Beginning of a Project

Long story, short... I am working on a development project in a small village (pop. 40,000) outside Alexandria with the Rotoract Club of Alexandria.

On Monday, we showed up to this village without knowing a single thing about it -- not even the directions to the village. Once we got near the village, we had to ask 8 people for directions until we successfully arrived. The village's roads were soaked in mud as it had just been raining for the past two days. Once we got out of the car, everything smelled like sewage. You didn't know if the mud you were stepping in was really mud. We were a site to see for the locals. Two city slicking Egyptians and 3 Americans. One lady thought we were an international police force from the UN, and she started out by saying her family didn't do anything wrong. We talked to a couple people nearby explaining our development project, and just 15 minutes later, we were drinking tea with the heads of the village. One person had called another who had called another who talked to the mayor/sheriff/whatever. 

We sat down with the head of the village and a bunch of his nephews and cousins and began introductions. The head was what you might visualize as the stereotypical leader in a village. He was about 60-something with gray hair and a round belly. His beard was a couple days old and he wore a jalibea. He greeted us with "Hello, how are you" with a chuckle and then reverted into Arabic. It's hard to appreciate the "Hello, how are you" without hearing it from an Egyptian, but the idea is that little kids want to practice there English, and often times, they only know how to say that phrase, so they'll say that phrase to any foreigner passing by. This guy really reminded me of one of the little kids practicing his/her English.

After introductions and an explanation of our project, we agreed to come back on Thursday to talk with the different member of the village to hear how we can help this village. So, we came back today. This time with about 16 people (4 Americans and 12 Egyptians). We sat down in two different rooms, and the locals would enter the rooms 2 at a time to explain to us the general problems of their village and how we can personally help them.

We met with six groups of people. The first two women asked for clothes. And, we realized that we needed to make our projects goals much clearer to the people of this town. We're trying to spark development, not just give a handout. The second two guys were Microbus drivers, and they wanted us to pave roads around the village. This resonated more with our interests: infrastructure building. The next pair of guys were freshmen/sophomores in high school. They wanted to open a Central (a place to sell mobile phones), and they were looking for a loan to start up their business. The following group had the exact same idea. And these ideas are definitely worthy of consideration for the project. The next guy wanted us to help him find a job in Alexandria. Once again, this isn't really what the project is about. The last guy wanted money to start up a bee farm to harvest honey. He said he was a pro, but something wiped out all his bee hives a year ago, and he hasn't had enough money to buy beehives to recreate his bee farm. This is a weird, yet very workable idea. 

We're going back to the village in a week to continue our discussions on development ideas. Once we get some good ideas, we'll write a proposal to the International Rotary Club to obtain a grant for $15,000 to put towards the development of this village.

Reality Check

A bomb just exploded in Khan al-Khalili yesterday. And, I was just there 3 days ago on my 3rd visit to the oldest marketplace turned touristy "souk" in Egypt. (I guess 3 is the lucky number here).

The last terrorist attack in Egypt happened in Dohab 2 1/2 years ago. Another place that I've visited.

It's not an everyday event that a bomb explodes in Egypt, but it happens every now and then. Truthfully, a foreigner has way better chances getting killed in Egypt crossing the street than by a bomb. But nonetheless, the looming possibility of a bomb exploding is scary-- especially when you put it in relative terms, I was in the exact place only 2 days before the explosion.

You never know what to expect in Egypt. Anything can happen. And, this is one of those things. 

I am at a loss of words to express the risks and dangers of living in Egypt, so I'll refer to the Egyptian's own words: Alhamdullah salema -- الحمد الله سلمة -- translated, thank God for our well-being. It's a phrase you'll hear whenever you return from a trip away from home, after a near accident in a taxi, or at those moments when your life flashes before your eyes (which is not too uncommon).

A Not So Uncommon Morning

Wake up. Eat yogurt. Read Friedman's column. Walk to the shower. Turn on the water. And it's freezing. 

The shower is usually too hot and over-pressured, but every now and then, one thing or another goes wrong and the shower gets cold. 

The hot water hasn't been working for the last 2 and 1/2 days, so I figured I'd let the dorm "supervisor" know, so that he might start thinking about solving the problem. As I got out of the shower and entered the common room there was a 40-something-year-old women in our common room talking to one of the supervisors. I begin to walk over to the supervisor to let him know about the hot water problem, but when she sees me she immediately stops her conversation and turns her face away from me. I was just in a towel, it's not like I was naked. 

Because I want to show respect for this culture that I've decided to study, I went straight to my room, changed into a shirt and sweat pants, and then returned to ask the supervisor to fix the hot water. 

I live in an all guy's dorm, and women are not allowed to visit whatsoever. The only women that I see are employees from the girl's dorm down the street who want to talk to the "well-respected" president of the dorms. So, it's not like I'm parading around without a shirt around in the middle of the street, this is a closed environment.

The Egyptians in the dorms wear their clothes to the shower. Undress. Take a shower. Dress. Return to their rooms.

It seems so difficult and uncomfortable to change in the shower, but people are really into covering up.

While I respect the culture, I find it extremely silly that someone would feel uncomfortable with me walking around with my shirt off. Anyways, I enjoy my American freedoms and chill with my shirt off when I want.

A View from the Countryside

Galel and David chilling in the fields in front of Galel's house.

Here's the "reception" room. As you can see the door on the left leads to the outside, and the other door opens to the rest of the house. This is like a family room, room to meet guests, and room to eat meals. 

Billboard in Alexandria

This billboard is all over the place in Alexandria.

A nice little oasis in the background is cool, but I prefer the American razor commercials.

Midan Tahrir

Find the difference

MTM -- Rap Group from Alexandria

A

The Authority of Age

Who should you respect?

A) The 40-something-year-old "president" of the dorms who took 2 months to get the internet connection fixed

B) The 60-something-year-old professor of calligraphy who is obsessed with photographing his female students and their friends and seems like a dirty old man

C) The 20-year-old girl study literature at the University of Alexandria

Of course, this is a trick question. The answer is clearly D) You should respect everyone. We're all human. But, do you respect everyone to the same degree? And, how should you show your respect?

Let's talk about Mr. A. Truthfully, he has failed at providing an American priced service. The dorms are cheap compared to America (around $350 a month), but for less than that price you can get a pretty sweet apartment on the Corniche with a view of the Mediterranean on the top floor. Egypt is full of disorder, but internet is not hard to get. Cafes and apartments all over Alexandria have internet without any problems. 

Additionally, he could never fix the food situation. The food is terrible in the dorms, yet the food is great at restaurants and friends' houses. I can get a good dinner at a restaurant for $5, so I don't know why I can't get a good meal at the cafeteria seeing as we are paying 15x the the Egyptian price to live in the dorms. One of the three tiny washing machines has been broken since August. This is pretty normal, but it's just odd that market forces (the relative wads of cash the dorms are bringing in from the Americans) don't lead to more organized and accountable living conditions.

So, I respect this guy as a human being, but my respect for him is nothing more than any regular person. I tried to enter his office to discuss the progress on solving the internet problem two weeks ago, but one of his secretary-like-people told me I had to change from my sweatpants and t-shirt before I could meet with him. I changed my clothes because I didn't want to cause a problem, and I respect the fact that I'm in another culture and customs are different. Nonetheless, I was very surprised that I had to change into formal clothes to enter an office located 10 meters from my room. I dress up when I meet with someone important, so I felt very odd dressing up for this guy (although it was only jeans and another shirt).

Mr. B is the definition of a dirty old man. I went to one calligraphy lesson, and I noticed that he was odd. He took more photos than the average Egyptian (and that means a lot), and although he took the same amount of pictures of guys and girls, it seemed like he was taking pictures of the guys in order to justify taking pictures of girls. I had a weird feeling about him, but no one else seemed to think he was weird. 

I never returned to the calligraphy class because I was too busy, but I saw Mr. B again at our Thanksgiving party. He brought his camera and asked some of my Egyptian friends, his students, to take pictures of people. Once again, I thought this was odd, but I didn't have any proof to say that this guy was doing anything wrong. Then, he asked Ahmed to ask a particular American girl to sit next to him, so he could take a photo with her. Mr. B had never talked to this girl or seen this girl before in his life.  Ahmed knew this, but Ahmed nonetheless he followed the directions of his elder professor. I stopped Ahmed mid-sentence (she obviously didn't want to take a picture with this old man) and told him that it wasn't going to happen. Ahmed apologized for asking and later explained to me the conflicting forces that pulled him in two directions in the previous situation: the respect for his elder and the respect for the girl... he might as well ask and that way when she said no, he would have done his best to please all parties. 

The inspiration for this post comes from another one of my Egyptian friends. Last night, he told me that he no longer goes to the calligraphy class. I thought that was weird because he loved the class more than anyone else. He told me that the problem was the professor took an obscene amount of photos of his girlfriend, and he got mad. He didn't say anything, but he doesn't want to return. He continues to respects this professor as an elder and artist.

Another Egyptian says that it's o.k. that the professor is a dirty old man because he is old and alone. It's not his fault, it's just the circumstances. The exact phrase directly translated was "He has a disease." Elder men are simply respected and that's the end of the story. The idea of confronting the professor and saying "NO, you cannot take a picture of that girl you don't know" is completely foreign.

Another example of respect for older men comes from the female side of the story. Egyptian girls don't like guys taking too many pictures of them (regular group photos like when we take trips with the program). On the last trip to Siwa, one Egyptian girl made another Egyptian guy delete all his pictures of her. He took a lot of pictures (and I mean a lot), but they were all group shots and nothing even resembling risque. She was willing to say stop, don't take a picture of me to him. But, they won't say this to an older man because then then they would be accusing him of being a pervert and that's rude.

Then, there's Ms. C. Some of these same guys are really nice to her, but one dismissed her as an academic because she attends the slacker college -- the arts and science college (remember stuff's relative). But, in reality, her marks were high enough to enter into the same college as him, the college of medicine. She was just more interested in literature, and that's what she pursued. These guys would say they respected her, and I know they do, but at least one of them is willing to put her down for no reason and not a single one is willing to confront a dirty old man about his misgivings.

We can say we respect everyone, but what does that mean. How do we respect these people. And, how should we gauge how worthy people are of our respect? 

Hospitality

This past weekend, I visited two of my Egyptian friend's in their homes in the country side. And, I have never drank so much tea in my life. Not only did we meet their families, but we met friends and relatives throughout the town. We drank tea with many people, but had to turn down even more offers for tea. Everyone wanted to just sit down in the living room/reception room to sit down and talk. While walking down the street at our friend's, Galel's, hometown, we ran into his middle school math teacher who then invited us to sit in on a math class (see last post). 

The food was great. Everyone was nice. We were kept on our toes with the 1001 greeting expressions -- welcome, welcome, we are honored to have you, you fill us with light, nice meeting you -- because they all have their own specific response (not just a thank you). 

Just like Ahmed's house, the food was amazing. Fresh bread, eggs from their chickens, chicken from their chickens, two huge plates of spaghetti, rice, and everything.

And just a cool tidbit, there were Tuk Tuks at Jalel's too!

Life Inside a Magazine

It felt like I was in a National Geographic magazine today. The class was working on finding the roots of quadratic equations. Instead of x's, there were س's, and the squared signs were found on the left of the variable, but other than that you still can't divide by 0 and factoring still works the same way.

The Country Side

Wake up at 8 AM on a weekend (it's actually Thursday, but hey, weekend can be a relative term) and eat some yogurt while reading the NYTimes and WSJ -- just for some political balance. Head out to "The New Stop" -- direct translation -- to catch a microbus with David, my American friend, to visit our Ahmed's, our Egyptian friend's, house in the country. The closest thing to "The New Stop" is a bus station, but this place is not a bus station at all. Maybe it's more like an amusement park's parking lot. It's filled with microbuses, taxis, private cars (when I say private cars, I mean cars for hire... they are old, worn out cars).Or you might say it's kind of like a state fair because there are plenty of vendors who set up shop in the middle of the road who sell tea or falafel or newspapers or other little things. This place is huge and you can find a microbus going about almost anywhere in Egypt. You find the row of microbuses lined up to go to your destination, you hop in, you wait until your microbus fills up, and then you're off. An hour in the car might cost about 4 LE.

Anyways, we get to the center of my friend's town after an hour. From there, we take a Tuk Tuk -- basically, a motorized rickshaw, see below -- to the next microbus station (more like a real bus station, but for microbuses).

This guy had red and black stickets of Bob Marley, the Bulls, Che Guevara, Muslim prayers and other random stuff including stuffed animals. This is not odd at all. Normal.

The next microbus ride is only twenty minutes, and we get out at the front of town (or more exactly village). As we walk along the main dirt road wide enough for two way traffic and filled with pot holes, we see fields and fields of crops, donkeys on our left, and Ahmed's one building elementary school on our right. On our way to his house, every other person greets Ahmed. It's the kind of place where everyone knows everyone. After a little meet and greet with the whole town, we got to his new house. This is the house in which he is going to get married. It's still under construction (a different concept than America), but it's half done. When he gets married he'll live on the ground floor, and his older brother (1 year older) will live on the second floor. They're building a third story, but I don't know what exactly they're going to do with it.

This house is a 30 second walk away from his parent's house. 

Anyways, when he get to his house, his parents greet us with open arms and warm hearts. His mom tells us to make ourselves at home (her house is our house) and told us welcome more times than I could count. His father greeted us with an uncountable amount of welcomes and the typical "Peace be upon you, may God bless and have mercy upon you." We sat down on cushions, and we started talking together. His father's second question was "How is Obama different from Bush?" It was an interesting start, but I'm pretty sure it wasn't a rhetorical question, but instead, a genuine inquiry into information regarding policies and characters. After 45 minutes to an hour of conversation, his mom brought us a huge meal. A full duck, a couple chicken breasts, red meat (they just call it meat here... I assumed it came from a cow), duck liver, duck spleen, macaroni, rice, vegetables, soup, beans, and pepsi. It was way more food than we could even imagine eating, but his mom kept apologizing for not making enough. His mom was hilarious because she kept telling us to take more food, and she actually picked up the chicken breasts or liver or whatever and kept handing us more food. Let's back up one moment. We're not at a kitchen table and there are no forks or knives. We're still in the reception room -- a room that you'll find in every house in this town -- that is next to front door. It's kind of like a room locked off from the rest of the house. Anyways, we're sitting down on cushions, and there is a table that is only 6 inches or so off the ground. It's a buffet style meal, and you just grab what you want or take all the food offered to you by Ahmed's mom. You eat with your hands and a spoon. The spoon works better for soup than your hands. Initially, Ahmed was going to give us forks and knives because he knows that's how we eat, but he changed his mind because he wanted to make sure we had the real experience of how he eats everyday. He said that every time he goes home (about every 5 weeks), his mom always cooks up a feast like this. It was pretty cool. His family was super nice and welcoming. His 13-year-old sister was particularly funny because she laughed whenever we spoke... I guess the American accent in Arabic is pretty humorous. His uncle and baby cousin ate with us as well, and we all had a good time just talking, eating, and drinking a lot of tea. A lot of tea. And, the problem is you can't say no.

Afterwards, we met the mayor of the town (another one of his uncles). We chilled with him for a little while, and then he took us to his office where he has a desk, birth records of everyone in the town, a board on the wall with the names of the leaders of the town -- mayor, vice mayor, vice vice, etc., and twelve rifles locked up in case there's any problems in town that require a little extra force. 

We returned to his house, had another round of tea, and bounced to the pharmacy that Ahmed worked in last summer. We said hi to his friends, and the we finally hit up a microbus to Alexandria. 

Dinner.

Engagement party for another one of our friends in Alexandria. Details on engagement parties and wedding parties still has to wait for another day.

Fuul

If you remember from previous posts, fuul is a beany paste. 

You can eat ful for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. And everyone loves it. It's cheap, popular, and filled with protein.

If I ask, how are you doing? A common response is "like fuul."

If you eat a lot of fuul, you can go "blackout" -- a term understood better by college kids than grown ups... the term speaks for itself. If you're day dreaming in class, a professor might ask you if you ate some good ful. 

Fuul is "bad ass." Sorry for my French, but that's the best translation.

If you see a strong dude, you might say, wow, he must eat a lot of fuul.

A ful sandwich is 3/4 LE ~ $0.14. 

And, an inspiring story...

Yesterday, I was in a taxi in Giza on a street overflowing with traffic. The cab almost hit two cars (the driver wasn't the best in the business), and on one particularly crowded stretch, I hear a loud CLACK, and I see the side view mirror bent backwards towards the window. The driver had just swiped an old woman dressed carrying her bag of whatever in her dirty robes with his side view mirror. He immediately came to a stop, and we turned our heads around to make sure she was ok. Someone shouted curses at the driver, but the woman seemed fine -- although, the piercing stare she gave to the driver looked like something that might have come out of ancient Egypt. Seeing that she was ok, the driver looked at me and said, "She must eat a lot of ful." I laughed at the absurdity of the situation. He laughed at the fact that a westerner is sharing a joke about beans with him. And, we drove off.

Update: In this NYTimes article, Michael Slackman talks about a band called fuul.

N

I ate Italian pizza for lunch today. Italian as opposed to Middle Eastern. Usually, you hear New York or Chicago, but here you're lucky to get the option between Italian or Middle Eastern. Italian is way better. In absolute terms, Middle Eastern pizza is not great, but everything is relative, so in Egypt, the Middle Eastern pizza is not half bad.

The guy at the pizza joint had the letter N tattooed between his thumb and index finger. It was a thin capital N in blue ink like the ink that Coptic Christians use to tattoo crosses under their wrists. It turns out this guy befriended a Coptic tattoo maniac back in his army days. For whatever reason, the pizza dude decided he wanted a tattoo like his friend. That's a totally normal (or rebellious or whatever you want to call it) decision, but I couldn't understand why he got an N. I asked him why he didn't get a ن -- noon -- the arabic equivalent. He thought I was crazy. Young Egyptians love English letters. They look cool. Of course, he'd rather get an N.

The story sounds crazy, and I have some trouble believing it. But, in reality, Egyptians love English letters. You cannot find one single shirt in Egypt with Arabic writing except in the touristy area of Dohab where you can buy a t shirt that says مش عايز تاكس -- I don't want a taxi. T-shirts with weird non-sensical phrases in English are ubiquitous. 

N or ن. Which is more exotic is based on your point of view. 

Siwa Round Two

You have to admit, this is a very welcoming taxi. And yes, this is a taxi. As I have said before, the city is run by little kids whipping donkeys. 

On another note, the desert is a lot colder in January. Bring a North Face.