Petra

Perhaps the most famous site in Jordan is Petra, the "ancient rose-red city of the Nabataeans, Arabs who controlled the frankincense trade routes of the region in pre-Roman times" (according to the Lonely Planet). This weekend I hopped a plane to Amman, the capital of Jordan, met up with a friend who was there for work and rented a car to drive three hours south to see the ancient city.

I had been so busy with work during the week leading up to the trip, that I hadn't done much reading about the site before I arrived. Pretty quickly, though, I decided that wasn't necessarily a bad thing. Rather than knowing just what to expect and just what I was going to see, I wandered through the ancient ruins encountering surprise after surprise. It was a perfect example of one of my favorite Paulo Coelho quotes, "at the same time, since all things are new, you see only the beauty in them and feel happy to be alive."

Just inside the gate that marks the entrance to Petra, there are a few caves carved into the rock walls lining the path. Not too far down the path is the Obelisk Tomb and Bab As-Siq Triclinium, which was an impressive first sight to see (though not nearly as impressive as the things to come, I later realized!).
From the Triclinium, we passed a few more caves before arriving at the entrance to As-Siq. The Siq marks the ancient entrance to Petra and is an impressive, narrow gorge between rock walls that rise up as high as 80 meters! The Siq itself is 1200 meters long (appx. 12 football fields!) and was formed by tectonic forces that literally pulled the rock apart to create the passageway.
The journey through the Siq was incredible, with beautiful rock colors and formations, tons of twists and turns in the path and even tiny alters carved into the walls along the way. With so many things to observe within the Siq, its end comes seemingly out of nowhere. And just as you exit the Siq, you find yourself face-to-face with Al-Khazneh, also known as the Treasury. There are not words to describe how impressive the Treasury is, especially when it appears before you after a long walk through the Siq. The building face is carved into the stone wall and was created as a tomb, though it has been misnamed the "Treasury" by a local belief that an Egyptian pharaoh hid his treasure here. (Another random fact, the Treasury was made famous by "Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade.")
Beyond the Treasury, the path that began as the Siq continues, though the path is much wider and the walls less towering here. This area is known as the Street of Facades and is lined with over 40 ancient tombs.
Just past the Street of Facades are the Royal Tombs, carved higher on the rock face with more ornate and impressive details than the tombs of Street of Facades. Unfortunately these tombs have been affected by erosion over the years, so they show a little wear and tear, but they are still stunning. The largest of the Royal Tombs is the Urn Tomb which was carved around 70 AD and used in the fifth century as a Byzantine church. We spent a good bit of time climbing around and through this tomb and marveling at its beauty.

The Urn Tomb (on the left side of the picture)

Main chamber inside the Urn Tomb
The natural colors of the rock on the ceiling inside the Urn Tomb

On the first level of the Urn Tomb, looking up to higher levels

When we were satisfied with our exploration of the Royal Tombs, we continued toward the city centre of ancient Petra. The road leading to the city centre is called the Colonnaded Street and was once lined with temples, public buildings and shops.

Colonnaded Street

Looking up to the Great Temple

Inside the ruins of the Great Temple, facing the main altar

Inside the ruins of the Great Temple, looking back toward the Royal Tombs

After passing through the city centre, we continued our journey toward the furthest site from the entrance to Petra (appx. 6 kilometers, or 4 miles, from where we had started at the entrance gate). Ad-Deier, or the Monastery (named for its use by the Byzantine church), is perhaps the most impressive (in my opinion) of the sites at Petra. The hike from the city centre to the top of the hill where the Monastery is found takes around 45 minutes and includes over 800 stairs, but the trip is most definitely worth it!
Further past the Monastery are a couple view points that look out over Israel and the Palestinian Territories. The views were nice, but I think the most impressive view was looking back toward the Monastery, which really put everything into perspective.

Looking back toward the Monastery

With Israel and the Palestinian Territories in the background

After visiting the Monastery and view points, we were exhausted from the heat and the hiking and hauled ourselves back down the mountain, where we took a quick break and then headed back toward the entrance. It was a long day, but so nice to be outside in fresh air and seeing so many incredible ancient sites!

Hear ye, hear ye

This morning I received word that the Egyptian government had issued a decree (thus the "Hear ye, hear ye" title) related to the control of H5N1, also known as highly-pathogenic avian influenza (HPAI). For just the very briefest of moments – and I do mean the very briefest; the thought couldn’t have lasted more than perhaps half a second – I was excited.

You see, Egypt has been hit by the H5N1 influenza strain harder than any other country in the world outside Asia. When the total number of cases is considered, and even when Asia is included, Egypt still falls third on the list, after Indonesia and Vietnam. However, unlike Indonesia and Vietnam and most other countries where H5N1 has been reported, the number of cases in Egypt is not decreasing. Already this year there have been 30 cases. Compare that with 18 cases in 2006, 25 in 2007 and 8 in 2008, and it’s not hard to see that over a third of all cases of H5N1 in Egypt have occurred this year – and it’s only the beginning of August! Not only that, but there hasn’t been much H5N1 reported elsewhere in the world in 2009; over 80% of all cases of H5N1 reported this year are in Egypt.

Another interesting fact about the cases in Egypt thus far this year is that only 4 patients (13%) have died from the virus. Although this may still seem like a high mortality ratio for an influenza virus, it’s very low relative to the average for H5N1, which is around 60% (or 64% if this year’s cases in Egypt are excluded).

Still, perhaps the most interesting aspect of this year’s cases of H5N1 in Egypt is the demographic affected by the disease. The vast majority of cases have occurred not among young men working on poultry farms or young women slaughtering chickens at home. Most cases have been among children and toddlers as young as eighteen months. Although there are a number of theories circulating about this shift in the age distribution of cases, the most believable (in my opinion) is rather simple. In rural areas of Egypt, where many families raise chickens and other poultry in their households for food and sustenance, it is common when it gets cold to bring the poultry inside the house for protection against the cold. Once inside the house, the children, who often already consider the chickens their pets, play with the poultry in very close quarters. Thus they are exposed to H5N1 and contract the virus. Voilà.

So, in summary, there’s a deadly disease circulating in Egypt that’s killed a high percentage of the people it’s infected and now it’s infecting a lot of very young children. And the government issued a decree today that it’s going to do something about it. As I already said, I was excited.

But then I realized that this decree was coming from the same government that ordered the culling of all the swine in the country when H1N1 – a strain of influenza that has never been transmitted from a pig to a human, that has never even been isolated in swine – broke out in the United States. I immediately knew the decree was going to be disappointing, and I was right.

The government of Egypt has now decreed that all official poultry farms will be moved out into the desert (a.k.a. the middle of nowhere) so as to eliminate any proximity to humans and strict biosafety measures will be implemented. At the same time, all unofficial poultry farms will be closed.

Now, if poultry farmers were the ones being affected by H5N1, this might seem like a logical and effective plan. Unfortunately, however, it seems to be just another attempt by the Egyptian government to show that they’re doing something, whether or not that something is appropriate.

Martha Stewart in Cairo

Summertime has been pretty quiet in Cairo. I haven't been traveling for work nearly as much as usual, and it's been way too hot to get excited about doing anything outside, so I've spent a good bit of time inside my flat.

I've taken on a few projects around the place and now have all kinds of ideas for painting walls and redecorating and the like. (You may need to refer to this post to understand why I feel the need to redecorate.) You might say I've been paying more attention than usual to the Martha Stewart-esque side of my personality. My most recent project has been to re-cover most of the furniture. I guess blue and yellow floral stripes just aren't my thing. And neither are black and gold Asian prints.

I started with the dining room chairs since they seemed easiest and posted the progress a while ago. Recently I decided to tackle the living room furniture. I knew this was an entirely new game for me. The dining room chairs project required nothing more than a pair of scissors, a hammer and a staple gun, but I knew the living room would require an actual sewing machine.

I thought I might want to purchase a sewing machine so I began looking. After about three weeks, I concluded that a sewing machine must be an incredibly difficult commodity to track down in Cairo, because I hadn't been able to find a single one. Thankfully, one of my colleagues told me that she had one and offered to loan it to me. I was thrilled at the prospect and took her up on the offer, ignoring her warnings that it's "a little old". I assured her it would be just fine.

I stopped by her flat one day after work to pick up the machine and quickly discovered that it was more than just "a little old". The machine weighs about 46 pounds (ok, that may be a slight exaggeration), comes with a bag of random metal pieces and a can of oil, and I'm pretty sure it hasn't been used in several years. I was terrified I would break it and intimidated, to say the least.
But thankfully, the antique sewing machine came with a small instruction booklet that, while also antique itself, was quite helpful, even if I was scared that the book itself would disintegrate any second!
Anyway, it wasn't nearly as bad as I had expected. I haven't finished quite finished the seat cushions, but I'm pretty proud of my accomplishments so far, so I thought I'd post a couple pictures of my progress.
(I know this is a little off the usual travel/social justice/health subjects about which I usually write, but it's another side of me and has taken up a lot of my time lately, so I had to go ahead and post it. Hope it's not too boring!)

Contruction elevator

There is no way that packing this many people into a tiny elevator over twelve stories in the air on a construction site can possibly be a good idea. It made me nervous even just to catch a glimpse of it out of the corner of my eye while at dinner tonight.

S...l...o...w...

I'm discovering that something strange happens in this region during the summertime.

Things....slow.....down...... Almost to a standstill (not that things move particularly quickly during the rest of the year, but that's a whole separate issue and conversation). And people think you're nuts if you imply that they shouldn't.

The reason? Simple. The heat. It's just too hot to do anything.

I suppose it's the same reasoning that's used to explain why we Southerners speak and move a little slower than the rest of the country, but in this region of the world, this excuse takes on an entirely new meaning. It really is unbearably hot. And so people don't work or shop or gather socially until the sun goes down. I now understand why the Egyptian population is pretty much nocturnal. It didn't make since during the winter months, but now it does. Quite simply, it's just too miserable and unbearable to be outside during the day.

The heat as certainly taken its toll on our work. Even though I've stayed just as busy as ever in the office, my work outside the U.S. Naval compound has pretty much been stopped dead in its tracks. No trainings for laboratory or hospital staff. No sample collection. No assessments of new facilities. No travel to meet and develop new collaborations. And there's practically no one in the office. Apparently everyone saves their vacation time for the summer and uses it to escape from the heat for two, three, four weeks at a time.

The Djiboutians "strongly suggested" in May that we not return to their country until September at the earliest. The Ghanaians haven't stressed the issue as much as other countries, but it's pretty obvious that things will move more smoothly after a couple more months. And here in Egypt, people look at me like I'm crazy if I try to set a timeline for anything to happen between now and October.

Up until now, the heat as been the primary factor in all of this, but I'm afraid another factor is approaching that will slow things even more. Ramadan, the Islamic holy month of fasting, in which Muslims refrain from eating, drinking and smoking from sunrise until sunset, will begin in late August. The Ramadan fast isn't like the version of fasting that most of us claim during Lent, when we give up chocolate or sweets or television; Ramadan is true fasting - not a morsel of food, not a drop of water, not a single cigarette (which I expect to be a huge deal here, where every single man chain smokes from sun up til sun down) - every day for a month from sun up til sun down. As much as things have slowed down over the past couple months due to the summer heat, I expect the few things that are still moving forward to grind to a complete stop when Ramadan begins.