Where do you come from? Where do you go?

One of my unanswered questions about the workings of Alexandria has just recently been answered.  It has to do, again, with the butcher shop around the corner of our street.  I've been noticing for some time now that somehow there is meat at that place, but I'm not quite certain how it arrives there.  I have never actually seen a live animal near there, yet somehow at some point in the morning meat shows up and somehow at some point in the afternoon again it goes.   Deductively, this only means one thing: it comes in a refrigerated truck from another undisclosed location.  

It comes in a truck because that's how you transport things around here (although there are plenty of donkeys and horses on the streets as well.  That would be another nice topic to touch on at some point.) and the truck is refrigerated because that's how you preserve the freshness of the food and prevent diseases from being borne.  Well, as it turns out only half of the previous statement is true, the second part not being it.  The meat comes in an open-air truck.

The first time I saw that I nearly stumbled, or something like that.  I was surprised to say the least.  

Picture your favorite uncle's pick-up truck.  Now put a travel cap over the bed and imagine that the tail gate, when closed, only covers half the space between the bottom of the bed and the top of the travel cap.  This should give you ample room for slinging pieces of meat into the back of the truck at the end of the day when packing up shop.  As for morning time, when unloading the meat, you'll probably have to let down the tail gate  and crawl over it a little, towards the meat, to reach the good pieces.  

There are two things I'm not too keen on discovering in this equation: one, how long the meat sits outside of a climate controlled area before it is finally eaten; and two, when the last time the back of that truck was cleaned.  I, personally, purposefully avoided looking at the condition of the actual bed of the truck to avoid knowing the truth of that matter.

Another distinguishing factor of butcher shop activities is how meat is handled here.  I mean literally handled.  There seems to be no shyness towards hoisting a cow leg or set of ribs over one's shoulders, or man-handling (I mean hugging) a cow carcass to hang it up on one of the hooks positioned outside the shop.  On top of all that, I can only remember one instance of somebody actually wearing an apron.

In closing, keep in mind that standards of cleanliness here are radically different than they are in America.  The FDA does not exist here (nor does OSHA by the way) and that probably, at least partly, explains why we had to avoid stepping on the slaughtered goat another butcher shop was skinning on the sidewalk the other day.  Also, as one friend put it, "If you have any problems with people handling your food, come to Egypt.  You'll get it over it real quick."

April Fool's Day in Egypt. It Came Early...

So the city of Alexandria decided to play a practical joke on the citizens of the city.  I'm not actually certain if it was a joke or if it was just some weak attempt at actually implementing city planning.  Anyways, it goes something like this: the Public Administration of Transportation decided to mark lanes on the roads of Alexandria.

Good idea, you might be thinking, and you're probably right.  I'm thinking the same thing, but I'm also seeing the poor implementation of this good idea.

The lanes have been marked at the street intersections where the first three rows of cars, both wide and deep, would be waiting their turn to turn their wheels again.  Something needs to be understood here though: the rule of driving a car on the streets of Egypt is that there are no rules.  I mean, the only rules are the understood customs and habits amongst the drivers themselves.  Any state laws are not really implemented.  Directly applied to three white stripes, painted 30 feet deep, at an intersection means absolutely nothing to car drivers.  The roads are chaos the whole stretch of road before the intersection and there is no hope of them suddenly straightening themselves out at the presence of fresh white paint.

And just like other road laws which are not implemented, neither is this one.  The policemen directing traffic on the streets don't implement this new lane thing and neither are they able to.  The road, now designated into three lanes, continues to witness cars squeezed abreast, effectively making the road five lanes and the cars continue to inch forward beyond the designated stop line whole car lengths.

The government also decided on another practical funny: road lights.  They seem to work most of the time.  Occasionally though, they might be down for two to three days.  They are still new so perhaps they are working out electrical kinks.  The people seem to obey the traffic lights more than they do the white paint beneath their wheels.

However, traffic lights mean there isn't need for policemen at intersections directing the flow of traffic, and that traffic light can't record your license plate like that policeman can (which they do in a very primitive manner by recording the license plate in script, in a notebook with them.  Electronic surveillance doesn't exist here.)  So, whose going to really listen to that changing light?

However the lights are not just circular indicators hanging above the intersection, they are either green or red lighted numbers counting down the number of seconds remaining for either your acceleration or your deceleration.  This is, in effect, interpreted as the following: green means go, with the added meaning of you should start nosing your way out early; green changing into red (i.e. the last two remaining seconds) means there is still time and you should slam the accelerator and avoid colliding with the protruding noses of the other cars.

When the lights aren't working things resort to their prior state of being: disfunctionality and chaos.  There are no such rules like we have at four way stops in Texas where you know whose turn is next in the event of failing traffic lights (either by first arrival or following the clockwise pattern when more than two cars are present).  This is compounded by the fact that policeman are not immediately present on the scene to stand in for the fickleness of the traffic lights.

In short, implementing serious change in Egyptian society like this is going to take a much larger effort than what the government recently undertook in this regard.  So far, Egypt's streets continue as they have been and as the Egyptian's describe them, "Everything here runs on blessing."  Mainly because there is hardly any organization and the only possible explanation for a lack of greater catastrophes and calamities is blessing from above.  I side with them in this belief.

Egyptian-Egyptian vs. Egyptian-Foreigner

So last semester we enrolled in a class of our choosing at the University of Alexandria (this class is in addition to the study abroad program we are with).  When it came time to take the final for the semester, we all piled into a large auditorium style classroom, with multiple classes taking tests at the same time.  The teacher for our class was giving instructions for the test as if he was drilling soldiers.

"Answer only one of these questions!  Only one! If you answer more than one, I'm going to take the first one on the paper and grade that one and not even look at the other!"  A moment's silence as he paced between the aisles, or up at the front of the room.  "I said answer only one!  Is that clear?!  Do not answer more than one!  It won't help your grade in the slightest.  Answer the question you think you know best."  etc., etc..

At one point a student entered the room, but somehow he did not enter correctly.  I'm not certain the logistics of that entrance but our teacher was not happy with it at all.  By this point though the student had already taken a seat and had his papers but that didn't stop Mr. Hussein from raising his voice once again.  His voice was so loud, accusatory, and aggressive I was convinced something had actually gone horribly wrong.  He finally ordered the student to walk back to the door and enter the room again properly (I'm still not certain the logistics).

I was convinced at that point that a dark cloud would be hanging over the space for the duration of the test and thought to myself that there is no way I could handle such treatment.  I decided I would have sacrificed my test grade by walking out on the test if I were that student.  To my surprise though the teacher cracked a joke, the students started laughing, and the unfortunate student who had become an example for the class, in the midst of his returning to his seat, broke out in smile as if he had understood what the intent behind the whole charade from the beginning.  In fact it seems everybody seems to have understood what was going on in some weird Egyptian cultural sense of humor way.  No hard feelings remained.

When Mr. Hussein, eventually made his way over to me during the test, as he was making his rounds, he placed a gentle hand on my shoulder, read a few of my answers, explained a word in one of the questions to me, smiled, and spoke softly.  I noted the stark difference in his actions and words with me.

There is yet another, incident I want to share.

Our Egyptian roommate is a student in the college of dentistry.  At one point he had lab which he entered without wearing proper attire.  This apparently did not impress the instructor one bit and he let our roommate know about it in front of the other students.  Well, our roommate, feeling it was the thing to do, talked back to the teacher and this only angered the teacher further.  He ended up getting kicked out of class.

Turns out that class was pretty important for his chances at graduating and the only way to enter the class again was to apologize to the teacher.  Most likely this apology needed to be made publicly, in front of the other students.  Eventually, our roommate succeeded in entering the class again although I'm not sure exactly how he apologized.  In any case though, the situation angered and saddened him greatly at the way the teachers are able to act as they please, bordering on corruption and egotism in his opinion, without any consequences while the students are mere pawns without any power of their own.

As I was speaking with a fellow tenant in our apartments he told me a story which, although we were speaking on another subject, helped explain to me this relationship between Egyptians and authority.  The story goes something likes this and takes place in Dubai:

A high ranking official's son attended school and used to beat his classmates.  The teacher complained to his father about these manners.  The father in return asked a question: "Who is he beating?  Citizens or those without citizenship?"  The teacher replied, "The citizens."  His father replied that this was within his rights then as it is necessary for the leader of the group to put his people in line, but it is considered a lack of manners to beat one's guests as those without citizenship would be considered.

Apply that to how the teacher treated me and how the other student and our roommate was treated... I found it a helpful comparison at least.  I should hope it elucidates something for you as well.

(p.s. - I don't have time to proofread this post.  Please overlook any mistakes if you would.)

Manifestations in a Post-Revolution Egypt

Here is a beautiful occurrence of expression (the link is to Facebook, so you will have to sign in most likely to really explore the page.  'Like' it if you feel so called!).  An expression of resistance, political messages, the feelings of the youth, etc. - which has surfaced after the revolution here in Egypt and continued to strengthen in occurrence throughout the ongoing events.

This manifestation is of course, if you followed the link above, graffiti art.  If you have kept up to date with current events here at all the art pieces paint a beautiful portrait telling of real lives, real events, real struggles, losses, and victories.  They tell of tears and bullets and poverty.  They tell of martyrs, as they are known for the most part in Egypt, and they tell of survivors with two eyes and they tell of survivors with one eye, the other being lost to bird shot being employed by the armed forces.  They might even tell of one or two survivors with no eyes to see with at all now.  They tell of some of the most amazing things that the world has witnessed in the past year.  

Check here and here for a little more info and background on the issue.

Enjoy.

Ol McDonald in your home

The farm eggs you buy at the corner store come with the farm still attached...