A typical day of field work in the Western Desert

[Barb T]

I'm in Egypt doing a week or so of field work in the Western Desert, and I thought I'd post some pics of a typical day in the field. If you have Google Earth and are interested in where we're working, you can go to 26.298728N, 30.717982E

The day starts with a stop at the pita bread bakery where we buy a huge bag of pitas fresh from the oven to eat with breakfast and lunch. Here are some pictures of the bakery:

Two huge vats of dough (background), and one fellow tossing globs of dough by the handfull onto wood trays lined with coarse wheat flour:


The youngest baker in charge of carrying the trays to the oven:


Another fellow takes each blob, flattens it a bit, and tosses it onto a conveyor belt that takes the pitas through the oven and out the other side:


We buy them straight from the oven when they are all poofed up, and they're put on the hood of the truck to cool a little so that we can stack them in a plastic bag:


Then we stop at the local "supermarket" (and that is indeed what it's called) to buy cheese and hallawa and canned tuna:


And then we head out into the field. Here are a few pictures of the area where we're mapping and collecting field data. Not a blade of grass, not a tree, not a trickle of water. It rains here maybe once every couple of decades.

That's me in the distance:


My grad student and me working in the field:


Yours truly:


And, as an update on an earlier post about our driving adventures, we were driving back to El Kharga from the field yesterday, and two belts broke in the Toyota. Luckily, the driver had a whole assortment of spare belts, and, on the side of the road in the desert by the light of a flashlight and a couple of cell phones, the guys fixed the belts, and we were on the road again in about half an hour. One adventure after another.....!

[Legba]

Cool stuff, thanks for sharing!

[tulloch]

Wow, Barb, you're amazing. What a life. Thank you for taking us out of our daily routines.

[piperdbh]

Barb,
I was just about to start a thread about you. I heard an interview on NPR today with Dame Helen Mirren. She was talking about the way dramatic roles for women are changing as societal roles for women change. She said that CEOs of companies are women, politicians are women, and then she said that on television one might see an expert on volcanic ash who's a woman, and that made me wonder if she had seen you talking about the volcano in Iceland.

I like your pics, by the way, especially the pitas on the truck. That's a novel way to cool them down.

[BoldHighlander]

Hi Barb,

First, great photos! Thanks for sharing your globetrotting with us!

Second, I might've missed it, but what are you all studying in that part of the world? Thanks.

[Barb T]

Barb,
...she said that on television one might see an expert on volcanic ash who's a woman, and that made me wonder if she had seen you talking about the volcano in Iceland.

Nope - wasn't me. But thanks for thinking of me!

[BobsYourUncle]

Thank you so much for sharing your trip with us. I can't imagine the heat, or how dry it must be in a place with so little rainfall. Happy holidays to you and yours.

[Barb T]

This is actually a very good time of the year, heat-wise, to work in the Western Desert. It gets up into the 80s or low 90s at mid-day, but it's actually quite chilly at night.

But it _is_ incredibly dry. We learned quickly that you have to rip your pita bread into quarters at lunch, stash 3 quarters back in the bag, put cheese in 1 quarter, eat that, and then repeat with the next quarters. If you put cheese into even half a pita, the pita is dried out by the time you eat your way to the other end of the half.....

[cessna152towser]

Great stuff Barb, thanks for posting.

[artificer]

Great pix! Thanks so much for sharing your adventures in the warm. It's 18*f here today