Category: Cultural Differences

Getting on an elevator here is interesting.

First there is the physical nature of the elevators.

Many of them are the old open cage style that is often retro-fitted in the middle of a curving staircase in an older building. Push the button and IF the previous user of the elevator remembered to close the inner doors, the elevator will come down.

Open the outer door, the inner doors, get in, close the outer door, close the inner doors, push button.

There are also more modern ones, in newer buildings, like ones we see in the US all the time.

Both types tend to stop close enough to the desired floor. There is always a small (and sometimes not so small) step up or down when getting in or out of an elevator.

But all of this is a minor annoyance that one quickly adjusts to and forgets about.

What is more interesting and frustrating to me, is the social/cultural differences in the way that elevators are used here.

Here is how it works:

Walk up to the elevator call buttons. Regardless of which floor you are on and which direction you want to go, push both buttons.

Then stand directly in front of the doors.

When the doors open, allow an appropriate amount of time for people to get out of the elevator. This appropriate amount of time is approx 10 microseconds.

Walk into the elevator, but only just enough to clear the doors.

Ok, sometimes people don’t actually get in far enough to clear the doors, and it will take 2 cycles of the doors starting to close and re-opening before someone will move.

Stand there, blocking people trying to enter or exit.

So now, you are on the elevator. It might be going in the direction you want to go in. Or it might not. But you are along for the ride.

What this means is that people on the ground floor of a building, that want to go up, will get on the elevator even if it is going down to the parking area. So then the elevator will be full going down.

It will go down one level, 1 or 2 people will get off and then it will go up again to ground. It will stop at the ground level, the doors will open, but there will be no one left to get on, cause they all got on when it was going down, see?

This means that the elevator is almost guaranteed to stop at every floor going up, and going down.

Unless you are really lazy or carrying something heavy, it is almost always faster to walk.

Fun fun.

Friday is Sunday here. The day that most people go to services.

Not everything is open, and what is open usually doesn’t open till after the noon prayers.

That means that Saturday is the day to “get stuff done”

That also means most of our tourist-ing is done on Saturday, which results in us being rather tired on Saturday night and a little weary come Sunday morning, when the work week starts….

The above translates into “I have no change”.

I know I have talked about “small money” and the process of getting change before, but it is a constant problem/annoyance.

Anyway, the other day Kaddee and I went to the coffee bean shop to buy beans. They roast their own beans.

We won’t talk about how it takes forever for the clerk to get the beans out of the hanging container they are in because the spout is somehow blocked and no matter how hard he beats on it with his hand, or how often he sticks his grimy fingers in the spout only about 8 beans come out at once and how this happens EVERYTIME we buy beans and how about 30 seconds with a ruler or a pencil or broom handle would fix the bean holder constipation problem.

No, we won’t talk about that.

Instead we will talk about paying for the beans.

The total was, IIRC, 46LE. Kaddee gave him a 100LE note.

He looked at it and said, in English “change?”. I looked at him and said

“Mafeesh Fakka”

Which is what EVERY shopkeeper will tell you.

He looked stunned for a second and then laughed and told the 3 guys behind the counter what had transpired, and everybody got a big chuckle out of it.

The cashier reached under the cash register and pulled out a STACK of 1LE notes, brand new from the bank. We got brand new bills in change. He chuckled the entire time.

Turning the tables is fun!

I thought the west used arabic numbers. I was wrong. The numbers in arabic are represented by different symbols. Who knew?

That would be ok, if they some of them didn’t look like the numbers used in the west.

A “5” is a “0”, a “6” is a “7” and a “7” is a “V”, a “0” is a “.” a “4” is “E”. gah.

In the days before Ramadan, people buy lots of sweets and treats to have with their Iftar, which is the meal at the end of the day that breaks the Ramadan fast.

One of these treats is dates. Traditional holds that the Prophet broke his fast each day with a date and water (or milk, depending on who you believe). So this time of year, dates are very popular.

It has been a tradition for the Cairo fruit peddlers to name the different dates after different people that are in the news.

The best/most expensive dates get favorable names. The poorest/cheapest dates get unfavorable names.

This year the sweetest, most expensive dates are called “Nasrallah”, at around LE24/kg.

Close runners-up are Ahmadinejad, around LE18/kg and Chavez at LE14.

The cheapest are Olmerts, priced at about LE1.5.

A few years ago, the good doctor and I were travelling in Namibia and South Africa for a month or so.

We stayed at a neat hostel, owned by a very nice couple.

One night we were sitting around after dinner chatting with the owners and a n artist friend that lives near by, and 2 (iirc) german tourists that were staying there, all white.

Also in the room was the artists “colored” daughter.

The extremely earnest german couple were discussing the obvious, to them, “solutions” to all the problems of Namibia and South Africa (unemployment, poverty, HIV infection rate, illiteracy).

One of the owners of the hostel said

“Here, we have a joke:

Q: What is the difference between a tourist and a racist?

A: 2 weeks”

The owners and their friend and her daughter laughed a great deal. I thought it was amusing and telling.

The germans either didn’t get it, or didn’t think it was funny.

Many ex-pats (american, british, german, whatever) have been here a long time. Some of their views are interesting to listen to. I cringe when I hear some of them.

Maybe they are right and maybe when we have been here long enough, we will see that they are correct.

But I hope not.

Anyone who has been on the intrawebernets for any period of time has seen the nearly ubiquitous “teh”.

It is everywhere. It is often used intentionally as a sign of… coolness? reverse chic?

Anyway, Kaddee and I have been taking (Egyptian) Arabic lessons. These lessons are starting to include reading and writing arabic. One of the letters is “teh“. I kid you not. Yeah, it looks like a smiley face.
It cracks me up everytime my instructor or kaddee or I say “teh”.

That is all.

I haven’t really spoken about the taxis yet.

Where to begin…

They are all black and white, mostly black with white fenders. They usually have racks bolted to the top for luggage or boxes or goats.

They are mostly Ladas, with some Fiats mixed in. I have no idea how old they are, but they are “of an age.” They are all dented and bashed in.

We actually saw our first accident the other day: A taxi hit a parked car. He had plenty of room (by egyptian standards) he just ploughed into a parked car. He completely peeled the fender off the parked car.

He must have been on his mobile

What else…

The taxis also have a certain…. aura about them.

Fom what I can tell, the drivers store gasoline by soaking the upholstery with it and squeezing it out when they need more.

And they belch some noxious exhaust gases to go along with the diesel bus fumes and fumes from all the other (barely running) taxis.

Of course, most of the drivers chain smoke.

And it is hot here, and not everyone practices the same hygene that most americans do and of course they all have the 4/40 air conditioning: 4 windows rolled down, 40kph so..
Well, I think I have done an adequate (and only just!) job of describing the olfactory component of riding in one of these taxis…

So on to the actual DRIVING. I will not do it justice i know, but I am compelled to try.

There is a magazine called Egypt Today. It is an English language magazine dealing with news and politics. It also has a really good directory of restaurants and shops. This directory is sold for 60LE. Or for about 10LE more, you can subscribe to the magazine and get the directory. We decided to subscribe.

So I went online and filled out a subscription form. It says on the form that they do not accept credit card payments electronically, and that a member of the subscription department will be in touch.

I submit the form and we get an email back confirming our contact info.

The next day the phone rings, and it is a nice lady from the magazine explaining their subscription options.

I pick a 1 year subscription and was asked:

When would you like the courier to come?

Excuse me?

Labo(u)r is cheap in this country. I believe that the official unemployment rate is around 40%. I have heard unofficial rates as high as 70%.

What that means is that everywhere you go, stores, restaurants, hotels etc, there are 6-8 guys standing around. It is unclear whether they all work there, or are just hanging around.

Buying something in a store involves picking out what you want with one guy, who gives it to another guy who writes a receipt. You take that receipt to the cashier, pay him/her. Take the receipt back to another guy, who hands you your purchase.

Any job that is labor intensive and can be done with locally produced materials is extremely cheap. Anything that requires imported materials is expensive because of duties and taxes.

This is one of the reasons that EVERY place delivers. Restaurants, kebab stands on street corners, markets, dry cleaners, makawagis, everybody.

As an example:

We bought 2 cases of 1.5L bottles of water. To get them home, 2 delivery boys from the market put them in a shopping cart, carried the cart up the stairs to street level, followed us the 3 blocks home. Then carried the cases of water to our apartment. We gave them 2.50LE each. That’s about $0.45. It was a generous tip cause it wasn’t that hot and they had the cart, so they didn’t have to carry the cases the entire way.

It was surreal, and a little uncomfortable, to have 2 men following us through the streets of Cairo with our groceries. It felt decadent and almost colonial. I have been told we will get over that. I kind of hope that we don’t.

Back to the courier:

Egypt Today doesn’t really take credit cards at all. They are sending a courier today, Sunday, to pick up our payment and give us our first copy and a receipt.