The Mighty Nile: Source of Life, Source of Trash

When many people think about ancient Egypt, they get pictures of Queen Nefertiti with her servants bathing with crocodiles among the reeds of the mighty Nile. The Nile, which flows north through nine countries beginning in Uganda and Ethiopia stretching all the way to the Mediterranean Sea in Egypt, has fed and sustained innumerable cultures and peoples. Her temperaments have allowed some regions to flourish and some regions to famine. She has brought people groups together and caused wars. She is truly "mighty" as her epithet suggests. While riding in a taxi after my arrival in Cairo, I saw her for the first time through the cloud of pollution and exhaust which was choking the life out of my lungs, I truly felt a surge of historical relevance and kinship in gazing at her width and current. This is the Nile River. Wow! I couldn't believe I was actually looking at her.


After I'd settled into classes, I decided to try for the rowing team with my university. I needed some outlet for my physical stimulus in addition to the thought that the river would be as close to pure, unharmed nature as I could find in one of the most crowded cities in the world. Every other day, I would wake at 5 am and catch a taxi to the club from where our team was based. We'd begin rowing just as the sun was coming over the buildings throwing it's orange rays into the haze that descended on the city just a few hours before. These mornings we so serene, so exhilarating, so hilarious. Only a couple practices into our season, we were rowing slowly upstream practicing technique and coordination when I glanced down into the water to see half of a plastic chair floating by. I just laughed! A short time later I saw an empty bottle and a dead fish and something red whose origin I could not distinguish. This became the usual sight during our morning rows. These mornings produced numerous stories.


One morning a group had come back from practice boasting of running their boat into the carcass of a cow that was floating in the river, a story which I'd similarly heard from a former member of the rowing team. Before one practice I had noticed that the small garbage dump which had previously been an obstacle for us in docking the boats was all of a sudden gone. Then my friend and I looked at the club next door to see a man dumping a whole garbage can or trash into the river. That's probably where it had gone. One day I accidentally shored a double scull boat in some mud where the river had receded slightly. I got out of the boat and stood in the river up to my knees to hear my captain shouting at me to get back into the boat. After that I had to go to the doctor to get tested for this certain parasite that lives in the Nile which can bore into your skin and possibly be fatal. "Don't worry. All you have to do is take some pills to get rid of it." Amongst other things, we would frequently see people bathing in the river or tossing the remains of their breakfast over the side of the bridge.


That picture of Nefertiti and water overflowing its banks into the most fertile ground in the world was made extinct. Now I saw a moving, living garbage dump. One day as I was walking to a bookstore from school, I saw this large crane-like machine on a barge pushing itself through the river. I couldn't quite figure out what it was doing, but it almost looked as though it was pushing against the river bed to free itself from the entrapment of the mud and garbage. I asked another onlooker what it was, and he suggested that the machine was cleaning the river. Unfortunately, I saw no evidence of that whatsoever. I glanced over the side of the bridge right in front of me to see a collection of garbage that was outstanding. It looked like a transport on the way to the nearest supermarket had fallen over the edge and relieved itself of all of its contents into the river. My environmentalist heart almost had a coronary. Regardless, I still saw life standing amongst the colorful boxes and bottles. A beautiful, tall, white egret was looking for food amongst the trash.


This egret is one of many avian creatures that live on the Nile and continue to feast on the life which she brings forth. So maybe she is not as picturesque nowadays as she was in the past, or maybe this section of her banks from the full expanse alone suffers from the same urbanization which has transformed Cairo. This I had later discovered on a trip to El Minya which does boast of river banks with reeds and lush fauna. Nevertheless life is still present on the Nile: from the exotic birds to the simple families who I see fishing every day to the array of boats with lights and dancing which use the waters every night to draw both tourists and locals to her seductive flow. This is the mighty Nile.

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And for reference, my rowing team did decently in our competition this semester. I can boast that my four-woman boat took second place in our division, which was quite an impressive feat. Though I do thoroughly enjoy rowing, I am a climber and a hiker foremost. Nevertheless, I admit that that 8 minutes of my life was one of the most physically exhausting periods I've ever endured and almost as satisfying as a summit. Maybe I will greet those waters again.