What's all the screaming about?

My plan now, since I am without gas of the useful variety, is I'm about to make tinned Tuna for tea.

..I however, it turned out I never got to make my cold tuna flat bread.

I had met a guy called Khaled a few days back. I met him whilst chatting to a group of siwan boys in the souk with Claudia, Angus and Sasha. He seemed nice. He was apparently from America and was a teacher who also spent a year teaching in Abu Dhabi. He was very open and a bit on the gay side and ended up confessing his bisexuality to the whole group..whom all thought was a tad forward since we had only just met him. claudia and him got on a treat ( as she loves anything to do with sex and what not). She is a 14 year old Girl trapped in a deserty town after all). I bumped into him in the souk a couple of times after that. Anyway, earlier tonight I heard a scuffle out side my door and what I thought was Khaled's voice attempting to sound authoritative and manly. I could make out something along the lines of

"I'm not giving you money for you to sit in my flat"....bla bla bla.."You said nothing about money..I'm not paying you"..bla bla bla.

The hulabaloo persisted for a while until eventually I opened my door which is right next to and at right angles to his.I decided on the entrance of ( you'll have to pardon my French here) "What the fuck's going on?" Khaled was in the door way of his apartment and inside was a boy called Mouhi. Mouhi is a donkey boy. He drives a donkey cart around the town ferrying tourists about the place. "The Donkey Boys" are known for their mischief, which in Siwa only means they hang around town all day with the other boys and occasionally taxi people about . They however give the place a vibe and they are heart and soul of the souk. Not exactly sex drugs or rock and roll...well, not the later anyway.

So, I enter the feud mid commotion. Khaled is saying he's not giving Mouhi any money..still, and I instantly recognise Mouhi. I've met him a few times already. He is 18, has a huge crush on me and follows me around town in a cart sometimes but is harmless and is as thin as a rake. I turn to him and ask him what's going on. He looks at me and in his best English mixed with rather more intelligible signing of the hands tells me that Khaled is no good and he is staying here until he gets his money.

khaled, I can see is sweating a little and so I attempt to make pleasantries with him to make him feel less humiliated. Mouhi may be a stringy Siwa bean pole but he's around 5 10". Khaled is a bit shorter but there is slightly more to him.

"Oh my, I thought it was you! Do you live here?, only ...I recognised your voice and I thought what on earth is happening.. bla bla.." I did however know that he was living next to me. I just hadn't had the time to make nicey nice. A few hurried exchanges later I decided the best plan would be to try and charm Mouhi away form Khaled's front door and ask him alone what the hell was going on. I beckon him outside to the stairwell at which point the door slam and locks faster than you can say 'something dodgy'

From the extremely confusing interchange that followed, a slightly darker picture began to emerged and it went something like this;

"What are you doing?"

"He very bad no good" *pointing to the now closed door*

"OK, but why you need money?" *International sign language for money*

"We come, two woman, after sex..."

"whoa whoa..after what?"

"We here, after the sex, one she go..(made a rather brutal double hand gesture towards the stairwell)

"Why you give money to him?" ( mainly executed with pointing movements)

I was beginning to hope that firstly; there wasn't a mangled prostitute all dead and limp at the bottom of my stair well, and secondly that what I was beginning to suspect wasn't true.

Mouhi looked at me with his puppy-dog 'I'm all innocent eyes' before beginning to bang repeatedly on Khaled's door again. I was in two minds as to whether to admit that i actually lived next door which might spell disaster for me for all of the rest of my stay here in Siwa, orwalk down the stairs into the street with nothing but my house keys. Mouhi was inside Khaled's apartment when I initially appeared. For all he knew I could have just been aimlessly taking a stroll up to the top floor of some unknowns apartment and stumbled upon a ruckus. Either or, I decided my perrogative was to get Mouhi away mine and Khaled's apartments pronto. I asked him for a cigarette. Whilst trying not to couch up my lungs and look like I didn't mean business, ( which I most definitley did ) I managed to calm Mouhi down a couple of notches. He was defiant that he would stay outside the door until Khaled came out. I asked him please not to bang on the door and he agreed to just wait outside and turn off the light. I told (part gestured) to him that indeed Khaled may not be good but you can get the money bouchra, tommorrow.

Mouhi didn't hesitate to tell me that when Khaled comes out the will strangle him for the 200 LE he owes him for the girls he brought him.

I retired to my apartment and started this part of my journal entry, one ear on the door and one the stiff Vodka and lemonade I had promptly poured myself.

All was all good on the western front for all of twenty minutes. In which time was so impressed with the fact that Mouhi actually did sit in the dark on the stairwell for that long without making a sound that I flicked him a cigarette under the door in a vain attempt to halt the seige. All noises ceased. After 10 minutes of silence and I heard a measly knock at my door. I opened the door and I could see Mouhi had decided to postpone his stairwell stake-out in favour of taking his donkey to bed and avoid being spanked my his father.

Tomorrow I will seek the truth as to what lies beneath the story of the sordid stairwell. I don't think I will have to look far. New travels faster than nukes in this town.

All I can say at this point is; I really hope Mouhi doesn't moonlight as a pimp, and that I hope Khaled wasn't so naive as to think that you don't tip a Donkey boy when he delivers your goods.

Claudia is super excited at the prospect of me living next door to a whore house.

Gas anyone?

Building with mud

Christmas became a very festive affair. The jollities began with our invitation to the British Consulate's Christmas party up in Alexandria. Penny became very excited over the prospect of free booze, but not just any booze, actual labelled booze. The consulates it turned out get treated like royalty in Egypt and Marie-Ann was no exception. We walked in her house which was not dissimilar to the interior of the White House. ( not that I've experienced the inside of the White House first hand but I can imagine it to be something close) There was free booze and yummy canapes and a fair few old Egypt-loving expats who had probably been in the country since the fall of the Pharaonic Dynasties. It seemed a far cry from our little siwan dust bowl hidden in the middle of the Great Sand Sea.

Part of the booze and canape deal was that we all had to take part in a fun old sing song of carols. Accompanied by a leathery old handbag on a Casio keyboard and a rather over enthusiastic rotund harmony-belter of a man with a uneven moustache, we had just enough alchohol in our systems to manage a fal la la la la.. Many of us found the whole thing hilarious and after a few yummy glasses of wine ( which I've been starved of for 2 months) it was hard not to chuckle behind our freshly printed carol sheets. I did however manage not to embarrass myself in any way shape or form and met a lovely 90 year old woman with whom I had the most pleasant of banters with. She was so small she would have popped her in my pocket. On second thoughts... she might have very well been a small child. Oh well, at least I didn't fall over.

Everyone survived the evening and I met a few nice people. But there always had to be the obligatory sleeze which had to rear his ugly head. This was a "party" after all. So, I got chatting to a nice couple, a man from manchester and his Filipino wife and 12 year old son. The Ridgleys and I were planning to head to a bar after the party as it was ending at 8pm (!!) and so we invited them along. I gave the guy my number so we could find them all later. It was not until the next morning that I found an array of sleazy gross lovey dovey messages on my phone, who I then worked out was from this lovely family guy from the party. I found this totally disgusting ( but not unusual ) but I was reminded of how cheating, creepy and rude some men can be. Anyways, after being grossed out for 5 minutes I got over.

After our little Alexandria expedition and a very exciting Carrefour trip we boarded the cronk tank and started the bum breaking 9 hour bus journey back to Siwa.

The festive cheer didn't end there though. We broke up for A couple of weeks Christmas holiday and my little tearaways were let loose in town to hang out in the Souk or play computer games. Christmas Eve consisted of trying to design 4 Business cards which I was told had to be sent to Cairo for printing in the next 2 days. Unlikely. Angus had apparently misbehaved at a dinner with a bunch of guests and was grounded all day in the house and hence not allowed on his computer. Taking Angus's computer away from him like ripping a bottle of Special brew out of a homeless mans hand. I thought this not a particularly festive method of punishment but then again, he did spend all evening bitching to guests that he had no friends and he hates his life...which I can imagine made a lovely impression on the family which was earger to know what life was like for kids living in the desert being home schooled.

Christmas Day was spent around the Ridgley's with really nice Norwegian couple and their two small children. Penny managed to find someone to source and kill for her the biggest turkey I've ever seen. We had Cranberry sauce and stuffing courtesy of Sasha who shipped it from England along with the kids presents. In the evening more guests arrived for drinks and general merriment around the fire. I had had enough booze by then to happily spend most the evening entertaining Electra, Helene and Henrik's 6 year old little girl who is very sweet. Sweet enough to adorn my right arm with whopping purple bite marks.

I haven't yet had another bout of Gastro Goodness so all if very good on the health front. Claudia and I do yoga at the weekends and according to Penny takes it very seriously, even practicing her Dolphin dives at home.

Mostly at the weekends I try to stay away from the kids but Caludia is always in town and so we do yoga or cycle to Abashoruf which is a cold spring 30km out of town. It is mainly flat as you make your way over these incredible shallow salt lakes for miles. There is literally nothing out there apart from a water factory and this spring which is crystal clear and has small fish swimming around in it. We haven't been recently as it's been a little chilly and sand stormy.

Just before Christmas Eve I realised I had run out of gas so I called my landlord to find out whether I could get any more. I had heard a rumor that Siwa had some sort of gas shortage but I didn't think much of it as the hotels were still operating and chicken was still being cooked out on the streets at night.

Nearly a week later and I'm starting to believe them. I had also forgotten that the chicken spitting away on the side of the road was always cooked on open barrels over fires or in the ground. Whoops. One of the Guys from the souk told me today that he knows one of the men who has gas a little way out of town and will go there under the cover of darkness to buy some off of him for me. Hopefully I will have gas tomorrow. I have however been hoping the same for the last 5 days.

I don't mind cold food much but I like hot food more.

The Metropolis

View from my Balcony ( I really want to capture the moment when the house opposite collapses)

After a month living out in the sticks with the gang I finally moved into my new flat. I have to say it's the largest apartment I've ever lived in alone. But then again, I've never actually lived alone before, apart from living with the crazy Arab lady Ms Ahlem in Abu Dhabi who was never there and also never allowed me to wash my pants or socks in the washing machine. But I guess that still doesn't count. My flat has two bedrooms, a galley kitchen which is slightly wider than a galley I suppose, with an oven, sink and fridge (all the mod cons) and a living area. The apartment came with 4 beds installed which I hastily dismantled to create space in the spare room for yoga. I have however realised it's almost impossible to attempt yoga without a yoga mat on shiny tiled floors, unless your willing to risk serious injury. Yoga sessions now resume in the living quarters as the lovely paper thin brown patterned carpet provides ample grippage when one is down-dogging. ( not to be confused with an outdoor recreational activity of a similar name)

My landlord insisted I have take the washing machine from the apartment next door as it was vacant, insisting "Mia mia" ( very good ) "women like very much" Thanks I said thinking to myself how very sweet of you but unlike the 99.9% of the women in Siwa, I am actually not obliged to spend every waking hour of the day locked indoors cooking and washing my husband and 10 children's clothes whilst you men frolick in the gardens and smoke shisha.

I considered my newly aquired "Washing machine". It consisted of a rather large upright steel barrel covered in dust with a loose steel lid and small pipe held to the side with a rather snazzy bit of brown twine.

On closer inspection I managed to figure out how the contraption would operate. You would pop your clothes inside an area big enough for perhaps 2 pairs of jeans where a fan-like wheel would spin the water and suds around. After rather laboriously filling 4 buckets of water from the bathroom sink and tipping them into the barrel I added suds and precariously plugged the contraption fully into the already sparking wall socket. Being all too familiar with the unpredictability of the electrical wiring in Egypt I decided to poke the on switch with the broken handle of a wooden spoon.

The barrel sprung to life with a ping and a groan and suddenly the lid was being buffeted up and down by the force of the churning water. My leg was suddenly sodden at which point I realised I had not put the cap on the out-pipe which was splurting white foam and piping hot water down my leg. It then crossed my mind that I may have filled my washing aide a little too full, or maybe hadn't put enough garments inside. In fact, it became evident I had used enough soap powder to wash all the galabayas in siwa, I took out my two pairs of jeans which were now so tangled around each other it was like trying to undo a giant steaming figure of eight.

I assessed whether this method of washing was actually easier than the good old fashioned soak and scrub in a bucket of water (which was the alternative) I decided to make it my mission to perfect the art of washing Steel Drum style.

I live in the middle of the town which is very handy for shops. I cycle to the Kids house every morning for nine which is only a 25 min cycle out towards the dunes which keeps me slightly fitter than if they had school in town which I believed they used to. My apartment is above a mechanics which is somewhat noisy in the evenings. Everybody works late in Siwa and siestas in the afternoon. The reving of dstressed engines and the call of ferral kittens emanate up to my sleeping quarters until about 1.00am. But not all is lost. On school mornings I have my very own cockerel which lives down in the street below which gently starts to waken me with it's incessant rather shrill Doodle Doos from around 5am till 8 am by which time I'm running screaming from the flat eyes blood-shot and in search of someone to maim,

After a few days I get used to my new apartment an the noisy surroundings. I always remember the first day at university when I realised my bedroom was actually positioned 3 feet away from the New Cross Gate train line on which they would consistently racked passed every 10 minutes until midnight. I find the best thing to do it to not waste energy allowing yourself to become stressed over these trivial matters.

The first couple of nights I did find myself of the verge of opening the door the my bedroom balcony and throwing multiple petrol bombs over the side at the mechanics who are clearly oblivious to the distress they are causing the neighboring residents. Now I don't even notice it.

Blobs of Blue Tack also serve as very effective ear plugs.

Field trips

Garbage City in the middle of Cairo

Cairo was busy busy busy. It took 12 hours on a bus to get there. We travelled with guests who were returning there from holidaying in Siwa. I spent the whole journey covered in children ranging from 5 to 10 years old. We dropped them off in their compound a little way out of the center. The big blocks of apartments and security gates made me realise that I rather liked living in the middle of a desert. I have become familiar to the honk of a donkey, which before now I never realised how incredibly loud it was. Something akin to a cow hyperventilating into a megaphone is probably the most realistic comparison I can make.

Anyway, Cairo. So we check into the Aussie hostel which was the same hostel I stayed in when I flew in 2 months ago. the next day myself and Mohamed who is a siwan who works for Penny and Duncan and has never before left Siwa Venture to the zoo. I was surprise and relieved that he managed not to get himself killed. Siwa only ever has one lane of traffic consisting of donkeys and motobikes. It's fair to say it can be quite dangerous and people now and again get hurt, but to come face to face with 5 lanes of continuous speeding veihcles might have been slightly daunting. The zoo was fun. I especially liked it when every poo-pusher we passed demanded we give them money for looking through the bars of a 6x6 ft hyena cage that smelt like death.

We had a brief tour around the Cairo Museum which was very interesting. Could have spent hours in there but we were on a tight schedule so it was in and out and back for dinner. The next day was Garbage City day. A huge area of Cairo receives tons of rubbish from all over the city every day and sorts and recycles it. Some of the plastics get shredded and send to China whilst some of the paper and other materials get made into products. The City is, as the name suggests full of garbage and the people live and work amongst it. I purchased some lovely oven mitts made from reused material cut-offs. Very pretty.

Penny knows a immensely fat man who owns a riding stables at the pyramids. The man in question I was informed was called Tariq and he probably weighs in the region of 30 stone give or take gram. And yes he does infact ride.

After meeting him I did the unavoidable comedidic; eyes surveying the fat man... eyes surveying the skinny Egyptian horses. NOO WAY?! I never excelled in Physics but in this instant you didn't need Newton to tell you that this combo sure as hell ain't going to work. As we had a tour of his stables I noticed all the horses were of the typical thin egyptian variety and there was not a cart horse in sight. As we followed one of the grooms out of the stables I swear i heard a horse crying into it's dinner.

Riding to the pyramids at sunset was fantastic. My styrups were too long so my thighs suffered badly the next day. It was nice to get back on a horse. Mine had a quite a lot of go in him but was reigned in so tight he could barely lift his head for the martingale was tighter than a G-string. Maybe it was Tariq's G-string.

We departed Cairo with a baggage full of booze. I could barely walk for my thighs had ceased up so much I had to resort to the John Wayne walk to minimise the pain.

Sunset Shali

We are making good progress with the website design considering he's now actually working in Romania for a few months. I think the plan might be that me and the kids might go over there end of the winter to catch some end of season snowboarding.. which will be great.

The nearest off license is 300km away so the term "stocking up" takes on a whole new meaning. I recently took a trip there with P her to extend my visa and found the secret (only) shop that sells alcohol. A dark and dingy hole with nothing but old dirty cardboard boxes strewn around and not a bottle or can in sight. Anyway I managed to stock up a bit. I think if I didn't have a drink after work one or both of the children would surely be dead by now.

We are all off to Cairo in a few days to sort out more visas etc and are going to visit the pyramids and go horse riding. We can go buy some "normal" products like insect repellant spray and tampons. Siwa really does sell the minimum. They grow dates, olives and Balsam (for donkeys) but apart from that everything else is imported and arrives in a worse state that if you had scavenged it from land fill site.

Hardly anyone has a fridge or washing machine including the family house ( as they have no electricity, only a generator) so essentially there is no such thing as a shelf life here..more like a considerably short life.

Siwa is an amazing place even though it is small, surrounding it is the Libyan desert which is the biggest expanse of desert EVER. and in the middle the tiny oasis which only came about because some money hungry Westerners drilled for oil back in the day and much to their disgust hit water. There are lots of hot springs which you can go swim ( sit) in under a breathtaking night sky. with some of the springs the source is so far under ground that the water is too hot to touch.

Apart from the day to day rigmarole and sometimes visiting a camp in the evenings ( desert camp where there is generally a spring and the Siwans have fires and cook food for tourists) Siwan life is pretty relaxed although it doesn't always feel like it. Evenings are pretty laid back if you managed to dodge Anus's attempts at mass Cluedo or Scrabble sessions. Because there is no electricity the solar powered battery which powers the house lights often goes off which makes reading a little tricky. No TV or mains for laptops either. I've read about as many books since I've been here than I have in the past 3 years and because a fair few of these have been GCSE related, I feel my brain is benefiting from the challenge. I've decided to not pursue Arabic but try and learn Romanian for when we all end up there for the Summer.

I just thought that I might as well have a Siwan Christmas this year as I probably won't have another out here and they have a party-type thing with all the westerner who live out here ( all of which are really old and are either old male and gay or old female and an artist who have clearly taken far too many drugs in their earlier years and have banished themselves to the oasis in an attempt to cleanse themselves from their old free-loving hippie ways)

Apart from the Siwans themselves, the population is made up of a collection of French, Egyptian and German Tourists, the occasional sane (ish) Westerner who has brought land and is running some sort of business venture.. and a hand full of the most eccentric characters you've ever seen. It's not dissimilar to living next door to a bunch of circus freaks, all of which are permanently on crack and are so detached from reality that conversing with one of would require the patience of a vegetable.

There is an old German lady called La Rosa who has lived here for a while and she, from what I hear is quite a reputable artist back home in Dusseldorf. She is nearly 70, dresses like a cross between Tommy Cooper and an Egyptian Bus Boy and passionately recalls her days at the theatre when she used to live the thespian dream along side other German wack jobs. Those are the sort of expats that live in Siwa. Not exactly what I was expecting but then I've come to realise it's always best to have less expectations so your rarely disappointed, only perhaps surprised and bewildered which in my opinion is much more manageable.

I'm writing this mail in the dark of my room as the house battery has died, my laptop battery is about to give up and everyone's waking around with candles and kerosene lamps and any second the whole house will go up in flames so I'm going to sign out until next time. Last night there were two wild dogs in the garden, obviously chatting to their friends in the next garden I actually felt like severing my ears off with whatever blunt object there is to hand and shoving sand down the canals in a vain attempt to drown out the sound. I eventually got on to the roof and hurled stones at them, hard. That seemed to do the trick.

Right.. small delay in posting this as it is infact two days later and have spent the time recovering from a bout of Gastroenteritis which was painful. I'm quite surprised I didn't get it sooner but I spent a whole night with stomach spasams and vomiting which was lovely. The next day I tootled off to the hospital..which looked like it had just been bombed and sick people had taken up residence in what was left over. Sanitary wasn't the word that came to mind, infact Hospital didn't either. Anyhow, I had two needles in my butt administered by some merciless nurse who I had just recently seen ruthlessly stabbing a poor baby in the leg. This however prevented me from puking up again and I then proceeded to munch on a cocktail of anti agony pills, Buscopan, Motilum and Antinal.. possibly supplies left over form the 1st World War who knows.

I'm just about 100% again and all is back to normal ready to start another sandy weekend!

LIfe in the sand

The Siwan festival of Siyaha

The Siwan people are very gentle and hospitable (when they realise your not a tourist!) and even though the town is full of men.. as the women rarely leave the house, they are considerably less sleazey that your typical Egyptian. Claudia the eldest is 14 and Angus is 13 and is into his computers games and all that jazz. Caudia generally hangs out with the souk lads in town.

It's early days but so far we seem to get on well considering. Living together however intense at times is nice as they have someone different to hang out with and I get shown around and introduced to the people they know. We also have created this little hobby named Sand Wrestling which generally occurs after I've had a few vodkas and they are bored and I refuse to attempt Monopoly for the 6th time that week. We all let off a little steam and everyone's a winner!

So school starts at 9am and we have 3 subjects a day ( which involves me doing a lot of reading in the evenings in a desperate attempt to be one step ahead all the time) and finish at 1pm. After lunch we all head into town which is a 20 min cycle ride on sandy dirt tracks. The shop they rent sells traditional Siwan Jewelry which Penny goes to Cairo to scavenge form dusty old bric a brac shops and then polishes up and sell back in Siwa. This is where I start doing the designs and compiling copy for Duncans new website idea.

Up until about 6 days ago we had a reasonable internet connection. However, the word on the street is that some guy who was buying the internet from some network and selling it to people ( including us) had not paid his bill. He has also, we have now found out done a runner from Siwa completely and is now officially AWOL, leaving siwa without a a mega byte in sight. The town can not get a new account as he has to pay for and close his first.

Siwa Oasis, Egypt

View of Siwa Oasis from the Old Shali Fortress

After a brief stint in the UK I decided to take a a less conventional job in the middle of the dessert. Home schooling two children and designing websites and general Graphic design duties. Here goes my first blog post.

I've been I've been seriously busy trying to get into my new routine whilst adapting to 24/7 children and a crazy Siwan souk. anyway, since I started writing this a few new things have happend. With no electricity at the house were I STILL live means I can only write until my laptop battery runs out.. which is up to about 20 mins.

My tolerance for small people and their evil ways has increased which can only be a good thing. I don't feel the impulse to stab hot needles up through my fingernails every day like I may or may not have done in the first week..!

The Kids are great 90% of the time, and considering their situation I think they're pretty cool characters.

The Souk is the center of the town where all the shops are but as with most deserty countries.The traffic does what it wants and consists of Donkey and carts, the odd runaway donkey, motobikes, and desert Jeeps. Among the many Donkeys and Galabaya (whites mens dresses) clad Siwan men is the odd tourist wandering the piss soaked streets in search of food and water. The town is so small everyone knows everyone and I'm known as "Teach" the main reason is my name "Anna" actually means "me" or "I am" in arabic.. so you can imagine the confusion this causes! And everyone I've met so far refuses to believe me when I tell them I'm English.