Sunday, December 26, 2010

Egypt's farmers desperate for clean water.why not come clean and say the Nile is polluted.

 I reported on what I saw in the Fayoum   they are even fining the farmers for using polluted water on the land read a caption from my blog dated 3 months ago, I have cut and pasted  into the  next story on this post,

Lake Qarun (Birket Qarun) in the Fayoum of Egypt

,
Fayoum, Egypt (CNN) -- In Egypt, water is so scarce some farmers are forced to use untreated sewage to irrigate their crops. Now, the government is trying to tackle problem by modernizing irrigation and teaching farmers to conserve water.
Salah Abdel Halim, an Egyptian farmer, is one of those affected by the water shortage.
He lives in the rural community of Tamiya, in Fayoum, 70 kilometers southwest of Cairo. It used to be a lush oasis, but is slowly being swallowed by the surrounding desert.
Halim grows maize, sugar beet and alfalfa on his feddan -- slightly less than half a hectare -- and earns barely enough to feed his family of six.
There is not enough fresh water for irrigation in the main canal so, like other local farmers, he relies on agricultural waste water blended with fresh water at a nearby plant.( Closed" what he means is factories that employed 600 workers)
"The water we receive for irrigation is a mere trickle," Halim told CNN. "It's freshwater mixed with drainage waste water."
Egypt, with its 80-million population, is below the UN's water poverty line of 1,000 cubic meters of water per person per year.
Fifty years ago, the country had 2,100 cubic meters of water per capita annually; now it has less than 800 cubic meters. The world average is more than 7,000 cubic meters, according to the UN.
Officials say population growth and sprawling urbanization are taking their toll.
I used to leave the tap water running ... I've now learnt to save every single drop.
--Faiza, farmer in Fayoum, Egypt

Tens of thousands of people took to Egypt's streets this summer to protest against water shortages, according to IRIN, the news service for the UN Office for the Co-ordination of Humanitarian Affairs.
For Halim, irrigation water is free, but he has to pay around £100 Egyptian ($20) a month for the maintenance and running of the pumps.
Local landowners and tenants have to wait their turn for water, which comes once every 10 to 15 days, if they are lucky.
Halim says the high salinity of the water is affecting soil fertility and, in extreme cases, causing the loss of agricultural land altogether.
But it's still better than what some farmers in the nearby village of Abul Nour have to do. They use untreated sewage to rescue their dying crops, at enormous health risks to the community and their thirsty animals.
The scarcity is driving many farmers to abandon their fields and seek more stable livelihoods elsewhere.
Those who have opted to stay are looking for new solutions.
Many have become members of water-user associations, groups that place farmers in state-sponsored water management projects.
The projects help farmers dig their own irrigation canals and educate them in water conservation.
"I used to leave the tap water running," said Faiza, a local farmer. "But that was before I attended these classes. I've now learnt to save every single drop."
Until now, modern water-saving methods such as drip irrigation and sprinklers have been reserved for reclaimed desert land because they are so costly.
Kamal Taha, of Fayoum Irrigation Directorate, said: "The water networks -- whether for drinking or irrigation -- are very old and in bad in need of maintenance and repair. We are now in the process of renewing them and we are also modernizing irrigation methods."
The government is trying to address its shortages using a combination of new technologies, water recycling and changing attitudes to encourage more cooperation and understanding.
Dia El Qousy, an adviser to the Ministry of Irrigation, said, "What Egypt is trying to do now is to convert vegetable fields and orchards in the Nile Valley and Delta from the conventional service irrigation into modern irrigation.
"We are starting with an area of about 700,000 feddans and this will save an extra amount of water.

all of which has to be cleared of the invading water Hyacinth,
"Everybody wants water and there's no way out as I see it, except with a win-win approach. Everybody has to win because the alternative is a lose-lose approach and this is what nobody would desire."
now read the truth on what is happening in the Fayoum,

Lake Qarun (Birket Qarun) in the Fayoum of Egypt

ONE of the reasons I have come back early is because I have been travelling around Egypt the wrong month to see the birds, not that I did not see any but most of the birds that come to Siwa oasis and the Lake Qaroun migrate here in the winter and from what the local people told me in both places the best time to see the birds is in February /March ,
The Lake qaroun has become such a cesspit that many of the birds do not go there any more the numbers have been dwindling over the past several years. one reason and the main reason is the pollution,
most of the surrounding villages including the Town of El Fayuom deposit the sewage in the lake Fayoum is 27 kilometres from the Lake, there are some people in Egypt who care about what is happening to the lake its supposed to be a wildlife protected area , the reason I left there was the police on the lake, On my second day in the Helnan Hotel, where I stayed after being told by yet another lying Egyptian taxi driver,this is the only hotel open near the lake. what he should have said was:- this is the only expensive hotel in the area:-
many other hotels and retreats have been closed by the powers that be
This next piece is taken from a eu page,
The condition of Lake Qaroun has deteriorated rapidly, since inlets and outlets are sealed off and drainage from approximately 482 million square meters of surrounding agricultural land filters into the lake, said Wafaa Amer, chairman of the environmental conservation division of the Ministry of the Environment. The drainage then evaporates and settles on the bottom of the lake as salts and nitrates.
Amer delivered her statement yesterday during a meeting of the agricultural committee within the People's Assembly in response to an information request filed by Hasan Abdel Ghufar. She asked for an inquiry into the declining fish levels in Lake Qaroun and for an investigation of threats from nearby industrial projects and wastewater.
An enormous amount of wastewater has found its way into the lake during the last year alone, said Amer, emphasizing that the pollution was due to poverty in the surrounding area and the harsh penalties imposed on farmers for committing infractions. "If I wanted to punish these people I would first give them an alternative way to make a living, instead of fining them and increasing the severity of the penalties, seeing as they have no other source of income," added Amer.
Egypt could meet the fish demand of the entire Arab world by establishing fish farms on the Mediterranean coast, ( this is what the laid off factory workers of Fayoum were told before mking the fish farms in Fayoum) she said, arguing, "We could emulate Cyprus, which uses helicopters to harvest the fish from its farms. After the fish are frozen, the helicopters could bring the fish back to other countries." She added, "It does not make sense for us to eat fish taken from waters in which we dump our sanitation and agricultural wastewater."
Kuwaiti businessman Nasir el-Kharafi has proposed seven projects to make use of the lake's water, and two factories have been shut down for polluting the environment, Amer confirmed.
IT DOES NOT MENTION THE BIGGER PROBLEM OF OIL POLLUTION :- MOTOR BOATS ARE NOT TO BE USED ON THE LAKE Many local people have boats with outboard engines that have not been used on the lake for several years these are tucked away in backyards and front gardens of the owners,
for fear of the police confiscating the boat + a heavy fine .
while walking along waters front where all the fishermen have their sail and rowing boats. I saw some police chasing each other in inflatable dinghies on the lake I asked The guy I was with what was going on and was told they do this all the time. Has the sail boat done something wrong I asked, he said no. do they stop the sail boats for money, like the do in Luxor and Aswan:- I asked. sometimes he said depends if they have small fish. What do you mean I asked again: the fishermen can only take a certain size of fish from the lake, some abide by the rules others do not. because we local people prefer the smaller fish for grilling. they also taste much better because the longer they are in the lake the more pollution the take in,and this makes a bad taste on the fish, after seeing the murky waters of the lake its quite audible that the lake is polluted to quite a high content, also the salt levels are very high. this I found out before I read up on the last article.

So I asked again if you the locals cannot have motorized boats what are the police doing with seven ,
Surely they can inspect catches as the boat comes to shore. all they need then is one police man in a patrol vehicle in each area of boat landings. this is Egypt Mr Tony. they make the law and they break the laws. no matter if the yanks or the UN. or Our minister of environment make the laws. laws in Egypt are meant to be Broken. and another man became quiet knowing he had said too much, its so sad that the Egyptian people cannot do anything to protect their living and livelihood, and being lied to by government officials. that they can grow and feed fish to the whole Arab countries.
.
I had decided to stay for another week, the previous day I met the owner of a fish restaurant and after a very nice meal of local shrimps and local veg Etc, we had a talk and one thing led to another and the offer of a flat was brought up. , I went to see several of the flats in the vicinity of the restaurant an the Lake front.
and after a lot of bargaining and telling him I was almost an Egyptian etc, I got the price down to 60le per night no further negotiation on a weeks rent, and of I went to enjoy my rather expensive last night in the hotel. I used all its commodities like a free swimming pool and a free bird watch from its terraces overlooking Lake Qaroun, I got down to do a bit of blogging and downloaded my photos of the day from the camera. Close to the phone was the dial for this and that, . why not I thought spoil myself one time:
On the dressing table there was also a cuisine price list, pot of tea with milk , lovely, 10le. Then I came to my favourite sweet, crème caramel. yummy yummy, price 20le.
and again I thought why not, picked up the telephone dial 2 for room service. Hello room service,
Ana ais wa chai hallib wa crem caramel. bait 107,shukran'
easy one would think in a all Egyptian staff hotel.
say again please,
then I tried English.
Please may I have a pot of tea with milk, and a crème caramel, in room one hundred and seven.
say again:-
ok so i asked in my native tongue.
Gai cwpaned o de a creme caramel. os gwelwch un dda.custudle cant a saith,
and again the room service said say again please, and I wondered if I was talking to a robot,
put the phone down and went to the reception to order.
He must of understood what I said even though it was in Arabic, because he asked for my room number.
and off I toddled back to my room,
half an hour later my order came, with the bill of 44le. one cup of coffee, and crème caramel with a blob of synthetic cream and a cherry on top, the cherry was on the cream not the cream and cherry on the crème caramel, The cream may have filled half a teaspoon so the cream was dwarfed by the glazed cherry.

Did not make a fuss I thought maybe the rich always get coffee and a blob of cream with their creme caramel makes up for the price they have to pay in their everyday life, and by this time all the anger had gone and I paid the man. one thing that put a smile on my face was the amount of sugar sleeves they gave there was sweetener, white sugar, cream coloured sugar but no brown sugar, and that to me as a very rare coffee drinker is an offence. and the coffee was the worst I have had while living in Egypt, and I did not even order it.the following morning still in Enjoy my money hotel mode,
I was up at first light. taking a dip and watching the birds coming in to eat whatever was left over from the night people,s food. bits of bread some nuts maybe, usually plenty of nuts about.

Friday, December 24, 2010

25.12.01 google , yahoo,




Little white egret (Egretta garzetta),

For 2 years I have tried to get a message to google, and finally on Christmas day 2010. I had a News-letter on how well they are performing and a list of all the new stuff they have for blogger,  yahooooooooo, I finally have an e-mail address, whoopeeeeeeee.
but soon as my whoopeee's turn to bollocks . why do these people give us false hopes
so what is says is  google cannot receive its own mail .

this was thee-mail just in case one of googles employees are looking in . 
http://nilelife5.blogspot.com/2010/12/purple-gallinule-porphyrio-porphyrio.html
 GO TO THIS PAGE,  BASE OF THE PAGE SAYS WHY I HAVE QUIT BLOGGER
 I FOUND BLOGGER SO EASY TO USE, BUT WHY DOES IT STORE EVERY PHOTO IN
ITS ALBUMS, sometimes I TAKE 500 PHOTOS  DOWNLOAD ON MY COMPUTER
BEFORE SORTING THEM OUT FOR A BLOG,  NOT A HAPPY CHAPPIE AFTER MAKING
5 ACCOUNTS  TO KEEP MY NILELIFE BLOG GOING,  THEN HAVING TO GIVE UP
WHEN NILELIFE5, ONLY LASTED 1 MONTH BEFORE IT RAN OUT OF ITS ALLOTTED
SPACE.




Mail Delivery Subsystem

 to me
show details 23:59 (0 minutes ago)

Delivery to the following recipient failed permanently:

    blogger-news@google.com

Technical details of permanent failure:
Google tried to deliver your message, but it was rejected by the recipient domain. We recommend contacting the other email provider for further information about the cause of this error. The error that the other server returned was: 550 550 5.2.1 <blogger-news@google.com>... Mailbox disabled for this recipient (state 14).

----- Original message -----

MIME-Version: 1.0
Received: by 10.42.174.65 with SMTP id u1mr4832250icz.55.
1293227964541; Fri,
 24 Dec 2010 13:59:24 -0800 (PST)
Received: by 10.42.241.5 with HTTP; Fri, 24 Dec 2010 13:59:24 -0800 (PST)
Date: Fri, 24 Dec 2010 23:59:24 +0200
Message-ID: <AANLkTi=T98XXgh7AVK+vJ7mSyOkFsV1=a6mX7QYD7RRT@mail.gmail.com>
Subject: PICASA3
From: Anthony Roberts <tonyluxor@gmail.com>
To: blogger-news@google.com
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1
Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable

Tuesday, December 14, 2010

new blog at nilelife. blog.co.uk,Common snipe,Gallinago gallinago, bird no 82

given up with google blogspot,

my blogs have a new home.
nile life in luxor  is on www.nilelife.blog.co.uk
birds and wildlife is on,  www.nilelife.blog.com
IMG_7830This is a very small bird and a rare visitor to the upper delta of the Nile, if  you want to see the rest of today's bird photos. go to my new blog posts on
www.nilelife.blog.com

Sunday, December 12, 2010

Purple gallinule (porphyrio porphyrio),MOVED TO nilelife.blog.co.uk/

cattle egrets,

'

Purple gallinule (porphyrio porphyrio),


Whoops! You're out of space. Purchase more storage.
Photos are stored in your Picasa Web Albums account and are included in your 1 GB free quota for photos. Additional storage you purchase is shared between Gmail, Picasa Web Albums, and Google Docs, and is in addition to your free quota. Learn more
AFTER HAVING THIS NOTICE I WENT TO MY ACCOUNT TO SEE HOW MUCH STARAGE WAS LEFT FFROM 1MB,
HERE IS A CUT AND PASTE
Each Google service offers you some free storage.

Gmail
0 GB (0%) in use
Google Docs Learn more
.MEANING I SHOULD HAVE    2.65GB  LEFT,

and this is my last blog  it seems google is adamant on putting all my photos on their stuff like picasa web albums even though I do not have picasa uploaded on my computer. over the past month from the beginning of nilelife5 blog  I have taken more than 5000 photos all of which are  4500x3800 m p. all go in the web album  those i make 1000x699 mp for my blog  are also loadeded on picasa wa, so each photo has been duplicated even tripled in the picasa web albums. i am wondering if i go on wordpress blog  the same will happen. to date I have been blogging for  one and a half years, and have had to create  7 accounts with google,  a new account each time I run out of space.  SO SORRY FOLKS ITS THE END OF AN ERA.
NILE LIFE HAS MOVED  TO  HTTP//:NILELIFE.BLOG.CO.UK 

ALL MY BLOGS SPOTS ARE ON THIS  SIDE BAR. INCLUDING SCAMS THE EGYPTIANS GET UP TO,

Boats garbage and dead fish.

All day we had this  dust cloud  the only time I saw the sun was early morning   when on my walk to the west bank of luxor, made for some silhouettes of  pied kingfishers on the front of one of the dahabia cruise boats

the Nile is very low I have never seen it so low and the farmers have been told to stop pumping direct from the Nile to water the land, they  can only use canal water that gets filled from the council pumps out of the Nile 
.
the farmers pump is in the middle of the  stanchions

.



one fishing boat on the what should be the winters normal flood line.
this one is 2 metres high on the summers flood line. it still has its fish nets
kingfishers on the guide ropes I counted 14 birds  this morning.
 
sail boats high and dry winter is a good time to paint and repair the smaller craft that use the Nile
the jetty in the background is the drinking water pipe pumped out of the Nile to the filtration plant,
the Nile is getting overcrowded  and these large cruisers are moored on the west bank while the other boats do a shuffle for places,   on crossing the ferry this dawn there was 14 abreast  half way across the Nile,
the garbage boat boys keeping warm on this foggy day 
even the rust bucket teba star has been moved from its moorings, 
one of the garbage boats full to the brim will have to find its way around the cruisers doing their routine ballet dance on the nile.
early morning flight of the ibis heading for the feeding grounds.
a balloon in the mist
sun coming up its about 6.00
Grey heron does not like the guy with the camera getting too close
on my way home at 9.30 the tier had 12 boats the others are in the river shuffle.
can you imagine the walk the paying guest has to do through 12/14 boats, always the boat leaving on a cruise down river to Aswan is moored at the end.
and why is there so much change in the mooring of the cruisers?
this past week we have had Mrs Suzane Mubarek Egypts first lady, came to listen at a two hour orchestra live, then Ban Ki-moon came he is the eighth and current Secretary-General of the United Nations, 
then today and the next couple of days there is a conference held in the old winter palace,
I was hoping it was on Nile polution , but its on the roll of ladies etc in the Egyptian community??.
even though the new moorings are built upstream the Nile is too low for the these boats as several already on the moorings are stuck on the bottom.  excellent planning on behalf of the luxor and district governor.
in their quest to spend millions of aid money. at this time  and for the next 3 years the existing moorings have no fuel supplies including sewage . due to lowering the prom by three meters.
the work is well under way, see,
http://nilelife5.blogspot.com/2010/12/common-bulbul-pycnonotus-barbatus.html
some of the 3 tiers of cruise boats looking  upstream.
these boats are 2 man vessels one rowing and one handling the nets. rod fishing is done off the bank.
so I waited to see why are there 3 in this boat,  I had heard about this way of catching fish  and the  reason I do not buy fish from the local market,
even the canals are getting low on water. these are the naughty lazy fishermen they go for the dead fish in the canal.
the ones that die from pollution. they sell  cheap to the locals.
 not surprising people have dysentery this fish will  no doubt end up on the tourists menu 
The pole the one guy has a net on the end  when fish leave the water they struggle,  the 4 fish I saw put in the container where already dead
one of the river fishermen getting his catch from the net.
fishermen of the Nile 
today,s word is

procrastinator, ie,

Last-Minute Holiday Gifts for the Procrastinator,

(1)To put off doing something, especially out of habitual carelessness or laziness.


(2)To postpone or delay needlessly.
I am a procrastinator, as I have put off going to the dentist for 45 years. rather pull my own out thank you very much, and a procrastinator I will be,
.