The only places in Egypt that aren't crowded

are the polls. Local elections were held yesterday, but almost no one bothers to vote in a country that has elected the same president in a landslide victory for over 25 years.

A friend who works at the US Embassy went to several polling sites to "observe." Observers were not allowed into many of the sites, but were still able to see NDP (the ruling "National Democratic Party") workers literally "cramming" the ballot boxes.

The NDP hands voters a card that allows them to match the faces of candidates with a symbol to represent them so that persons who can't read can still vote. Then people show a handwritten ID card, check the symbols they wish to support, and place their ballots in a central collection box.

The whole thing is really a ridiculous farce, as the NDP announced before the voting occurred that they had received 70% of the votes. The Muslim Brotherhood boycotted the elections, and my observing friend said that she only saw 3 actual people cast ballots all day. Below is a photo of an elections worker; you can see that it is deserted, and in the foreground you can see the empty glass ballot box:

This is an excellent article that recaps all of the recent unrest both within Cairo and in the textile factories outside of it, and gives the shortest accurate summary that I have seen of the political situation: An excerpt:

Thousands of people, including factory workers, junior office clerks, young people skipping school and political activists, marched through the streets of Mahalla al-Kobra on Sunday evening. Their numbers included those who had always been poor, and those who had watched the rising cost of living in Egypt eat into their modest prosperity.

They wanted to protest against the rising price of bread and demand an increase in their salaries. However hundreds of uniformed policemen and thugs in civilian clothes put paid to the dream of a peaceful protest. Police used tear gas and there were reports of shots being fired. The demonstrators responded by throwing bricks. Some took advantage of the chaos to carry out looting -- two schools went up in flames and computers and air-conditioning units were stolen.

The death toll at the end was at least two people, who were killed when a tear-gas grenade exploded next to them. Around 80 demonstrators were injured, some of them seriously, and police made around 150 arrests.

The street battle in Mahalla al-Kobra, located one and a half hours by car from Cairo, on Sunday evening might be considered normal in other parts of the Middle East. However such scenes are rare in the tightly run regime of Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak.

The government well remembers the bloody bread riots in the 1970s. Then, too, crowds gathered because food prices were rocketing. Hundreds of people died in the unrest. (Emphasis added).

It has been business as usual around Cairo, though, and you would never know that anything is happening elsewhere in the country.

Not much occurred

Aside from a small gathering that quickly dispersed under police pressure in the morning, the hoopla was largely for naught. The only things gathering in Midan Tahrir around noon on Sunday were scores of Egyptian policemen, hopeful foreign would-be journalists, and windy swirls of warm amber khamseen dust.

Interested parties can read more about the strike in the links that follow. The first details what has actually been quite an issue up north, in the Nile Delta, whereas the latter two focus on different strikes occurring now in Cairo:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/6333251.stm
http://libcom.org/news/university-strike-egypt-24032008
http://news.trendaz.com/index.shtml?show=news&newsid=1161673〈=EN

It was a nice excuse for staying home, it seems, as almost none of the Egyptian students came to school. Traffic was also noticably lighter, as the fifteen to forty-five minute ride to school took me only seven.


Here is a picture of AUC's main administrative building from across Midan Tahrir. You can see a Metro sign and the typically heavy traffic and smoggy air. Rumor has it that just breathing in Cairo has the same ill effects as smoking a pack of cigarettes a day.

Pregnant with anticipation...

I'm not sure if the air is actually abuzz with tension or if it just seems that way because I live in a dorm full of 80 girls, making it easy for us to run from room to room and across the lobby to pass on the latest tidbit or repeat the same story yet again. The top of the list today: today's expected strike in Cairo.

Planned for today is what I have been told will be the largest organized strike in Egypt, ever. Since I arrived at the end of January, the price of food has been steadily increasing. There have been outbreaks of violence in government bread lines because it is so profitable to resell flour (due to the national shortage of wheat) that bakeries often sell what should be feeding Egypt's poor on the black market, meaning that there's usually not enough for those who aren't in the front of the lines.

From what I can gather, today's strike began with the doctors, who are public sector employees in Egypt, and who generally earn around 400 to 700 pounds per month, which is between $80 and $140. Some prices for comparison:

Basket of bread: 3-5 pounds
Can of Coca-Cola: 6 pounds
Taxi ride across Cairo: 25 pounds
Stella, the standard Egyptian Beer: 20-25 pounds per bottle
A pair of ladies' boots: 110 pounds
Cup of coffee: 10 pounds

The primary complaint is not just that salaries are absurdly low--although they are--but rather that the public sector salaries have not been increased despite the government having raised food prices. (Why the price of food, and the price of other neccessities, like cooking oil, has been skyrocketing is a whole other can of worms that has to do with Egypt selling essentials to Israel despite the domestic shortage because it's more profitable for the government).

The strike began with doctors, and now includes the professors at Cairo University (and other public universities), transit workers (the Metro is supposed to be closed) and other public authorities. People have been encouraged not to do anything that the government generally profits from--including using mobile phones (many of the revenues go to state-owned Mobinil).

The dorm has generally been in a tizzy because we aren't sure whether to go to class. While AUC is not participating in the strike, many individual professors have cancelled classes in solidarity and others have said they will not count students absent today if they skip for moral or safety reasons. I say safety reasons because the demonstration and main strike is expected to occur in front of the largest government building--the behemoth Mugamma--in the largest downtown square--Midan Tahrir ("Liberation"). AUC's campus is across the street.

AUC is generally very concerned about our safety. There are at least 6 security guards at our dorm entrance at any given time, we must fill out forms informing them of our whereabouts at all times, etc. We received e-mails from AUC letting us know that school will be open as usual on Sunday, and the school-sponsored shuttle that runs between campus and our dorm is still operating, so it's quite likely that all the worry is unnecessary. Jillian has to give a presentation today and I have to meet with the ALI director, so both of us are obliged to go. Jillian's close friend, who is Egyptian, said he expected things to be peaceful because the demonstration was organized by white-collar employees and is registered with the authorities, but we will nevertheless heed his advice: "Don't get curious." I will let you know what, if anything, goes down.

A regular day

I haven't been posting very often because I want to describe everything in vivid detail, and that takes time, which I am finding to be in short supply in between taking advantage of opportunities to go and do things and making a valiant effort to be a diligent student. I'll try to at least keep a log of what is going on from now on, even if I have to leave out some of the color and anecdotes...I'm also going to be going back and posting about things that ocurred in the past, so those posts will have old dates and you'll have to scroll back through past postings to find them, so keep an eye out for that.

This past weekend we were invited by Krissy, a friend from the dorm who is dating an Egyptian (and has been for 4 years) to go with them and some of her boyfriend's friends to stay in a villa in Ain Sukhna, a resort town on the Red Sea. It is just beginning to get warm enough for that here (it was in the 80s for the first time this week) and we were eager to get tan...we are all winter-pale, particularly compared to most of the Egyptians walking around, who are naturally a lovely olive shade. We were there Thursday and all day Friday, and we spent Friday evening singing and playing the guitar on the beach...it's funny the songs that the Egyptians knew--they knew all the words to "Hotel California," but no one had ever heard of "Brown-Eyed Girl."

Nothing in particular happened today...I went to class all morning, then sat in the school courtyard and had some tea and talked to some of my friends, including some who came over to AUC to visit although they are currently enrolled at ILI, another language school in Mohandiseen. There is a fair amount of crossover between the schools as ILI is offered on month-long terms and is cheaper, which is more amenable to many students for various personal reasons. After that break, I met Tanisha at the dorm and we went to Beano's (which is kind of like Starbucks) and ate dinner and did homework for 5 hours.

Some girls from my class are having a potluck dinner at their apartment on Friday. Class is relaxed, but most of the chatting that we do is in Arabic about topics pertinent to our current vocabulary as part of practice exercises, so it's not too terribly conducive to getting to know people beyond a superficial level. We do a fair amount of mingling in the courtyard, but the girls in my class were already friends with each other because they had class together last semester, and I had my own friends whom I met in the dorm in the week or so before class started and who were new students like me, so me and my classmates haven't really had a reason to do too much bonding (except to commiserate over the volume of new vocaublary that we are assigned). They seem like very fun, normal girls, and I'm looking forward to spending some time with them outside of class.

I am now about to do my final worksheet for the evening, read a chapter of The Other Boleyn Girl, and call it a night.

And that's an average day.

Morning traffic in Nuweiba, a small town on the Red Sea

They let the goats out every morning to clean the city by eating the trash, and then a real-live goatherd calls them back to where they belong with a horn!

Lawrence Wright, Author of The Looming Tower

Today after our Listening class (I take five Arabic classes: Grammar, Writing, Media, Speaking, and Listening) a friend and I were lamenting the 5 minute presentations we are supposed to give tomorrow. I seriously doubt my ability to deliver a 5-minute monologue entirely in Arabic (or at least one that is mildly coherent), but I suppose this is how one learns. They say the intermediate stage is the hardest stage in learning any language, right?

Anywho, she mentioned that Lawrence Wright was coming to speak on campus later that afternoon, so instead of heading home to start figuring out wtf I could say for 5 whole minutes, we decided to head to a cafe in an alley about two blocks from school to meet some friends and have shisha and mango juice.

A few games of backgammon later, we ended up in Oriental Hall, the largest (or at least the nicest) lecture hall on AUC's main campus. The place filled quickly, and Wright (who taught ESL at AUC for two years to fulfill his "conscientious objector" service during the Vietnam War) proceeded to lecture about what I understood to be roughly the same content as his New York Times bestselling book.


Perhaps trying to condense a book into a lecture was his problem. The narrative history that Wright wove together was definitely interesting. Unfortunately, the Q&A section at the end concluded before I was able to ask him about his assertion that "The War on Terror had ended prior to the beginning of the war in Iraq." Wright proceeded to explain Al-Qaeda's reorganization from a vertical business model to a horizontal cell model, which he then credited as the reason for its ability to continue to grow and operate despite initial US/coalition successes in Afghanistan. The Iraq connection was never established or mentioned again. I wondered how the present need for US troops in Afghanistan and the apparently insurmountable lawlessness that continues to allow the northern tribal areas of Pakistan to be a safe haven and training ground for terrorists jived with his theory that the War on Terror was over prior to Iraq. I don't think the situation in Iraq has done much to prevent terrorism, but how Al-Qaeda owes its continued existence to the Iraq War remained unclear.

Additionally, I had serious doubts about some of his facts, such as that Al-Qaeda, at 20 years old, is the second-oldest terrorist organization remaining in existence--the other being the IRA. What about Hezbollah and FARC? Moreover, I found his claim that "There are more Muslims than Catholics in northern Europe and more Muslims than Protestants in southern Europe" equally objectionable. Those things may be true, but stated as facts to show how overrun European nations are becoming with foreigners (so much so that they are losing their sense of national identity) they are misleading. Southern Europe is predominantly Catholic and northern Europe is predominantly Protestant--not the other way around-- so it isn't all that shocking that Muslims aren't the smallest religious minority in those places, which is really all that those statements mean.

To his credit, Wright handled himself well under pretty heated questions after the lecture, and maintained his position that most terrorists are motivated by a variety of sociological and political causes that are not really the fault of the USA even in front of his Egyptian audience. His presentation was captivating, but could have been stronger if he had omitted the things that cast doubt on his credibility. However, if nothing else, it was a thought-provoking way to spend the afternoon.

Masr! Masr! Masr!

While walking from a party to a friend's apartment last weekend, we happened upon a huge gathering of people dancing in the streets and shouting. Cars everywhere were honking in the pattern: beep (pause) beep (pause) beep beep beep. I started to get nervous when people began setting things on fire, and thought for sure we were about to witness a riot, but it turns out that everyone was just celebrating Egypt's unexpected victory in the quarterfinals of the African Cup of Nations. Check it out:

For whatever reason, the United States hasn't gotten on board the global soccer obsession. Someone told me that it is because soccer is played in two continuous halves without ever stopping the clock, so it hasn't caught on with the big networks because they can't have as many commercial breaks. Nevertheless, for most of the rest of the world, soccer is a BIG DEAL. Two examples: (1) during the World Cup last summer, Cote D'Ivoire temporarily suspended their civil war so people could watch the games, and (2) according to a recent article in the New York Times, universal support for the Iraqi national team has made headway in bridging sectarian enmity in the country.

While I can't tell you the name of a single player on the USA national team, I couldn't help but get caught up in the enthusiasm that absolutely permeates every corner of Cairo for Team Egypt. People tape Egyptian flags to everything, wear them around, and cover their cars with black, white and read banners--all to demonstrate their support for the team.


Having seen the ruckus the victory on the quarterfinals caused (see video above), you can bet we--me, Jillian (my roommate), Rafaela, and Tanisha--decided to do it up big time for the finals. We bought flags the night before the game (after bargaining down the price since we wanted to get four at once) and as we walked home with them people yelled "Egypt!" and "Misr!" (which is the Egyptian word for Egypt) at us from stores and car windows, while cars greeted us with the celebratory pattern of honks.

One of our dorm mates is a really fun Egyptian girl named Dina, and she offered to take us to watch the game at a place where locals go to watch games (as opposed to a hotel bar or somewhere similarly upscale, which is where most expats hang out but would be too pricey for the average Egyptian.) We eagerly accepted and joined her downtown, where many local coffee shops and small shisha bars had moved all of their furniture outdoors into the alley. The place was packed with people--we had to sit on tables or stand--and we watched the game from the crowded alley on an outdoor projection screen. For this the store owner charged us 3 Egyptian pounds--the equivalent of about 75 cents--well worth being able to chant "Masr" with a rowdy Egyptian mob. Two of our upper-class Egyptian friends, Omar and Ahmed, met us downtown and marveled that we were showing them around Egypt - having spent all of their time with the upper crust, they had never before seen how the average Egyptian watched a game.

For a long time the game was zero to zero. Halfway through the chicken shwarma sandwich that I purchased from the stand around the corner at half time, Egypt scored. The bedlam that ensued gave a whole new meaning to the concept of a crowd "erupting." Not only did a roar and the sound of drums reverberate through the alley, but people were shooting fireworks and lighting hairspray (and other things of unknown identity) on fire everywhere.

When the game ended and Egypt won, the energy went through the roof. It really felt like the population of the city had been on hold watching the game and then turned out into the streets simultaneously. People were blasting plumes of hairspray ignited with cigarette lighters into the air, beating drums, and chanting "misr!" It was completely amazing. Tanisha noted that the only time we had ever seen anything like it are when American news plays clips of crowds cheering, shouting, and dancing after something like the American Embassy is bombed--but that's misleading, because it appears that this happens all the time!

After the game the 4 of us went with Omar and Ahmed to an underpass in Heliopolis (their neighborhood in Cairo) where crowds often gather on occasions such as this. We watched the pulsating throng from the slightly less crowded street above until Omar and Ahmed got nervous about the number of guys who had stopped chanting cheers and gathered around to take our picture instead. I am sure that four obviously American girls with Egyptian flags was an unusual sight; however, due to the prevalence of verbal harassment and unwanted touching on the Egyptian streets, staying any longer wouldn't have been prudent. We gave our flags a final wave and headed to a nearby cafe for some fresh mango juice. It was a thoroughly memorable night.

Settled In

My first two weeks in Egypt have been so full of things to do that I've hardly had a chance to look around and be fully cognizant of the fact that I am in Egypt, the land of King Tut and mummies and oases and hieroglyphics.

My flight landed at 3:00 in the morning, and even at that odd hour the airport was crammed full of people. I had to walk through a gauntlet of them in order to make it past baggage claim, and I imagined as I walked through the rows of jostling, curious faces craning their necks for a glimpse of the disembarking passengers that this must be something like what it would be like to be a celebrity on the red carpet.

School registration happened, slowly and inefficiently (in true Egyptian fashion), over the course of several days. In order to obtain my student visa, for example, I had to:

(1) go to registration and obtain instruction sheet
(2) go to the Business Support office to see if the forms that I sent in to the New York office had actually been passed along to the office here in Cairo
(3) I then had to leave my passport for a few days
(4 )then come pick it up
(5) take additional form to the Visa Services office to have someone sign and verify that I am registered for class
(6) take said form to a third office for verification that I have paid
(7) return all red tape to Business Support Office
(8) wait for visa ~ 2 weeks
(9) go pick it up.

Step 9 is yet to be completed. But I must say it seemed like it would have been simpler for everyone if the necessary people had come to the registration fair and sat at the tables the students had to circle around anyway rather then requiring several hundred students to run the Indy 500 around the campus!

Nonetheless, like the rest of this wonderfully Eastern and Western city, bursting at the seams with activity and relentlessly developing even amidst rubble and general decay, the system somehow manages to function in spite of itself.

Alive and well

I know you were all on pins and needles to hear that. I made it without any trouble (if you don't count the fact that the drivers are insane. When I reached for the seatbelt and realized there was no clasp, the driver said "no problem"--the first of many times I will hear that phrase, I am sure, since "no problem" and "okay" are the two English phrases everyone knows and uses abundantly, whether or not they apply). As we ran yet another red light while simultaneously crossing several lanes of traffic, I sort of felt like it was a problem, but I guess my opinion didn't count.

Going to bed to the sound of the morning call to prayer from the ubiquitous minarets...

Ahsfar ila Misr!

I depart tomorrow, and after a short stay in Amsterdam (9 hours in the airport, to be exact) will arrive in Cairo in the wee hours of the morning on January 25th.  American University in Cairo (AUC) has helpfully arranged for a representative and car to meet me there so that all goes smoothly, inshallah.


Along with saying goodbye, changing my cell phone plan, and concluding my job at CenturyTel (see photo), my preparations for leaving have included brushing up on a little Arabic. When I said my farewell words to the Monroe Rotary Club, I mentioned that the origin of the word "Algebra" is the Arabic word for Mathematics, al-jabr.  Another common English word originates in Arabic.  The title of this post means "I travel to Egypt!" The root of the word for travel, safara, is s-f-r, which is where we get the word "safari."  So now you know two loan words from Arabic: algebra and safari.


I can't believe I am actually, finally going--I will be sure to post upon arrival as soon as I am able!