It’s a great way (I believe) to help out — it’s archaeological tourism, one pays for everything oneself, is worked like a dog, is generally employed in countries which could blow up at any minute, it’s hot and dry, and one can’t take home anything one finds (unless one contracts typhus from excavating an ancient latrine, for example).
I’d like to try it, but I’m not 30ish any longer. :’)
Thank goodness I'm long past 30ish, too; when I was that age, I was dumb enough to have tried it. *<];-')
Years ago, I drove by the Berenice site and then headed inland. Drove for at least eighty miles until arriving at the Nile. The only sight of greenery occurred inland about twenty miles where a camel had died and a bush had grown up around its remains. Stopped halfway to have a Stella beer and was immediately surrounded by swarms of flies. How they survived in that barren land I will never know.