I was scouting locations in Egypt for a film I was producing.  I had hired a driver to take me to the various places.  He took me to a small town.  This was my first trip to Egypt and I was alone.  Something my mother at the time was fearful of, but always the adventurer, I went on alone after my partner bailed on me.  My driver took me to this small town.  This part of Egypt looked like what I always envisioned the story of Moses to look like.  There was the Nile river and the reeds.  Date trees were everywhere bulging with fruit.  We stopped and my driver brought me the best dates I had ever eaten.  We went on to a little town which would be good for a market scene.  The town was like no place I’d ever seen.  The buildings were made of old brown stone which was falling apart.  There were dirt paths, not streets as we know them.  There was a market on this one street where they sold everything you can imagine: pots, pans, fruits, vegetables, and fabrics.  It was so bizarre.  My driver went to park the car so I went out alone, fearless of anything.  I stood out like a sore thumb and soon became a magnet to the little children who gathered around me.  I was like the pied piper as I strolled down the street with the children and donkeys following me.  There were also lots and lots of donkeys.  I had never seen so many before.  Even though I felt perfectly safe, my nervous driver found me and insisted that I leave since I was causing so much commotion just by my presence.  The children were adorable.  I saw no threat there.  This place reeked of poverty, and I’m sure people thought I was just a rich foreigner – which I wasn’t.  Nobody had much here.  I could see it in the town and the area around us.  Everything was primitive and people worked hard for everything they had.  It certainly was not like our world.  I remember seeing a woman who sat on a crumbled step that led to a building.  She wore a dirty dress and felt no shame exposing herself as she nursed her baby.  She stared at me as I stared at her.  I felt sorry for these people.  This area was like it probably was 2000 years before.  There were no modern conveniences here.  Actually, on my journey, it was apparent that women were not supposed to be in public.  I had to go to the bathroom, which apparently not even a restaurant had (which by the way there were no women).  He stopped and knocked on an apartment door.  It was answered by women who acted embarrassed to be seen.  They had a bathroom.  There was an old-fashioned toilet and next to it was a pipe hanging out of the wall which emptied into a plastic container.  Of course, it was a good thing I had my own toilet paper, as they did not have any.  We forget how lucky we are in this country.  As bad as things seem here, these poor people have a really rough time just to survive.  It made me grateful to live in the USA.  So many of us take our country for granted.