What a day. Fridays are not days
that you can excavate. This is wonderful because bodies and souls really do
need a Sabbath. It also allows us to go to church. So we caught some taxis to
Maadi and went in for church. Today was district conference. We were able to
hear from the District President,
Lebanese person who lives in Jordan, and several other speakers. It was
so good, I enjoyed it so much and felt so edified. I came to understand some
things I need to teach my children about more.
Afterwards the branch had a
little luncheon. We were able to visit with a number of people as we ate. A
wonderful little family from Congo was particularly delightful to me. Also a
family from Hawaii. And so many others. What a wonderful group, what good
people. This was a blessed part of the day.
We changed clothes and went Rich
Zeolla’s house. Rick is the manager of the Marriott. We were going to see the
Abu Roash pyramid (also known as the lost pyramid) and he and his family were
coming. It is a bit hard to find, but last year Joyce and I found it, and I
marked the GPS coordinates, so we should be able to find it. He had his driver,
and we found two taxis.
As we headed out we went past the
place where you turn in to the Giza pyramids. The camel jockey mafia were out
in full force. These are guys who try to force taxis with tourists to stop, they
make you ride their friend’s camel, and then they take you out in the middle of
nowhere and take all your money. They really try to force the taxis to pull
over. Our taxi got away with them hitting and kicking it. The taxi behind, with
half our crew, didn’t fare as well. The driver had his window down, and the
mafia guy caught his arm and held it in a painful lock. He jumped up on the cab
and held onto that arm until the guy pulled over. Then they played a weird game
for a long time where the taxi drive would try to take off, the mafia guy would
hop on the trunk and ride until he could run up and grab his arm again, etc. It
looked for a while like he was going to pull this guy out and beat him up and get our friends. He was
pretty violent and pretty close to making it happen. As we kept going but slow
enough to see if they would get away, one of them caught up with us and got our
driver’s door open. Then our drive was trying to speed up and get his door
shut, etc. It took a while to get away. It made for a tense situation.
This stuff makes me so angry. It
was happening last year too. These guys don’t know how much they are hurting
themselves. Fewer people go to Giza because of them, so in the end they make
less money, and so does everyone else associated with Giza, innocent or not. A
few people have asked me about getting involved in tour groups to come over
here. They ask if it is a good time. I think it mostly is, but the problems at
Giza have to make me say no. The wonderful people here are suffering, and it is
partially because of these idiots at the pyramid. I hate to see my wonderful
friends here struggling so much because of the lack of tourism, and these evil
men make it worse. It angers me.
Anyway, we continued on our journey. Sadly, we
had the worst taxi driver in Egypt. He would not believe us that there was a
pyramid in Abu Roash, even though we had been there before. We could only go
about 5-10 minutes before he would pull over and try to convince us to go to
the Saqqara or Giza pyramids. He stopped and asked directions of everyone we
met, even though we told him to keep going and told him where it was. This made
it take forever. I am sure that the people in the other cars were giving up
hope and thought we were crazy. What should have been a 45 minute drive took
1.5 hours. It was a horrible drive. And I wanted so badly for Rick and his
family to have a good experience that I was getting an ulcer by the time we
found it. We finally did, and it is a very cool place and we had a good time.
But I am not sure they thought it was worth it. I feel badly about that. What
can we do? It was kind of a fun trip, but mostly stressful.
I look forward to a good day of
excavating tomorrow. I miss my family. I don’t do well without them and I wish
I was with them. At least we get to skype. I have even been able to skype with
them for family prayer a few times. It makes it a bit easier.
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