Arriving in Egypt

First arrived it’s all desert. It’s hot. There’s very strong customs. There’s different tribes or warring and it’s my first UN experience where the two parties that had been warring have been separated by X number of miles and we have to sit in the middle. And being a volunteer service, the Canadians are very good at that. They’re very good at doing the diplomatic talking. They aren’t carrying the baggage from other wars and you can’t take sides. You have to listen to both sides and regardless what you may or may not think, you must remain neutral. Some parts of the Sinai Peninsula it goes up to 140 degrees. It’s sandy. It’s sort of consistent day after day of sunshine, yet you can get a shower and get wet and dry in a five minute walk. But all in all, it’s a poor area for the population except in the local villages with a lot of bartering and trade from far countries in between. The war started between Israel and Egypt and they went across the Sinai and then they took part of the Sinai as they came back. And the strip is 30 miles wide by 12, or, yeah 30 miles long by 12 miles wide and at that time there was around 185,000, now there’s over two million living there.