Posted by Mosaicos on January 30, 2011 at 19:21:46:
Chicago�s �Grannies on Safari� caught up in turmoil in Egypt
BY MAUREEN O�DONNELL [email protected]
Last Modified: Jan 30, 2011 05:34PM
The two hosts of the Chicago-based public television series �Grannies on Safari� wound up in the middle of the Egyptian unrest this past week.
Pat A. Johnson and her globe-trotting partner, Regina S. Fraser, arrived in Egypt Wednesday and witnessed the protests while in Cairo, both said in phone interviews Saturday from Luxor in southern Egypt.
A spokeswoman for the TV hosts said Sunday that they are on a boat on the Nile at Luxor waiting for word on when they will be evacuated.
�We could see from our balconies the force of the crowds congregating a few blocks from where the Nile is,�� said Johnson, who used to work for the Chicago Department of Cultural Affairs before launching the show, which is aired in countries around the world. �We could see fires. ... You could hear the people chanting. They would chant in Arabic. I heard the word �Mubarak.� ��
�We saw thousands of people on bridges, just packed people all over the place,� said Fraser, 68, a member of the Chicago Sister Cities International Program. �That made us think this is kind of scary. ... Who wants to be around gunfire and also tear gases? It�s pretty scary.��
At one point, their bus driver had to let them off two blocks from the hotel because the bus couldn�t get through all the protestors.
�We had to circumnavigate around the hotel because the crowds were massing up,� she said. They made it to the hotel just before it locked its doors.
The cameraman for their show, Julio Martinez, a veteran of WMAQ-Channel 5, left the hotel to film and was briefly detained by authorities, Johnson said. He saw the body of someone who�d been shot, apparently in the protests.
As they left Cairo, �we saw blocks and blocks of tanks lined up along the corridor to the airport,� Johnson said.
The group is scheduled to leave Egypt Friday, but they are hoping to leave sooner, Fraser said.