A Day in the Life and the Meaning of Success

Ever wondered what a day in the life of me looked like here in Egypt?  Well, me too.  I'll tell you a little something about it, since I actually paid attention today.

Class at 9am.  Talk about the Egyptian sitcom we watched for homework and some short film I hardly understood.  Try to go home and take a nap before I have hours of homework before me.  Run into my language partner (weren't partnered up with fellow Egyptians to meet like once a week for two hours) who tells me that she doesn't want me to go home but stick around at the center because there is something planned and she wants me to be there for it.  She's wasn't that good at keeping it a secret so it turns out there is a Christmas surprise planned.  Santa will be there and elfs too.  There was already a pot-luck lunch planned (cutely called a "dish party" in Egyptian), which I was trying half-heartedly to avoid (using the fact that I had not brought a dish to the party as an excuse to continue feeling not social at the time), so I thought I would stick around.

Turns out Santa did show up. He was a she, and Muslim.  Have you ever had an Arabic speaking Islamic believing Santa show up at your door?  Unfortunately Santa didn't know how to announce his (her?) arrival.  I enlightened her - Ho Ho Ho!  She looked confused when I did so and I didn't hear the cheery sound again.

After the food and festivities, there was homework.  And then there was a nap.  And then there was a tram ride.  I arrived right when the tram was leaving.  I breathed a heavy sigh.  Public transportation here is kind of like look shooting dice, you never quite know what you're going to get.  I sat down and looked at some Arabic I half understood from the homework assignment.  Another train came after five minutes or so.  I boarded the train, put up the Arabic I half understood, and took out some Arabic I hardly understand at all.

Reading the Quran in public places is commonplace here and one of the beauties of being here.  It is usually read out loud in private or in a quiet voice melodically to one's self.  Here, it is understood what you are doing.  In America people don't seem to know what to think.  The train is slow and has many stops and nothing else is going on in it - other than heads nodding off to sleep, families boarding, guys and girls flirting occasionally, the young boys playing the run-along-side-the-train-until-you-can't-run-any-faster-and-then-hop-on game, and the very occasional disagreement which almost escalates into a fight - so why not read some Quran in time that would otherwise be 'wasted'?

I reached my destination - the previous apartment I just moved out of.  I was there to return an internet router I had thought my previous roommate had bought for us.  It turns out the owner of the apartment had bought it for us.  Good thing he's a good guy.  His whole family is amazing actually.  I called his son before arriving and felt like I had arrived at the meaning of success when he thought I was a friend of his at the end of the short conversation.  Besides the fact that there was a slight misunderstanding between who was speaking to who, he still thought I was an Egyptian at the end of the conversation.  Score!

When I arrived tea was served.  We talked about stuff.  Ahmed, the eldest, is in the navy.  He has a year to go.  The elections and the Ikhwan and the Salafiyeen and Isreal and the Parliament.  A show came on the TV.  Children getting abducted for ransom.  True stories.  Apparently it's a problem here in some places.  Abu Ahmed, Ahmed's dad, opens up the subject of illiteracy.  It's rampant here in Egypt, about 40% of the population suffers from it.  The conversation melts into religious talk.  I'm served a piece of cake by Abu Ahmed.  It's really delicious.  The tea is still warm, slightly.

I walk down the old familiar street.  The neighbors wonder where the heck I've been.  Apparently news hadn't reached them yet that I had moved, or they just wanted to hear it straight from the horses mouth.  I spread the greeting of peace to Ahmed, an attendant at the parking garage.  I can keep the conversation to 10 minutes if it's only him there.  If Eid, or Ehab, were around I might as well kick off my shoes.  I was happy they weren't.

I went to a clothes store I had been intending to check out, "Brands for Less."  I shopped and laughed with the sales people and felt relaxed because the prices were written on the clothes and marveled at how far we've come with this language and how far we have to go.

Then I went home, and did some homework.  And the cool thing is, I did all the above in Arabic.

That elf on the right is my language partner.  She made a pretty good one if I may say so myself.

Fun fact: How to say elf in Arabic?  Midget.  Why?  Because the idea of the fictitious winter gift-bearer and his hard working employees just doesn't really exist here.  I suppose you need to have a concept of something before you start developing vocabulary around it?

أيام مبارك وليس أياما مباركة: Those weren't blessed days...

One of our teachers yesterday told us she was really excited and happy.  We had no idea why, so she continued on.  One of the individuals she had voted for in the recent Egyptian parliamentary elections had won!  This was the first time in her life that someone she had voted for had actually won and it's not because she didn't vote....Imagine...

Egypt vs. America - shweya Hagaat...

So, I've been living in Egypt now for about three months.  Here are some observations about things in absence or things in abundance here.

Things not to be found:

1- Pull-up bars.  I'm  not talking about inside gyms, but rather in public spaces, like on running trails (which there aren't really any of those either) or public parks (ditto).  Trying to do pull-ups on door frames and the beams of hallway arches is either not a good idea or near impossible.

2- Outlets.  At least not in the capacity that were used to.  It seems, where I come from, that a lot of the time you can choose your favored seat and then plug in there - usually there's an outlet waiting to serve you within cable stretch length.  Here choosing your seat in relation to the outlet seems tantamount if you plan on using it. You might no longer be sitting in your favorite seat though.  In addition, the outlets are also positioned at odd heights, usually it seems much higher off the ground than is practical.  So that, if you wanted to charge your phone let's say it might be necessary, barring the presence of another piece of furniture already in place, to move a chair over to rest your charging phone on.  Otherwise it will be hanging in mid-air, dangling there, waiting to either become disconnected from the charger, or to pull it out of the socket.

3- Paper Towels and Toilet Paper.  Yeah, that's right.  Paper towels and toilet paper.  I'm speaking about in public places, like your coffee shop (if you're fortunate enough to be in a coffee shop that actually has a bathroom), or your mosque, or your college bathrooms at times.  Thank Goodness though, toilet paper seems to be a little more plentiful though than paper towels.

So, what is one to do in the absence of these very small, yet very valuable slips of paper?  Well, get used to using the bidet system.  You gotta do it, and there is a bidet installed on like every toilet here in Egypt.  Well, at least all the ones I've come across here.  And believe it or not, it works a lot better than only using paper - water cleans, paper kind of spreads.  Just think about it this way, your white underwear (and I still don't understand why one would wear white underwear) will stay whiter for longer.


4- Dryers, for drying your clothes.  There are usually strings attached to your balcony, in some fashion or another, for the purpose of hanging your clothes out to dry.  Otherwise there are collapsible wire frame hangers that resemble an ironing board, when unfolded, for sale for use in the house.  Thank Goodness there are washers, well at least for some of us.  Here is a picture of three of our classmates after finally purchasing a new washer.  You can imagine how the poor things must have been before the purchase if this is what they were driven to after it...no worries K, E, and E : )

Things in abundance:
1- Plastic bags. Oh my Goodness! Try being environmentally conscious in this town and you might go crazy.  If I forgot my re-usable bags in Austin, I would choose paper bags for the groceries or I would literally carry the individual items out to the car (or stuff them in my bike bag, as was more often the case) and nobody could really have given a hoot.  They either sympathized or didn't care.  Here, you can't convince somebody to not give you a plastic bag.  Buying one bunch of bananas?  It doesn't matter how far you're walking, they're going in a plastic bag.  Buying a jar of delicious nutella?  No worries, it's going in a bag.  The one time I did remember to bring a re-usable bag to the store, in the vain attempt at not having to contribute to plastic usage here, the cashier pulled a sly one on me and put all the sweet potatoes in one so he could weigh them.  One of these days...

2- Curiosity.  That's what's been getting on my nerves for the past three months.  Just last week it was brought to my attention when one of our teachers pointed out "That we [meaning the Egyptians] are very curious people."  They want to know a lot about you, like you are an interesting sample of American-ness.  It probably doesn't help that a lot of the questions are asked within a ten minute time span resulting in the same questions being asked over and over by different people.  Egyptians, also at times, seem to be surprisingly outright.  For example, my classmates and I have been sitting with some neighbors and one of them will remark, "Abdul-Latif, your friend is better than you at this language." But then they might add, "Your pronunciation is better, but he knows more words and understands better."  I can't argue with honesty.

Till next time...