Below is the body of an email that I received from Warren a few minutes ago...
I had another amazing day and now I am sitting in my room
with the window open listening to the 8 PM call to prayer. It is a man
singing-I imagine some kind of prayer - he has a fine voice and there is no
mistaking this for Kansas. We left Cairo this morning at 6:30 and headed
north towards the city of Alexandria - famous from Greek and Roman times.
We turned into the countryside sometime before the city and Mediterranean
Sea. We found the beekeeper and he directed us down this incredibly
beatup street. We stopped by a 3 story concrete house and were invited
in. We sat in this narrow concrete balcony and got to know each
other. A young man 32 with 2 kids, Bismulliah (age 4) and Mohamed (age 1)
His wife (failed to write her name), his parents, and younger brother (19).
All lived somewhere in the house. The father is my age - lots more white
hair. Then they asked me if I wanted a breakfast. It was flatbread,
homemade olives a kind of lunchmeat, 2 kinds cheese, Egyptian beans
(fool) The price of being a good ambassador may be playing digestive
roulette. When we returned, we were served in tall gilt tipped wine type
glasses a strawberry drink. I could not refuse so prayed to the cipro god
and enjoyed - when I tried to put back the glass with an inch or so of drink
still in it that if a drink is returned half drunk, the host's daughter will
not get married. We went to the apiary (in a citrus grove) with an
entourage: a PhD researcher in bees from the local university at
Damanhour where we are sleeping tonight, a pretty young woman of 27 who is
finishing her masters in plant and fruit production, plans to continue to her
Doctorate and keeps 25 hives of bees. She was nicely dressed including
her head covering, but did not mind being photographed and shook my hand and
sat and talked with me, there was another beekeeper,the father, younger
brother, the 4 year old daughter Bismullah, and a non-beekeeping video
cameraman. We went through a number of hives. They were much
stronger than in south Egypt, but still in only one box and only 4-5 frames of
brood.
We then went back to the house for more talk, I showed the
powerpoint, the brothers downloaded all my 800 photos on the chip including the
dozens we shot today. Lunch was overwhelming, Pita style bread, homemade
olives, a chicken broth soup with small pastas, delicious beef koftas, a plate
of fried chicken, a salad of tomatoes and cucumbers, much rice fixed with small
pasta threads, and the father and brother kept piling food on my plate - I
tried valiently, but had to give up. As our driver was agitating to go, I
took several kitchen photos - the wife was fixing more strawberries for another
smoothie drink, this time with added sliced bananas, so what could I do?
No comments:
Post a Comment