yesterday i wandered around elephantine island, an island on the nile, just a short ferry ride from aswan. the island has a small museum, some egyptian ruins, a pair of nubian villages and an ugly high priced resort hotel (which is walled off from the rest of the island to keep the nubian villagers out)
i spent a bit of time wandering the villages. at one point i ran into H, and he became my make-shift guide. the nubians once had their own kingdom that clashed with the ancient egyptians. the two civilizations wrestled back and forth for thousands of years, and there were a handful of nubian pharaohs. aswan was once the border city between egypt and nubia, though at other times the town itself was nubian.
H claimed that aswan was always a nubian town, although a lot of the nubians around here were relocated from areas upriver when the aswan dam was constructed. as we walked through fields he explained how he worked as a teacher in cairo before moving home to elephantine island where he wanted to teach village children the nubian language, as well as arabic. "the egyptian government is not interested in such a school," he said, "when we proposed the idea they said: yes. yes. but when it comes to supporting the project they will not do anything."
