Marsha Bailey, Fine Artist

Post Office Adventure
Two packages arrived today from the States via conventional post. A little man on a bicycle came to our offices at the hotel with a hand-written note that said, from what they tell me, something like - there are packages for David H.at the Kafr El Bateekh post office with customs fees due. Please come and collect them. The little man wanted me to ride on the rack on the back of his bike, but we took the jeep with the intrepid Fouad driving. The trip to the Kafr El Bateekh post office was amazing! Our address at the temporary offices in the ground floor of the Casablanca Hotel is Port Road, Kafr El Bateekh. Kafr means village and Bateekh means watermelon, so the village is where watermelons were and are grown – they still sell them along the road. The little man rode along in the back seat of the Jeep and directed us through a “short cut” in the tiny, unpaved streets that serve more donkey carts than motor vehicles. The buildings seem not far behind in entropy the brick and weed-grown lots. There are bicycle shops and produce shops and furniture manufacture shops and auto repair shops and general plastic merchandise shops, all with wares and work flowing out into the trash-strewn streets. It  was a good thing we took the Jeep because the PO was on the other side of town - about 3 miles! We gave the little man a lift back to his waiting bicycle at the hotel and he waved as he rode off on the Port Road, almost colliding with a speeding tandem tractor-trailer. He and we had an adventure today.

The Abode in New Damietta's seaside neighborhood.

View of the Veranda from the Courtyard Below