Egypt - an education - part 4

Enough negative and not so pleasant aspects of life in Egypt for now - but keep in mind that no matter where, the conditions I have described are in general present everywhere.
When we arrived by train in Assuan, we went by bus on a sightseeing tour of the high dam that Russia helped finance. To my amazement (though I shouldn't have been surprised, since Nasser and Tito were great friends and leaders at that time of the third world "uninvolved countries" (forgot the proper nomenclature) for the then Union in a sense, of African, Asian and S. American countries where they were spreading socialism/Communism, supposedly friendlier from the Soviet Union), I spied the affixed large iron plate on the bridge over the river commemorating the builder as "Maribor" and "Litostroj" from Yugoslavia (actually Slovenia, but at that time it was all Yugoslavia). Apparently, a good proportion of the bridgework, locks, turbines and other steelwork was provided by Slovenia as well as technical knowhow. I was told that many Slovenians workers stayed there for years. Near the dam site itself stands an enormous concrete sculpture (probably 4 or 5 hundred feet high, perhaps more) commemorating in Arabic and Cyrillic writing the friendly cooperation between the Soviet Union and Egypt in this gigantic project.
The positive aspect of the dam is that it provides huge amounts of electricity and of course water for irrigation - the negative side is that many archeological sites disappeared below the lake and the river no longer floods the farm land to regularly and naturally enrich the soil. The lake is gradually silting up, and the farmlands are now dependent on expensive artificial fertilization.
Also, whereas before, the river was like a muddy Mississippi, now it has a clear greenish hue, more pleasant to the eye. (The same thing happened to the Colorado river after the dams were built on it.)
On returning from the dam to the city of Asswan, we boarded the river boat and were assigned our rooms for the duration of the float down the Nile. Later that day, we had an excursion on the river on the local traditional sail boats the "feluka". My luck was that I was on the one that got stuck on a sand bar and it took a few crewmen to wade knee deep (no fear of nonexistant crocodiles here) to push and rock it off its sandy mooring - there was no wind and eventually a motor boat took us in tow.
By the way, the food on board was varied and good, even delicious - you know my propensity to overeat where you have self service (breakfast, dinner and supper), however, no matter how careful we all were not to drink their water (we all drank exclusively bottled water) or eat anything that might have been washed in their water ie: salad and fruit that has not its own peel (like banana, orange, grapefruit), with the exception of two or three, we all had diarrhea the entire time in Egypt - some were even heaving, had a headache and temperature (I only had the runs for a few days thanks to my stock of dark chocolate which firms things up. Others had hard whisky with them to disinfect their stomach, mostly unsuccessfully) - the guide however, was kindheartedly supplying us with medication to alleviate the situation. I suspect that in most cases, the kitchen and the help in it was not too clean. The other possibility (also very probable) was that the bottled water was just water from their faucets poured into the plastic bottles and sold to us - it is not difficult to reseall the plastic cap, besides, the waiter or whoever brought you the water opened it himself for you and poured it into your glass at the table.
I would have preferred to drink beer or sodas and juices, which were no more expensive than the water, but it was seldom available and of course, alcohol is not sanctioned by Muslims, thus is was available for tourists only on board or in the hotel, where we returned mostly to sleep.
Next installment later.
Ata