Life As I See It - From Egypt

Continued...

We spent the first two nights at the Semiramis Intercontinental Hotel in downtown Cairo. This is where Ron has been staying when in Cairo since the end of September. Very nice place. This is where we stayed the first time we came to Cairo. Our room overlooks the river Nile. Gorgeous view of the city. First night we go to pick up Ron’s laundry at the cleaners. A funny thought for me because he doesn’t even like to take his suits to the cleaners in the US, let alone boxer shorts, dress socks and polo shirts. But I digress. We go into the shop. Ron forgot his ticket. No problem, he just goes around to the different stacks of clothes and hanging items and pulls out the plastic bags with his stuff. You pay when you drop off so we gather his stuff, nod at the attendant and walk out. Just like that. The guy doesn’t know us from Adam and he takes our word and we leave. Unbelievable! My first full day in town is Friday, the holy day for Muslims. This is good because traffic is much less on this day and Ron is driving his newly acquired Jeep Cherokee. No sense getting it dented in its first 100 Kilometers. We go over and check out our Cairo apartment. I had no idea what to expect. It is in Maadi, a section of Cairo. The apartment is number 8 on the fourth floor (they count the ground floor as zero so you push 3 on the elevator). There are three bedrooms, two full baths and one half bath. One room is set up as a den so could be another bedroom. It came furnished. Some of the stuff I like…. French provincial bedroom set, beautiful dark-wood, antique, small armoire, large wall units and lavish draperies. Some of the sofas are not my taste but perfectly comfortable and adequate. The floors are all wood except for tiled baths. The kitchen has a gas (propane) stove, dishwasher and microwave, no garbage disposal. The parking garage is big enough for about four cars the size of our Jeep. We park there anyway with 9 other cars already parked in the garage. The apartment attendants are helpful and direct us into the garage and parking space. I am dripping with sweat by the time we get parked and would rather walk a few miles than go through that again. Because getting out proved to be just as harrowing. We FINALLY get out of the garage and careen up a narrow passage at a about a 35-40 degree angle…. when you get to the top you pop into non-stop two-lane traffic. This is why they say “en shalah” (God willing) about every single thing. If God wills, you will live coming out of the garage. If not, well, you get the picture! The building attendants do not speak English but try to help as much as possible. For any and all assistance, a tip is expected. Usually just 1 or 2 Egyptian pounds. This is approx. 50 cents. So, not much each time but it is a constant activity pulling out the 1 pound bills. Second day is Saturday, the Egyptian equivalent of our Saturday. So, lots of people out shopping and milling about. Ron and I head up to his Cairo office at the New Cairo Uptown development. They are having a HUGE open house with lots of food and entertainment and tours through all the models. The homes range in price from $500,000 US to $3M US. The one for $3M was AWESOME! There was so much beautiful wood (teak, walnut and oak) and marble (Egyptian and Italian and Spanish imports) in all the units. The ceilings were 10 to 16 feet tall. Just gorgeous. Most interesting to me was that the people at this event were upper class Egyptians and few wore the common clothing of robes for the guys and covered heads for the women. And, the program was all in English! I found that very surprising. We go back to the apartment. Maid is there. She doesn’t speak English… great. Oh well, somehow I will figure out how to communicate. She’s to come every other day…. we think. I don’t know exactly what she does yet but I’m sure I will find out soon enough. At least the apartment was pretty clean when we arrived. Hurray! She had already put some of our stuff away. REALLY put it away!.... it took us quite some time to find it all! Sunday morning in America, first day of the work week in Egypt. Ron and I leave about 7:00a from Cairo and head to Almein, in the Sidi Abdel Rahman area, home of the Marassi project. We drive for one hour. We go somewhere but, not far, in the interesting traffic and, we don’t know EXACTLY where we are. The car has a compass so we know we are going west and north (most of the time). However, there are no street names. I can’t appropriately describe the traffic at this point. I will work on it and get back with you. Suffice it to say the streets are crowded and noisy. And they include cars, taxis, mini-busses, huge, overloaded city busses, trucks and semi-trucks, with people walking in and through traffic and a few donkeys and goats for good measure. Finally we find the actual Alexandria Desert Road. This is good. “Now I know why most people have drivers”, is what I am thinking to myself. Of course I don’t relay this thought to Ron. J So, now we are on the open road. Police checks are random and I’ve yet to discover what they are checking for. We always get waved on through. They have camel crossings here instead of cow or deer crossings. We saw at least five dead camels on the side of the road. A couple of them looked petrified. No one comes along to pick up the dead animals so they just stay around for however long it takes to decompose. Hey, at least they pull them off to the side! We stopped at a rest stop about half-way to Marassi. This was the best coffee (the only REAL coffee) I’ve had since getting to Egypt. I savored it, let me assure you. I decided to go to the bathroom. There’s an attendant. She walks me to the stall and proceeds to clean off the seat and dry it for me. So far so good. Then she pulls off some toilet paper from a roll and hands it to me. I look at it. “More?” she asks. Not thinking about it much I say “No” and continue on. Thankfully that bit did the trick. Note to self: ALWAYS carry toilet paper in purse. Of course she expected a tip upon my departure. Then we walk out to get in the car. Two guys are washing it! “La, la” Ron tells them. This means NO. He wound up giving them two Egyptian pounds (50 cents) and we drove off with a half-washed car. We were on our way to the desert for Pete’s sake. Why would we care if we had a clean car? On this particular trip some guy got off a bus in the middle of five lanes of traffic directly in front of our car. He proceeded to go out into the desert and defecate. No, I’m not kidding. Trust me; you have plenty of time to take in every detail of the local activity because usually the traffic is simply inching forward. Sometimes its two inches in a row with no stop in between! Trucks and vans are stacked at least 8 feet tall with rope-wrapped possessions. They sway from side to side and I feel confident more than one has tipped right over. Trash is a constant. I don’t know if they understand the concept of litter. How can they walk by heaping piles of trash every day? (the SAME pile only bigger) I have no idea. This is only one of the many questions about fundamental Egyptian living that I am now in search of.

posted by Teresa @ 6:50 AM