November 2004
Although I have read, in the Bible, about plagues of locusts, I had never experienced them. But last week, for the first time in 50 years the Cairo skies were black with these insects. I first heard about it when I walked into my painting class and was greeted by a chorus of voices saying "Did you see them? Look!”. They were all pointing at the sky light. I didn't realize what the black dots in the sky were until they told me.
My first impulse was to go to the roof, to see them better. I had planned to take the students to the roof anyway to paint, so I had a perfect excuse to go up and see what was there. Three students accompanied me. When we got to the eighth floor and looked out over the railing, I could now see the sky was black with these flying objects.
An Egyptian man beckoned to me. In Arabic he was saying "Come, I'll show them to you". We tentatively followed him to the bottom of the outdoor stairway leading to the roof. And then I couldn't help myself – I gave out a little shriek. Because there, crawling all over the stairs, were these red winged grasshopper looking creatures that were about 4 inches long and an inch and a half wide, but seemed to me to be about 6 inches long! As we looked up the outdoor stairs at the sky, all we could see was swirls of these creatures circling and flying. I couldn't imagine even contemplating walking up these stairs. All I could think about was being in a swarm of gnats in the woods, but now they were 100 times the size!
The Egyptian man was amused by my fright. "I'll give you one to put into your bag" he joked. My students, on the other hand, started talking about how they had a friend who was bit by one who had to start taking antibiotics right away etc. etc. In any case, it was clear that class would not take place on the roof that day. In the States, I would always wonder about outdoor classes because of the weather, here in Egypt I never worried about the weather but slowly I've come to realize that the occasional sandstorm and now locusts! could disrupt our plans.
The next day, though, a cooler wind finally came to Cairo, the temperature only went to 25 degrees Celsius and the locusts, who don't eat when it is colder than 30 degrees, were gone.