The most impressive part of the temple is when you walk in – either side of the walkway is flanked by a colonnade of gigantic statues of Ramses, probably about six times the hight of a tall person. Lots of carvings adorning the walls of course, apart from the usual ones of the king smiting his enemies there were a couple of nice ones of Ramses hunting and Isis, Neftis, and Amoun-Ra. We spent some time looking and not taking photos (as usual, not allowed), then back onto the bus to make the convoy back to Aswan.
The afternoon we had free to roam Aswan. Shelly was at a shop recommended by Sam for papyrus buying up big, meanwhile I headed to the markets behind the hotel to have a look around. I’m not really big on buying souvenirs – generally I find their only purpose is to gather dust. I did buy some postcards though, and was looking out for a CD stall, as I’d really enjoyed all the Arabic/oriental style music I’d been hearing on the radio, and that the DJ had played the night before. Sam had warned us to cover down to our elbows and knees while wandering the market in order to avoid the inevitable catcalls of the stallholders, but to be honest I had planned for summer weather and my pack was full of strappy singlets and little t-shirts. I didn’t mind the hassle that much, you learn pretty quickly not to turn around or even blink when someone calls out to you, but it does get wearing after a couple of hours. Finally I did find a music stall blaring just the kind of music I was looking for, but unfortunately only on cassette. He did manage to sell me another “dance mix” CD, which on returning home I found to be more electronic-style-dance than boogie-style-dance. A little disappointing, but such are the problems of buying from a salesman with sketchy English, even if he means well. Then the long walk home past all the market stalls again “Welcome back beautiful lady!” “Hello! Come over, I’m free tonight” (as if, jerk!).
After a bit of a clean up it was time for our evening adventure – a visit to a Nubian village. The Nubians and the Egyptians have a slightly strained relationship. Nubians are a mix of African and Egyptian origins and traditionally lived close to the Nile in Aswan and places around there. They were, along with the Asians, the traditional enemies of Egypt because they were always revolting and trying to secede from Egypt. Now the Nubians are up in arms over land rights – the aforementioned engineering feat that is Lake Nasser now covers vast tracts of land previously occupied by Nubians. The Egyptian government kindly offered to rehouse them – in the middle of the desert. For a community used to living close to water and a large number of which are fishermen by trade, they are justifiably furious. Still, the ones we met seemed very happy and jolly (a show for the tourists I assume) and politics were not really on the agenda anyway. We visited the school where the children are taught both Nubian and Arabic. Nubian is a strictly oral language with no written form and is completely unlike Arabic in any way – Sam and Rami were just as much in the dark as us about it. The teacher tried to drum some numbers into us – unfortunately I can only remember wahid (one) etneen (two) and telete (three). That’s in Arabic – I don’t remember any of the Nubian ones except that one of them sounds like whiskey! Then we went to visit a Nubian house where we drank hibiscus tea, checked out some baby alligators (they were so cute!) and got henna tattoos. I had been thinking of getting one earlier, but changed my mind. I just felt kind of strange, invading someone’s house, drinking their tea, having them tattoo me, and without any chance of getting to know them, or even having a real conversation or being able to say thank you in a sincere and convincing fashion. They open their house to tourists willingly and meet them every day, but I still felt uncomfortable invading their privacy without being personally invited. The best part of the visit happened when we were just leaving – I struck up a conversation in Spanish with the girls of the house – one 12, one 10, one 8. The children are amazing, since they spend all their days with tourists they have picked up loads of languages, so as well as Arabic and Nubian they speak quite passable English, Spanish, Italian, French, and probably German, Chinese and god knows what else. Children’s brains have that sort of “sponge” effect for languages, where they kind of absorb them without apparent effort. Their Spanish, considering they’d had no formal training, was impressive. The girls showed me their houses, told me about their families, siblings, what they like to do. One of the girls has a little crush on Sam – so cute! He’s my man, she informed me. We ran together back to the felucca and they kissed me goodbye (such sweet girls – but again, they are used to dealing with tourists and you have to wonder how much of that sweetness is genuine).
From the village to the restaurant where we enjoyed a singing, dancing Nubian show where we got to participate and dance like the Nubians. I had a great time – the Nubians have a fabulous sense of rhythm like the Africans or the Brasilians, and are amazing drummers. After we’d worked up an appetite dancing, we ate dinner sat on cushions on the floor, very bohemian and lovely. Actually the decoration of the place was beautiful, lots of bright colours, rustic, wooden carvings, draped tapestries and such. Dinner was delicious, and I drank my first Stella, the Egyptian beer and I must say it’s not a bad drop. After dinner back to the hotel where we crashed into bed.
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