St. Vincent in Egypt: April 2009

Dahab-April, 2009 New Friends, Quiet Times, and Relaxation

Kris and I have just returned from our week-long relaxing holiday in Dahab, Sinai Peninsula. We went there in the fall with a group of teachers, by bus, and the journey took 10 hours. This time we opted to fly to the southern tip of the Peninsula, to the city of Sharm el Sheikh.

We had arranged for a man named Hassan to pick us up at the Sharm airport. Hassan is a wonderful man, and over the course of our hour-long trek northward to Dahab, we learned about his family. His wife, Zhouza, was due to have her baby the very next day--a C-section. We asked if it might be possible for us to see his new-born baby sometime during our week in Dahab. So.....it turns out that one of the GREATEST thrills of our time there was the night Hassan picked us up and brought us to his apartment. When we entered the apartment his wife was in bed in the living room with baby daughter, Noor, next to her. We also met Hassan's mother, sister-in-law and very cute older daughter, Ayette. You will see several photos taken during that evening.

For the most part Kris and I really spent our time visiting, walking, reading, essentially "chilling out". I think we enjoyed the time spent with new friends met at restaurants or at the hotel more than anything else. By the end of the week we felt as though we had known the staff at the hotel forever, and we were able to do a lot of visiting with them. We also met so many nice people working at the restaurants and other shops in Dahab. We talked of many things: family, dreams, politics, whatever was on our mind at a given time.

The only arranged trip we took was to St. Catherine's Monastery. The monastery was founded in about 330 AD-a LONG time ago, and is one of the oldest functioning monasteries in the world. The Roman empress, Helena ordered a chapel to be built there in that year, and it is one of early Christianity's few surviving churches. It was built on some very historic real estate-at the foot of Mt. Sinai. In fact it was supposedly built on the site where Moses saw the Burning Bush and the chapel is called the Chapel of the Burning Bush. Inside the monastery grows a thorny evergreen bush, reputed to be a descendant of the original. The monastery is named after St. Catherine of Alexandria, a 4th Century martyr. She lost her head after first being spun around on the famous "Catherine wheel". Many tourists who come to the monastery then take the trek up Mt. Sinai to see the spot where Moses received the Ten Commandments. We didn't do that, as it takes about four hours, and we just didn't have the time. Many tourists climb the mountain at night so that they can witness the sunrise from the top. We didn't stay long inside the monastery as it was packed, and we only had an hour before the noon closing. There is still a small community of about 20 Greek Orthodox monks who live there, and they need to use it after the tourists have been chased out each day.

One of the interesting discussions we had during the week concerned the Bedouin people. The Sinai is home to thousands of Bedouins who have lived there and also in Saudi Arabia, Tunisia, and other places in the Middle East for thousands of years. They are a people apart from the predominant Egyptian, Saudi Arabian, Jordanian, etc. population in the countries where they live. To a certai degree one could compare them to Native Americans living in the U.S., Canada, and Central America. They have lived off the land in very harsh desert conditions and have survived the heat and rainless environment. The area around Dahab was and is Bedouin territory as is most of the Sinai Peninsula, and for most of recorded history that was not a problem, 'cause nobody else wanted to live there. For the past 30-40 years this has changed. When the Israelis had possession of the Peninsula they began building resorts along the Red Sea coastline. When the Egyptian govt. regained ownership of the land, they continued the trend, and today there are resorts to be found all over, particularly in the area around Sharm el Sheikh. There are some extremely posh resorts there. There has been a lot of development in Dahab, too, but not nearly as much, and it is a much quieter area.

Anyway, some of the Bedouins have had their way of life disrupted, but they have also, in some cases, begun to assert themselves. They have made ownership claims in certan areas of the Peninsula. For instance, at the Rocketa Hotel, where we stayed, there must be some kind of joint ownership between an Egyptian group and the local Bedouin people. I never did get the whole story, but there were Bedouin folks coming in and out of the hotel all week, and they have a tent outside the hotel where they would set up shop during the day... From what I could tell through my conversations with the staff at the hotel, the relationship between the Bedouin people and Egyptians is not necessarily warm and fuzzy, but that opinion was formed after having talked to just a few people.....I want to find out more.........

I will let the photos do the rest of the "talking"......Happy Easter to Everyone!!!