ANN MARIE HOURIHANEalways wanted to see the desert, so when she heard about a dam-building project in the Sinai, she signed up straight away
LAST YEAR my friend and her teenage daughter arrived home from the Sinai desert. They had been building a dam in the mountains, they said. A dam to irrigate the lost gardens of the Bedouin. I was sold on the spot. I’ve always wanted to see the desert and I’m at the stage of my life now when I had better do what I’ve always wanted to do, while I am still physically able to do it.
I did not want to be flown over the desert, or driven through it in a jeep. I wanted to live in it, and this we did for more than a week, sleeping on shelves of rock under a million new stars. The desert felt both spellbinding and safe – you feel entirely at home there. Its silence and its brightness at night – the sand works as a reflecting carpet for the huge moon – were a surprise for us newcomers.
Our working group consisted chiefly of teenagers, who made the ideal travelling companions, being cheerful, open-minded and full of beans, both literally and metaphorically. Our itinerary was pretty varied, spending eight days working in the desert with a bit of trekking at the end of that time; three days at a holiday eco-village on the Red Sea (good snorkelling, bad mosquitoes, deserted coastline); and two days in the mountains where, as well as seeing the Bedouin gardens stretching like a green ribbon through the hills, and drinking tea in a shady vegetable plot, we visited the famous St Catherine’s, a Greek Orthodox monastery at the foot of Mount Sinai itself. St Catherine’s was built in the sixth century and the Prophet Mohammed himself wrote a letter demanding that his followers protect it.
It should be pointed out here that I am not the intrepid sort. I pretty well need assistance operating a can opener and I have to be helped to descend the gentlest of slopes. It is true that I rode a camel twice on this trip, but that was in order to avoid walking. On the plus side I am not squeamish about things like washing oneself on the side of a mountain, or compost toilets. The toilets at the camp where we worked were called the Twin Towers, and it is the pictures of these toilets which have proved to be my most popular holiday photographs. I do not know what this says about my friends and loved ones, and would rather not speculate.
The Sinai peninsula is the triangle which hangs down between Egypt on one side and Saudi Arabia and Jordan on the other. It lies south of Israel and we were told that the camp where we slept at night was on the Exodus route, along which Moses led the Israelites out of Egypt to the Promised Land. It was in this desert that the Ten Commandments were given to Moses, and where he beheld the Burning Bush. King David killed a lion here. There are still leopard traps up in the mountains, we were told, but the leopards, like the wolves, are gone. However, there are leopards, protected by the Israeli government, in the Negev desert .
The desert is a mystical place. The Bedouin who have settled in towns try to visit it regularly and regard the desert as their home. Bedouin children – presumably their boy children, although I didn’t ask – spend weekends in the desert alone, learning independence and how to cook their traditional flat bread in the wood ash of their fires. We were told informally that this way of life was left undisturbed by the Egyptian government for many years. It was only when Israel invaded Sinai in 1967, and built roads throughout the region, that the Egyptians became interested in this wilderness. The Bedouins, for their part, got on well with the Israelis and this made the Egyptians suspicious of them. When the Israelis finally left in 1982, the Egyptians moved in to make the most of the region’s new accessibility.
Sharm el-Sheikh on the southern coast of the peninsula, is now a major mass market tourist attraction, with all the demands that implies. The Sinai’s water supply is stretched to breaking point by these developments, with disastrous consequences for the Bedouins, and others, who make their living from farming and grazing.
We arrived through Sharm el-Sheikh, via Gatwick, although there are some direct flights from Belfast. Nawamis, the village where we were to work, was about two hours away. This is a project supervised by the Makhad Trust and Nomadic Journeys. You pay to go with them. In the mountains, as I have said, the Makhad Trust’s dams have been a big success, holding the rain that fell for the first time in five years last January.
The situation at Nawamis is more complicated. It consists of a beautiful, newly-built compound which is referred to as the school, complete with tall palm trees, and a collection of breeze block huts of unimaginable wretchedness, where the Bedouin live. The contrast between the two never dulled. The village had been founded there because, the head man reportedly said, there was good mobile phone reception. The Makhad Trust, which is a charity registered in Britain, undertook to build a primary school for the village children.
The Egyptian government will educate Bedouin children for free, but many Bedouin parents are reluctant and want their own schools instead. The head man of the village reportedly withdrew his eldest child, a girl, from the local government school because he said she was being bullied. The appointment of a teacher for Nawamis is therefore a tender political point.
Tensions are high in the area for other reasons. The sections of the peninsula we drove through were riddled with checkpoints run by heavily-armed Egyptian troops and police. There have been attacks on tourists in Egypt in the past, and Bedouins have been implicated in some of them.
As the appointment of the teacher for the Nawamis school is delayed until the opportune moment, a whole generation of Bedouin children here are missing out on primary education.
The previous year, after their work in the mountains, my friends had come here to work on the school. This year the westerners, three Egyptian workers and some young Bedouin men from outside the village were working on the building of a makhad, or meeting place. There is to be a meeting of the seven Bedouin tribes – the first for 20 years, apparently – at Nawamis in November.
We older types spent our time making bricks, or collecting stones in the rubber trugs the Bedouins make out of old car tyres. The heat was unbelievable. One day it went up to 40 degrees. The teenagers tried to work right through this and ran straight into sunstroke. They started going down like ninepins with diarrhoea, headaches and nausea – most distressing to watch. I think we all felt that a bit more direction would have kept us more productive, as well as healthier.
On the building site itself when they were healthy, the young workers, males with two young Western females, were ebullient, playing with the local children, tearing around in pick-up trucks and laying the bricks. It is an ideal holiday for male teenagers.
We older ladies were swathed in our scarves, our long skirts, our hiking boots and our runners. We ate delicious food – flatbread, tomatoes, hummus and beans – back at the school.
One night, to mark the departure of the young Englishman who had been working there for nine months, the village headman killed a goat and we had a big party. Western women were the only women there, but it was a great night with two local musicians, and a sheikh from another Bedouin tribe – a sophisticated man in his 30s. He, together with our guide Eed, was a reminder that we were with the Bedouin who are the poorest of the poor. It was only when we left the desert and travelled to the coast that our guide brought us – two Irish women – home to meet his wife and children. This was a great privilege, and a very happy afternoon visiting a confident woman and her relaxed children. Stereotypes are made to be shaken.
- The Makhad Trust provides trekking trips through the desert, as well as desert retreats. The next dam building working party is on October 2nd -9th. The Seven Tribes Gathering and Camel Trek takes place on November 17th-24th. Further details at makhad.org. Our guide, Eed Ali, works as a mountain guide for private individuals as well as groups. He can be contacted at halaeed89@yahoo.com.
Where to volunteer
- Book Buses is a literacy project operating in Zambia and Ecuadorto bring reading to the children of developing countries. 00-44-1926-411122, thebookbus.org.
- World Wide Opportunities On Organic Farms provides a network of organic farms, which need help with planting. See wwoof.org.
- Tortuguero National Park in Costa Rica takes volunteers to tag and protect the green turtles who breed there. See tortugueroinfo.com.
- La Florida is an agricultural co-op in northern Guatemala, which takes volunteers for short and long stays. See fincalaflorida.org.