Florence of Arabia!

Around two months ago my school and I went desert camping for the bronze Duke of Edinborough award. This was initially a big shock considering the past three years I have pictured the bronze award to be me hiking in England through forests on a cold, rainy mountain, instead of hiking up sand dunes in Egypt, trying to find a tree. I had been on two expeditions, the practice and the real one. I was extremely unsure of the trip, as I did not know these girls well at all, and had no clue as to what to expect. I arrived oblivious at 7 am on Friday (our Saturday), to find everyone being herded onto a bus,  screaming.

Surprisingly, twenty-five out of the twenty-nine Egyptian girls were just as discombobulated as me, because although living in Egypt their whole lives, they had never been to the desert.  Not to be mean, but these are priviledged Egyptian girls who have barely been out of their five star lives, and would never dream of going on a trip without their driver, maid and cook. This is normal for them and they did not think twice about asking for everything.  One Egyptian friend of mine even asked the school if her maid could accompany her, and one of the girls had her bodyguard come on the trip. As the bus began to move once more they started shouting, “We will never see civilisation again!” and one girl started tearing up as we passed the Costa Coffee.

The bus ride was rather intimidating, as we started seeing less and less cars, and more and more sand. Then it happened. Complete pandemonium occurred. Their Black berry service ended, and they had no connection. Two girls started crying and another begged the teacher for the bus to go back and let her get off! I was laughing along with my British friend and British teacher, which resulted in countless dirty looks in our direction. When the bus began to off rode into a never ending mass of sand, the girls finally started to ask logical, or some not too logical questions, like, “Where are we going to go to the bathroom, I thought there would be a porta potties?”, and my favourite , “Where are the hotels?” One girl  thought there would be hotels near by, where we could go if there was an emergency or if we ran out of food/water etc.  When the realisation hit them like a bucket of cold water, the second uproar began. It was like watching a movie. I had never expected this.

I tried to ignore them with my iPod and take in the breath-taking scenery. There were sand mountains, sand ditches, sand rocks, sand dunes, soft sand, hard sand and I think I even saw an igloo type hut made from sand. Overall, there was A LOT of sand.  It was picturesque, and I was finally starting to enjoy myself. The girls screams actually reassured me, as it let me know I was MUCH more prepared than them in every way. I have been to camp, after all.

The campsite was in a valley, with one hill behind the tents designated as our ‘bathroom’ (putting most girls in a state of denial), and the other to be our test camp. Our first activity was to put up our tents and unpack our few belongings. This is where being in a school of wealthy Egyptians becomes very useful. My group had quite a bit of trouble in pitching the tents (the cover had flown away in the wind, and we did not have enough strength to hammer the poles in). This is when my  friend decided to get her friend's bodyguard to come and help us pitch the tent. He did not as much help, as just do it all himself, along with some of the other workers that travelled with us. Soon everyone in our campsite had called over the guys to help pitch their tents up for them, and in no time we had twenty perfectly pitched tents in place.

We had a rest after all of the hard work we had not done, and this was the most enjoyable time for me. Although there were more tears from one of the girls (her glass jar of tomato sauce had spilt all over her clothes and other food), I was talking to my friends, sun bathing, listening to music, and taking in the attractive and scenic view.

Then the real work began, and this time we couldn’t ask the bodyguard to do it for us. We had to use a compass to find a tree. There were no specifications of the tree, but because of the few amount of vegetation, the word tree is all we needed. We embarked on our first hike, which later proved to be the most challenging one for us. No one in my group listened to the teacher when he explained how to use the compass except for me and my friend Emily. We were in charge, which was probably not the best idea. Emily and I decided that we should take the shorter and less steep way to the tree, and ignore the fifth bearing. This was because the fifth bearing meant hiking up an extremely steep area on the mountain. We thought that going around it would save us from MORE tears, and would conserve our energy. This was completely and utterly wrong. We got absolutely lost and in the end had to travel up something steeper (that probably wasn’t meant to be walked on) where the sand just fell apart under our feet. We soon arrived at the top of the mountain, and saw the long-awaited tree.

As we were on the half hour descent to the tree, we came across some desert bedouins. These are people that live in the desert full time. Now I was expecting to come across bedoiuns, but I was expecting them to be dressed in the typical galabeas (robe), with camels (which is what we had seen early on our drive), but instead these bedouins were much different. They were driving huge Harley Davison motorcycles around and had iPhones. They were wearing leather jackets and jeans. They started taking pictures of us so the Arabic speakers in my group soon ushered them away. When we got back to the campsite, after a long four-hour walk (that was initially meant to be two hours) we only found one group back, out of the five groups. Obviously we were not the only group to get lost.

That night I made pot noodles, and we roasted marshmallows. It was a peaceful night for me, but once again not so easy for the other Egyptians. They all had brought completely the wrong food, and the people that did bring the right food, eg: pasta, had no clue how to cook, as they had never done so in their lives. This concluded with more tears, and four packets of pasta left in the fire, burned.

The actually sleeping was the worst part of the trip for me. It was FREEZING, like New York in winter freezing. I was not well equipped for this, because although I was expecting it to be cold, I could not fit nearly enough sweaters as I needed in my small backpack. I shivered my way through the night and then was back in shorts for the next day. Breakfast was short and simple. We were given free time to pack up our tents and clean the dishes, our good old friend the bodyguard came back, and cleaned it all up for us, along with everyone else’s. He made it extremely clean, although we did have to go on bathroom duty, where you had to pick up any toilet paper that was not taken to the bin or had been burned.  Proceeding the ‘big clean up,’we had to go hiking again, but this time it was mostly flat, except it was much longer. We had to hike for six hours, and lucky for us we did not get lost this time.

After this hike we finally got back on the bus, home to civilisation. I slept until around forty minutes after we left, and awoke to screams of joy. All of their blackberries had service and they started calling everyone they knew. It was a great experience, and also an exciting bonding experience for all of us, including the first-time Egyptian campers, and I am so happy I did it. We all passed the award, and are looking forward to the next trip. My family and I are off to Dahab today, for tanning, diving and touring. When we hike to the top of Mount Sinai, I will truly feel like Florence of Arabia.  

Comments

[Deborah Juster]

Florence- you are a wonderful writer! I was laughing so much at your descriptions of the trip and fellow campers.

[Liz Conlin]

Jolly nice article. I am most impressed at your story telling. You come by in naturally. Sounds like a fun time. Barb and John loved your story too. Aunt lIz

[Adina]

Most excellent. I am sitting at the reference desk at work and shared this with my co-worker. I think he wondered why I was giggling. I love the bodyguard part. Did he have is own tent next to his charge? Did he have to stay up all night? Great job! Adina

[David Shorr]

Sounds like a great experience; many 'learning moments.' Susan Bender was interested to see the site and read Florence's journal. We should get Sadie to do a desert outward bound like this somehow. The closest I've been to the Sahara was 30,000 feet up; it was cool to fly over it during the daytime -- very organge.