Bill's Blog

After getting through the Zabbaleen streets, we reached the beautiful monastery named in honor of St. Simon. We didn’t explore much of the monastery because the afternoon breezes were sending odors from the garbage city into the monastery and Nadia couldn’t take it. We did manage to enter the huge outdoor church inside a shallow cave-like formation and sit for a bit to soak in the atmosphere. I am fascinated with the Coptic Church. Coptic tradition dates back to the St. Mark (author of one of the four books of the Gospel) who founded the Church of Alexandria, Egypt between 42 and 60 AD. Of course ancient history is difficult to verify with so much time passing and no video/digital documentation back then. He was martyred under the reign of the Roman Emperor Nero in 68 AD. Today’s Coptic Pope is considered a successor to Mark. The Copts separated from the Roman and Byzantine churches in 451 AD, more than 500 years before the split Orthodox and Roman churches. It looked more like an Orthodox alter than a Catholic alter. The word “Copt” derives from the Greek Aigyptios, meaning “Egyptian”. The Coptic language is only used in the ceremonies and liturgy today after so many centuries of the growth of Arabic in Egypt. It uses mostly Greek letters and Copts consider it to be the last stage of language of the Pharaohs. Estimates put the population at around of 10% of Egypt today.

St. Simon is traditionally place in the 10th century (900s) and the location centers on the Mokattam Mountain miracle. The mountain is said to have moved in response to the faith of the community. A local leader challenged the Christian community by citing the Biblical verse that a mustard seed could move a mountain. The mountain is said to have moved three times. Saint Simon also represents a “blue collar” profession. Tanners take livestock skins and turn them into leather and it was considered an unclean profession in those times. That must resonate with the waste management workers in the Zabbaleen community that built the monastery.

I recommend visiting early in the morning to avoid traffic delays going through Garbage City. I also would wear a mask if you are sensitive to odors.

When you get to be my age (59 years old) and having traveled the world for almost 40 years, I don’t often have totally novel experiences. Yesterday afternoon Nadia and I visited the Monastery of St. Simon “The Tanner” which is less than 2 kilometers as the crow flies from our house. The monastery is carved into the cliffs of the Mokattam Plateau. The church is beautiful and one of a kind. What makes is even more fascinating is driving through Garbage City to get there. The Zabbaleen (Garbage Collectors in Egyptian Arabic) is a community that makes its living by collecting, sorting and recycling a good portion of metropolitan Cairo’s waste and garbage.

There are no warehouses or waste management facilities, families sort through bags of rubbish in the streets and in their homes. It is literally everywhere in the narrow streets. Waste laden trucks constantly come into the city and dump it for others to sort and turn into prime material for recycling. The entire city smelled like a combination of sour milk mixed with vomit. It was like the sequel to BladeRunner but after a nuclear bomb made it even more dystopian. I couldn’t believe what I was seeing. The place had a normal community feeling however, with people going about their day. School kids walking home in their uniforms, old men drinking coffee in a cafe, a vendor waiting for customers in his appliance store, etc.

The Zabbaleen are a group of Coptic Christians that migrated to Mokattam in the 1930s and 1940s from southern Egypt. They have carved out (literally and figuratively) a living under the cliffs through being the waste management company of the city. You can watch the 2009 documentary “Garbage Dreams” that follows the lives of three Zabbaleen teenagers.

We didn’t stay long at the monastery because Nadia is sensitive to strong odors. There was no entrance charge to the monastery and we did see the main cathedral, but couldn’t explore the rest of the complex. On the way out of Garbage City after visiting the monastery, we had a Homeland moment. We were stuck in traffic and waiting for the truck in front of us to move, when suddenly a group of men wielding knives and machetes walked around the cars in the narrow street. A guy in the middle of the group was screaming with blood flowing from his head that was wrapped in a rags. It looked to me that he had been attacked and a vigilante mob was seeking the perpetrator. Thankfully they were hot on the trail of someone and quickly walked past us, but our car was vulnerable, stuck between two trucks front and back, and apartments on both sides of the road. It felt like we were in a movie. I wonder if they found the alleged attacker and what form of justice did they seek?

I’ll post about the monastery next. Here video Nadia shot as we made our way through the streets up to the monastery.

I ran the 10 kilometer race this morning in the Roody 50X in the nearby Wadi Degla Protectorate Nature Reserve. Ultra Ibex is a trail running and outdoor adventure events organizer. One of the founders of the organization, Raid Gamaleldin, is a parent at our school. I connected with him through his daughter leads a conservation group at our school. It was natural for me to participate considering my love of silent sports (trail running, cycling, nordic skiing) and environmental conservation. Raid told me that he started the race five years ago when he turned 50 years old and to celebrate, he ran a 50-kilometer race. He is now 55 years old and so he ran the 55-kilometer race. There was a 28-kilometer, 10-kilometer, and 5-kilometer categories.

My race was running 5 kilometers into the canyon and returning to the starting line. It was slightly uphill with only one elevation gain at around the 2.7 kilometer mark where there is a small dam. The canyon was formed by winds and occasional flash floods. It is unique to have a desert canyon on the edge of a metropolis of over 20 million people. My Strava app paused during the run while I was shooting video so I didn’t have an exact time. It was a minute or two before or after the one hour mark, which was my goal. With a bit of training, I can certainly improve my time. I felt strong coming to the end of the run. I haven’t run a race for awhile and I was exhilarated to be in a competition with others. I do more cycling that running to preserve my knees from a lifetime of distance running.

The Ultra Ibex calendar of races is amazing with trail runs in the deserts and mountains of the Sinai Peninsula and wadis along the Red Sea. The shortest distances are between 25 and 30 kilometers which I may not be up to. We’ll see how I feel this year.

We had a strong turnout for the cleanup following the races. The German Embassy, Maadi Normer School, a couple of universities, private citizens and our group from the American International School Egypt. In the first 3 kilometers of the canyon there is a lot of litter and garbage from campers and groups spending the day in the canyon. There is an almost overwhelming amount of cigarette butts, plastic food containers, potato chip bags, etc. left by picnickers. The “pack in – pack out” mentality is not here in Egypt.

My daughter got me hooked on a Japanese company’s “Life Books” that I absolutely love. Hobonichi Techo has been making planners since 2001. Japanese culture is obsessive compulsive about many things, including designing great products. The company’s designers put a lot of thought into producing a useful notebook that is meant to last as an artifact or record of one’s life for the year. The Tomoe River paper is sturdy but thin so you can fit an entire calendar year (1 page per day) in the notebook. It also has weekly sections, monthly sections and various pages to record information. I ordered the Hon model for 2027, the same I have for 2026.

I had to preserve for posterity the video exchange Ocean and I had. She had them delivered to her dormitory at Northern Michigan University. We both love stationery, notebooks, and school supplies. She will be visiting us in December and I can’t wait to see her.

I was surprised to learn there was a nature reserve a 25-minute drive way from our home. The Wadi Degla Reserve protects a long, dry limestone valley that narrows into canyon-like stretches with walls up to 50 meters high. I think the most amazing aspect of the reserve is that is adjacent to a metropolitan area of over 20 million people. Wadi is the Arabic word for a valley, specifically a dry riverbed or canyon in a desert that carries water only during occasional heavy rains. Flash floods can rush through them with little warning during the few times it rains here. The canyon is carved out of 500 million year old limestone. It used to be the Tethys Sea when the continents were splitting. Visitors can find fossil shells, urchins and coin-shaped single-cell organisms called nummulites.

Nadia and I drove over to do a reconnaissance of the reserve for a race and cleanup that is taking place later this month. We found groups of visitors have picnics/BBQ and a few hikers. You can probably drive all the way through the valley that is between 12 and 30 kilometers (online research). We drove about 10 minutes and Obi and I walked up a side canyon to get a better view of the park. It would be beautiful around sunset. The term Degla may means Tigris in Arabic and the nearby neighborhood has the same name. It is odd that the valley is named after a river in Iraq.

Two aspects of the park I didn’t like were the garbage/litter that collects in rocky areas and the pack of dogs near the entrance. I am looking forward to exploring more of the canyons.

One of the insightful things about reading a digital book is that it tracks how much time you spend reading it. I first opened this book 1 week ago and I spent 8 hours and 42 minutes reading the novel. It didn’t feel like almost 9 hours, but it is surprising how much time you can accumulate reading in moments when you are waiting in the car for your wife, shopping and IKEA and trying to falling asleep.

The two things I most like about Tokarczuk is she is a beautiful writer and an original thinker. I highlighted many passages of writing and was delighted with the fresh thinking she puts into her characters. The protagonist of the story is Janina Duszejko who lives in a remote, mountain village in the Klodzko Valley, near the border with the Czech Republic. I’ve been to Warsaw and Krakow and much of my ancestry is from Eastern Poland so I have an interest in the region and culture. Olga is an activist and voice against the right-wing, conservative politics and aspects of Polish culture. She is a spokesperson against anti-semitism and anti-gay views, as well as supporting animal rights and feminism. The book was originally publised in 2009 in Polish and translated in 2018 into English by Antonia Lloyd-Jones and was adapted into the film Spoor in 2017. She has lots of fresh ideas, such as wondering why the brain cannot process all of the body’s internal processes. We need blood and urine tests, x-rays, cat scans, MRIs, etc. to figure out what is going on. Janina is regarded by most of the village as a crazy, old woman, but she has a good core of close friends that There were many passages that I highlighted below.

• “Sometimes, when a Person feels Anger, everything seems simple and obvious. Anger puts things in order and shows you the world in a nutshell; Anger restores the gift of Clarity of Vision, which is hard to attain in any other state.”
• “Long years of unhappiness cause a Person worse degradation than a fatal illness.”
• “It is at Dusk that the most interesting things occur, for that is when simple differences fade away. I could live in everlasting dusk.”
• “One thing’s for sure – these houses won’t be here; my efforts are insignificant, they’d fit on a pinhead, just like my life as well. That should never be forgotten.”
• “Nowadays no one still has the courage to think up anything new. All they ever talk about, round the clock, is how things already are, they just keep rolling out the same old ideas. Reality has grown old and gone senile; after all, it is definitely subject to the same laws as every living organism- it ages. Just like the cells of the body…” – education suffers from group think
• “…he told me, probably quoting Luther, that he who suffers sees the back of God.” – A Catholic criticizing a Protestant
• “Children are soft and supple, open-minded and unpretentious.” – that is why it is so uplifting to interact with young people
• “On a Wednesday in January, at seven in the morning, it’s plain to see that the world was not made for Man, and definitely not for his comfort or pleasure.” – winter mornings, cold, dark, painful, better to be in bed
• “It’s better to live with someone than alone. It’s easier to go through life together than on one’s own.”
• “I would go into the forest – I could wander around it endlessly. Here things were quieter, the forest was like a vast, deep, welcoming refuge in which one could hide. It lulled my mind.”
• “One has to tell people what to think. There’s no alternative. Otherwise someone else will do it.”
• “For people of my age, the places that they truly loved and to which they once belonged are no longer there. The places of their childhood and youth have ceased to exist…the parks with uncomfortable benches where their first loves blossomed, the cities, cafes and houses of their past.”
• “So for people like me the only thing possible is here and now, for every future is doubtful, everything yet to come is barely sketched and uncertain, like a mirage that can be destroyed by the slightest twitch of the air.”
• “Everything will pass. The wise Man knows this from the start, and has no regrets.”
• “every single Person has their own expression which he or she overuses. Or uses incorrectly. Generally – Apparently – Don’t you think – In truth”
• “lifetime opportunities are missed, because you overslept, because you didn’t feel like going, because you were late, because you were neglectful. It’s a tendency to be sybaritic, to live in a state of mild semiconsciousness, to fritter your life away on petty pleasures, to dislike effort and be devoid of any penchant for competition.”
• “President was pretty good at carousing, and had a wild, typically Slavic streak, dangerous for himself and others.”
• “This drifter physician reminded me that we should never make ourselves too comfortable in any particular place, in which case I had probably gone too far with my house.”

• apoptosis – programmed cell death
• foehn wind – wind falling down the leeward side of a mountain; warm and dry after dropping moisture on the way up the windward side; the name from the Alps in Switzerland; Santa Ana in southern California; chinook in the Rockies; Eastern European folklore claims it causes headaches, irritability, and unease
• reconnoiter – a military observation
• hyleg – astrology term, Persian-Arabic term for the planet with the most important position
• postprandial walk – post meal walk

This is the first book I read of the 2018 Nobel Prize laureate in Literature. I will seek out her Man Booker Prize book, Flights.

Uptown Cairo is a 1,000-1,200 acre master-plan gated community built atop the Mokattam Mountain, a huge limestone plateau rising 200 meters above the eastern desert of New Cairo. Emaar Properties, the Dubai company that built the world’s tallest building, the Burj Khalifa, and downtown Dubai, developed Uptown Cairo starting in 2007. The gated community is very different than much of Cairo, looking more like Spain or Arizona than Egypt. Legal disputes with the Egyptian government have plagued the developers and it has slowed completion of the compound. The most recent settlement dictates Emaar must finish by 2028. We live in one of the many phases which are mixed, with some being massive, multi-million dollar villas down to nice, furnished apartments. The center piece is a beautiful golf course that rarely has golfers. In Egypt I noticed several compounds with golf courses that are more for the views than actually playing golf. There is also a retail center (grocery store, internet office, restaurants, cafes, etc.) which is convenient.

My two favorite aspects of living here are first, being close to the school so we have a short commute, and second, I can get decent bicycle rides in and around the compound safely. Emaar installed many speed bumps all over keep vehicles moving slowly and they have wide, tree-lined roads that provide shade and a smooth rides. The hills are a good size, not soul-crushing mountains of Uzbekistan, but more like the hills in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. I can get 20-25 kilometer bike ride any time. It is a little bit boring taking the same routes, but living in the megapolis of Cairo, I am grateful I am able to ride safely anytime. We haven’t played tennis yet at the sports center, but Nadia has swam laps in the pool and worked out with her trainer in the gym at the nearby community center.

Often expatriates like to live in more vibrant parts of Cairo like Maadi or Zamalek. At our ages, Nadia and I prefer the quiet and convenience of a gated community, sacrificing proximity to cafés, restaurants, and the visual feast of street life in Cairo. There is a nearby district of Mokattam, that looks like downtown Cairo, Mumbai, Bangkok, etc. We can drive down the mountain to get some of that. Obi is begging me for a walk, so I need to stop writing.

As a teacher and thinking human being I feel it is important to continue to read books in this digital, social media age. Reading a novel feels a bit old fashioned these days. Thinking about a story or subject of long periods of time is very different than swiping through Instagram. Young people are reading less and it shows on PISA scores and other measurements of reading comprehension. Yes, there are great documentary videos and one can learn much from YouTube, however, I stand by the idea that people who don’t read and write, don’t think at the same level as those that do. I read because I find it pleasurable to immerse myself in a story (fiction) or in a subject (non-fiction), but I also read as a lead learner as a Head of School.

I breezed through Tom Perrotta’s latest novel, Ghost Town. I loved his book The Leftovers, that was made into a hit HBO television series. This is the story of a successful author thinking back to the summer between grade 8 and grade 9 in the fictional town of Creamwood, New Jersey. It is set in 1974, my post grade 8 summer was 1981, but I could relate very well to the vibe of the community. It was a time of civic participation and the main character, Jimmy Perrini was a counselor helper in the community center. Before mobile phones and internet, people had to go out to connect to one another. It was a tragic summer for Jimmy, I am not going to spoil it here. It is story of grief and coming-of-age. It is also a story of memory which I could also relate to. I grew up in a small town and left to travel the world. Unlike the author, I did come back and visit through my life, but having been overseas now for over 30 years, my childhood seems like such a long time ago in a different place. I love going back to Caspian and the friendships I formed so long ago are still intact. The book also has a supernatural element like the Leftovers.

[Spoilers below]

Jimmy loses both parents in that tragic summer. The impact of a death of a parent on a young person is strong. I see that in my wife, Nadia, who lost her mother when she was nine. Children don’t process events like adults because their brains are not fully formed. Jimmy is also discovering girls and dating, Little League Baseball, drinking and smoking pot, while going through the first parent’s death (mother to cancer), but then a second death of his father. I don’t think the book will be made into television series, unless they change the ending and add a bit more to the supernatural element. They did that with the Leftovers.

Overall, it was an enjoyable read, not his best book, but a solid story.

Our lives are finally getting into a bit of routine. We have a spacious, beautiful “twin house” or “twin villa” as they are called in Uptown Cairo’s compounds. A twin house means there are two units joined by a single shared wall. We have our own garden and pool wrapping around three sides of our house. In the US it would be called a semi-detached house or duplex. The house came unfurnished and we have pretty much completed furnishing it. This week natural gas was installed and our oven and stove top is now working. The living and dining room looks great as well as two of the bedrooms. We are working towards unpacking everything in the third bedroom. We have not explored yet the third floor and roof top patio yet.

We finished our third week of school and both of us, Nadia and me are getting used to the new school culture. We have friendly and helpful colleagues who have made the transition much easier. Nadia went swimming in the community center pool and we worked out how to reserve the tennis courts. Neither of us are golfers, but I am using the golf course to run and walk with Obi. There is a Carrefour grocery store and an Orange store inside the compound that takes care of internet, phones, and groceries. We also found a dog washing and haircut service that drives their van right to the house as well as a laundary/dry cleaning service until we get some domestic help.

I found a great bicycle shop in the nearby New Cairo district of Mokattam. The name refers to the low range of hills and a plateau and this area was a limestone quarry for the ancient temples and pyramids. Emaar Misr, a subsidary of the Emaar Properties, a Dubai-based real estate company, is building a series of residential developments around our school here in the Eastern Desert, about a 30-minute drive away from the Nile River. Uptown Cairo looks like Spain or Tempe, Arizona, outside, it looks like many parts of Cairo, an Arab version of Mumbai or Delhi. I am looking forward to exploring more of the plateau the New Cairo district of Mokattam.

I awoke a little late on Friday morning after falling asleep on Thursday night, a bit later than usual because Nadia and I were talking with the kids. I was excited to run in Miles for Meaning 7-kilometer Race. This was advertised on Instagram and a local ticket entertainment website as taking place September 18 at 8:00 AM inside the pyramid complex at Giza. When we arrived, there were no runners anywhere and no course set up. They took my $18 but offered no race.

We made the best out of a disappointing situation by being tourists at the last intact Seven Wonders of the Ancient World. I don’t mind tourist places, Nadia definitely doesn’t like tourist places like this, however, seeing the huge pyramids is a breath-taking, awe-inspiring experience. The pyramids are huge and to think they were build over 5,000 years ago is crazy to contemplate. Humans started in Africa and the Nile River Valley was one of the cradles of civilization.

Local officials set up the site well, with plenty of desert between the pyramids and the massive city of Cairo. They have a hop-on, hop-off bus that does a loop to a panoramic viewing site, each of the three pyramids, and at the far side, the Sphinx. There are also camel and buggy rides, souvenirs, interpretive centers, and tourists can go inside the largest of the pyramids as well. It is well worth seeing and considering they are only a 40-minute drive away, Nadia and I will be visiting them several times as we show family and friends who come to visit.

I guess without Netflix and legal marijuana, the ancient Egyptians had more time on their hands to do stuff. Why would they go to the effort of putting massive stones over 150 meters high in the shape of a perfect pyramid? I wonder if they thought that in 5,000 years, millions of people annually would visit their legacy. They truly are a global icon with the Great Wall of China. The three pyramids at the complex are as follows:

• Great Pyramid of Khufu (Cheops) Built c. 2560 BCE for the pharaoh Khufu, it is the largest (146.6 meters – 481 ft tall) and oldest of the three.
• Pyramid of Khafre (Chephren) Built for Khufu’s son, Khafre later in the same century with the Great Sphinx built as part of that complex.
• Pyramid of Menkaure Built for Khafre’s successor, the smallest of the three (65 meters – 215 feet) and pink granite instead of limestone.

The Sphinx was carved out of limestone and the human head is believed to be a likeness of Khafre. 73 meters long and 20 meters high, for millenia is was buried in sand until excavated in the early 1900s.

These structures are so old that by the time the Jews were in Egypt and the Biblical story of Moses, they were ancient to them.