South Sinai- When Ismail was five years old, his daily activities did not exceed his father’s help in watering camels and helping his mother in transporting firewood and searching with his comrades for primitive games for entertainment, but now he is on the outskirts of forty, he has become surprised by the changes that have befallen Bedouin life, especially between new generations.
Ismail, who belongs to the Jabaliya tribe and lives in the Saint Catherine region in South Sinai, is trying to convince his two daughters – who did not exceed ten years – the danger of using electronic games for long hours, “do not succeed throughout the day except to stare on the mobile phone,” he says while remembering his childhood, which he described as humble.
The Bedouin man retracts the description of his childhood as humble to say that it was suitable for the surrounding environment, it is natural – according to his opinion – that the activities of children who live in the desert are linked to their heritage. As for the abnormal, they are coordinated behind other cultures, and because of his changes from his surroundings, Ismail does not hide his fears of the extinction of Bedouin heritage after a few decades at the hands of new generations.
The fears of the Bedouin man seem to be understood, there are manifestations of an evolution that affected the lives of the people of the Sinai tribes, which made the Bedouin tent, whose pegs were ran over hundreds of years, in the winds of the winds of the match, to touch the tent with the folded heritage merely a folklore to spend a fun time in the desert and retrieve the atmosphere of the past, not a residence that witnesses life.
Pasture
The manifestations of development that have befallen Bedouin life in many Sinai, and perhaps the most clear are the displacement of the tribesmen to live in residential gatherings – whether they were cities or villages – away from traveling in tents in separate aspects in search of pastures like the ancestors.
In southern Sinai, the Bedouin, who lives in a tent and pursues grazing, has become a man who adheres to the scarcity, this seems justified in view of the tourist nature of the region. Tourist cities, such as Sharm El -Sheikh, Dahab, Nuweiba and Taba, which attracts tourists to visit also attracted large numbers of Bedouins over the past three decades to engage in work in the tourism sector.
Saleh, who is from the Al -Muzainah tribe and lives in the city of Dahab, says that small numbers of his tribe are still adhering to the old image of the life of the desert and their grazing areas are concentrated in the center of Sinai, not the south, while North Sinai is heading to the civilized nature because of the young generations that graduated from universities.
There is another reason that makes the northern Bedouins tend to settle away from traveling, which is the insult of numbers of them for cultivation, especially the cultivation of olives, peaches, aromatic and medical plants.
For more than 10 years, Saleh has been working in the tourism sector where he is driving a four -wheel drive vehicle to transport visitors to the heart of the desert, where the valleys and mountains are a tourist destination, and he does not inhabit the tents as his grandparents but rather an apartment in one of the buildings that the government put forward in the framework of social housing projects with payment facilities.
A dress in the phase of extinction
In the past, the Bedouin woman’s robe was distinguished by cultural privacy, but now the women of the tribes are wearing ordinary clothes that resemble the women of the Nile Valley governorates (Delta and Upper Egypt), only grandmothers adhere to the traditional dress that is characterized by bright colors and hand embroidery.
Saida, a fifty -year -old woman who lives in the Ghazaleh Valley near Nuweiba, says that many of the Sinai women are wearing regular clothes while the traditional costume is limited to the elderly and also appears on social occasions.
The manual knitting of a single Bedouin dress needs a long period of up to about two months, as it is happy, as the various embroidery takes time, and there are many accessories or supplies for the garment such as “the mask”, which is a head covering, and “the burqa” is a face mask made of metal pieces, and “the crocodile” is a belt around the waist, and “bitterness”, which is a tape placed over the belt made of goat hair, which makes With its highly expensive inclinations, it also reduces the demand for it automatically.
On the other hand, the Bedouin man seems more preserved on his traditional uniform than his wife, as he wears grabs and loose pants and uses light shoes and is not freed from this outfit except in working hours if he works for a government agency or during the study.
Saida says that men’s clothes are simple in their details and comfortable in the movement and are not highly expensive, and therefore the man does not seek to replace them with another as happened with the woman.
The clothing has not only changed in the Bedouin woman’s life, but her view of the family’s number changed, for example, she is the mother of 9 children and Jeddah for the same number, while her married children are the most number of children who had 4 children, and the fiftieth lady summarizes what happened.
What the Internet did in the Badia
Ismail says that he bought his child as a mobile paradise when she reached the three years as well as he did with his second daughter, and many other tribesmen do so with his sons, it is true that he regrets this because the phone has become a substitute for real life for his two daughters, but he could no longer back down.
He himself cannot dispense with the phone or use social media, because the latter specifically benefits him in promoting his work as a guide to the visitors of the desert during safari trips.
But he tries to be balanced in the use of technology unlike some of his friends, and he says, “We meet every period and go out to the desert while it is assumed that it is being alone, but the scene is very strange, we all wear the Bedouin dress and sit inside a tent, but everyone is busy staring at his mobile phone throughout the session.”
Nevertheless, what is more dangerous for Ismail is the effect of the Internet on the nature of the Bedouin personality, and explains, “In the past, if a problem occurs between two parties, there is respect for customs and complete assignment of the customary council. Now, it is true that the customary council is still the ruler, but the two parties also resort to Facebook as a square to divulge the secrets and even calibration.”
Bedouin societies update
Ain Shams University began to study the variables on Bedouin society by preparing two studies, the first of which was titled “Updating Bedouin Communities and its relationship to the principles and variables in the popular cultural heritage of Bedouin Sinai.”
The study, which was supervised by the Desert Research Institute, showed a relationship between the change in economic activity and technological development, and between the occurrence of social and cultural changes, whether material and non -material.
Accordingly, North Sinai Governorate has high levels of education and openness to the outside world is the most updated from the South Sinai Governorate, according to research results.
The study, prepared by 3 researchers, indicated that the modernization may work to make a change in the existing social system by weakening the inherited values and replacing them with a sect of new behavior.
And she warned against the fact that the new manifestations of behavior by conflict with the inherited values may lead to a loss of clarity of vision in front of society and the creation of a state of societal confusion.
As for the second study, which the Institute of Environmental Studies and Research has entrusted, it focused on the impact of modern technology in the modernization of Bedouin societies, revealing that about 80% of the Bedouins have mobile phones and accounts on social media pages.
And she indicated that the Bedouins spend a long time using the Internet, which led to changes – and its radical study – in the nature and customs of those societies, including the weak social relations that the Bedouin society was distinguished by its durability.