Once hired a felucca to spend the afternoon sailing up and down the Nile. Got in and the guy doing the sailing produced a bottle of water and asked if we'd like a cup of tea. So we sat drinking funny-tasting tea, watching the dead dogs and camels and the human waste drifting past, and the people on the banks defecating and urinating straight into the river. The smell was that of an open sewer. The guy doing the sailing dipped his bottle into the river to fill it up again and asked if we'd like another cup of tea.
I’ve had a similar experience in Egypt in the
Nike Delta. once a donkey dies it gets shoved into the nearest ditch.
My guide stopped at a roadside vendor for a drink. It was a grey mash of sugarcane and water in a big drum.
They dipped a tin cup in, gave it to the customer who drank the brew, gave it back unwashed and it was dipped back in the barrel.
Every cell in my body was telling me no, but trying to be polite I had a cup.
And I lived to tell the tale.
Peas are bloody loverly!!!
