I woke up kind of early the next day, and since Russell was on his way to climb the nearest sand dune, I volunteered to accompany him while everyone else lay snug inside their sleeping bags. The climb to the top wasn’t long, but walking on sand is always a challenge for me. Huffing and puffing we made it to the top and admired the view of the sand, the Nile, the feluccas, and the power lines (damn technology always ruining the vistas). After the descent it still wasn’t time for breakfast and I fancied a dip in the Nile. Sam confirmed it was ok to swim in there so on with my bikini and I plunged into the icy water. It was so cold I could almost feel my heart stop when I dived in. There were reeds all around that part of the river which made it difficult to move, but I had a little splash about and then got out for breakfast, happy that I had swum in the Nile and also that I’d been the first to attempt it. I must be more careful about the movement of my swimmers though – at one point I was slightly more exposed than is considered modest in most modern cultures which the girls on Felucca C thankfully pointed out to me. How embarrassing! I hope they were the only ones that saw it.
More sailing after breakfast and we passed a tranquil morning reading, listening to Ben’s iPod, getting totally sunburnt (despite the factor 50+) and generally doing not much. We stopped for lunch on a semi-deserted island and the boys set up a game of beach cricket. It was bound to and did end in tears when one of the boys achieved a particularly spectacular run out and the stumps (fashioned from empty beer bottles) smashed and shrapnel went flying. One piece flew directly into Dave’s finger which was immediately looked after and bandaged by one of the girls on board who happened to be a nurse. Beach sports abandoned for the afternoon I had another swim in the river before we headed back to the boat for the afternoon’s sailing. Before we got away though, Sam handed us a piece of paper outlining our challenges for that evening’s entertainment. The questions were thus:
1. What is the capital of Ethiopia?
2. Who is the president of Egypt?
3. What are the names of your crew?
4. Produce coins from four different countries
5. Come up with a song for Budget Expeditions (I have a feeling this one was Rami’s idea)
6. Come up with a group dance
7. Dress one of the girls up as a boy, and one of the boys up as a girl
We were to present the first four to Sam before sunset, and the last three after dinner. The rest of the felucca ride was given over to discussion and planning. I had thought the capital of Ethiopia was Mogadishu – of course my geography is at best appalling and at worst abysmal but thankfully Ben’s isn’t. He pointed out Mogadishu is the capital of Somalia and that the capital of Ethiopia is Addis Ababa. I knew the president of Egypt was Mubarak (easy to remember since I used to work with a guy by that name) but Rami informed us that wouldn’t be enough for Sam, we’d have to give his first name too. That stumped us for a while but in the end after some poking Rami told us what it was – Muhamad. I should have guessed that – every second guy in Egypt has that name. I had made a point of remembering the crew names when Sam first called them out to us (I hate saying “hey there” or having to ask names a million times) so that one was easy. The coins were a piece of cake as we had most of the nationalities on the tour – we ended up with Australian, Euro, Canadian, and a Bahrainian dollar contributed by Mike (worth about three Aussie dollars).
The last three parts were more of a challenge, particularly the last one. I knew it would be nearly impossible to dress the guys up and Rami absolutely refused to wear a bikini. But I was surprised by the level of interest with which the challenges were embraced on the boat, everyone really got into the spirit of the occasion and we had a great time coming up with the song. Ben turned out to have a great knack for writing lyrics, and this is what we came up with in the end (to the tune of "Summer Holiday"):
We’re all going on an Egyptian holiday
Shisha, mummies and feluccas too
We’re all going on an Expedition
Budget Expedition with you
We’re all going on an Egyptian holiday
Singing on the Nile with the Nubian crew
We’re all going on an Expedition
Budget Expedition with you
Simple and easy to sing along to. We were sorting out the music for the dance when we got distracted by the dancy music on Katrina’s iPod – Jennifer Lopez and Ricky Martin (I love “The Cup of Life”). I leapt up in tremendous excitement (this received a slightly bemused look from Rami) and we turned felucca B into an all-dancefloor nightclub until it was announced we were mooring for the night – disaster! How could we come up with a dance and practise without espionage from neighbouring feluccas? We handed in our questions and coins to Sam who was suspicious that Rami had helped us. He had in fact, but not for the questions that Sam was suspicious about. We said, “Well, Rami is part of our felucca, right? So he can help us answer the questions?” “No, no” replied Sam. “He’s not supposed to help”. “That’s a pity,” I said, feigning disappointment. “We were kind of hoping to get him to wear a bikini to dinner tonight”. At which point Sam roared with laughter and insisted “Okay, okay! Rami is part of the group! Rami is part of the group!”.
We went ashore to answer the call of the wild and then the girls of felucca B had a quick confab. We resigned ourselves to the facts that a) there was no way any of the boys were going to volunteer to dress up as a girl, and b) the dream of seeing Rami in one of our bikinis was going to have to stay just that – a dream. The only solution was for us to pick one of the boys to do it, and present it to him as a fait accompli. No arguments. In the end we chose Ben, as his slim figure would fit best into Marcie’s dress. Then we rounded up the boys and dragged them off into the desert for dance practise. We came up with a pretty cool dance (well, pretty cool for totally uncoordinated people to invent in half an hour) and we had it down great. We informed Ben of his fate, and to his credit took it all in his stride with minimal fuss. Very impressive, especially for an Australian male, usually so super-macho. Done. We were ready for showtime, so until then we chatted idly. I went to sit by the shisha fire with the boys – not to smoke, but because I like watching flames (there’s a little pyro in there somewhere). I got chatting to Rob, one of the Perth boys, and we talked until we realised it was pitch black and everyone else had abandoned us and was eating dinner on the feluccas. Rob was a felucca A boy, so we bid a fond farewell and went to find our food. We had another lovely candlelit dinner, and Marcela told me my fortune (she’s very good at it – or at least very convincing). Russell told us the story of the Egyptians vs. the Hixos (very entertaingly but not very accurately – but never mind, Sam to the rescue later to fix all his historical errors) and then it was time for the games and competitions.
I went off to find the player and cassette tape that had been seized earlier after our practise session, which Ziggy assured me was somewhere on felucca A. I asked him for the same tape we had been using earlier – he hadn’t a clue which one it was, they all looked the same. This despite the fact we asked him specifically earlier to please remember which one it was – but it was kind of them to even lend it to us in the first place. He led me down into the dark under-cabin of the ship with only a small candle for light, and we tried a few different cassettes before we gave up and I just picked a random one. When I made it back to the fire it was time for the felucca B song; I must say we totally rocked the house. I might be biased but our song was the best, loudest and sung with the most spirit. Then the dance – again we were first, who knows why. The different music messed us around a bit, but we got through it. Unfortunately thanks to the film crew that probably totally crap dance is now recorded for posterity on high definition film. Felucca C totally cheated by doing the time warp (stolen dance moves) and changing the words thus incorporating the song and dance into one, which Sam had told us earlier was not allowed. I don’t think felucca A even had a dance, so again I felt we were the clear winners. Felucca C caught up with us after that though – they won the bellydancing competition by a mile, did well in the mummy-wrapping contest and made it to the last stages of “pass the bottle”. I never found out who won the cross-dressing part of the evening – I really hope Ben’s efforts weren’t in vain. In the end feluccas B and C tied for honours in the evening’s fun and games. We won equal shares of a bottle of red, so not bad going if we got a glass of wine out of it.
After the competitions the Nubians treated us to some more fireside singing and dancing. I had a little try of the drums; one of the crew tried to show me how to do it, but I couldn’t get the same sound they were getting. They hit the drum with the pads of their fingers and the drum says “Duf!” – short, sharp and bass. I tried the same and it emitted a shrill, long “Draaaaaang!” sound – not very rhythmical. But they’ve been playing these things as long as they’ve been walking, so I can hardly expect to be an expert in five minutes. I sat with them for as long as they continued to sing; slowly people began to drift back to the boats. I stayed right until the very end, as I was having a quiet conversation with Sam which I was very reluctant to leave. Eventually it got late and we went back to our respective feluccas for some shut-eye.
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