Just different

Life smacking a pharaoh in the face

There’s plenty here…it’s just a different kind of plenty. Sometimes what I want is nowhere to be found, and the many things I could care less about are everywhere. What I find in place of what I want looks, smells, feels and tastes different. All my senses are in disarray.

It’s not all bad, just different. Don’t get me wrong, sometimes it is excruciatingly bad (dinner on the deluxe sleeper train to Luxor comes to mind) and on delightful occasion its better  -- like the fava bean falafels, called tomaya, in the Khan al Khalili. Mostly its just different and putting me into a little existential crisis. I looked it up and I think that’s what I’m having.

I am talking about everything from work culture to air-dried bath towels, breathing air that chokes, lack of grass and a quiet place to walk, bargaining for everything from pyramid paperweights to taxi rides; making my toast in a fry pan and seeing sad animals I can’t touch. Nothing is as it appears to be on first glance and wherever I go is a crooked line and takes longer to navigate and I run out of patience from trying to jam the square peg that is me into the round hole that is Egypt. Most of all not understanding what most people are saying most of the time because I am like most Americans and I mostly only speak English. So I am wondering …when all the things that make me... me… are different – am I still the same old me?

Being here alone I have time for such self-absorbed musings. But I could sure go for a chili cheese burrito from Taco Bell and a good glass of wine in a bouncy chair in my back yard on Newsom Street holding my husband’s hand, a dog’s soft ear in the other and a daughter on my lap.

Soon enough I suppose.

Carving at Luxor Temple

Cat of the day

Street mosaic

Wadi Degla - where we hike/walk/run on weekends

Budgie market in Maadi

Camel Market

Camel herders

Camel market workers

Siiiiiiiiiiiiiit

Good camels!

Nicole's purchase!

I wouldn't want that in my ear!

What to say about the camel market….

That somewhere near 4000 camels pass through the market just outside of Cairo every Friday morning to be sold for transport, for draft, for their milk, for their meat.  What proportion end up hauling tourists like me around the pyramids or are slaughtered for food, I don’t really know.

I want to know more. What I have heard is that these camels mostly come from Somalia, Ethiopia and Sudan and make the long trek on foot and by truck to come to Cairo to be sold. They are the quintessential beast of burden - swatted with sugar cane sticks to submission. They wouldn’t dare spit – they know better.

Most of the camels have a leg tied up to keep them from running away, or kicking. But not all of them are hobbled and we caught one on video kicking a herder/handler in the groin. I can’t help but think he deserved it. Maybe not him personally, but “him” in general in the sense that throughout the ages more has been brought upon the poor camel than upon most anything else – except maybe the donkey. We gave him (the camel) a big thumbs up after that one.

I heard a story that once a camel spit so much rumen contents into someone’s ear that they had to have the debris surgically removed. Okay… so I might bring along my shower cap and ear plugs when I have to work with them, but I am not deterred.

I might be in the minority … but I find them soft, sweet, noble, and worthy. I want to believe they like me too.

Luxor

Luxor Temple

Nicole, my long time friend and traveling companion came to visit. When most people are fleeing Cairo, she chose to come. Nicole is brave.

Nicole and I  have a history of train travel in Kenya during vet school where we met our long time friend Chris from the UK. Nicole cheerfully claims to be able to sleep anywhere and has finally found the place that she cannot – the so-called “deluxe sleeper train from Cairo to Luxor”. I  make no such claims and the outcome was predictable.  

“Deluxe” is also a somewhat misused adjective here. The porter announced dinner and to our queries of what was on the menu - reported that the meal consisted of a “surprise for you” and indeed it was.  Since I wish to banish it forever from my memory, I will not venture to describe it – life is too short to dwell but will include a photo for your viewing pleasure and see if anyone can venture a guess as to what this “surprise” is.

If our porter friend had announced the next morning that our breckfast would be an assortment of viciously stale bread with 2^nd rate processed cheese triangles  with a  packet of honey that thankfully saved the day…he could not have been more spot on! Well enough of that….and on to the wonders of Luxor!

We visited tombs and temples rode horses and took a hot air balloon ride. Yes, quite touristy, but the horse and ballon rides were so much more than the touristy adventures.

For some unexplained reason (because he liked him – he said) our guide rode a donkey named Bob Marley while Nicole and I rode horses with classy Egyptian names like Amira. For 3 hours we rode  through the west side village of Luxor, past temples and out into the desert.  We rode along narrow village streets peered into the open doors of homes,  saw workers planting rice, talked and waved to children and saw a side of rural Luxor life that we wouldn’t have known existed if we stuck to the tombs of the beaten path.

The hot air balloon ride began before sunrise and took us over tombs, the Nile, sugar cane fields on the east side of Luxor, and the city rooftops that are all open or half-thatched with scurring chickens, goats, occasional dogs and the obligatory plastic bags and garbage. Many people keep their animals on the roofs of  their flats. Being who we are…we wonder where the waste goes and feel sorry for the scurring animals because these balloons must be freaking them out and that is why they are scurring.

We finally landed in a sugar cane field surrounded by alfalfa and our balloon driver told us to “pay no attention to the angry farmer that might appear”. As if by cue the angry farmer appeared, much discussion occurred and 20 or so people showed up out of nowhere, pulled us out of the field, wrapped up the balloon and drove us back to town.

So nice to get out of Cairo for a few days!

Boats on the Nile

"surprise for you"

Avenue of Sphinxes

Nicole and Sancho Panza riding through Luxor

Practicing English, practicing Arabic

Taking my turn with Bob Marley

Getting ready for take off

East bank of Luxor just before sunrise

Rooftops of Luxor

Boats on the Nile

"Temple"
because I am a heathen and can't remember which one

Khan al Khalili

Ladies of the market

I’ve gotten some very negative advice about traveling around town, alone or at all which has paralyzed me. I am used to going where I want to go where we all go when visiting famous cities like Cairo – within reason and with some common sense.

Egypt has a long history of being a place with virtually no crime, but things have changed a bit since the revolution and it has those with knowledge of the past afraid. Most people still agree that Cairo is still much safer than many cities in the US.

Finally couldn’t take it anymore. I took the metro alone to downtown Cairo and walked the mile or so to the great old market – the Khan al Khalili through the blast of horns, and throngs of people and heat of the day.

I fended off the hard sellers of scarves, perfume, pyramid replicas -  “come into my shop madam, what are you looking for, I have what you are looking for, and I will give you a good price” and the soft/hard sellers – “what are you looking for madam – nothing? I have nothing to sell and I will give you a good price – haha”.

A sense of humor usually goes a long way with me, but I was feeling strong and kept on walking. Someone offered to sell me the stray chicken pecking in the garbage. And then there was the nice gentleman at the metro station that had tried to help me find the way to the market... and to his uncles perfume shop who I triumphantly blew off at the metro station on arrival, but then ran into again at the market and felt obliged to sit in his shop and smell perfume.

But I bought nothing, except for fava bean falafels with an onion and spiced carrot salad and heavenly bread that is like pita but so much more. …yea, and a table cloth that I got a really good price on…  

Market cats of the day

My new chickens!

Market cafe

Shops in the Khan

A street in the market

Al Hussein Mosque (I think)

Walking legs

Cats of the Day

I was told when I arrived in Cairo to not go anywhere alone --- especially if I didn’t know where I was. But I am HERE… ALONE …and ALMOST NEVER KNOW WHERE I AM.

Can’t take it anymore…so… I am getting my walking legs back and walking places. I have been sitting on my butt for the past couple of years behind a desk, and so far that is what I am doing at work here too… so I gotta walk and it’s a good change.

This is necessary too - since it is estimated that only 50% of the time when you get into a taxi in Cairo do you get where you actually want to go. A colleague with a dinner date spent 2 ½ hours and all her money driving around Cairo trying to find a particular restaurant one evening. This is a mystery to me.

Taxis comprise about every other car on the road in Cairo and all they do is drive around all day stalking fares. If you are non-Egyptian you are super-stalked. They honk, slow down, call out “taxi” or just “tax” while leaning out the window eyes off the road, causing close calls and near fatal accidents for which you…. “the stalkee” feel morally responsible.

How could this zeal for a fare not be matched with any directional capabilities? A bit of playing dumb to jack up fares you might say – that would be one answer. In an effort to avoid the smug comforts of cynicism I will keep searching for answers. In the mean time I will keep walking and hoping I don't cause too many fender benders.

Victoria baseball fields

Garden shop mosaic pots

Voting in Egypt

This goes in the “what we take for granted" department, or what we take “mostly” for granted ... since the US system isn’t perfect either.

Things are going pretty smooth with the voting, and people are turning out, lots of people are turning out. I was gone for several days and just returned to work on this second day of voting. I work with many Egyptians and they are all talking about it.

An Egyptian man here about my age, a professional man told me he was never encouraged to vote before and he said it didn’t really matter anyway because it was already determined who would win and what would happen. He said “this is my first time” and he showed his inked finger to prove it. I have heard these sentiments, these words before in print but to hear him say it with a smile on his face brought a smile to my face.