After leaving Maadi and picking up people downtown, we started our trip by taking the desert road towards Alexandria. We were about 45 travelers whereof five children and Courtney & I knew quite a few of our fellow participants. Around 9:15 we stopped at the rest house with a playground we had stopped before during our trip with John Swanson to Wadi Natrun. The boys started playing on the merry-go-round, and I stood by watching them, talking to Dan. Suddenly William came running up to me “MAMA!” . He held up his shirt and looked down at a 5x1 cm gaping tear through his skin right above his hip bone, revealing fat cells and flesh underneath. It wasn’t bleeding very much and my first reaction was “a piece of my son’s skin got ripped off – how?!” but then I realized he had been cut, like a scalpel had cut through his skin – a razor-sharp screw sticking out of the merry-go-round had lacerated his skin, and the cut was gaping open. I picked him up, trying to pinch his wound shut with my hand, telling him everything was going to be alright. Someone came up to me with Band-Aids, and Dan ran to get Courtney and Louise, our trip organizer. I held my boy tight, yelled to August to “get away from the merry-go-round NOW!”, and tried to figure out what to do. We were just starting a four-day trip. We were in the middle of the desert in Egypt. I had no experience with the Egyptian medical system, but William needed stitches right NOW. Louise, our trip organizer, and Courtney came back and guided me (carrying my 26 kg William) to a pharmacy next to the rest stop. The pharmacist sprayed something anti-
septic (most likely alcohol) on the cut and put a large patch on it all the while William screamed in my arms, and then we ran to the bus after hearing that there was a hospital just two kilometers down the road. After a short drive, we walked right into the hospital and immediately three doctors and four nurses started working on William. The hospital appeared to be just opening – they were still working on the main entrance, and there was dust everywhere from all the drilling and polishing. After some discussion, the doctors, nurses, William and Courtney went into a room in the back – supposedly clean but Courtney said there were bird droppings on the shower curtains covering the beds – where they numbed William’s side (this must have hurt because William let out a heart-tearing cry and scream no parent should ever have to hear from their child) and first the doctors patched together his bottom tissue, and then put four visible stitches in the outer skin. The whole procedure took about ten minutes and was by far the most efficient hospital experience I've ever had. We only had a few hundred pounds in cash and were nervous about the bill, but as I carried William back to the bus I heard the clerk ask Courtney for 50LE. So: after 8 stitches, 50LE and about 40 minutes late, we were still able to continue our Siwa trip. William was a bit sore but we gave him pain relief and antibiotics to prevent an infection, and here he is visit El Alamein with the rest of the group, a few hours after the incident.We spent the night in Marsa Matrouh at the hotel Beau Site. The rooms were in a pretty poor state – not very clean, old slow showers and everything at the hotel seemed to be in dire need of a makeover, but the beach was fantastic. Because of his stitches William was not able to swim with the rest of us in the salty, clear blue and turquoise water, but he did very well playing by the water front, and we all had a nice time that evening on the beautiful beach.
The next day we drove the 4 hours south to Siwa oasis, checked in to our hotel, had lunch, and went to visit the temple of the Oracle of Amun Alexander the Great went to see during his journey through Egypt. It was an interesting site largely because we had studied Alexander the Great for a couple of weeks, and the boys knew the history behind the sites very well. It was very hot this day, between 40 and 42 degrees Celsius, and we ran out of water very quickly. After the sightseeing we bathed in the cool hotel spring (tried to have a nice shower but here too, the rooms were in a pretty poor state and our shower didn't work), had dinner and went to sleep early.
The following day we visited mountain of the dead with a Siwa born university student acting as our guide, the site a Greek archeologist announced a few years ago
was the burial site of Alexander the Great, and walked through Shali, the abandoned part of Siwa with mud-brick houses. We were also supposed to visit the Siwa House which is as close to a museum as you will get here, but it had suddenly changed its opening hours and was closed, so instead we paid a visit to the carpet factory. We had lunch consisting of rice, chicken and couscous at restaurant Alexander and finished off the day visiting a spring where some of our group members went for a swim. I was far too intimidated by all the boys and men staring at us, Courtney was busy talking to a fellow philosophy professor, and it was too deep for the boys to go in by themselves, so none of the Fugates swam in this particular spring. We ended the day by spending our very last few pounds on a few souvenirs and food for the trip home; olive oil, mint, bay leaves, a scarf, bread and fruit. We would have bought a carpet and something else locally produced had it not been for the fact that the only existing ATM in Siwa was out of order the entire time we were there.The bus ride back to Cairo via Marsa Matrouh was long – almost 12 hours, and when we finally arrived in Maadi we were tired and sore. The boys had done very well though – they slept, looked out the window, colored, listened to their music and played without complaining or fighting. It was nice to be home in Maadi. We spent practically the whole next day inside; the boys played together, I cleaned our house from top to bottom, and Courtney prepared his exams for the next day.
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