Eid Al-Adha, the festival of slaughtering animals in the street

I awoke on the first day of Eid-Al Adha and decided to take a walk in the streets to see if there really were dead animals everywhere, there were! Luckily I missed the early morning slaughtering. A few odd facts about my walk.

A) I was the only white person in the neighborhood, probably.
B) I was the only woman in the streets between the ages of 18 and 30.
C) There were actually animals getting killed, but I only saw one.

To help define this glorious holiday I have copied the wikipedia entry for you, stare at the pictures of bloody pools in the streets first though. I stupidly wore flip flops on this walk, stupid, stupid, and stupid.




"Festival of Sacrifice" is a religious festival celebrated by Muslims worldwide to commemorate the willingness of Ibrahim to sacrifice his son Ishmael as an act of obedience to God. However, God provided a ram in place once Ibrahim demonstrated his willingness to follow God's commands.

Eid al-Adha is the latter of two Eid festivals celebrated by Muslims, whose basis comes from the Quran. Like Eid-al-Fitr, Eid al-Adha begins with a short prayer followed by a sermon.

Thank you Wikipedia.com

Mainly the streets were empty and I felt very alone. The streets are never empty and you never feel alone in Cairo, so that was cool. I could even cross the streets without having to dodge mini-buses, cars and donkey carts. Amazing. My whole neighborhood smelled like ground beef and there were bits of sheep and cow in the gutters. I witnessed one animal getting its throat slit, but from across the street. People were killing animals in front of their apartments! I hear in Turkey you have to kill them off the street, but Egypt is hardcore.

For the rest of my week off I went on a blood-free dive trip, where the only dead animals I saw were food. All the fish were alive. Nour, Mousaad and I traveled to Hurghada and left aboard the Storm II with about 10 of Nour's friends. We sailed down to Safaga, diving along the way. All of the passengers are are amazing divers and cheerful friendly types. I was able to do a night dive, so cool, a wreck dive and one day of three dives. Doing three dives in one day is exhausting, but worth it for sure. The water was much colder and I did not get a killer tan, so sad.

Faye and Mousaad at a beach watching the volleyball tournament.

The Storm II, captained by some of Hurghada's best divers.

Mahmeya Island, our last stop.

The islands is about 20 minutes away from Hurghada. We spent three nights on the boat, waking up early to dive, eating, napping and I went to bed really early every night. Teaching is wearing me out and I was ready to nap all day and sleep all night. The aquatic highlights of the trip were the over three meter Moray Eel I saw while it was swimming, normally you just see the head poking out of the coral. Also a sea turtle, going 30 meters, a night dive, and a wreck dive. The wreck, Saalam Express, crashed on its way back from Mecca in 1996, most of the passengers died in the crash. Very sad, it was full of people on their way back from Haaj and it happened at night so the rescue response was very slow. There were still suitcases and one very old-school boom box underwater. Super weird.

Not to bad for one week.