We walk to the Nile and meet Sayd, the captain of the “Mama Africa” Felucca who stands out as a nice guy amongst all the touts. We negotiate the price of a two hour sunset sail on the Nile, but to do that, he first invites us to have tea with him on board-the normal precursor to doing business in Egypt. I tell him about the popular American book “Three cups of Tea” and explain that the book describes the journey over tea one takes in Afghanistan from visitor to guest to friend and I can see Sayd absorbing this.
When we go back as arranged he is there waiting for us but there is no wind and so he arranges for a friend to pull us upstream for a while with his small motor boat but then that boat has engine trouble. Then that is fixed and we continue for a while but then the friend refuses to go any further since he doesn’t want to damage his engine. Sayd’s younger brother hops out with a rope and pulls us along behind him as he walks the bank past water buffalo and herdsmen with their sheep and goats. I can see a farmer pulling a plough with an ox. Two fishermen nearby in a very small boat throw a fishing net into the river and then make bongo drum noises on the side of the boat and slash the water with a long pole-all to scare the fish into the net, it’s hard work for them. After 5 minutes they haul the net in with five 5“ fish and then start again, they will sell them in the souk tonight.
Now Sayd has processed the “Three cups of Tea” story and has our journey to friendship all planned out, his brother starts by making curry tea for us as we drift downstream under a light wind. (He tells us that the tea is good for our stomachs). We all start singing “row, row the boat gently down the stream” and Sayd and his brother try to memorize the words so they can sing it to the next English tourists they host.
When we dock (and after more tea) Sayd invites us to come to his home and meet his large family and have dinner and listen to them make music together. We would love to do that but we have been up since 4.00am to go ballooning and we have to fly tomorrow and so we reluctantly decline and poor Sayd seems genuinely sad and that makes us sad. We dock, hug and part best friends with an exchange of e mail addresses. (He has since already e mailed me twice). I pay him but only after confiscating his pack of cigarettes and extracting a commitment that he will stop smoking as of now.
No comments:
Post a Comment