jack's cairochronicles

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.

The other day, I had several errands I wanted to do:

• get copies of our apartment key made
• drop off some clothes at the tailor for alterations
• do some minor clothes shopping

We got up, we went to the local coffee shop for a coffee and pastry to start the day around 9am.

Kaddee got called by a colleague and ended up meeting her to go into school so she could show her around the department, so I was on my own.

I finished my coffee and headed out. It was 9:30-ish. It was a Thursday. Friday & Saturday is the weekend.

So, I strolled towards Brazil St (which is where the tailor is) in a zig-zag fashion, attempting to stroll by the various clothing stores I had seen in previous walks.

None were open yet. Hmmm.

I get to the tailor’s shop.

I need to digress a moment about the “tailor”. Our orientation buddy had introduced me to this man. He had used him for some simple alterations: pant’s hemming, replacing a button etc. Good for simple work, cheap. I would not go to him to have him make me a suit, most likely, but I needed my pant’s hemmed and the sleeves on a jacket shortened. This gentleman is perfect for that kind of work.
The tailor’s “shop” is an 6×12 foot stall with a rollup metal door. about 80% of the shop space is heaps of bags of clothing and fabric in plastic bags.

The tailor sits on a chair on the sidewalk, sewing by hand. I see no evidence of a sewing machine, nor even electricity in his stall.

This is “the tailor”.

So, I get to the tailor’s shop, and his metal store is rolled shut and locked. Hmmm. It is about 10:15.

I go to the key making stall. He is open! Praise Allah! I have some keys made.

I remember now that I had been told that things get moving around 11am-noon. I have at least 45 minutes to kill.

Ok, I find a restaurant that is open and have a late breakfast/early lunch and read the Herald Tribune.

I finish lunch and strike out again.

By now it is really heating up. I find the tailor, give him my clothes and head back to the apartment.

It is too warm now to entertain the thought of clothes shopping and trying on clothes in a cramped dressing room. I go home.

In every other “hot” country I have been in, people tend to get moving early-ish (not 6 am early, but 9am early) to beat the heat of the day. Here, nothing really gets going till 11 at the earliest. Just in time for the heat to really pick up.

Egyptians on the whole seem to be really late night people. There are several bars that don’t get going till 1am and are open 24 hours.

Most of open air concerts and entertainment venues (of which there are many) list showtimes of 11pm and midnight starts are far from uncommon.
Having dinner before 8 or 9 is kinda like the “early bird special” in places that have a large retirement community in the US.

All this translates into very quiet mornings for sleeping in.

Which works for us, mostly. Except when “we have stuff to do” and want to get going.

I have been told, repeatedly, by people here that:

The American way is to make a list of things you want to do today and check them off as you go

The Egyptian way is to have a list of things you need to do, and a time at which you will quit for the day. When that times comes, you’re done. The rest can happen Bukra. (Bukra is egyptian arabic for “tomorrow”. It has the same meaning as “manana“. It doesn’t really mean tomorrow, it just means “not today“)

It’s gonna take some getting used to…