Tuesday 11 March 2008

At the end of things.

I can hardly recall the last time I wrote here. The Wadi Ram seems ages ago, back when the Irish were still here and the French hadn't arrived.

That is far too long a time to write an interesting piece about, so I will briefly sum up what happened.

We went to Wadi Ram, awesome, played in the dunes, brilliant, rolled from the highest dune I've seen in my life, fantastic, so fantastic I'm still crapping red sand.

Then we got back to work, my trench soon turned muddy, not because I didn't like climbing up three metres every time I had to take a piss, but because of the altitude of the groundwater table.
We dug some more, said goodbye to Helen, Bart and Joris after some nice partying and welcomed the French and Walloon replacements.

It is uncanny how little faces there are in the world. Magalie, the French drawer(Person who draws, not part of a cupboard), was the almost exact double of my former sister-in-law. It goes without saying that she wasn't immediately high up on my list of people I like. Luckily, she turned to be nice enough, for a frenchy ;), so that was that.

The Walloon guy, Jacques, looked like the father/brother of the guy some of you know as Consul Colin. Apart from them both being awesome and their spitting resemblance they had very little in common. So that too was that.

The Bedouin.
I love these guys. They are one of the most hospitable people I have ever met. They have given us names, they have given us tea and they have slaughtered a goat for us. In the beginning they were workers, but now I call most of them friend, not because of the fact that their names are as similar as they are(yes, that is entirely untrue and very colonial of me, a flogging is necessary), but because they are friends. They are honest in their handling of matters and if they dislike you they will not hide it, plus they liked my knife. People who like my knife are my friends.

Salah, what's in a name, invited us to his 'house', beit bedouin, in Humayma and we camped under one the starriest skies I've seen in my life.

I will cease my writing for today, because I'm starting to bore myself. More of my exciting adventures tomorrow.

1 comment:

Bright Smith said...

A friend called Salah... now your journey to the Indiana side is complete!

I would love to see a starry sky, but unfortunately the smog and light pollution in Cairo prevents the view of celestial bodies of any kind at night...