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Al-Ahram Weekly 8 - 14 June 2000 Issue No. 485 
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Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 |
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Al-Ahram Weekly 8 - 14 June 2000 Issue No. 485
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| Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 |
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Egypt Region International Economy Opinion Culture Features Travel Living Sports Profile People Time Out Chronicles Cartoons The great desert park
By Ragi HalimIn the early 1990s, the Egyptian Environmental Affairs Agency (EEAA) and the European Union (EU) combined forces to protect southern Sinai, specifically the monastery of Saint Catherine and the surrounding mountains. Six years later, the Zoological Society of London joined the partnership. Charged with the task of setting up a protectorate in Sinai is John Grainger, an Englishman with a doctorate in botany and geology, who worked in a school of forestry and range ecology in Iran, and later served as manager of the National Wildlife Commission in Saudi Arabia.
That task is proving to be a great challenge. Sinai is one of the largest and most complex areas in the Middle East. The territory in question is 4,350 square kilometres vast and includes the entire mountain massif of southern Sinai, portions of the adjacent coastal plains and the monastery of Saint Catherine itself. With a budget of more than a million dollars, paid by the EU, a team of professional engineers, anthropologists, zoologists, environmentalists and rangers was assembled and a great deal has already been achieved in terms of protecting the environment.
"When we first came here, there were 78 quarries [being operated in the area], now there are 12, many of them illegal. Can you imagine that investors even wanted to quarry the Blue Valley?" said Grainger, referring to one of the most scenic areas in southern Sinai.
"We surveyed the entire area in cooperation with the quarry department, established which specific areas should be protected and then looked for alternative sites for the quarrying operations," said Tareq El-Qanawati, senior ranger at the park. He pointed out that quarrying granite demands huge quantities of water, which is not available in southern Sinai. "We are in an area where rainfall is 50 millimetres per year," he said.
Yet, somewhat ironically, while a processing factory for the extraction of raw materials that require water is considered unfeasible in the area surrounding the monastery, the Tourist Development Authority (TDA) and the Ministry of Tourism advocate swimming pools in order to convert existing four-star hotels into five-star ones.
A glimpse of Sinai snow (above): Tarek El-Qanawati, senior ranger at St Catherine protectorate; (below) the Bedouin Support Programme, established to aid Bedouin in the area, has encouraged the setting up craft centres
"Morganland Hotel has a vast swimming pool only 4 kilometres outside the protected valley," El-Qanawati said. "Bedouins are desperate for water, sometimes having no rain for up to five years, while Morganland buys 1,300 cubic metres of water for its swimming pool, which is to say 10 days' supply of water for the whole protected area."
"How will the Bedouin feel when they see this great oasis of water they themselves are not allowed to use?" El-Qanawati asked. He further pointed out that one other hotel, Catherine Plaza, also has a swimming pool.
Grainger questions the logic of creating "Olympic size" pools when tourists are only attracted to the area for six months of the year and tend to stay overnight, or for a couple of nights at the most.
The behaviour of the tourists is also criticised. "We noticed lately the rate at which trees in the Al-Galt Al-Azrak area are being cut for barbecues," said Atef Darwish, an ex-military officer who runs the ranger force and acts as a liaison with the EEAA. "This is why we started a programme of 'sign in, sign out' where gates are put up at the entrances to places like Wadi Gabal where safaris are arranged as far as Gabal Al-Bab which affords a view of the whole of the Gulf of Suez," he explained.
As for garbage, especially in the vicinity of the monastery of Saint Catherine where hotels and camps have a capacity of 1,442 beds, "we first started with a garbage collection site in Wadi Abu-Sila," Darwish said. "We hired tractors to carry 300 garbage loads to a designated place for processing and dumping. Now the Bedouins are responding positively toward this and we have established a garbage committee with the City Council. It includes members of the Ministry of Health, the police, the Ministry of Education, hotels and bazaars."
Southern Sinai is rich in flora and fauna, with 37 endemic plants that grow at high altitudes and large mammals including hyenas, foxes, gazelles and hyraxes. "We cannot deny that although hunting is illegal it still goes on," commented ranger and zoologist Hossam El-Alkami who explained that Bedouins are often the guilty ones. "They kill hyenas, which attack their livestock. We are studying how to compensate them for such losses." Perhaps tourist income from viewing wild life could be used, El-Qanawati suggested.
The protection of endangered species like the Dorcas gazelle is another problem because they prefer wadis (dried out river beds) and plains rather than mountains. Because these are areas of development, their population is getting fragmented. "We have been monitoring gazelle populations to the east and west of the Saint Catherine protectorate ... inbreeding would lead to the appearance of recessive, usually weak characters and inevitably to the spread of diseases between members of the population," El-Qanawati said.
A Bedouin Support Programme has been started to encourage Bedouin crafts in southern Sinai. "It is managed and motivated by the only female ranger in our force, Youssriya Abdel-Basset, together with Eman Al-Bastawisy, a consultant anthropologist," said Grainger. The flora and fauna of the region is reflected in the embroidery of the women and their work is marketed at the Saint Catherine Protectorate Visitor's Centre (see neighbouring column).
Bedouins were a bit hesitant on hearing about Saint Catherine being a protected area. "We gained their trust through talks before the declaration," said Ali Metrash, a park ranger with a university degree in anthropology. "The talks were organised by Joseph Hobbs, author of Mount Sinai and Bedouin Life in the Wilderness on behalf of the park management authorities," he said, elaborating that questions discussed included the needs of the Bedouins, their jobs, income, health care, fresh water and pest control.
"They were positive and supportive," Metrash said. "They were addressed as the owners and core elements of the park, and actually they are. I had the responsibility of choosing 16 Bedouin men representing all the park's tribes to work with us as environmental guards. This is how the park is managed, by its people. They are the ones who know about the area. In the beginning we learned from them, and we still are."
"Saint Catherine has the potential to become one of the world's great mountain parks," Grainger said.
The great desert park
"I WAS lucky to find my way into the life of the Bedouin women," said Youssriya Abdel-Basset, an anthropologist. "You know, it's very conservative here and for a Bedouin Woman to open her heart and talk about her joy or sadness, it needs a great deal of mutual confidence between them and me."When the Bedouin Crafts of South Sinai started, women were so happy and enthusiastic that the amount of Bedouin products were beyond my power of marketing and selling. They were happy to do something that could bring their families a bit of money, apart from their responsibilities including home management, shepherding and raising children," Youssriya added.
Youssriya explained the varying styles of dress women wear at different stages of their life. "When seven years old, a child wears a printed colourful dress and no head covering. Then at 12, she begins to wear a second dress, black and sleeveless, on top of the first. In the past, a girl of 12 wore a lathma, a small face covering without decoration, now they wear a tarha which can be worn in different ways to cover the head and mouth, usually decorated at the edge with brightly coloured beads.
"At the age of 14 or 15, Bedouin girls adopt the gebla hairstyle, two plaits crossing the forehead. In the past, a girl showed she was ready for marriage by fashioning her hair into a gossa, which is a plait made into a bun on the forehead, which she maintained after marriage. At this stage, she usually added the shebeka or ghodfa, a small head covering with small pieces of shells attached. After marriage, the girl dresses her hair in a new style, masaih, which is an elaborate interlocking style dividing the hair into two parts covering the forehead," Youssriya added.
In the Bedouin department of the Visitor's Centre are wedding shawls (the gon'a or herga) incorporating sequins and coloured beads in the design and edged with brightly coloured pompoms, bags carried by women attending flocks of goats and sheep and kilim rugs used both domestically or to drape over the backs of camels. Among the most attractive pieces on display are sugar bags, which contain a pocket for tea, an essential part of the baggage Bedouin men carry on longer trips, emblazoned with brightly coloured foliage, flowers and animals.
As Youssriya delved deeper into the lives of the Bedouin women, she helped develop, with the help of the protectorate physician, a health awareness among them.
