Snotting black

The weather in Cairo can be quite warm, some might even call it hot. During the day the temperatures climb almost as high as those currently prevailing in Mid-America. And when we’re really lucky, there is equally high accompanying humidity. There are some places the heat is not a problem, like the classrooms at AUC and Alpha market. Everywhere else, however, it must be dealt with.

My apartment has three air conditioners (central air conditioning does not exist here/I have not seen it so it might exist), but they remain off 90 percent of the time. Our living room is particularly unpleasant, since its physical location is such that getting a breeze in there will be possible when little flying pigs tumble in through the window at the same time. The coffin-like air moves only begrudgingly and  only when human folk stir it directly. Regardless of the time of day and exact location, the apartment is always a little bit warm. And since I spend about 90 percent of the time I’m in the apartment sitting down, either doing homework, clipping my fingernails/toenails, or brushing my hair, I often suffer from what I call “damp pants.”

Damp pants is that special feeling you get when, after sitting for a while and then rising, you realize that a steady and even output of sweat from the back of the legs/thighs and the derrier was absorbed into the fabric of your clothing. Usually after walking for a few minutes, the clothes naturally disengage themselves from clinging to the body, but manual assistance may be needed. The severity of the situation depends on the material in direct contact with ones’ clothes. Our choices of sitting situations is particularly dismal: we can choose from warm blanket, to cozy couch, to fake leather chair, or to gross carpet.

Day after day and night after night, all of us suffer from damp pant syndrome, its only remedy wicker chairs and/or standing desks. Though it is not particularly harmful, I would hesitate to damp pants a pleasant situation. I think because of all the alien movies I’ve watched (Monsters Inc.), I associate dampness with filth, thus on some level I am continually disgusted with myself at the level of filth I bathe in every day. This does not, however, urge me on to frequent rounds of laundry.