LIFE IN EGYPT

Bay of Plenty Beacon, Volume 2, Issue 151, 24 April 1940, Page 6

LIFE IN EGYPT

NURSE'S IMPRESSIONS GOOD LIVING CONDITIONS "We are working here with English sisters who gave us a most cordial welcome and who have treated us with exceptional kindness ever since," writes a Dunedin nurse serving with the New Zealand Army Nursing Service in Egypt. "As a matter of fact I have never been, as a stranger in a strange lamli, SO well treated in my life," the letteei adds. "I am charmd with the English sisters; t.hey are real ladies. There is a quiet, gracious air about them all, and yet they are full of business and wit and humour. It is indeed a privilege to be mixing with them. "As for our living conditions we are really in clover. Half of us are in tents on the desert sands and the rest in bungalows. We are two in a tent and are very comfortable. Our j meals are excellent. Sudanese boys are waiters and they are very well trained. We are some considerable distance from a town, but if there are enough folk wanting to go a bus will take us any afternoon for five piastres (Is). On thing that strikes me very forcibly is. the flowers. Goodness knows where they grow. There are numerous natives about the town selling them at two jMas tres a bunch. (One piastre equals 2%d). Marigolds and all our hardier flowers appear to do well here. "Everyone seems Avell and happy. The men are further away from town than we are and in quite a different direction. All buildings are of stone and are very like what you sec in Biblical pictures. When you see a donkey and a few goalvs and these long robed Egyptian people, you certainly feel is if time has gone hack many hundreds of years, Even the little church has a stone floor. All floors are of stone, which has meant great wear and tear on our shoes already. I have never seen as many horses in my life as I have seen here. They are smaller than in New Zealand and are a very light. In fact, everything in the animal 'ine seems to be smaller here, even f o the hens and the eggs she lays, ft must be the lack of green feed. r t Avould just be heaven to see a beautiful stretch of lawn and some •.iish."