El Andalous - Preparing for Holiday

El Andalous Beach at Sunset

Time zooms onwards; I sometimes wish I could just get it to stop for a little while. Anyway, this time next week, when you read this, I will be in the UK. So, no blog, but I’ll prepare a photo and a little text, just so you don’t think the blog has disappeared entirely. To be honest, I don’t really think of people actually reading this, but writing it in public at least forces me to think and write something each week.

Anyway, as usual when I’m going back to the UK, I had a spending spree on Amazon. I feel Amazon should pay towards my air fare, actually, because they must make quite a bit of money each time I’m preparing to go. This time, it was helped by the fact that I had more money in my UK bank account than I realized (which is a bit fatal); I must have decided to keep my last tranche of money in the UK rather than in Egypt. I keep on making decisions and forgetting what I’ve decided. As if decisions weren’t hard enough in the first place!

So, for your entertainment (or otherwise), here’s what I’ve ordered:

1. Three swimming costumes (these were actually from decathalon.co.uk). I thought I may as well invest in my leisure time in Egypt. I’d bought two costumes when in Switzerland (one from decathalon), but at the moment I do feel like I’m probably wearing them a bit too much, given that I’m on the beach every day. A bit of variety, and at least the appearance of being cleanly, is called for.
2. A very exciting snorkel mask (also from decathalon). It’s a new design and fits all the way round your face. You no longer need to have the snorkel in your mouth and you can just breathe normally. Also, apparently, it’s a whole different snorkeling experience because you get a 180 degree view. I can’t wait to try this out, although I met someone on El Andalous beach and hers had just broken and she didn’t have a good word to say about it. I’ve heard others rave about it, though. They don’t seem to sell them in Egypt yet.
3. A solar panel that can charge laptops. I’ve dithered about this forever. It’s not really worth the money as I’m sure I won’t save enough electricity costs to make it worthwhile, but I’ve always loved the idea of solar energy and it seems such a shame not to use solar power in Egypt. And what’s the point of working if you don’t spend the money on things you are hankering after even if they’re not entirely logical?
4. A power bank that can charge laptops and that can be charged by a solar panel. Yes, I’ve gone a bit mad, but I also wanted some kind of backup electricity for all our power cuts (even at night) and this should do the trick! The first one I tried to order was actually over the watts per hour allowed by airlines for lithium-based batteries and power banks. I ended up getting airline permission (but I think they didn’t know what the problem was) and they wanted me also to get airport permission, but by the time I’d got an answer from the airline it was out of stock anyway. I then found a lower-powered (and more expensive, of course) alternative that explicitly said it could go on a plane. I had no idea this would be so difficult!
5. A solar light. This was an impulse buy and I’m very excited about it and wish I’d bought two while it was on special offer. I’m curious to see what it will be like. You can squash it down (it’s like a concertina) and it turns into a torch and a USB solar charger. Or you can pull it out and it serves as a solar-powered lantern that lasts up to 12 hours. I’m almost looking forward to my next power cut now!
6. Three books for learners of Arabic (basically parallel text Arabic or Egyptian Arabic and English with audio either on CD or online). I’d meant to buy just one, but couldn’t decide which one to try first (they are all still beyond my capability really, but I can’t help being ambitious). So, once I knew I had money in my account, I just bought all of them. Hmmm.

I will need to buy printer ink while I’m over in the UK. I’ve also developed an ambition to make some jewelry from the shells and stones on the beach over here so that I can always carry a bit of Sahl Hasheesh with me wherever I go, so I’ll try and buy some craft stuff, too. If I have room, I’ll bring back some cereals that I can’t get in Egypt, but my snorkel and solar panel will both take up quite some space in my luggage. It’s like my birthday at the moment!

Sahl Hasheesh - Progress

BestWay, now in Sahl Hasheesh! (photo (c) Nicole)

Businesses come and go in Sahl Hasheesh fairly quickly. It’s a tough life for the shopkeepers, although if you talk to them, they’re usually hugely optimistic and never really appear to see themselves as having a hard life. Most shopkeepers have more than one shop.

It’s always interesting to see what’s new and about to open, but rarely is it so exciting as the first proper supermarket. Yes, this is the pinnacle of excitement over here in Sahl Hasheesh.

I should explain that by Egyptian standards, BestWay, our new supermarket, is a “proper” supermarket – it sells cold meats, bread, cheese, fresh fruit, butter, frozen meat, fresh meat, as well as food that will in any case keep for a while (chocolates, cereals, canned and jarred items, coca cola, etc). Usually in Egypt something that calls itself a “supermarket” is actually just a small shop selling a few items of food with no meat, no bread, or anything that needs cooling or freezing. It’s not the type of shop that you could rely on for your weekly shopping.

BestWay provides pretty much everything in some form; it also sells some basic stationery, washing stuff, kitchen utensils, personal hygiene items, coffee makers, DIY items, light bulbs, games, bicycles…. To my delight (or is it horror?), it also has a café with some delicious cakes, so I can already see my waistline expanding just by looking at it all.

However, to put this in perspective, I’m now making it sound huge and it’s probably still just a “little shop” by European standards rather than a “supermarket” which I, at least, always imagine to be on huge grounds and having rows and rows of frozen cabinets and cooling shelves. BestWay has two small cooling shelves, two small freezers for frozen goods, and another freezer for ice creams. That’s it. But for Egypt, this is pretty good. Spinneys in Senzo Mall, which is just like a European supermarket, is called a hypermarket over here. I guess BestWay is closer to a Tesco Metro.

Anyway, it’s life-changing for me. Up until now, I’ve had to have a taxi drive of 20 minutes to do my weekly food shopping and it’s really annoying if I forget something. Now, it’s just a 10 minute walk away and it’s there all the time, open until midnight. No need to worry any more. They are even promising home delivery.

The prices are a bit more expensive, but then I save myself the taxi fare and I gain the convenience, so I’m eager to shop there and to support it so that it makes a go of it in Sahl Hasheesh. It will do well if all these new buildings / apartments actually get finished and ever have people living in them. But over here, that’s a big “if”; BestWay may even have been brought in to try to help sell the apartments (lack of supermarket was definitely a major reason why I considered not to buy originally). So far, it seems to be getting a fairly steady trade, but it’s early days yet.

There’s lots going on here at the moment. I was also astonished to hear that a butcher’s shop is going to open up next to BestWay as well. It’s almost as if I’m living in a proper town! I’m a bit sceptical that there will be enough trade for it, but I guess if enough tourists rent apartments and want to buy their meat in the resort rather than venturing out to Senzo or Hurghada, it might just work! It’s called “The Butchery” (this is what some people rudely called my hairdresser when I was in Edinburgh) and also appears to sell pork (that’s the advantage of living in a tourist resort); obviously it’s being run by Christians. I hope it will do well – we’re just waiting for it to open, but the cabinets seem to be in place and the signage is up.

Less exciting is the opening of a Moevenpick ice cream shop where my old ice cream shop used to be. I’m happy it’s there, but I’m still grieving over the old place at the moment. And an “optics” shop also seems to be preparing for opening. This I found a bit astonishing as we already have one optics shop in the same road and I can’t believe that we could possibly support two of these shops, but, hey, worth a go. And, as I was thinking that to myself, I suddenly noticed that the existing optics shop was actually quite busy, so maybe I’m completely wrong.

It’s really good to see some new things opening up after seeing so many shops close. It would be even better to see some stability, both in Sahl Hasheesh, and in Egypt as a whole.

Sahl Hasheesh - Return to Snorkeling

Turtle!

Most people I know who have spent some time at El Andalous have remarked on how easy it is to get lazy – you have the whole of Sahl Hasheesh, but you can’t be bothered going any further than your own private beach. It’s so close, you can pop back into your flat if you need something, there’s no time taken up with getting there and back. Before you know it, you’ve been in Egypt for months on end and you’ve not gone any further than your own beach. It sounds terrible, but it’s just so easy to do!

Anyway, I finally got round to picking up snorkeling again. Although our beach has some small isolated bits of coral, or there’s the Sunken City, there’s not so much. Also, the same fish tend to hang out at the same spots at the same time each day, so they soon become your friends (you should all buy 25 New Year’s Resolutions – For Fish to read about my friend Finn!), but you lack the novelty value.

That’s not to say that there isn’t the occasional surprise. I was hovering over one a patch of coral at El Andalous watching the fish (this was before I came back to Egypt this time round), turned around to swim back and realized that two bulky porcupine fish were bombing towards me. I foolishly grabbed my camera and just floated there trying to get a photo whilst thinking that maybe this wasn’t the best idea.

I’d never seen these fish before and they looked fairly solid and rather bizarre. And they were flying through the water with determination right at me. I don’t know if they mistook me for a big lump of coral, but they suddenly halted (phew!) and then swam nonchalantly in another direction, as if pretending they hadn’t made a mistake at all.

Meanwhile, just a foot or two away, people were standing and chatting in the water, oblivious to the amazing creatures just next to them. It’s often the way – you’ve got your attention in one place, when actually all the real action is going on just behind you. There was another time when I saw two or three people snorkeling and behind them a whole shoal of fish was leaping out of the water in unison!

I’d heard that the Baron hotel had a good reef, so I decided to try swimming from one of my normal places (called “the ramp”, because there’s an unfinished hotel there with what looks like a large ramp heading down towards the sea) to the reef at the Baron. I’d forgotten that in the summer months, swimming from these more isolated places in Sahl Hasheesh has its own difficulty. Although you usually have the whole stretch of beach to yourself, there’s no shade, and no loungers, so it’s not so easy to sit and relax; it becomes more of a functional snorkeling trip.

The excitement of seeing fish I’d never seen before refired my enthusiasm. I managed to see a coral grouper for the first time (red fish with blue spots), a red starfish (weirdly, also with blue spots) for the first time, and I was just looking at some fish I knew already when I remembered that sometimes more exciting things are happening behind you, or maybe I sensed something, so I turned around and a Manta Ray was gliding past me flapping its sides together in a graceful movement. I was too surprised and astonished to take a photograph in time, but it was amazing to see it right beside me.

What I really like about looking at the fish is that you get so close that you can even see their eyelids opening and closing; when you see them this near to you, they seem to have distinct personalities and you really start to feel like you are one of them.

Sometimes they appear to be attracted to me and I’m not sure if they think I’m going to feed them, whether they are just curious (they strike me as curious by nature), or maybe they are trying to chase me away while I’m thinking they are trying to say hello. I never tire of seeing so many different types of fish, so many colours, the beauty of the coral and the clams, and the utter privilege of being able to visit them in their home. They always look as if they might actually bite or nudge me – they don’t have any sense of personal space – but they always just narrowly avoid me (apart from today when a cleaner fish decided to nip my arm; it was quite sharp, to my surprise, as it’s just a little fish!). It really is like swimming in an aquarium.

I finally made it to the Baron and went out a bit deeper before swimming (rather than snorkeling) back to where I’d started. A rock seemed to be below me, so I stuck my head in the water to take a look and, after my eyes had focused, I realized that the rock was a huge turtle! It started to swim when it realized I was there, but it’s the only thing I’ve seen in the sea that looks as if it swims more slowly than I do. It looked so ancient; it was like watching a prehistoric creature. Maybe its slow swimming speed made it seem older, like someone who can no longer really walk very well. I’ve wanted to see a turtle for ages, so it made my day. I’d always imagined I’d see a small, young turtle rather than a huge, lumbering item of the species, but that didn’t make it any less special.

Another strange thing about snorkeling here was that there are quite a few sandbanks. At one point, I was having to tread water, and just a metre or two away were two people standing on the other side of the coral with the water just round their knees. It made me feel like I was a child and ridiculously small.

Then, when I tried to get out of the water, the closer I walked to the shore, the deeper the water got. I like to see where I’m putting my feet as I walk to shore (it’s easy to tread on a stingray hidden in the sand or a stone or lion fish taking a nap), so when the water kept getting deeper, I kept on having to look up to double-check that I wasn’t walking in the wrong direction. It’s quite worrying when you start off with the water knee-high and then you find yourself up to your shoulders in water. It just doesn’t compute.

Anyway, my enthusiasm for snorkeling has well and truly returned!

Hurghada - Egyptian Arabic Classes

Ali Teaching

And another thing that kept me busy when I returned to Egypt was that Nicole had found a teacher of Egyptian Arabic and so we signed up for classes at the weekends. I was a little bit frustrated at starting again. All I ever seem to do is start again. However, I rationalized that any practice is good and each beginner’s course teaches slightly different vocabulary.

Our teacher is Ali and he works in a language school in Hurghada run by a German woman. The school buildings are on the third floor (no lift) of a building just off Sheraton Road, the main shopping street in Hurghada (although you go to different streets for different things, such as furniture, material, paint, vegetables, etc). Sheraton Road has its fair share of tourist shops, luggage shops, restaurants, some Western chains (KFC, McDonalds, Costa Coffee), and ever-present pharmacies.

Ali has been teaching for 8 years, I would guess he is in his late 20s?, and very fond of offering words of wisdom and uplifting phrases (eg “Smile in your hard time because life doesn't worth to be sad my friend. Enjoy the life as much as you can and don't forget to help the others”). He’s a very likeable guy and always cheerful and patient.

It was a bit of a culture shock going back to Egyptian Arabic because the verbs are conjugated differently from Modern Standard Arabic (MSA) and, as I’ve said before, some of the words are different. The one I stumbled on most was the word for “we”, which is “ihna” in Egyptian Arabic and “nahnu” in MSA. My poor brain must be a mush of confusion by now as I’ve switched from one to the other and then back again. It didn’t take long to remember how to conjugate the verbs in Egyptian Arabic, but I did notice myself slipping back into MSA occasionally.

What I liked about his course, though, is that it started off with verbs and sentences. Most books or courses teaching you MSA or Egyptian Arabic spend a lot of time with the cornerstone endings for “my”, “our”, “your [female]”, “your [male]” etc. In both types of Arabic, these endings (which differ slightly between Egyptian Arabic and MSA as well) come at the end of the word and are not separate words preceding the noun. In addition, they are used to say “me”, “us”, etc – so, for example, “see you later” will add the “you” ending after the verb for “you”, as will “how are you?” 

These endings are also used to form the verb “to have” which isn’t really a normal verb, but is a preposition followed by one of these endings. In MSA, there are three different prepositions for the verb “to have” – “with” (a general have), “for” (a lasting have), “alongside” (a with me now have) – and you conjugate them by sticking these endings on. So, “I have a house” is said as “for me house” and “I have the money to pay for the bill” is said as “alongside me money to pay for the bill”. Therefore, you can go a long way with MSA and Egyptian Arabic without learning any proper verbs (since the verb “to be” can be omitted in many cases).

The problem with the traditional approach, though, is that you don’t really learn anything very exciting to say for what feels like forever. When you start off with the verbs, you’re immediately saying interesting things like “I want to drink tea”, “I must go home now”, etc. The sense of progress is a lot faster.

I was interested to see one thing that Ali posted on facebook that didn’t translate due to cultural issues. He posted a picture of a very old lady with a cat and captioned it with something like “Mum and her cat – two loving souls meet”. Virtually all the non-Arabic readers started asking him if this was a picture of his mother and he had to explain that no, it wasn’t, the term “mum” is used to refer to any old woman. As I said in an earlier blog, old age is regarded as a positive thing in the Arabic countries, so “mum” is a term of respect. I guess at a push we may use “grandmother” in a similar way, but it wouldn’t be usual and it would have to be used in a specific context for people in the West to understand it like that. Now that I’m getting older myself, I quite like the idea of regaining a positive image for the elderly!

Our lessons are three hours in one go. We started off doing it both Saturdays and Sundays (totaling 6 hours), but then this got a bit much for both of us, so we cut it down to just Sundays. However, it’s been Ramadan and Ali has been in Cairo and now he would really like to move to Dubai, so I’m not sure how much longer these classes will last. He also does lessons over skype (therefore, any of you could also learn with him!), so actually it shouldn’t really matter. 

Unfortunately, I’ve been very lazy and not done any practice or learning of Arabic since he has been away in Cairo. Whoops. This is mostly because I’ve got my novel-writing bug again and prefer to spend my time rewriting the draft of Space Shapes than going over Egyptian grammar. I’d like to do both, but there aren’t enough hours in the day.