Tag Archives: travel

Jul 09 2011
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Two minute read

Do they have T.V. in the mornings?

This was the meter going too fast

As has been my Friday custom since I’ve been in Cairo, I did not leave my apartment until the ripe hour of 8:30 pm, at which point the sun was safely beyond the rim of the earth, scorching another people somewhere. I don’t know if I’m just complainy and/or high maintenance, but it sure does get hot here. I have no problem with the weather per say; I just have no desire to be out scampering around in a cauldron-like atmosphere–hence the clever avoidance strategies i.e. sleep. Since I realize the weather will get hotter and is already hotter some places in America, I will save my strongest complaints for later.

Apparently, however, I’ve been missing out on a different world. The streets, they say, are calm on Friday mornings and one might actually use the word “pleasant” to describe walking outdoors. They might as well say that unicorns pull the buggies and the nile is filled with iced tea, but so help me I will witness for myself the miracle of Friday morning next week. I might stay up all night just to wander the empty streets and eat the candy leaves of the acacia trees in the soft light of dawn, but I will do it.

On a different note, tonight we took a taxi back from our favorite hang out spot, Boursa, which is in Midtown and probably about 10-20 minutes in taxi from Doqqi, depending on the traffic. After we got into the taxi we commented, in English, that the meter was running faster than usual, much faster. It reminded me of cartoon characters’ eyes when they turn into slot machines out of extreme desire for something, the image flipping faster than you can say “hold on there one hot second, pal.” Mr. Taxi Driver noticed we were staring at the meter and talking about something in our foreign tongue, gestured to the meter and said “Expensive?” Great guess, bucko. To be fair, you had the advantage of remembering the time you took the meter to your cousin and asked him to rig it for you, so I’m not going to say you’re a genius. But we were grateful for what was, in essence, an admission of guilt, and got out as soon as we knew where the heck we were. On the bright side, we got to walk a little bit, which we hadn’t done all day. On the dark side, we had to walk in the presence of Cairo night dwellers, which aren’t always the most savory of folk. Except for us, of course.

There were protests today in Tahrir, but they were peaceful, so that’s good. I heard the number tens of thousands thrown out there, also the words “carnival atmosphere.” Tomorrow I plan on sitting at home, promptly followed by feasting on camel meat.

Also, the title to this blog post is a vague reference to 30 rock…let credit be given where credit is due.

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Jul 03 2011
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Anecdotes

Cairo boat-night view

I lied about the dates of the churches…one is a 9th century structure and the other is a 4th century structure but both

Cairo at night

were built on older things of significance, I think, and there is still a dispute between them as to who is the oldest.

There is a dog in our neighborhood that loves to bark at night. This is the reason I prefer stray cats to stray dogs…stray cats might look disgusting,occasionally sound like human children whenever they meow, or even engage in shrieking street fights, but they do not constantly produce loud noises for no reason. Moreover, they are more discriminatory (I believe) about where they mate and relieve themselves, producing a more respectable strolling experience alongside the highways of Cairo. I’m considering hiring our doorman to hunt down the offending dog and remove it–however he may please–to a different neighborhood permanently. I don’t need to know the details.

About four hours ago right now I was on a boat in the Nile. This time we were on a felucca–a wind powered vessel–and there was less dancing though an equal amount of pop Arabic music. Twenty five of us sat around the main body of the boat on a cushion lined couch and stared at each other from across the way for the first ten minutes of the trip before it occurred to us to engage in conversation with one another. Conversation commenced and as the sun went down, Cairo slowly looked more beautiful, the pollution fading away leaving just a sliver of the moon in the sky above the various high rises on the Giza side of the Nile.

While on the boat, one of our leaders got a call from a student from the program living in Midtown saying that there were clashes in Tahrir square. I’m still not sure what those were all about/if they were real since it became clear later on that nothing was going on. Earlier today, however, we did see tents in the square and there are plans for big-ish demonstrations on Friday. I tried to convince one of the people who work in the office at AUC to go to Tahrir and check out the sitch for me but it looks like I’ll have to do it myself come Friday post-prayer time.

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Jun 27 2011
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Two minute read

Appearance first, substance later

I want something like this

Every morning when I board the metro, I impulsively begin analyzing the components of the outfits surrounding me. This research is part of a long term “going native” “project” in which I construct an Egyptian wardrobe (or at least a few articles of clothing) that will ideally allow me to further blend in; sometimes business pants and collared shirts just enhance the foreignness of my features. I have always wanted a native wardrobe, but inevitably I get used to wearing the same clothes/run out of money/stop caring about blending in. Not so this time! I would rather starve than wear my t-shirts for the next 11 months.

The variety of clothing is endless. Every girl wears her hijab in a different way (about 9 out of ten or 12 out of 13 women cover their hair), and the rest of the outfit is always color coordinated. Imagine every combination of tier skirts, tight jeans, long shirts, tight long sleeve shirts with tank tops over them, bangles, colors, sequins, cartoon characters, gibberish English, gaucho pants, layers, cardigans, t shirts, bows, buttons, heels, flats, bejeweled sandals, abayas, niqabs, and almost everything else except for tie dye shirts, cargo pants, and whatever the Americans are wearing in general.

As we stand humidly on the metro and my eyes wander from ensemble to ensemble, I’m almost overcome with despair. I want it all! -especially a shirt with cartoon characters and or/teddy bears with sequins on them and a tier skirt . My goal is to go so native that the only clue I’m not Egyptian will be my predilection for peanut butter and the fact I prefer to eat meals in front of my computer instead of with humans. Here in Egypt I will be able to fully indulge my love of gaudy color combinations and obnoxious patterns: color goes with color, as I always say.

Today I finally embarked on my nativ-ication project and had great success. I purchased a blue long sleeve spandex shirt to go underneath other clothes…when I later tried this on in my home (there was only one size) I realized it breathes only slightly better than a trash bag. Part of my going native outfit might have to be the tissues everyone carries around to dab the sweat beading on their faces. I also purchased a long shirt-like thing that has stripes on it. I could have gone tackier—no sequins, bows, obnoxious patterns, or animals today—but there will be chance in the future, I believe.

Both my roommates saw the bottom of my feet today and were disgusted/charmed by how dirty they are. What does this mean?

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Jun 11 2011
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Anecdotes, Egypt, Three minute read

Old. Hot. Big.

Of course I’m talking about the dusty hollowed out water buffalo carcass I saw today. Just kidding, I saw a live water buffalo. They are such beautiful and noble animals, and delicious as well I’ve heard. I wonder if there is any ancient Egyptian mythology detailing their extensive history helping the human race. Topic for a later blog….

No but seriously, I went to the pyramids today on an excursion organized through the Arabic Language Institute at the American University in Cairo. When you travel with AUC, you travel in style. I didn’t pay a dime for the trip, and we had a yacht on wheels to carry us out the pyramids and ferry us around them, an art history professor telling us about the history of the pyramids, and all admission fees to the boat museum, the temple, and the pyramids themselves paid for. The only thing lacking was some kind of on-board food and drink service, which would have come in handy right about noon when every drop of moisture I brought with me had been evaporated by the merciless sun.

The pyramids are not far from Cairo. In fact, they are almost directly within it and are slowly being surrounded by it. Millions of people are able to make out the pyramids through the smog from their windows in the many high rise apartment buildings in the city. It was so strange to be winding our way through Cairo streets and then all of the sudden to see a pyramid pop into sight right out my middle school history textbook.

They were everything I thought they would be (see the words above), but there’s something to be said for visiting a place that is 4500 years old. I love imaging all the people that walked where I was walking over the past millenia and remembering how they had such ordinary lives just like my own, except for the semi-frequent mummy attacks that must result from living so close to the pyramids.

We didn’t go into any of the big pyramids, but we did go into equally small and smelly spaces. One of them was the burial chamber for a notable, and on the walls were all these dumb pictures and I was just like “Come on, they couldn’t even speak English? Why do we bother even learning about this civilization.” But I guess the craftsmanship was incredible. Everything was done with stone tools (that’s what our “guide” said) and it was incredible to see how well preserved and elegant it was. That chamber had the distinct odor of feet, which resulted from a stinkier group having gone in before us and the lack of ventilation. I can only imagine what the bigger pyramids smell like after a long day of tourist stink filling up the stagnant air.

The other small smelly place we went down into was the queen’s pyramid, for which we had to crouch as we descended down a very steep and narrow shaft and then turned the corner around another very steep shaft into a chamber where about 20 of us  looked around at each other and at the stone walls and then decided it was time to leave. I almost had a moment of panic when I began to think about what would happen if we got stuck down there and slowly suffocated to death. We’d have had to kill people in order to save air. I was also worried about mummy wrath and plagues.

No description of the pyramids is complete without a describing the tourism workers that accompany the experience. Tourism is the number one income for Egypt as a country, and after the revolution there was a huge decline in the number of tourists, threatening the livelihoods of millions of people. Despite the fact it’s hard to see kids selling bookmarks all day when they should be in school, and men whose only source of income are the dumb camel rides that tourists seem to love, it doesn’t make it any less annoying to have people offering you “gifts” and “Egyptian prices.” That said, it wasn’t too bad. You just say no thanks a bunch and walk on, sister. Don’t take anything, don’t let them do anything for you and you should be fine. If you really want a singing stuffed camel, though, be my guest. Haggle away and don’t look back.

Note: look at pictures on Flikr. There are more than just ones of the Nile I promise.

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Jun 10 2011
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Anecdotes, Egypt, Two minute read

Quit playing games with my heart

our bowab looks kind of like this but sans hat

Before anything else: the electronic music festival was a blast. We danced, we sweated, one of the DJ’s wore a gigantic mythical bird helmet, it was free, there were no injuries that I know of (though I did hit someone while I was dancing), and no one got an accidental boyfriend. All in all, a great success. I even got to use some of my sweet hip hop moves.

Onto more pressing matters. We’ve been having issues with our landlady regarding ‘irsh or dinero or money.  We first met our landlady and her daughter about a week ago, shortly after we moved in. The landlady’s daughter, a student, was extremely nice and spoke excellent English. The landlady herself, on the other hand, a stout woman of about fifty or sixty, was a little brisk and wore sunglasses the entire time she was in our apartment. She didn’t speak very much English and what little she did know she shouted at us (VEDY GOOD).

When transactions are being conducted in translation or in Arabic, there is always a chance that something has gone awry. Right before they left, the landlady asked us for 100 pounds to give to the bowab and to pay for some other expenses in the building. The bowab is the man who “guards” the door and runs errands for the tenants and stuff like that. They’re a part of Egyptian culture, usually living a very sparse life on little money, and subsisting oftentimes on bread, eggs, and pickles. It’s important to have a good relationship with the bowab because they’re the ones who can either make your life miserable or be a great person to practice Arabic with.

Long story short, the money never reached the bowab. Furthermore, it wasn’t clear what we had actually paid for. Over the course of several telephone calls with both the landlady and her daughter, it was said the money was for a) the bowab and utilities for the building, b) our utilities and the building’s utilities c) the bowab and our utilities d) just the building’s utilities. What’s going on here? What are these games?

So….I called her daughter today and we’re going to set up a time to meet together, all five of us plus an Egyptian guy associated with the program (I told her that there would be a man in our apartment. Her mother conceded after a short conference.) On the bright side, I am now completely knowledgeable about the concept of paying for utilities. The daughter told me at least five times with different examples: “When you take a shower, you use water and you need to pay for that. When you clean the floor, you use water that and in Egypt we have to pay for these things” Ohhhhhh……I thought it was sent directly from heaven in a golden chariot. I guess I need to pay for your mother’s Krispy Kreme habit too with the money she’s squeezing out of us.

Hopefully this will turn out okay in the end and we’ll all be able to be facebook friends. We shall see…..

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