Zabbaleen Cave Church in Cairo
My friend Hayfa sends me the most amazing things. Her mind is another Here, There and Everywhere Kind of mind. 🙂
This article resonates with me because when we moved to Tunis, the garbage collectors would fight over our trash. I felt horrible, we had an infant, and there were diapers in the trash. 😦 Our maid would take cans and jars and especially jars with lids out of the trash, and ask if she could take them. We learned before throwing anything away to see if she wanted it first. They used, and re-used, everything. We learned to look at our consumption in a whole new way. It was one of the best things about living in an ‘alien’ community; we learned to see ourselves with different eyes.
Thank you, Hayfa, for this fascinating article.
The Cave Church of the Zabbaleen in Cairo
The Monastery of Saint Simon, also known as the Cave Church, is located in the Mokattam mountain in southeastern Cairo, Egypt, in an area that is known as ‘garbage city’ because of the large population of garbage collectors or Zabbaleen that live there. The Zabbaleen are descendants of farmers who started migrating from Upper Egypt to Cairo in the 1940s. Fleeing poor harvests and poverty they came to the city looking for work and set-up makeshift settlements around the city. Initially, they stuck to their tradition of raising pigs, goats, chickens and other animals, but eventually found collecting and sorting of waste produced by the city residents more profitable.
The Zabbaleen would sort through household garbage, salvaging and selling things of value, while the organic waste provided an excellent source of food for their animals. In fact, this arrangement worked so well, that successive waves of migrants came from Upper Egypt to live and work in the newly founded garbage villages of Cairo.
For years, the makeshift settlements of the Zabbaleen were moved around the city trying to avoid the municipal authorities. Finally, a large group of Zabbaleen settled under the cliffs of the Mokattam or Moquattam quarries at the eastern edge of the city, which has now grown from a population of 8,000 in the early 1980s, into the largest garbage collector community in Cairo, with approximately 30,000 Zabbaleen inhabitants. Egypt is a Muslim-majority country, but the Zabbaleen are Coptic Christians, at least, 90 percent of them are. Christian communities are rare to find in Egypt, so the Zabbaleen prefer to stay in Mokattam within their own religious community even though many of them could afford houses elsewhere.
The local Coptic Church in Mokattam Village was established in 1975. After the establishment of the church, the Zabbaleen felt more secure in their location and only then began to use more permanent building materials, such as stone and bricks, for their homes. Given their previous experience of eviction from Giza in 1970, the Zabbaleen had lived in temporary tin huts up till that point. In 1976, a large fire broke out in Manshiyat Nasir, which led to the beginning of the construction of the first church below the Mokattam mountain on a site of 1,000 square meters. Several more churches have been built into the caves found in Mokattam, of which the Monastery of St. Simon the Tanner is the largest with a seating capacity of 20,000. In fact, the Cave Church of St. Simon in Mokattam is the largest church in the Middle East.
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Not The Day We Expected . . .
And once again, we have to laugh at God’s perfect timing.
I love Thursdays. Thursdays are the only day I have unscheduled. Once a month on a Thursday I have a meeting, but other than that, Thursdays are mine, and I luxuriate in them.
This morning I slept in an hour, then went leisurely through my Lectionary readings and scanned my e-mail. AdventureMan had other plans, but as we talked over our day, decided he wanted to come with me to the commissary. It’s fine with me. We have always had some of our best conversations in the car, and he doesn’t follow me around in the commissary asking questions like “do we really need this?” the kinds of questions that drive wives to homicidal thinking. There are some benches in the commissary, AdventureMan calls them the Old Farts benches, and he picks up his specialty bird seeds and supplies, then settles in to watch for me coming down the last lane.
Four minutes after we left the house, we got a call from our son, tied up on a case, that little Q broke his arm on the playground, could we go pick him up? We were only about five minutes from his school and were there in a flash. AdventureMan/BaBa rode in the ambulance while I drove over to our son’s home to care for the baby while Q’s Mom zipped to meet them at the hospital emergency room.
It took all day. Between the transporting and the paperwork and the x-rays and the setting of the bones (yep, two bones broken), by the time we all met up again, I no longer had any interest in hitting the commissary. I will try again tomorrow, God willing.
Meanwhile, we marvel at how wonderful it is to be here in Pensacola, to be on call for emergencies like this, and that we were just minutes from his school when our son’s call came. We love it that we can be useful in these emergencies, that we are here to help and that we can be helpful. Once again, we thank God for his perfect timing.
Meanwhile, Mom called and gave me no sympathy whatever. She laughed! “Remember your sister broke both her arms before she was six, and you both broke legs skiing!” she chortled. Ouch! I guess little boy Q comes from a family of risk-takers. His dad broke exactly the same arm in the same place jumping to grab on to a high bar once. His son said “I thought I could fly. . . but I can’t.” It’s in the genes. :-}
My Travel Must-Have
I don’t like large handbags. I am small; a large bag is disproportionate. At the same time, I wanted a bag big enough to stick my computer in without looking like a briefcase. I wanted to be able to take my computer to Alaska with me.
I looked and looked, searching for the right bag. I looked in Pensacola, I looked online, I looked in Seattle. It had to be the right size, a nice heavy leather, a sturdy leather carry strap, and a neutral color as I was only taking one bag. Finally, at the very last minute I found this wonderful bag, and the computer fit beautifully, leaving room for my camera and wallet – what more do I need, right?
Then, me being me, the night before leaving for Alaska I decided I really did not need to carry a full sized computer, that the iPad had enough capacity and besides, it had books and Sudoku on it. But I still liked the purse; I stuck a nightshirt inside in case my luggage got lost, it has a side zip pocket for tickets, car rental brochures and car keys, and with everything inside, it was still roomy and not too heavy. It is wonderful boarding airplanes with just a purse!
By the end of the trip, I was in love. It is a great bag, goes everywhere, can be filled or used with little, it is versatile. I love this bag!
Recipe For Life
Thank you, Renee, for sending this lovely little reminder of how to lead a happy life:
Great Recipe (one of the best that you will ever read)
1. Take a 10-30 minute walk every day. And while you walk, smile. It is the ultimate antidepressant.
2. Sit in silence for at least 10 minutes each day.
Talk to God about what is going on in your life.
3. When you wake up in the morning complete the following
statement, ‘My purpose is to__________ today. I am thankful for______________’
4. Eat more foods that grow on trees and plants and eat less food that is manufactured in plants.
5. Drink green tea and plenty of water. Eat blueberries, wild
Alaskan salmon, broccoli, almonds & walnuts.
6. Try to make at least three people smile each day.
7. Don’t waste your precious energy on gossip, issues of the
past, negative thoughts or things you cannot control. Instead
invest your energy in the positive present moment.
8. Eat breakfast like a king, lunch like a prince and dinner like a college kid with a maxed out charge card.
9. Life isn’t fair, but it’s still good.
10. Life is too short to waste time hating anyone.
11. Don’t take yourself so seriously. No one else does.
12. You are not so important that you have to win every argument. Agree to disagree.
13. Make peace with your past so it won’t spoil the present.
14. Don’t compare your life to others. You have no idea what their journey is all about
.
15. No one is in charge of your happiness except you.
16. Frame every snowballed disaster with these words: ‘In five years, will this matter?’
17. Forgive everyone for everything.
18. What other people think of you is none of your business.
19. GOD heals everything – but you have to ask Him.
20. However good or bad a situation is, it will change.
21. Your job won’t take care of you when you are sick. Your
friends will. Stay in touch!!!
22. Envy is a waste of time. You have everything you need.
23. Each night before you go to bed, complete the following statements: I am thankful for__________.
Today I accomplished_________.
24. Remember that you are too blessed to be stressed.
25. When you are feeling down, start listing your many blessings. You’ll be smiling before you know it.
26. Send this to everyone you care about.
“);
Justin Cronin: The Twelve
I had downloaded The Twelve to my iPad for a trip, but didn’t get to it, and sort of forgot it was there until my son mentioned he was listening to it on audio-books, and it was good, maybe even better than the first book in the trilogy, The Passage. He had loaned me The Passage several years ago when it came out, and as soon as I finished, I got on the list to download as soon as the next book came out – it was that good.
Cronin’s gift is an ability to create a future world entirely different from our own, with a devastating enemy – the virals – who, literally, are us, transformed. Cronin can make the enemy terrifying, destructive, truly horrifying – and can make them also captive to their repugnant nature and even pitiable. I think that is an amazing dance for an author to accomplish.
The setting is post-apocalyptic USA; the government had a sector working on a secret weapon which – of course – was not able to be contained, creating 12 super vampire-like creatures called Virals, who in turn create hordes of minions. This volume, The Twelve, is set more than 100 years later, but shifts back to earlier times to help us understand how this disaster occurred, and how characters relate back to the earliest times of the disaster. The populations live in fear of sudden attacks; one family, out on a picnic, are almost totally wiped out by an eclipse for which the Virals were prepared – and the families were not.
As I read his books, I find them very cinematic, but, as my son and I discussed, too complex for a movie; it would need a gritty HBO series like The Wire, or OZ, or Deadwood to capture the subtleties, the nuances that make this a best-selling series. The heroes and heroines are all make for the screen, their relationships – and inter-relationships – make them interesting, and then, as we learn more, interesting again. We never know enough to make a final judgement on any character; the characters are complex and the relationships obscure until the author chooses to reveal. It makes it fun to try to spot them before he tells us. I missed a couple!
Although it can be read as a great-adventure stand-alone, you’ll be happier if you read The Passage before you read The Twelve. If you have a problem with postponing gratification, you might want to wait until the third and conclusive volume of the trilogy is published – and that may be a year or so.
World War Z
I talked AdventureMan into going to see World War Z with me – us and half of Pensacola showed up for the early matinee, and we got the last two seats. I had thought it’s been out for a while and people would be going to see something else, but all the theaters showing it in Pensacola are selling out every show. That doesn’t mean every seat was already filled – a lot of people had bought tickets online but weren’t there. On the other hand, while we got two good seats – they were – LOL – at opposite ends of the row!
World War Z is not a movie where you want to be sitting on opposite ends of the row.
World War Z is Contagion on steroids.
Did you ever see Romero’s 1968 Night of the Living Dead? I used to love scary movies, until I saw that movie. The scary movies were funny, not so scary at all – and George Romero changed all that with this low-budget horror classic. I think I liked it because it had a scientific kind of origin – a virus.
World War Z takes a similar approach, a scientific approach, and it is also very scary because it is hard, very hard, to be scientific and observant when your entire world becomes unsafe, when everything you known has turned to chaos. The zombies aren’t so damaged and tattered as Romero’s zombies, but they have the same herd mentality, a frenzied mob mentality, and an Alien-like skittering and swarming that makes my skin crawl.
I love seeing Brad Pitt as a responsible family man. He does it well. He has to make some very tough decisions in this movie, and you get to see that this sweet family man has another, tougher side.
AdventureMan was glad we went; he also thinks this will be a great computer game. We agreed it was scary because it had some things in it that truly can make life dangerous – you know, political leaders dying en masse, political and social systems dissolving and life becoming a brute struggle for survival with scarce resources . . . having swarming zombies kicks all that up a notch.
Not a movie for anyone under five. Maybe not even ten, if the kids are sensitive, or prone to bad dreams . . .
Our son said we need to read the book; it’s only sort-of like the movie, and has a lot of very edgy things to say about our current political system and leaders. Hmmmm. . . might have to do that.
Florida Man Shot in Case of Mistaken Identity
U.S. News
Suspect denied bond in I-4 shooting death in Florida
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Published: July 2, 2013 at 9:32 PM
TAMPA, Fla., July 2 (UPI) — The suspect in the Interstate 4 shooting death in Florida was denied bail Tuesday and authorities now say it’s a case of mistaken identity, not road rage.
Jerome Edward Hayes will have another bail hearing next week, WFTS-TV, Tampa, reported.
Hayes is charged with first-degree murder in the slaying of Fred Turner, 47, Saturday. He turned himself in Monday.
His attorney described Hayes as a “soft-spoken, nice guy.”
“You take a look at him, you talk to him, he does not seem like the kind of person that could possibly commit this kind of crime,” Nick Matassini Jr. said.
The TV station said police have obtained the gun and car involved in the shooting. Investigators say Turner was in the wrong place at the wrong time.
“The victim was mistaken for an individual who was involved in an altercation with the suspect’s friend inside the Gold Club,” Col. Donna Lusczynski said.
Hayes and a friend allegedly were in a fight at the strip club and waited outside for their opponent. But they mistakenly followed the wrong person, who had been in an adjacent business.
“Mr. Turner was followed from the location by the suspect to the interstate, where he was shot several times,” Lusczynski said.
Turner was on the phone with a 911 operator, telling the dispatcher he was being followed and had not done anything to precipitate a confrontation when he was shot, she said.
Arabs wary of expressing their opinions online
Fascinating study results published in Qatar’s Gulf Times:
Northwestern University in Qatar has released new findings from an eight-nation survey indicating many people in the Arab world do not feel safe expressing political opinions online despite sweeping changes in the aftermath of the Arab Spring.
From over 10,000 people surveyed in Lebanon, Tunisia, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Qatar, Jordan and the UAE, 44% expressed some doubt as to whether people should be free to criticise governments or powerful institutions online.
Over a third of Internet users surveyed said they worry about governments checking what they do online.
According to the report, “The implied concern (of governments checking what they do online) is fairly consistent in almost all countries covered, but more acute in Saudi Arabia, where the majority (53%) of those surveyed expressed this concern.”
The study – titled ‘Media Use in the Middle East – An Eight-Nation Survey’ – was undertaken by researchers at NU-Q to better understand how people in the region use the Internet and other media. It comes as the university moves towards a more formalised research agenda and is the first in what will be a series of reports relating to Internet use.
The survey includes a specific chapter on Qatar, the only country where those surveyed regarded the Internet as a more important source of news than television. “We took an especially close look at media use in the State of Qatar – a country with one of the highest Internet penetration rates in the Arab world—and internationally,” said NU-Q dean and CEO Everette Dennis.
These findings follow a preliminary report NU-Q released last April that showed web users in the Middle East support the freedom to express opinions online, but they also believe the Internet should be more tightly regulated. “While this may seem a puzzling paradox, it has not been uncommon for people the world over to support freedom in the abstract but less so in practice,” Dennis explained.
Among other findings, the research shows: 45% of people think public officials will care more about what they think and 48% believe they can have more influence by using the Internet.
Adults in Lebanon (75%) and Tunisia (63%) are the most pessimistic about the direction of their countries and feel they are on the ‘wrong track.’
Respondents were far more likely to agree (61%) than disagree (14%) that the quality of news reporting in the Arab world has improved in the past two years, however less than half think overall that the news sources in their countries are credible.
Online transactions are rare in the Middle East, with only 35% purchasing items online and only 16% investing online.
The complete set of results from the survey is available online at menamediasurvey.northwestern.edu. The new interactive pages hosting the survey on the website have features that allow users to make comparisons between different countries, as well as between different demographics within each country.
Dennis confirmed that the research report is the first in an annual series of reports produced in collaboration with the World Internet Project; one of the world’s most extensive studies on the Internet, in which NU-Q is a participating institution.
NU-Q and WIP signed an agreement earlier in the year, providing a global platform for the current research.
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