In my visits to Cairo bakeries last week, I was amused and a bit disconcerted to see to what extent the bread shortage has already become a “sensitive” issue–one that gets enfolded, as usual, with all sorts of paranoid nationalist discourse. At both bakeries I stopped at, men emerged immediately from the crowd to harangue me and tell everybody else, basically, to keep their mouth shut and not tell foreigners about the country’s problems. One man held on at length (and high volume) about how the bread crisis was a Western conspiracy against Egypt and about how Egypt in fact had everything it needed, so much so that it hosted people from all over the Arab world. At the second bakery, a young man assured me “there is no bread crisis, and in fact there never was a bread crisis to begin with.” The people around him pointed out that he was with the President’s National Democratic Party and laughed while he insisted that “there is bread everywhere.” In general, the people I spoke to showed a combination of anger, suspicion of me as a foreign journalist (not unusual) and embarrassment–I’d guess that people are a bit shocked to discover themselves a country where people kill each other for a few loaves of bread. It shows how desperate things have become. And it explains the denial.
There is no bread crisis!
For those who might be interested, I just did a story on the (continuing) bread crisis for the radio program The World.
No doubt also embarrassed to be found standing in a bread line.
Downloading the segment now. looking forward to listening.
Very cool – what’s the deal with a PHP file? Do I need Window’s Media? VLC ignores it. How inept am I? That’s how inept I am. Whatever happened to MP3s anyway?
[…] Ursula did a good radio piece on the bread crisis in Egypt, which you can listen to here… […]
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Hey Ursula, ashamed to admit that’s the first of your pieces I’ve listened to. Great piece!
Actually, same for me. I figured just talking to Ursula periodically would be the same as hearing her radio pieces. But great stuff, and nice length to it. The fact that you have time to do this while doing your classes is doubly impressive. MC, not sure what your technical issue is but it played immediately on my machine, do you have the latest wmv translator for mac? Flip4Mac as it’s called. That seems key.
They are right, it is a Western conspiracy… well, to some extent. US and EU bio-fuel policies are one of the key factors driving wheat prices up, and creating the hysteria in the cereals market in general.
Thanks for this pieace Ursula this is an extremely important and worrying subject. Unfortunately, this is only the beginning … some very rough times ahead.