Bedouin women break new ground leading tours in Egypt’s Sinai
Umm Yasser is one of four women from the community who for the first time are working as tour guides.
Four women are breaking new ground among the deeply conservative Bedouin of Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula by working as tour guides.
Women among the Bedouin almost never work outside the home, and even more rarely interact with outsiders.
But amid a stunning vista of desert mountains, Umm Yasser is one of the four women from the community who for the first time are working as tour guides.
“People will make fun of us, but I don’t care. I’m a strong woman.”
They are part of Sinai Trail, a unique project in which local Bedouin tribes came together aiming to develop their own tourism.
Founded in 2015, the project has set up a 550km (330-mile) trail through the remote mountains of the peninsula, a 42-day trek through the lands of eight different tribes, each of which contributes guides.
The project has been successful in bringing some income to the tribes, who often complain of being left out of the major tourism development of the southern Sinai, home to beach resorts and desert safaris.
Ben Hoffler, the British co-founder of the Sinai Trail, felt it was not enough.
He said: “How can we be credible calling this the Sinai Trail if the women aren’t involved?”
But even after years of trying by Mr Hoffler, almost all the tribes still reject women guides.
There are some conditions: the tourists can only be women, and the tours cannot go overnight.
Each day before the sun sets, the group returns to the Hamada’s home village in Wadi Sahu, a narrow desert valley.
The organisers also urge the tourists to photograph the guides only when they are wearing a full veil over the face that covers even the eyes with mesh.
Umm Yasser was the first to join.
She convinced the families of three other women to allow them to work as guides.
Their tribe is a poor one, living in small concrete houses strung along the Wadi Sahu.
Electricity runs no more than five hours a night and there is no running water.
The men often leave the village to find work, either at resorts or in mines further south.
“We need money to help support our families for basic necessities,” Umm Yasser said.
“We need blankets, clothes for the children, washing machines, fridges, books for school.”
It was launched as an Islamic State-linked insurgency intensified in the northern part of Sinai and a year after a Russian passenger plane crashed, killing all 224 passengers on board in a suspected militant bombing.
The violence has stayed far from southern Sinai, where tourist resorts are located – but the industry has had to push hard to win tourists back.
On a recent tour joined by the Associated Press, 16 female tourists – from Korea, New Zealand, Europe, Lebanon and Egypt – were led by Umm Yasser and the other three women guides, Umm Soliman, Aicha and Selima, through the rugged landscape in and around Wadi Sahu.
During the two-day tour, the group hiked across an endlessly broad landscape of mountain peaks and valleys of dry riverbeds.
While male Bedouin guides range far from home, the women tend to move closer, with an exceptionally rich knowledge of the surrounding mountains.
In the evening, the group returned to the Hamada tribe’s village.
The women sat on the floor of Umm Yasser’s home and the tourists asked the guide about life in the village, marriage and divorce.
Umm Yasser is sceptical other Bedouin women will join her as a guide or in working in general any time soon.
Some attitudes are changing.
Mohammed Salman, an elderly man from the Aligat tribe, said he thought the guides project was a great step for women.
“If a woman wants to work, she should be able to have the right to,” he said.
“Many men say no, a woman’s place is at home. But I’m sick of this ideology. She’s a human being.”
“This trip is going down in history and will be talked about,” said Julie Paterson, a facilitator for Sinai Trail who often works with Bedouin women.
“It might also go into Bedouin oral history.”