Back when I was in Cairo a few months ago, I had taken a taxi into the Old City to catch a free performance of the Whirling Dervishes (in Turkey, which has higher-profile dervishes, they charge admission). As soon as I got out of the cab near the market, a loquacious peddler named Ahmed approached me and asked me if I needed some help finding something. I told him I was looking for the Dervishes and he said he'd show me where they perform. We walked into the market, down a bustling and colorful alley, to a cathedral-like structure where the show would start in another hour. He invited me to see his papyrus shop to kill time, promising that I had no obligation to buy. What the hell? (By the way, papyrus is the ancient precursor to paper, a writing surface made from the dried reeds of the papyrus plant that grows along the Nile).
Mohamed and Ahmed
After climbing up fluorescent-lit concrete stairwell, with nary an inclination as to any malice on Ahmed's part (either I'm especially sensitive to the underlying goodness of people or I'm a damn gullible fool), I entered the secluded, second-floor gallery. There stood Mohamed, Ahmed's Nigerian business partner, who spoke to me about the Egyptian art of papyrus painting. Despite the quesionable location of the shop, Mohamed came off as an expert in his vocation, Ahmed shining equally as a consummate salesman ("Your mother is best mother in the world after my mother, she deserve something from the gallery"). I bought a beautiful $25 papyrus scroll for my mom, but I also got some interesting footage of Mohamed describing the art and craft of papyrus painting.
When you're in Cairo, make sure you say "hi" to Ahmed and Mohamed (and buy something, too):
Alghouri Papyrus Art Centre 28 Ahmam El Mosbagha St. (beside Wokela Sultan) Alghouri, Al Azhar, Cairo, Egypt Tel. 2512-5859, Cell 0106695899 www.alghouriartcentre.com
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Photo by AV8NLVR Last week, United Airlinesannounced service from Washington-Dulles to Accra, Ghana, continuing on to Lagos, Nigeria. When the flights start in May, UA will become the second major American carrier to serve the Motherland, giving the large Nigerian population in the DC area nonstop access to the country's largest business center and former capital. Atlanta-based Delta Air Lines already flies to Accra and Lagos, as well as Abuja, Nigeria; Dakar, Senegal; Johannesburg, South Africa; and Cairo, Egypt, though they've announced several routes to other African destinations in the past year that either have been terminated or never took off for various reasons. It's nice to see other airlines taking the (lucrative) chance of serving Africa, but I can't imagine the in-flight service even approaching that of the European airlines already flying from the US to the continent via their hubs.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ AA's new black travel website, featuring Fly Brother
In October, American Airlines started a travel website centered around the black travel experience called Black Atlas. Headlined by writer and "travel expert-at-large" Nelson George, the site highlights 27 domestic and 15 international destinations sure to resonate with affluent African-American travelers. Readers can submit blog posts detailing their experiences on the road, as well as search for airfares with a special interactive map. They've also been kind enough to feature ya boy, Fly Brother, and his scribblings on Salvadorda Bahia, Paris, and Mexico City. Now, that's fly.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Fly Brother Winter Tour 2009
LOS ANGELES, November 18-23 NEW YORK, December 11-20 ORLANDO, December 20-26 MIAMI, December 29-January 6
If I'm headed your way, shout me!
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Fly Brother welcomes your views. If this post hit the spot, please comment and/or click.
The seat of one of earth's oldest civilizations has survived into the modern era as the largest city in Africa and the Arab World. And what a city. Riding astraddle the “Lower” Nile, Cairo houses over fourteen million people in an otherwise inhospitable desert. Sand hangs suspended in windless air, coated with the exhaust of a gazillion late model cars, trucks, and vans snaking like Miss Cleo's asp throughout the whole shebang. And as the gilded disk of the sun arcs through the beautifully apocalyptic haze, it becomes evident that late afternoons belong to Egypt.
With pharaonic heat cooking the city for most of the day, folks don't start stirring until after 4pm. Greek restaurants and sheesha bars and ice cream parlors and shops selling sparkly hijabs to Egyptians and glittery papyrus art to non-Egyptians stay open until after midnight. Party boats and shopping barges replete with TGI Friday's bob up and down the Nile while friends and young couples stroll arm-in-arm watching the sunset from the Corniche. The afternoon call to prayer wafts smoothly through the air from muffled speakers in soothing Egyptian Arabic as the whirling dervishes (yes, I saw them for free in Cairo; the ones in Istanbul charged admission) prepare for their religious fervor under a crescent moon.
Spending most of my mornings writing, I barely got out of the house before afternoon myself, stepping out for a shawerma or two to fill my stomach. When I did get out into the city, I felt the familiar buzz of organized chaos that makes me know I'm going to like a place (ou seja, in many ways, Cairo's like a dry Sampa). Traffic rumbled past ancient landmarks, souks (those world-famous city-sized bazaars) popped with commerce, and I was alternately taken as local and foreigner, and never without the percussively benevolent “Well Come to Egypt.”
Conversations with everyday Cairenes often mean sifting through endearingly unrefined English grammar and in-eloquent pronunciation to reach a breadth of witty observations and humorous anecdotes (like the tale of the poor stray goat being chased in the middle of rush hour traffic by several working stiffs hellbent on bringing home the mutton). And with a religious mix of Christians, Jews, atheists, and a Muslim majority ranging in its orthodoxic* intensity, more than a few of those conversations were with women. That is not to say that the society isn't segregated—it is, and most of the women do cover themselves completely except for the face and hands and will stand demurely and wait for a man to realize he's blocking a path as opposed to even intimating he get out of the way—but there seems to be more freedom for Lady Cairenes to determine what they want to wear than in other parts of the region. Still, I couldn't even imagine what it must be like to have religious and community pressures telling you to look one way and a bombardment of Western media and beauty products selling a competing idea of “modernity and style.” Talk about an identity crisis!
Not only is Cairo a primary gateway into the intriguing Islamic culture, it's also the center of a youthful, energetic society that I find appealing. With its Venusian skies and Martian landscapes, easy smiles and dreamy eyes, balmy nights and golden afternoons, the Egyptian capital has just hit Fly Brother's top cities list.
*Yes, I made that word up.
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Since Flickr is blocked here in the United Arab Emirates (among other sites such as X-Tube), I've decided to post another of my "road movies." This time, watch as I approach the Pyramids at Giza, literally right across the street from a joint Pizza Hut/KFC, via an elevated expressway from Downtown Cairo. No camels were injured during the making of this film.
...and she wasn't nothing like her namesake. She was actually kind of mean.
With a romantically crumbling 19th-century air, the famous Egyptian port city of Alexandria (dubbed Alex by locals and Cairenes) basks in the Mediterranean sun along a narrow strip of land between the sea and the marshy Nile Delta. The wondrous lighthouse may no longer exist, but the renowned library of old lives on in the form of a brand-new structure opened in 2002. Sixties-era Ladas and Fiats zip past couples and friends strolling arm-in-arm along the palm-lined Corniche. If it weren't for all the robes and head coverings, I could have been in Havana. The bustling, dusty train station is total Bond meets Death on the Nile, and the friendliness of the people has been unmatched by any nationality I've encountered thus far in my travels. I've never been "Welcome[d] home!" before so much in my life. It's especially nice to be back in a place where the people identify with me and my "Egyptian face." Alex, do your thang, gul.
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In an update to my post about Delta Air Lines' new expanded service in Africa last month, just three days ago, the airline announced weekly and biweekly routes starting next June from Atlanta to Abuja, Nigeria; Luanda, Angola; and Malabo, Equatorial Guinea, all via Ilha do Sal, Cape Verde. The Atlanta-Johannesburg route will become nonstop and ATL-Nairobi will finally take off, as will the JFK-to-Lagos run.
Yesterday, my favorite US airline, Delta, announced a new weekly flight from their hub in Atlanta to Monrovia, Liberia, with a stop in fabulous Cape Verde. Not sure how much business travel there is between the States and either Cape Verde or Liberia, but I'm definitely hoping this route takes off. Now, Delta hasn't paid me anything to talk about this, but I'm compelled to because I appreciate their expansion efforts into Sub-Saharan Africa since 2007, the only major US airline to do so. Granted, there's eight months of uncertainty between now and the scheduled start date for the flights next summer, and Delta already canceled a planned route from New York to Lagos and postponed another to Nairobi, but I'm sure those are business decisions in the face of economic challenges instead of the airline reneging on its move to offer extensive service between the States and Africa (something not done since the '70s). The company seems to be testing the waters for lucrative destinations on the continent, which means there might be some wishy-washiness, but I'm still excited about the idea of flying nonstop from the cultural capital of Black America to the source of that culture.
Currently, Delta flies daily or several times a week from Atlanta nonstop to Lagos, Nigeria and to Johannesburg, South Africa via Dakar, Senegal. New York-JFK has more offerings, with nonstops to Cairo, Egypt and Accra, Ghana, as well as a flight to Cape Town, South Africa, with a stop in Dakar to allow passengers from the Atlanta flight to board or folks flying in from NYC to switch to the Jo-burg flight. Book here.
In other news, with the approval of a new bilateral aviation agreement between Brazil and the US that has finally opened up direct routes beyond the megacities of Rio and São Paulo, Delta (along with another airline that I shall not name because my experiences with them have been exceedingly horrible each and every time I've been forced onto one of their unpainted, AA-initialed transport tubes from hell) is offering nonstops from Atlanta to Northeast Brazil, historically and culturally the South American equivalent of the American South.
I'm awarding Delta a strong Black Power fist for attempting to connect the folk in the Diaspora via their route network. One-time, Delta! (Yes, I'm an airline geek.)
Cape Verde is an archipelago of ten teeny-tiny volcanic islands off the coast of Senegal in the North Atlantic. Yes, most hurricanes that hit the Caribbean and the southeast USA start off over Cape Verde as typical summer rainstorms. The uninhabited islands were discovered and populated by the Portuguese in 1460, who brought over Africans as slaves. As was typical of Luso-Hispanic colonialism, blood boiled, races mixed, and Cape Verde was left with a variation of skin tones and hair textures reminiscent of its big brother Brazil. After a brief, shining turn as a major refueling stop for ocean-going vessels and a source of skilled mariners for 19th century American whaling ships, Cape Verde fell into long-term drought-induced economic despair, launching a diaspora now numbering over a million Cape Verdeans in North America and Europe, with less than 500,000 on the islands themselves. Cape Verde's best-known export: soulful morna singer Cesária Évora.
I was invited to accompany my good friend José, Cape Verdean historian and intellectual playboy, to visit his homeland in August of 2004. For two weeks we swatted flies, battled dust and heat, watched Brazilian soap operas, met (literally) boatloads of folks from the States and Europe visiting family for the summer, and relaxing on beaches in the absolute middle of the ocean. Yes, everybody thought I was Cape Verdean ("Hey, why dudn't that kid speak Kriolu?"). No, I'm not Cape Verdean. Would be very proud if I was, though. And yes, I know going there's like going to Hawaii and saying you've been to the USA - technically it's true, so technically, I've been to Africa.
Fly Brother tackles international travel in unabridged, unapologetic, full and complete color. It's also the blog name of writer and educator Ernest White II, a tall, ruggedly handsome, erudite, occasionally delusional Black American male living in Brazil's largest city.
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