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TRIP TO EGYPT REVEALS MUCH BEAUTY IN IRRIGATED DESERT
I am very thankful I live in America.
I just returned from a 18-day trip to Egypt. Many of the sights, sounds and smells of Egypt exceed my capacity of expression. It was a wonderful and unforgettable trip. Nonetheless, as we turned east on Hwy 494 towards home after a marathon series of airplane flights, I expressed thankfulness for the opportunity I've had to put down my roots in the United States of America.
Egypt has a history that eclipses our country's history by more than 20 times. Recorded history began in Egypt. Its story for most of its 5,000 years is told in the hieroglyphics chiseled into the walls of its temples, tombs, pyramids and monolithic statues.
Egypt is a study in contrasts. As I slipped my bank cash card into an ATM machine on the main street of Aswan, Egypt, and casually retrieved 300 pounds of Egyptian currency, donkey powered carts loaded with sugar cane, fresh produce and crates full of pigeons and ducks skillfully dodged busses and cars on the busy thoroughfare a few feet to my rear.
More than 95% of Egypt is as brown as the sand of the Sahara Desert. The other 5% is green as a spring lawn, thanks to the life-giving water of the Nile River, which bisects north-to-south the 386,000-square mile country (slightly bigger than the combined area of Texas and Oklahoma).
While we traveled by bus and camel through some of the desert, most of our time was spent in the irrigated Nile Valley, a lush and fertile strip of land which seldom exceeds 10 miles in width. This valley is intensively farmed, often with the exact methods used during the time of the pharaohs. I saw many farmers turning the soil by swinging heavy hoes. In other places, water buffaloes still pull single-bottom plows, and alfalfa for livestock is harvested using small hand scythes.
Fields seldom exceed a 1/10th of an acre, but the crops are some of the best I've seen anywhere in the world. The wheat crop, which was just beginning to take on the golden hues of ripening, appeared to me to hold promise of 100+ bushels per acre yields. To ward off flocks of grain-snatching birds, fields were decorated with plentiful scarecrows. In many wheat fields, human scarecrows sat at corners of fields - an indication that the cost of labor is less than the value of lost kernels of grain.
While most irrigation water is pumped mechanically from the river, I saw quite a few water wheels powered by water buffaloes that take turns walking in circles in two-hour shifts.
With the exception of Cairo, with its population of 18 million, most inhabitants of Egypt still purchase their fruit, vegetables, meat and other foodstuffs at street markets - the action centers in every town we visited. Vendors display and sell oranges, zucchini, tomatoes, beans, bananas, mango, watermelons, fish, goat meat, pigeons and chickens in much the same way that these commodities were marketed thousands of years ago.
The only tractors I observed were pulling wagons of sugar cane to barges on the river. The cane was still cut and loaded by hand, and much of it was still transported by donkey carts. One day I hired a buggy driver to take me several miles away from the river into the fields for a closer look at the local agriculture. We stripped the outer layers off stalks of sugar cane and sucked the sweet juice from the succulent canes. The buggy driver was so impressed with my pocketknife that I had to talk fast to get it back from him.
Most men in rural Egypt wear full-length robes called galibeyehs and draped head cloths as protection from the bright desert sun and to keep sand and dust out of their eyes. After experiencing the wind and blowing sand, I can understand their reluctance to give up this style for western-style clothes.
Purely by chance, our Egyptologist (tour guide) was an amateur horticulturist who is writing several books on the trees and plants of Egypt. Day after day, I soaked in the many nuggets of knowledge he shared on the growing behavior and healing properties of the hundreds of exotic plants we observed. I particularly enjoyed a tour of a botanical garden on Kitchener Island in Aswan.
Mango trees in full bloom gave off such an intoxicating fragrance that I yearned to transplant them in my yard. Oleander, bombax, wisteria, bougainvillea, poinsettia, hibiscus and many other trees, shrubs and flowers were also sporting colorful spring flowers. Date palms were in the early stages of fruit production.
The women in our group were enthralled with the Dolup Palm that, our guide said, is known for its oil that eliminates wrinkles from the skin.
Returning home to cold Minnesota, I wasted little time before rolling up my sleeves and planting dozens of containers of petunia, salvia, impatiens, ornamental grasses, rudbeckia and other seeds. Egypt was an incredible experience, but I'm ready now for gardening in Minnesota!
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PUTTING DOWN ROOTS:
A Delightful Blend of
Gardening Wisdom, Wit
and Whimsy
$10 + $2 for shipping
by Cliff Johnson |
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