LIFE IN EGYPT

Wairarapa Times-Age, 3 April 1940, Page 8

LIFE IN EGYPT

DESCRIBED BV N.Z. NURSE CORDIAL WELCOME FROM ENGLISH SISTERS. ‘•EVERYONE WELL AND HAPPY." (By Telegraph—Press Association.) DUNEDIN, April 2. “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 land, so well treated in my life,” the letter adds. “I am charmed with the English sisters; they 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 to a tent and are very comfortable. Our meals arc 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). One thing that strikes me very forcibly is the flowers. Goodness knows where they grow. There are numerous natives about the town soiling them at two piastres a bunch (one piastre equals 2Ad). Marigolds and ah our hardier flowers appeal' to do well here. “Everyone seems well 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 see in Biblical pictures. When you see a donkey and a few goats and these longrobed Egyptian people, you certainly feel as if time has gone back 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 type. In fact, everything in the animal line seems to be smaller here, even to the hen and the egg she lays. It must be the lack of green feed. It would just be heaven to see a beautiful stretch of lawn and some bush."