Egypt with Mara Blog

So where are we today?  Personally – and this is more of a personal touchy, feely post today…. Personally I have been DESPERATELY trying to NOT focus on Syria or Egypt’s ‘stuckness’.  Am I succeeding?  Of course not!  Every time you see a FACEBOOK or TWITTER posting you know I’m not.  But, as Esther once…

It appears that Egypt has lost and is still losing the international media war. They are short of video and stories of violence because to a greater extent the situation has stabilized here. Yet they continue with the insinuations of civil war, chaos and mayhem – Obama even linked in Egypt with Syria! Syria is…

My efforts over the last few months to bring businesses in Luxor together to discuss and to plan how to improve Luxor; solve some of our problems; make it a better place for ourselves and for tourists; to plan our own marketing, has all come to nothing. Why did I want to do this?  Mostly…

I hardly know where to start this morning.  Once again the CNN, BBC World and Al Jazeera English are continuing their “…….” I don’t have a word to put in there – let’s just say that their slant on the news from Egypt seems to be from some parallel universe to the one that I…

So far UK has been quiet in response to what is happening in Egypt and rightly so, with the exception of William Hague’s bit of non-specific waffle deploring deaths etc. I am taking this opportunity to remember the UK responses to the London riots in 2011 – where mainly young people ran riot across London…

Statement by the State Information Service (SIS) on current events in Egypt (August 17, 2013)The State Information Service (SIS), as an Egyptian national institution, welcomes and appreciates contacting all media outlets and extending all assistance for facilitating the great job of foreign correspondents through supplying them with all facts about the current situation in Egypt. The SIS while underlining…

Early yesterday morning before turning on TV or opening the internet I sat on my doorstep in the deserted street.  I looked at the dark ring around the manhole cover in front of me, an indication that the sewer was ready to overflow – the pipe is obviously blocked somewhere up the street.  Two days…

What is happening in Egypt now has never happened before in many ways.  While we do not have a civil war in Egypt in the traditional sense we do have a war being waged on many levels between two groups. First group are the Egyptian people who went to the streets on 30th June and…

When a natural disaster or terrorist act occurs in a Western country like US or any European country – what happens?  Within 24 hours local and government representatives are on world news channels and front pages of international newspapers.  They take the attitude Britain took when the Nazis were dropping bombs on London in World…

Have you notice how we all have been glued to the TV’s since 30th June?  Come on folks that is 40 days incl all of Ramadan – more than enough time in the desert.  We won’t even talk about the paralysis we have been experiencing for the year 30 June 2012 – June 2013 or…

Let’s get to the root of my anger.  Isn’t it romantic to be able to say “I survived a revolution!”  Believe me there is nothing romantic about it – that is just a notion.  The revolution of 2011 was not bad at all – to be honest I spent most of those days in Cairo…

3 days ago I told you something exciting was happening and that I would tell you later – well here is the something exciting but it is more heartbreaking than exciting. The Souk (Market) people here have a kind of committee of which a young gentleman named Bekhiri is the spokesman (remember I met him…

Have you been to Luxor?   We are trying, genuinely trying to make Luxor a really good, exciting and memorable experience for tourists. We all know that Luxor has it’s faults but, believe it or not, some people don’t want to admit we have problems. Would you take a few minutes to briefly tell us…