Who are these men and women in Sharm El-Sheikh wearing wet suits and funny headgear? Dena Rashed takes the plunge looking for answers Click to view caption "Flying underwater is what diving feels like," Ramy Helmy, an advanced diving instructor explained. It is for the love of that feeling that Ramy goes underwater almost every day of the year. He is not alone. The feeling keeps many other diving instructors immersed for a lot of their time. The venue for their experience is Sharm El-Sheikh, Egypt's diving haven which has become one of the country's leading tourism spots, opening the door wide to job opportunities in a number of fields. But professional Egyptian divers have yet to be accepted by Egyptian society as "real professional workers". Part of the problem, perhaps, is that few Egyptians dive. "I could say our market depends mainly on foreigners as only one per cent of our clients is Egyptians," Khaled Mahmoud, 36, one of the diving instructors at the Red Sea Diving College told Al-Ahram Weekly. Mahmoud has been in the business for seven years. Before that he worked as a tour leader in Sinai. "Although diving is great fun, I think it is still a luxury for many people, especially for Egyptians," he said. Diving is expensive. Mahmoud points out that for an Egyptian to dive a couple of times he must pay $85. "That could mean one- month's salary for some people. And we can't subsidise diving too," Mahmoud said. Some professional Egyptian divers claim that foreign instructors are favoured over them. Ahmed Amr, 23, an advanced instructor, said: "Certain diving centres hire more foreigners than Egyptians, and some actually prefer not to hire Egyptians in the first place." But Hisham Gabr, a diving pioneer and owner of the Camel Diving Centre, said the job market was clearly open to Egyptians. Gabr was among the first people to come to Sinai after it was returned to Egypt in 1982. At the time there were only three diving centres -- all owned by foreigners. He started out working in one of these to be able to dive for free. After a year on the job he became a full fledged instructor in his own right. Gabr points out that diving is not like any other job in the tourism field. "A diving instructor spends eight hours every day, five days of the week with tourists. His job requires him to be crystal clear about the instructions he gives to his divers, and therefore he must be able to speak as many languages as he can fluently," he explained. Commenting on a popular perception of Egyptian divers and their numbers, Gabr blames the Egyptian Underwater Sports Federation for not doing more to popularise the sport. So job vacancies continue to be taken up by foreign divers -- even those who are not full-time instructors. Sylvia Dozio is an Italian instructor who started diving in Sharm in 1994. "Since then I have been coming for around 10 days every year to stay in Sharm and give diving courses," Dozio said. She believes she and other foreigners have a good chance of working as diving instructors in Sharm El-Sheikh because the market is basically for foreigners. Yuri Voronov is another case in point. Throughout the year he works at a petroleum company in Russia and then comes to Sharm for a couple of weeks to instruct divers. "I come with my family and take them all to dive with me. No visa complications are involved and it is cheap enough and I make money by teaching the courses," he said. It is not difficult for foreigners to obtain work permits. In fact most of those interviewed by the Weekly were given jobs without having had to bother with the Labour Office at all. Foreigners undoubtedly play a big part in diving instruction in Egypt. Another curious aspect of the diving profession in Egypt is that it is rare to find an Egyptian instructor married to an Egyptian girl. Many Egyptians do not approve of diving as a career for their children. Mahmoud confided that his parents still wanted him to work in any other field of the tourism industry. His success in his chosen career is irrelevant to his family. "They believe that at some point, when I get older, I will not be able to find another job. But diving is a career that I have chosen for myself and enjoy at the same time," he said. Mahmoud has a foreign wife to whom he has been married for years. He said that in his experience and that of his Egyptian colleagues, "Egyptian families do not like their daughters to marry divers because they believe diving is not a stable job." Amr adds: "It would take me a lot of time to explain to the family of a prospective bride what diving is in the first place. I personally won't waste that time," he said.
