Saturday, March 06, 2010

Seeing in a new way

Living In Egypt (Maryanne Stroud Gabbani)

With photos of the museum visit.

Laurie and I have been friends on email for over 15 years and friends face to face for almost 10 years. We got to know each other on Equine-L so it was only natural that, having recently retired from her work, she should decide to come and visit me in Egypt and go riding. What might not seem so completely natural is the fact that she brought a friend along to "see" Egypt who is blind. I was a bit taken aback at the idea of Gail wandering around our stretch of the Sahara with only someone calling out directions, but all went well and will be in a Sarcophagus post soon. When we were planning activities for Laurie and Gail the seeing issue was an interesting parameter. We talked about museums, but as Gail said "Once you've felt one glass case, you've felt them all". So true.

BUT...I'd read that the Egyptian Museum was instituting special tours for the blind so I called them. Mona, the assistant to the director Dr. Wafaa el-Saddik, told me that so far the tours had been done for school children and not for adults but she would see what they could do.

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