Creatures in the street

And of course the creatures, i love urban goats:

The street of my cyber with my building in the background, the new animal in the hood:


And some of the old skool and new skool in the the hood (who is who? or both are both?):


My favourite cat in tugareia


Curiosity of the day: i might become a Spanish teacher

Details in the streets of Alex

I could do a billion post like this one...i cant get enough! So let´s cut the skin, none of my long never ending posts, none of my non sense, no tease just visual pleasure...you will finish soon with this one, here a very classical looking column of a building under reparation:

When old is a synonym of beauty:

Some of the building materials in careful order waiting to be used:

Tomatoes displayed in open air:

The butane gas cylinders on the truck:

The Ficus, as in Isbilliah, are very present:

The tram crossing the centre:

The Murphy´s week with a magical end to it

Hello people! It is a miracle i am back in Africa...this time i finished all my hanging businesses in the UK, namely that thesis, and i´m fully concentrated in my egyptian adventure. This was a cursed break, it was not Murphy´s law, it was Murphy´s constitution!!! the things that could go wrong went wrong, and the ones that couldn't go wrong went wrong too...that is what happens when u have butter in both sides of the toast. Let me briefly remember: my camera (catastrophe!!), the charger of my computer and (another) phone charger all broke in 2 days, i lost the adapter from English plug to Egyptian, the printer of my office broke when printing the final version of my thesis, the battery of my phone lasts as long as a sweet in the door of a school...and this is just the material things, the most precious thing that i lost cannot be explained with words...away from sentimentalisms, i went to the airport with 4 hours in advance (yes, i know is difficult to believe coming from me...) following my mother´s eternal advice...and it actually paid back!!! I was suposed to take a bus from Bath, and (even though i explicitly asked when buying my ticket) the bus was full. Then i found a faster connection through Bristle, and the bus for there was late...great! i finally managed to arrive in Bristle bus station, still plenty of time. I was going to take my bus at 2 p.m. to arrive comfortably 2 hours before my flight. So i went out of the station and indulged myself with some picture taking:

So i was there waiting at 2pm, and minutes passed and passed, and i begun to get nervous. Where is the bus??? we got informed it broke in the way from London...ooooh noooo! They didn't know when the replacement bus will come, and there was no other possible connection (except maybe hijacking a bus with my pencil...but i didnt think that would increase my chances to leave the country :P). I had a nervous breakdown after 35 minutes waiting, after the ultra hard week i had, sleeping very very little, working very very hard and all my life and possessions breaking down...i was going to miss my plane. My future was breaking in front of my eyes...The people in the station were extremely rude and inattentive, they didnt find out the telephone of egyptian air for me, of course they wont let me use their phone...and the telephone booth they (not that) kindly pointed me did not accept calls to the directory. I was really freaking out then...after 55 minutes of tense and desperate waiting there with no possibility to warn the plane, the bus finally arrived. I was going to arrive one hour before the plane...i didn't know if i could make it...and then met an angel :) a lovely angel: Madhuad. This Indian woman is a medicine doctor (i think she said pathologist) working in the UK, very well traveled, unrealistically kind and tremendously funny. I think she got fond of me cos i reminded her to her own son, as well as because she felt compassion when she saw my emotional breakdown in the station. She called her daughter, who called the airport and the flight company; then she let me use her phone to call them in person :) She was telling me that i have to keep the balance (in reference to my breakdown in the station) and then i begin to tell her all the problems of my last week, and that it was just the last drop in the bottle...to what she answered: "if you have lost so much, is that life is getting ready to provide you with a lot of new things" :) well, i don't know what was the spell, but i went into that bus with my head filled with worries, and i went out of it with a big smile in my face and my soul as light as i ever remember it...i love that hindi white magic :) And indeed the magic worked! i got to the check in point literally in the last minute (after breaking the world record of 435 meters airport obstacle)...i was going to make it to Africa, and i actually did it :) This time i have come back to stay, that is my main aim...to generate enough income for surviving here indefinitely...i dont know how naive i am, but im sure that life will teach that lesson to me...again

PS: the new egyptian (bad joke) constitution has been approved the day i arrived...a sad day for this country. At least now is legal to breach human rights...

Egypto Interruptus...

Technical reasons took me to England for 6 days...After a taxi (miami-station), bus Alex-Cairo airport, plane Cairo-London (...after 14 hours traveling) i finally was in the bus destination Bath (or Baaaaaath in local English). After a little nap i spend the last hour of my trip admiring the landscape through the window. I found a patchy afternoon and everything in the west country (arrrgggghhh) looked as green, clean and nice as ever. Where the spirit of the country side and the silent left overs of industrialization got frozen in the built environment:

I love the architecture of all the little towns in the way, south west vernacular in action:


And another English sunset for my collection:

I forgot how cold England could be...

Over one thousand page loads...thank you all

Well, there is no much of a story for this post, there has been over a thousand hits in a month since i put the counter. So beyond my expectations as it is my first experience publishing what i write, is my first blog, is the first time i publish my photos...i am really flattered, so i want to thank all of you reading from Masr, UK, Spain, China, US, Canada, France, UAE, Yemen, Trinidad, Bosnia, Switzerland, Portugal, Greece, South Africa, Croatia, Luxembourg, Mexico, Germany, Uruguay, Bahrain, Chile, Ukraine, Italy, Indonesia, Mauritius, Netherlands, Hungary, Brazil, Belgium, Saudi Arabia, Norway... I didnt know what this blog was to be, i have just been trying to open a little window through my eyes to the Egypt i am living in. I really hope that i am succeeding in making you feel a bit what is like to be here, that magic of traveling without moving that the books have given me so many times. I intend to give you a hint of the taste of the spaces and people of this country without the blurred filters of media, solely with the subjective texture of pure personal experience...thank you all for peaking through this little window.

The flea market

Today i visited the flea market in Alexandria. Really, i have not seen more junk piled up in the streets in my whole life...The system in here works like this: guys with carretas and donkeys walk around every neighborhood shouting like mad men, and everybody will give them the old stuff they dont want. Then they take everything to this old industrial area, expose them in massive piles and try to sell them. This point can be easily illustrated by this picture, the tram passing through the only corridor available:

As you can realise there is no apparent order...an old telephone close to an iron, a remote control of an unknown appliance close to a vase of a mixer, doors and windows, sewing machines, etc...the list is almost infinite. It is indeed very amusing to see all these objects, you cannot predict what is coming next :) From the chaos certain patterns emerge, as we scientists know; therefore sometimes the classification is something like "small metal pieces":

Other times (the less of them) is a bit more obvious like "bathroom stuff". Observe the demonstration of the vendor sitting on one of the toilets:

The classification is not always possible to make, even though some premeditated order can be hinted. This guy seems mainly interested in wheeled stuff and lamps...

But, as i was saying, the most of it is simply chaotic, shoes and electronics was one of my favourites:

And for not forgetting we are in Africa, the ever present colourful approach:

I have to say that there was many interesting and useful objects to be rescued from there. Old russian film projectors, shishas, furniture, tools, engines, suspensions, keyboards, typing machines, radios and many others... A paradise for any curious and patient mind. Particularly interesting was the offer from this guy, that claimed to have an engine that runs forever without the need of any fuel, quoting him "by thermal expansion" mmm really??? This guy was either a thermodynamics heretic or the Nicola Tesla of the Arab world :P

The day i was treated like a muslim terrorist

Masr, historically, has certain similarities with Al-Andalus. As a start is the only other exit of the Mediterranean (literally the Middle of the Earth) to the ocean which makes it a very strategical point to commerce. Since both are relatively flat lands with abundance of water they are very rich agriculturally. Due to such circumstances many different powerful civilizations have controlled those areas, Greeks, Romans, Phoenicians, Arabs, Ottomans, etc...For the particular case of the Roman Empire, Al-Andalus was the granary of the West and Egypt the granary of the East. Such civilizations not only benefited from our lands, but they left a tremendous technological inheritance that throughout the centuries mixed and evolved. As a result, in both places, we became a center of interest, not only for economical reasons, but for cultural reasons too. Due to that, we attracted intellectuals from different religions and places in the world that enriched furthermore our lands. In Al-Andalus, as well as in the particular example of Alexandria, we had periods when Muslims, Christians and Jewish lived in in relative peace. Reminders of such mixes can be found in both lands, from Seville (with the second biggest cathedral of Catholicism after St. Peter in Rome), where the "christian" temple is half Islamic (conserving the Minaret and the patio of ablutions of the old mosque) and half gothic...

...to Alexandria, where mosques and churches stand side by side:


I have been having very long conversations about religion and faith with some locals, and i have realised how long it has been since i went to church or even considered my own faith. I stopped making questions because i could find no complete answer, i could not find it in the Bible, Torah, Coran, Bhagavad Ghita, Tao Te Ching, Popol Vuh or any others i read. So a couple of days ago, i was coming back from my visit to the Carita's building outside Alex, when i found myself walking between that mosque and that (Coptic) church in the picture. I stopped and observed all the people going in to pray and i felt like going inside the church to explore that field that i abandoned so long ago. i know most of you are surprised with this...but surely not as much as i did (actually when i told this story to Bahz he asked me if i went in there for research :D). I walked to the church, and in the door two security guards stopped me: They asked me for my passport, meanwhile one inspected it, the other was saying in Arabic that i was Muslim pointing to the Mosque opposite (my 2 month long beard was not helping). The next idiotic question from the man looking at my passport was "where are you from?"...ehhh i thought it was obvious from my passport, but i answered. Then he took my right hand and checked my wrist trying to find the tattooed cross that most Coptic people have, and obviously couldn't find it. Then he asked me why in my passport doesn't state that i am Christian, i answered because almost every Spanish is Christian (at least on paper) as freedom of religion was abolished five centuries ago. Both were quite aggressive, and that was not putting me in a very good mood. Then the guy turned his attention to my bag, i opened it and begin taking things out: my notebooks, my books, pens, my sweater, my calculator...basically the usual stuff. He searched every pocket in my bag until he found something and gave me an accusative look and with a menacing voice he inquired: "what is this??" You could have guessed it was a gun from his face, but it was my USB pen. I thought that was the end of it, and that they would let me pass to the church. I was wrong again, the guy was taking me to the security office to do a body search!!! At that point i refused to go further with that non sense, i sent him to fry asparragous (lo mande a freir esparragos) in my best Spanish, i turned around and left the building. I felt what many Muslims feel everyday in many places around the world, pure religious discrimination...I do not think that i am welcomed to the house of God anymore, it was a sign: i will stay away from it...

Curiosity of the day: Egyptians just have one sound for "p" and "b", and many of them interchange it very happily. This difficults communication even more, let me give you some examples: pan and ban sound the same, palette-ballet, bale-pale, bay-pay and the always funny brick and pitch :P

The architectural rant

Not so long ago Alexandria was a city of low rise buildings, with front gardens where children used to play safely under the view of their families. Around 30 years ago such model begun to crumble to leave space for a so called "progress"; the owners of the houses were (and still are) seduced by the idea of selling out making massive profits...(dinero es el unico dios verdadero?). Nowadays there are few of the original buildings left, like tiny creatures surrounded by a world where they will not be able to survive. They were condemned to certain extinction long time ago... this one in my street reads the proud statement: "this building is not for sale, for more information call lawyer fulan"...i wonder for how long.

Note that the colour of the building in the photograph has been enhanced because i felt like it :P I have already showed some high buildings rising from relatively small bases thanks to the black magic of concrete, every square centimeter meter is treated like a potential 13 floors high building. This is the block where our flat is, note that the big space in the back of it is a new construction site.

Due to this particular way of understanding (??!) urban planning and development, the density of population in Alexandria is tremendously high. Such high density posses a further problem in a developing country like Masr, as the deficient public transport system is unable to cope with all these people, collapsing the streets with more cars, with the consequent degradation of the air quality. Furthermore, as buildings are separated of each other by a couple of meters, ventilation and natural lighting are poor. If that was not enough, the small gaps between buildings are not the paradigm of cleanliness, as people simply chuck stuff in there. An illustrating example is the beauty of the "view" from our living room:

Other consequences on the quality of life is that the reception of radio signals and mobile phones inside those buildings is very limited. So we are forced to hang outside the window for having a proper conversation...And by the way, green areas are not to be found anywhere, except inside private residences of relatively wealthy people. I wonder what is the responsibility of governments and designers (together with clients). Dont they realise that besides the great wonderful money they are making, they are leaving a legacy of houses and neighborhoods where it is not very desirable to live in? Surely that does not matter as none of them live in a place like miami, they can live in some nicer place...unlike most of urban population in the world.

The architectural and egyptian paperwork week

The first architect in the week was M.Rifaie on Monday, who drove me to the Arab Academy of Sciences (AAS) and facilitated me access to the architecture department library (RIBA accredited degree). In there (limited but high quality collection) i studied books on Hassan Fathy keeping up with my research on Egyptian vernacular and in the hope of meeting some people that could lead me to architects that are maintaining their traditional methods. My hopes proved correct! I met various architects that facilitated me some names and places where to keep digging. Ahmed is working in a practice in Cairo and when he found out about my research asked me very kindly if he could accompany me in my walks in his city. He has studied the work of the great Fathy but, as sevillians rarely go up to the Giralda, he has not personally visited them; so i will have some expert company. He was especially helpful in giving me some background information about the history of the capital and the remainings of buildings of the past. His help was not only restricted to that, he forwarded me information about the incredible lecture that i assisted last night in Biblioteka Alexandrina (i will detail later). The second contact was the architect Mr.Yunus who led me to the work of PhD A.B.Elseragy (thesis title: Architectural and solar potential of curved and flat roofs in hot arid regions) by the University of Nottingham and currently working in the AAS; fortunately they had a copy of his thesis in the library and i had the chance to have a look to it (ill have to return to this one). Mr.Yunus is helping me too to arrange a meeting with PhD. G.Moshad, as she researched egyptian vernacular in her doctorate. I really thank Mr.Yunus for his help; research would be an impossible task without the help of the local experts. Mr. Rifaie, a very busy and talented young man, not only made all of this possible by investing his precious time in me, but we found a very interesting project where we might collaborate in the future .

On Tuesday i received more help, this time from Aya, an architect from Alexandria University. She offered some of her holiday time to help me to gain access to the library of her University to assist me in my research. First we went to the University with my certificates and identification, we sat in the security office for half an hour before the security man could work out what was the procedure. The procedure was that I needed an approved paper from a different office...that is exactly the kind of thing i was trying to avoid. So we walked 15 minutes to the next stop, spoke with some people and found the woman that deals with this sort of cases for international people. Very kind woman indeed, what i do not understand is how a person in her specific position does not speaks English or French!!! but at least we seemed to be going somewhere, i needed a couple of photocopies of my passport, my spanish ID, my letter from Bath University and the corresponding translation to Arabic...and even prove of my application to Cambridge University, thank god that i was not asked for my birth certificate. I did not have all of these on me, and of course that was impossible to return with them on the same day (cos they close at 2pm), so we arranged to come back the following day. I did not think that Aya had to come with me next day, but the woman in the office insisted quite forcefully that she should. So Aya, again, had to spend more of her time in that office, apart of making me the favour of translating my letter from Bath University. We arranged to meet next day in Biblioteka Alexandrina to go together, but the lack of morning coffee mixed with my lack of sleep made me go in the morning to the office instead and i forgot totally about the real meeting place. If that was not enough and as most of you know already, many times my mobile is a purely decorative object i carry around with no battery with the sole purpose of occupying space in my bag. So basically i left her waiting for me for 45 minutes with my mobile off until i could work out a way to contact her (her number locked inside the idiotic item). I felt so embarrassed that, on top of all the time and help, i made her wait. In the mean time, i hanged around with all the security people in there, i got introduced to everyone of them, they brought me tea, offered me cigarettes and ask me about Real Madrid and Barcelona FC and told me about the local football teams (here you are Jimmo, the comment you were waiting for). So finally Aya arrived much less pissed off that what i was expecting and i lost the count of the times i said "sorry". So, back to the international woman that does not speak any other language but Arabic, we handed all the papers and everything seemed (and i mean it, just seemed) fine after some complimentary 30 minutes of discussion, apart of the fact that we found out that this permission document was valid just for 4 entrances to the library...ok then! But there was a little final requirement: i needed the signature on the document of the head of security to validate everything, they might think that a Christian terrorist might blow up their library...fair enough! I thought that was going to be a piece of cake as i knew already all the security people...but no!!! after another 30 minutes waiting i was informed that the man could not sign the frigging paper that day and that i should come back the following day for it!...agggghhh!! i was beginning to lose my patience, that place looked pretty much like the mad house of the 12 works of Asterix and Obelix..but ok...just one more day and i could go to the library, i just want to read!

After the early morning hassle, i went to meet Dani (Spanish psychologist) in his workplace, the Alex Med Centre (https://www.bibalex.org/English/researchers/Alexmed/alexmedcenter.htm). It is a very reputed research centre within Biblioteca Alexandrina. There are many architects working there, some of whom i got introduced to. I spent half of my time theoritising to work out with Mr.Karakiri the possible use of one anomalous tower in the archaeological site he is studying. My suggestion was a particular astronomical use, but we require the exact calculation of the orientation of the complex to know if i was right in my guess. The other half of the time, i spent it Dr.Aref, who helped me greatly to find out more names that i should dig in, and some potential problematics that i might find out when implementing my proposition. Very critical, very insightful, very kind...very useful. I met the subdirector of the centre, but i failed (just then) to meet one of the people i have been wanting to meet even before arriving, Prof. Mohamed Aued, the director of the centre and one of the most prominent egyptian architects of our times. But due to that, he is an incredibly busy man...i had to wait

So today i had come back to the mad building again, one of the security people led me to another and this one to another one. They did not seem very busy at all, in groups of sixes or sevens sitting in many offices smoking cigarettes and drinking litres of tea. In the fourth room i saw the first of them actually "working", he was typing in an old looking computer with his two index fingers at a rate of approximately one stroke per second, with breaks to smoke and sip his drink (no much stress, i see). So after asking and asking about my paper, they could just ask me where were my papers...oh no! they did not have a clue of what i was talking about. Finally one of them seemed to understand...or did he? he told me to sit, order one of the others to bring me more tea and he begun to call in the phone. Meanwhile, seven officers stood in the office and talking in arabic about me...i could catch doctor, isbany, isbilliah and things of the sort. After the third call of the guy, interrupted by a 5 minute call to his wife, he told me everything was ok...yeah? where is my paper then?. He answered me that there is no paper!!! that i just have to go to the library and ask for fulan and give him his name and mine and he will know what i am talking about...so conclusion: i went out of all of that hassle with a couple of arabic names that i scribbled in a post-it!!!...i really cant wait to go to the library and find out the rest of this story and wasting some more of my time drinking tea and watching more officers talk in the phone, i cant get enough of it. This is one of the few moments when i come to realise how much i miss England.

The architectural week culminated today in big style. I assisted the lecture, organized by Prof. Aued, and named "the language of architecture" by Charles Correa, (http://www.charlescorrea.net/) world famous Indian architect, planner, activist and theoretician, winner of the Agha Khan Award in 1998. He is one of few great architects originally from the developing world that has built most of his works in his country of origin, and still gained wide recognition from western countries from it. He studied in Michigan University and MIT and then came back to India, where he made tremendous effort to adapt the technical advances of the modernist architecture to vernacular typologies. That makes him tremendously relevant for my research, as he has managed to draw a successful bridge between the past and the future. He has been specially concerned with using modern building technologies for designing low cost shelter in developing countries respecting the cultural values of the place. His presentation was simply wonderful, he explained many of his works and how he developed his own language of architecture, some extracts from it:

-"developing a language of design respecting the local cultural values"
-"This power point thing is a menace" (when the presentation was giving him some technical problems)
-"understanding the past to understand the aspirations of the people in the present"
-"an architect should only build in places where he has been living in" (criticising architects that build in places that they have no previous cultural knowledge of)
-"Simply copying an existing building or typology is kitsch; the transformation of old cultural and architectural concepts for fulfilling the needs of the users is good practice"
-"Incrementality, Pluralism, Participation, Income generation, Equity, Open to sky space and maleability"
-"build a rich building that poor people can enjoy without being intimidated by it" (in reference to the Ghandi Museum designed by him)
-"The centrality of an empty space in hot arid climates is related to the ancient idea that enlightenment can just be achieved in open air"
-"achieving complexity through manipulation of simple structures"
-"the beauty of science is undervalued nowadays"

The humanity that this venerable man transpired, his words encouraging the young audience of architecture students to innovate, his humility and simplicity made me love the man even more than the architect. He has become in 3 hours in one of my heroes (thanks Ahmed for telling me about this lecture, i will be gratefull for the rest of my life). And that was not all, among others, i met Mr.Gharib a PhD student in the AAS that is researching in Life Cycle Assessment of buildings and another teacher in Alex University who is going to help me circumvent all the stupid paperwork. And finally, i managed to meet, with some bravery of my part, Prof. Aued!!! i asked to meet at some point with him and he kindly passed his arm over my shoulders and accepted with a smile in his face. I hope he does not forget me!

The greatest sunset i have seen in my life, yesterday form the ship building site in Alexandria. As my strict principles dictate, the colours are not photoshoped...but i could have done it to clean to beach :P

Curiosity of the day: Hassan Fathy found a perfect moment for the implementation of his ideas about recovering vernacular architecture when Egypt suffered shortage of modern building materials due to the sanctions imposed after the declaration of independence of Egypt from England in 1956.

"See you soon" to the early man

This is a sad moment, one of the members of the red sofa crew (el-ahmar canabe crew) has left us. He like many other educated, professional and talented Egyptians is going to emigrate to Saudi or Emirates...the estimation i heard is that there are 45.000 Egyptian scientists working abroad, we could really do with all those here! The same great problem that can be found in many other countries in Africa: brain drain. The difficulties at all levels (social, economical, political, etc...) that most of people face here on a daily basis are fueling the dreams to live in any other place and killing any hope of amelioration. One simple example (and not representative at all of the width of the multifaceted problematic) is that one of Prof. Ahmed Zewail (Nobel laureate in chemistry). He finished his undergraduate degree in Egypt and emigrated to the US, where he ended up in CalTech. This guy really loves hes mother country, for a graphical example go http://www.its.caltech.edu/~femto/ and pass the mouse over research themes. He put his research on the map of Masr, how lovely/geeky the mesoscopic phase in the new valley? If that little detail of his love for his country was not enough, i will tell you more. He came back to Egypt with a great plan: to create a whole new university for boosting the research in here and to try to retain the great intellects this country produces. He spoke with the government and fought and fought and fought for it, problems, problems and more problems...at the end he could not get anything done and he had to go to Qatar to open the University. The teaching is: if a Nobel Price falls in despair trying to implement a promising project to develop the state of education, science and technology in his own country, who can keep his hopes high??? everyone should agree that that will be a great for Masr, but nevertheless another battle was lost...the fight is still on...so my dear friend, you are another innocent casualty in this non-sense war, i deeply cry for your lost. Still, this was not a bad bye letter to a friend, it is a see you! I really hope one day in the future we will be able to repeat this picture in a much better Masr for all:

Ashof washak alla kher!

Curiosity of the day: When we are talking about somebody of unknown name (or we cannot be bothered to repeat it) the generic words used in Arabic and Spanish are fulan and fulano respectively. Arent you impressed? i was! And if you are wondering mengano is unknown to the arabic speakers :D

Kawalis Masr Project

The other day (Thursday) a very pleasant coincidence occurred... as i have been demanding continuously to be fed with Egyptian music, Bahz brought me a cd back home. It is the first compilation by a project called Kawalis Masr, or Egypt Backstage. This is a very interesting project, they use music done by musicians (meaning not just a pretty face singing commercial songs) and distribute it for free; the costs are covered by the publicity inserted in the funky looking booklet inside, a picture of the booklet is shown:

Immediately, i put the music on my computer, and i fell in love with one of the tracks called "Darabou El-Amar" or "they shoot the moon" from a band called Eskenderella (Alexandria in Arabic):

http://omoniak.ath.cx:8888/af_nono/DarabouElAmar.mp3

Now you might understand why i loved the song so much...minutes later, Balal came back home and he told me there was a free concert the following day (Friday) in the Jesuit Centre by...Eskanderella!!! I could not believe it :) Of course we went and the whole concert was simply amazing: the band is composed by a guy in the laud that sings too, a pianist, a percussionist with two djembes and two female singers:


After the concert, many of the people that assisted to it gathered in one of the classic meeting places in Alexandria, a cafe called Tugaria (sorprendentemente similar a tugurio :D). I met by chance some spanish people that i was due to meet since i arrived, but we never did...so was another nice coincidence. I met as well many interesting others that offered me their valuable help in my research. Apart of the people, i met another lovely cat, that loved me so much too. As soon as i got in the cafe i looked at him and smiled, then i went to sit for an important meeting with Haythem (one of the founders of the NGO), and oh surprise! the cat ran to me jumped on my lap meanwhile i talked :) He was so fixated with me that when later on i left my jacket on one of the chairs he jumped on it and dozed peacefully:


Once everyone was gone, Haythem and me stayed there until breakfast time (9am) talking about more potential projects within the NGO and funding possibilities in Egypt for other projects. Very productive and interesting meeting i have to say. In the way back home i took this picture in the seaside:


I really like the dissolving skyline...

Vegetables and fruits In the market

I went yesterday to the market of my street, Friday is the holiday here as you know . You can get the little audio file (left click on the link and "save as") i recorded while walking across it, i hopes it gets you a bit more into ambiance:

http://omoniak.ath.cx:8888/af_nono/walkinthemarket.WAV

And going back to my visuals, here i present a collection of some the most common vegetables and fruits that can be found in the market. One of my favourite fruits, the bananas:

Artichokes (eng), Alcachofas (esp) or Al-Jarchuf (arabic):

Red onions:


Strawberries and oranges:


Tomatoes and sweet potatoes :


Limes and lemons:


And the already famous, basketball size cauliflowers:


PS: the clear sunshiney African sky helped a lot for achieving those vibrant colors ;)

People in the market

The good in the market are not only the vegetables, there are people too!. This was the only person selling non-vegetables items. The careful organization of the shoes and the decoration of the bike suggested me that this guy was a good business man:

In spite of my general reluctance for bothering people if taking photographs of them (as i did in Morocco), i gathered myself for making some portraits in the market. But actually they seemed more than happy; so much that at some point i was being pulled from the two sleeves on my jacket in opposite directions, with a third guy calling me to take a picture of something else. Anyway i solved this with a couple of words in Spanish, not a big deal anyway, most of people simply ignored me ;) This man actually insisted with a big smile that his lovely horse appeared in the portrait with him, he treated the animal like a brother, the horse was well fed, scrupulously clean and perfectly combed:

This one did not even bothered talking to me, he saw me taking the picture and smiled proud of his onions...

...and these two even prouder of his artichokes, they both hold a couple of them specially for the picture:

These two were very funny, they were fooling around with each other and laughing a second before i took the picture:

This one did not seem so happy, but thankfully not because of my pictures. He was standing up on top of his carreta shouting non-stop to many people. I don´t really know who he was doing, maybe the bamboo cage rental service as all of them were empty :P

The kids were very friendly, these two wanted their donkey to be immortalised with them:


This boy seemed specially nice and innocent:

And for finishing with the kids; i really liked these ones...they told me "good man" for photographing them, how sweet?

As a final note, even though there is not people in the image, the decoration of this carreta says a lot about the dedication and creativity of the owner:


No wonder why I really love those old style markets...