DAY 6 Fri 18 June

It is becoming something of a habit, waking up early and lying in bed for a while. However, the minute I get up and start moving around, Bella will scratch at the door asking to be let in. After I was up and about, I headed over to the house to see what the plan of attack was for the day. However, nothing worked out as planned today – it was one thing after the other.
At first Maryanne and I were going to head into Maadi to get modem sticks for the computer – one to replace the one of hers she washed, and another so that I could access the internet. However, then Mona rang up and said she was coming around, so Maryanne gave her the shopping list – this turned out to be a good thing – possibly one of the few good things of the day.
We then went out to check on the horses, but we didn't get far – poor Figgy was standing in the paddock with his mum and brother looking absolutely miserable. He had been fighting off the strangles infection, but now it appears he had come down with what they call Bastard Strangles, where the pockets of infection migrate to other parts of the body – poor boy – he was also very dehydrated. So he was taken to the ICU area close to the guest house where they put him on an IV drip to deal with the dehydration.
I went and checked on the other horses, and they all appeared to be happy and reasonably healthy, eating and drinking like normal.
The vet finally turned up and checked out Figgy, Nazeer and Marzouk, the last three with obvious signs of infection. Figgy was given an injection to help him out, and Marzouk had the proud flesh around his ear cut off.
All the animals were then turned out in their respective paddocks for the rest of the day.
During this time Mona had contacted us, first to say that everything was closed, so she would check the shops again after prayers had finished (Friday is their Sunday). And then she had to ring to say the shop didn't open until 3, so she had to wait some more. This made Maryanne and I grateful that we hadn't decided to head into Maadi – it would have been a totally wasted trip.
When Mona finally made it out to the farm, we set up the internet on the two computers. Maryanne also needed to wait for a phone call from Mobinil to work out what the problem was, and the worry about Figgy, so there was the days swimming down the drain also.
Then Mona's mother was still sick, so she decided she should head home instead of heading out to the village wedding that Maryanne had been invited to. It turned out that we didn't go either as Maryanne wasn't feeling very well herself, and add on top of that her worries over Figgy, it was quite understandable. Instead Maryanne sent her grooms with her camera, so hopefully I'll get to see a little bit about what a village wedding is like from that.
With the stress of the day I was rather tired, and so I headed over to bed early, only to hear a voice out by Figgy who was back in ICU, so I went out and talked to Sabine while she was treating Figgy. I couldn't stay up too late though, I was so tired. I heard bits and pieces of their conversation as I was dozing, off, but missed that fact that Sabine came into the guest house to stay for the night!