Karnak Mene Market - a photo on Flickriver

Karnak Mene Market

            A very small vignette in the busy area of Karnak where the tourist busses park.  Bright and colorful, a visual overload of colors, activity and smells.

The local farmers with their donkeys, hauling wagon loads of fresh veg and fruit to town among all the busy traffic and tourist busses. They will probably be forever my strongest memory of Egypt.

Here in the left corner you can see the police shifting an interloper cart. We saw that a lot in various cities.  

No matter the enterprise, buggy rides, veg carts, food vendors, etc.  They fell under some kind of preferred system and it was enforced.

When our bus pulled in and we were disembarking, an older gent toting a well equipped wooden box in his very stained hands approached the bus.

His was the shoe shining trade and was obviously selling a shin to the tourists.

We could see him from the bus windows as the line moved forward. His eyes were trained on the feet of those stepping out of the bus.  He noticed my boots and gestured at them and then at his polishing box. 

My relatively new boots had been though a week of walking though miles of sand and grit and were hardly recognizable as new anymore.

I asked his price and told him yes, but when I got back from the tour.  With a bit of disappointment on his face, he nodded and I was off with the tour.

When we returned there he was waiting for me. I gave him a smile and he pointed for me to  put my dusty dull boot on his boot shine box and proceeded to have my shoes polished.  

I have never ever had a real shoeshine before.  I always did my own shoes and boots.  I have to say I felt pretty uncomfortable with someone kneeling below me doing my shoes.  But, I told myself this is how he made his living and I was helping the local economy.  

Amazingly when my boots were finished they looked like new.  I thought for sure they were goners and would have to be replaced when I got home.

His asking price for the shine was about 1.00 US and I have seen in the our local train station that a professional shine was about 5.00 or so.

He worked extra hard on my boots and they looked amazing,  so I gave him a generous tip and paid him the equivalent of 5.00 US instead.

Upon returning to the bus in my now shiny boots, I got a loud embracing reprimand from a fellow american tourist. (the sort of tourist who gives fellow US tourist a bad name).  He seemed upset that I had overpaid and did not barter the old gent down.

Rather than saying what I really felt like saying, which was not nice at all and very unbecoming of a lady, I told him I figured the gent just saved me at least 50.00 or more dollars in replacement costs and 5.00 was a very small price to pay.

I sometimes wonder how the old shoeshine gent has faired in these years after the Arab Spring.

Captured Feb. 2006 with Canon PowerShot A620.

Edited today on the desktop in Photoshop, light editing in Viveza and then into Alien Skin Exposure X2 where I applied and modified Lo-Fi - Kodak Portra 400VC preset.  

This film type just gave a nice contrast pop.

Taken in: مصر / الاقصر / الاقصر (show map)

Taken on: November 6, 2016

Tags:

Egypt

karnak

market

square

busy intersection

signs

bright colors

red

yellow

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brown

architecture

Donkey

food

produce

fresh

farm fresh

police

street

street scene

dusty

sand

wagons

rustic

travel

world travel

2006

canon

powershot A620

photoshop

Viveza

alien skin

Exposure X2

egypt 2006

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