Those who know me, know that when I travel, I am interested not just in the historical sites or the great monuments, but in the lives of the average people around me. That’s what makes travel to very different countries so interesting to me. Little things like roadside shops and open-air butchers fascinate me.
Of course, the worst place to experience this is from a seat on a tour bus or in a luxury hotel. But, I made a great effort to take in my surroundings in Egypt and grab some pictures.
Several things struck me. First, how very materially poor parts of Egypt are. There are vast areas of Cairo that we might call slums. They are made up of both old houses and new tenements that seem unfinished and poorly maintained. To be fair, Cairo has some nice parts and many middle class apartments, but the size of these run down areas surprised me.
Second, we to see how much of the rural life outside the cities seem to have bypassed the 20th century. You see many mud brick homes, with people working in the fields with donkeys, water buffalo, and even camels as their main source of transportation. Some of these people live much of their lives just about as their ancestors did 4000 years ago.
I think this is a bakery. Notice that one window is for men, they other for women.
But then, you see a mud brick home with a satellite disk on the roof.
Egypt is a fascinating country, still facing the transformations of the modern world.
