It's all quite on the Western Desert front

As we all know, a week can be a long time in politics. I am currently in Romania and have heard the stories of the ’89 revolution here told many times. “One minute communism was all powerful, a week later there were road blocks searching for communist sympathisers”. How the might fall, it must be a huge blow to their egos.

Penny, Claudia and Angus are in Siwa, Sasha is in the UK and got out a few days before it all started. As I write this life goes on there as normal. “It’s not a problem Penny” a local says to her “ there was no bus, no petrol, no electric or phones here in Siwa before, we have our gardens, we can go by donkey – humdula”. He’s right, we’re good in Siwa for a few generations, we have our own water supply, solar power and vegi patch.

Angus is feeling it the most, as the Egyptian government cut the internet a few days ago and so he is a bit lost with what to do. They are riding their bikes instead of using what’s left of the fuel that may be needed in the future. Our guests cannot get through, the tourists that are in Siwa cannot get out, so a kind of Ground Hog day feel has set it. Which is completely different to what is going on in Cairo, Alex and we have heard even Marsa Matruh has been affected with looters coming down from Alex who have looted the main street in Marsa Matruh which annoyed Penny as she was going to go there for a final ‘batten the hatches down’ booze run. Nobody knows what to do. The police have disappeared and put back on their civy cloths, they are all Egyptians after all.

It’s weird watching history take place in front of your eyes. To know that Angus and Claudia don’t see the big deal at the moment as, inshala the internet will be back on tomorrow, but they will have their story to tell when their old and their grandchildren ask them. “So Granddad, what was it like in Egypt when Mubarak was overthrown? I read about it in our history lesson in school about how the whole middle east situation changed from this point on.”

He will fall, like all the other bad guys in history, his number is up and he will go in the same humiliating way all the others do, hanging on until the end. The question is, what comes after? One thing is for sure, all the energy of all these brave young middle class Egyptian men and women has nothing to do with religion, its real simple, he’s had it his way for 30 years and they want no more.

We are sticking with it, what ever the outcome, we’re not tourists like in the Tsunami, we lived there too, well we lasted one day and didn’t have time to build a house… this time we did.

If any one has a spare 5 minutes, please give Penny +20165940776 or Claudia +20191407904 a call and a bit of moral support as they cannot call out or send texts or emails.