Mixed messages

If I believed everything I read, I'd never set foot in Egypt. Here are the two messages of imminent disaster I read just in the last hour:

1 - Food and water about to run out! Here's a New York Times article that, in a stunning feat of journalistic ex-po-say, reveals that desert nations have trouble with water. Crack out the champagne! Pulitzer Prizes for everyone!

Of course there's a water shortage! That's why it's called the desert. It's an actual scientific term that's directly tied to the amount of precipitation received by an area in a year. Ta-dah!

And yet, there's a glimmer of hope on the horizon. Pour enough money and idealism into a project, catalyze the process with a unilateral dictatorship, and you can make forests grow in the desert. I've seen one, at AUC's Desert Development Center. I visited the DDC back in March but apparently I forgot to blog about it. Here's a fellow AUCan's remarks about it.

2 - Terrorists lurk behind every ... whatever they've got in the desert! This morning I got an email from the Cairo consulate directing me to the new State Department Worldwide Caution update. I'm not even sure how to respond to this except to say that Egypt, as far as I can tell, is not full of terrorists. The government did a great job of ruthlessly supressing opposition voices in the wake of the massacre at Hatshepsut's tomb back in 1997.


Was it creepy standing in the chapel where the shooting happened? Yes, of course, especially when our guide pointed out the residual bullet holes. Did it prevent me from visiting? Hell, no!