The Dam

My country is doing some major development in the north and today I had the opportunity to go up and check it out with a group of foreign doctors in a sort of VIP entourage. Long story. So we flew on one of these little charter planes. When we arrived there was no runway and, amazingly, it was one of the smoothest landings I've ever experienced.

I've always heard people talk about the Nile River Valley and I do live in it but I've never actually seen the contrast between where the Valley ends and the desert begins until today.

There were camels everywhere. Living in the desert and seeing camels more often than the sporadic zoo visit has kind of caused them to lose their novelty, although I still love the baby ones. (notice the two little ones running to catch up to the group)

We also stopped to look at some pyramids. These aren't the same ones I attempted to see a few months back but apparently they are the 'oldest in the world'. I'm not so sure I believe that although they are older than the ones in Egypt. It's kind of odd b/c you can just go and climb on these, I mean there are no barriers, no entrance fees. To the left of me in the picture (which you can't see, sorry) are these huge sand hills that are actually more pyramids that have just had sand blown over them.

Here are some local girls riding their donkeys bringing back feed for their other animals.

Now here's the dam. It's the biggest project ever attempted in my country. This picture is of the dam and is taken from this huge fancy complex that they built to house all the foreign engineers that they hired to build this thing. So I'm standing in front of this air conditioned movie theater looking out over this tiny village that has no electricity or running water and looking at this dam that will, alone, produce twice as much electricity than the entire country is producing at the moment. Behind the dam they will build a reservoire and displace a couple thousand people. They say that they are giving lots of money towards relocating people but yet they can't hook up the neighbor village less than 20 feet away with electricity. Sorry to share my pessimistic attitude. Maybe when they finally get this thing up and running they will stop cutting our power every other day!

And this last one is a picture of my city. I do live in the capitol city of my country, but it's really more like a very large village than it is like a city. Although it is getting more modern every day it is still definitely third world. Recently there has been a influx of money into the economy here and they are projecting huge growth. I personally am hoping that they will spread the money out and work on development all over the country, not just in the capitol.