The Egyptian traditions endangered by rampant inflation

Multi-day weddings, bereaved families feeding the poor and households that pride themselves on having the best homemade bread are all a thing of the past in rural Egypt as age-old traditions are challenged by a punishing economic crisis.

Across the country, more and more Egyptians — crushed under the weight of 33.9 percent annual inflation, as of March — are having to say goodbye to once-cherished rituals of celebration and mourning.

In the Nile Delta, grooms once threw elaborate bachelor parties before their marriage, erecting large traditional tents, hiring bands, and slaughtering livestock to feed guests from far and wide.

“Hardly anyone does it anymore,” 33-year-old engineer Mohamed Shedid told AFP news agency from his hometown of Quwesna in Menoufia, 70 km north of Cairo.

“We used to blame COVID, but immediately after that everyone was hit by the economic crisis,” which has put the price of meat out of reach for most families.

Even before the current crisis — exacerbated by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine last year, which destabilized crucial food imports — 30 percent of Egyptians lived below the poverty line, and the same number were vulnerable to join them, the World Bank said.

Not in a party mood

In the Nubian south on the other side of the country, “rising costs mean our weddings and funerals aren’t what they once were,” says Omar Maghrabi, a 43-year-old Nubian language teacher.

“It’s really hard. Families need the money we once spent on these events to keep households going.

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In one year, the Egyptian pound lost almost half its value, causing consumer prices in the import-dependent country to more than double.

Nubian village weddings are no longer three-day, nine-meal affairs to which the entire town is invited.

“A few months ago there was a kind of agreement between the villages to make weddings more affordable,” Maghrabi told AFP.

“Now the hosts only have to offer a light dinner” instead of the old festivities, which used to last “up to a week for the wealthiest families”.

With everyone keeping an iron grip on their wallets, brides have also become less picky when it comes to wedding rings.

“Rings used to be a certain weight of gold,” the teacher said, but they’re finer and lighter now.

With newlyweds unable to keep up with skyrocketing gold prices, Egypt’s top Muslim authority said in March there was no religious objection to swapping gold for cheaper alternatives, namely silver.

Common grief, shrunk

In the close-knit agricultural villages of Upper Egypt, stretching south from Cairo along the narrow green belt of the Nile Valley, funerals are a communal affair.

With each death, families rush to deliver convoys of trays of food to the relatives of the deceased, who soon run out of storage space and enlist the help of neighbors and guests to help them get rid of the celebrations.

But now “it has been agreed that only the next of kin will cook for the bereaved,” former parliamentarian Mohamed Refaat Abdel Aal, 68, told AFP from his village of el-Adadiya in Qena, five hours south of Cairo.

“Some families also suggest we limit ourselves to just the funeral and forego the wake,” which at the very least means serving drinks to guests who offer condolences.

No commodity has been unaffected by price increases, including coffee and – catastrophically for rural families who cherish their baking skills – flour.

Egyptian baladi bread is a staple of every table in every village, town and megacity. In Upper Egypt, it was a source of pride for families to always make their own.

“It used to be embarrassing for families in villages to buy bread from a baker. It would mean that the house had become lazy and complacent,” said Abdel Aal.

But with the price of grain rising 70 percent in a year, he added that “everyone is queuing up for the government-run bakeries.”

At least there they can get subsidized bread – even if it tastes nothing like what they would make at home.