So the pride has extended into ego but sadly not translated into effort or outcome. There is no pride in their work, they are proud of themselves, being Egyptians.
I have noticed this about some Singaporeans too. Singapore is great. Certainly some of its leaders have been outstanding. Their achievements though cannot be used as a trait of superiority in the ordinary Singaporeans.
Back to the Egyptians, how then does the country thrive when it is running on hubris and when it is no longer the world super power it once was. Its not even a power amongst the Middle East states. Today, nothing in and from Egypt is held up as a reference benchmark. So, to move along, they quite simply make it up. I wrote earlier that for them the ends justify the means. So long as they figure out a way to get to the finish line. But over the generations, it has become a way of life of making it up or worse, making things up. In other cultures, it would be lying... here its just disingenuous misinformation. That's the rub, the lying here is not dishonest. It's authentic. It's their way to get things done, to not offend, to avoid work.
Then there's the expectation of reciprocity from a generous act which I had also alluded to in my previous post.
We have only been in Egypt for ten days but for every single one of those days, all three dichotomous traits of pride/ego, authentic/lying and generous/reciprocity were in evidence multiple times.
Our next stop was Ethiopia. It's not as old a country as Egypt but still older than most. Unlike Egypt which had been conquered by the Hyksos, the Greeks, Persians, Romans, Ottomans and the English, Ethiopia had fought hard against invaders. It's most recent adversary was Eritrea and that war happened just last year which decimated their tourism industry especially in the north where the fighting took place. When we visited Lalibela, we were about the dozen tourists in town and the only ones in our hotel, the aptly named Panoramic View hotel. As we left, we saw three bullet holes in the glass window of the airport's only boarding gate.
It is safe now, or safer, I should say. The roads leading to the airport are guarded by armed soldiers. Quite a sight to see them amidst the farmers sowing in the plantations next to the roads.
Speaking of plantations, the hills and valleys here are rolling lush green, a stark contrast from the desert landscape we saw in lower and upper Egypt.
We didn't come for the landscape but that became a highlight. It's so beautiful that its almost possible to believe this is the fabled Garden of Eden. If ine doesn't take the bible too literally and then also support the Out ot Africa migration hypothesis, then it's doesn't take much more imagination to believe this was where Adam and Eve were expelled and instructed to go forth and multiply... which is what our first foreparents from here did. Indeed, researchers have been looking for mitochondrial Eve and traced her back here to this country. And amidst all the rock-hewn churches here in Lalibela, there is one Adam's tomb!
Our guide, though a local was thankfully not too proud to admit that it's probably just a legendary tale. He explained that the portal was one of the main exits from the churches here and was thoughtfully referred to as Adam's tomb to remind us of our mortality and as we leave the church to then live a moral life.
We arrived during a short lenten period. They have multiple lents each year. We saw the people here at prayer. Unlike the Egyptians, they seem humbler and more genuine here. They too could be proud of their history but they are not (perhaps because of their recent past). Like many of my generation, the one scene from Ethiopia was that if a vulture awaiting it's prey, a small boy about to perish from famine.
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