A Day and Weekend in my Cairo Life

A normal day:

7.30am: wake up

8am: leave the house

8.07am: get to work

2.30pm: remember that I’m starving and order takeaways from a restaurant nearby

3.30pm: eat lunch (on a good day – depending on the Egyptian time it takes to get to me)

6.30 / 7pm: leave work

7.30pm: get to the stables to ride (having gone via home to change)

9.30pm: head to dinner after riding two horses (normally at a restaurant nearby, and normally in my sexy riding kit!)

11pm: head somewhere for a sheesha (the Marriot hotel is a good spot)

12.30 / 1am: climb into bed

 It’s a long exhausting day! On days when we don’t go out for dinner, we would cook at home – which doesn’t mean an earlier night! Sometimes instead of riding (although I go at least 3 times a week), I will do some chores – like head to the supermarket to buy some supplies… But I have yet to make it into bed before midnight… 

A weekend in the life of Luke and Emma:

 Thursday night: do something – usually a bit boozy and with some mates (like a dinner, or a bit of a party at a night club etc etc). Normally pretty late!

Friday

10am: start to think about waking up

11am: climb in car and head to Katameya for golf (having slept until 10.55pm)

12pm: have a bite to eat at Katameya club (they have pork – very exciting!)

12.30: tee-off for 18 holes

4.30pm: have a drink in the club house and then head home

5.30pm: collapse at home (a book, a sleep or tv!)

9.30pm: head out (dinner or a party or just a sheesha and a game of scrabble at the Marriot with mates)

Saturday

Sleeeeeep in…

1pm: head somewhere for lunch (a picnic on a felucca with some mates, or maybe City Stars for a spot of shopping too – they even have a Virgin Megastore!)

4pm: meet at the club for a bit of giddy-up

6pm: crash at home   

 I am starting to work out why I feel like such a zombie most of the time!

 

Some overdue updates

1. We took the plunge and hired a full time Filipino maid. Her name is Estrelia and she is great! Except that on day 7 she washed Luke’s Italian wool suit trousers and shrunk them – he was livid! She still has a bit of a penchant for shrinking things (the list includes 2 scarves and 2 jerseys so far…), but does everything else, and we now live in a clean house – quite something in dirty, dusty Cairo.

2. Our driver Amr is my hero! People have a really tough time with their drivers (eg. a guy in my team: his driver bumped into a car in rush hour traffic, jumped out of the car and ran away – never to be seen again! The poor guy had to placate the person who had just been driven into, and then drive himself home – no mean feat!) Still strange to know that there is someone waiting in the car outside a restaurant until we are done!

3. Last night Luke had to go to Alex (3 hours away) to check on something for work. The roads are really bad, and it is extremely dangerous to drive them at night, so Luke had to spend the night there (not too bad, stayed in the Four Seasons). But he just gave Amr LE200 (about R220) and said find somewhere to sleep, and see you in the morning at 8! Which, by all accounts, is completely normal, if not bordering on the generous side!

4. It is cold here – properly cold! Seasons are opposite to South Africa, so we are currently in the middle of winter. I wear a vest, 2 jerseys, a jacket and boots to work most days. Cairo is not good at heating things up – I’m hoping that their air conditioning is better!

5. Rain: I was also told that it rains in Cairo for only 5 days every year. Well, it has been pouring with rain for at least 10 days – fantastic for cleaning the air, but oh my! you get to see just how dirty the air is… After it has rained, everything is filthy! The roads don’t drain, so you drive through massive puddles hoping that the ground has not given way underneath. Everything you touch has a layer of grime (from the rain cleaning the air), and the mud is just all consuming. There is no way you can walk outside without getting filthy!

6. Our furniture arrived from SA on 4 January – life changing I tell you! We now have a house that feels like home. It’s pretty funny to see how far some of that furniture has gone in life (we have 2 chairs from my home in Morningside dating back to 1987, and lots of stuff from our digs at university). Can’t believe that it was all shipped here at such vast expense, when it really is not worth much at all! But I was so excited to see those mix-matched plates, and the sofa that is clearly at the end of its life!

7. I really want to learn to speak Arabic – I hate not knowing what people are saying! There are two types of Arabic to learn: 1) Egyptian spoken Arabic (which they speak here – go figure) and 2) Modern Standard Arabic (which they speak worldwide and use in media, but people would laugh at you if you spoke like that here!). Slowly learning that nothing is straightforward here! I have done some research and found some part time courses at the American University, so watch this space…

8. I have heard a rumour that you can get DSTV in these parts… Not rocket science, considering all it takes is a satellite! But the government doesn’t like it because they want to control what is beamed in. Tough sh1t if you ask me – the TV here is crap!

9. The whole of Egypt’s internet is down – has been down since yesterday. Barclays can access the internet via their network through Barclays UK… Just strikes me as odd (yes, nothing surprises me anymore) – apparently a cable broke…

 

Horsing Around

Show jumping in Egypt is big! And I say this because I have been seriously impressed with the standard of everything I’ve seen involved with this discipline. But let’s be real – it has a certain Egyptian flair!

 

I found a website belonging to a guy involved with horses in Cairo, and emailed him to find out about my horsey options while I’m here. This single email has had a profound influence on my life in Cairo…

 

I met Ahmed the next day at the Ferosia Club (on the island Zamalek). This club is amazing! So completely different to anything I would associate with horses in my past. The first thing to realize is that the club is situated in the centre of crazy Cairo – in between apartments and shops. There are 130 stables, a huge sand arena and another grass arena that is saved for shows. There is a highway going over the sand arena – I kid you not! Behind the sand arena is a school, complete with playground and basketball courts. In between this is a race track that goes through the Ferosia Club and links up to the Gezira Club (it is actually used for horse racing on Sundays – amazing if you could see what it looks like). But mostly you get people running and walking along the track. No fields or paddocks…

 

What is amazing is that the horses being worked in the arena don’t bat an eyelid at the bus that has stopped overhead and expunged 10 shouting Egyptians, or the kids next door bouncing their basketballs, or the people that come out of the shadows when they run around the track…

 

Ahmed is one of the kindest, friendliest people I have met. He schools horses for owners who don’t have the time, and owns a couple of babies that he will bring on and sell. He is a professional – has worked in Belgium and Ireland with top trainers, and this is clearly his passion too. (You can check out his website: www.ahmedhussein.info for some pics)

I met up with him again the following weekend at a horse show at the Cairo Stadium, so that we could go to the yard where he kept his horses.

 

The facilities at Cairo Stadium are amazing – truly world class! A massive flood lit fibre sand arena, with grand stand (the VIP section had really comfortable sofa chairs), fantastic jumps, state of the art judges box and rows and rows of stables… The Pan Arab Games were hosted here at the end of last year. 

 

And the horses competing in the 140cm class were gob-smacking! All imported from Belguim, UK, Ireland, Germany and all with the latest equipment and really good riders.

 

After watching the big class (which normally takes place after the 12 o’clock prayers), Luke and I accompanied Ahmed to the yard where he has been keeping some of his babies.

 

I rode Cielo – a 5 year old mare from Germany – and I fell in love! (You can check her out on http://www.ahmedhussein.info/cielo.htm) This horse reminds me of Sam (my junior horse) – and is just so cute! Also unbelievably well schooled and behaved! Perfectly balanced and able to do beautiful flying changes – amazing considering she was broken in in April 2006! I am so tempted to buy her with the money I got from selling my car – but somehow this just doesn’t seem to be a wise investment!

And this is how it all began! I now ride 3 or 4 times a week at the Ferosia Club with Ahmed (he has moved Cielo there), and have also been riding another fairly stiff horse for another owner.

 

I have to say I feel incredibly lucky: I have met fantastic people (really really great!), get to ride (my passion) and it is affordable for me (free!)…

 

From behind my Glass Walls

I sit in a glass office on the other side of the branch of the Head Office. This means that I get to see some fairly interesting things.

Like this morning: an unhappy customer started yelling at one of the tellers – really yelling (no idea what we had done to irritate her so much, had that all too familiar language barrier – but quite funny to see an Egyptian woman yelling at an Egyptian man in Arabic – I definitely understood that she was extremely pissed off!).

But what was truly amazing was the crowd that this spectacle attracted. On hearing the yelling, everyone flew out of their offices and went and stood around her listening to her woes. Hilarious! I was expecting her to take a bow at the end…

And when she was quite done, the 20 odd people she had attracted just sidled away again like nothing had happened…

Another interesting monthly occurrence I get to see from behind my glass walls: at month end we have to lock people out of the branch. This is a truly innovative way of ensuring a great customer experience. But things get seriously crazy at month end, and I suppose it’s the only way the bank can cope…

(Things are a little backwards here, so coping mechanisms are not quite what you’d get anywhere else in the world. Like no security barriers between the customers and the tellers – not too tragic until you get to appreciate the piles of cash lying on the floor behind the tellers desks. Not sure if it’s lack of storage space / lack of time / lack of necessity that causes this. The most amusing part is seeing the tellers wade through the bundles of cash when you draw LE1000 and you want it in different denominations…)

 

Ten Reasons Why Egyptians can’t be Terrorists

1. We are always late; we would have missed all the flights.2. The pretty girls on the plane would distract us.

3. We would talk loudly and bring attention to ourselves.

4. With food and drinks on the plane, we would forget why we’re there.

5. We talk with our hands; therefore we would have to put our weapons down.

6. We would ALL want to fly the plane.

7. We would argue and start a fight in the plane.

8. We can’t keep a secret; we would have told everyone a week before
doing it.

9. We would have put our country’s flag on the windshield.

10. We would all have fallen over each other to be in the photograph
being taken by one of the hostages.

(You have to be here to understand just how hilarious all of that is!)

 

Cairo – Cape Town

Our first unofficial visitors: 6 crazy people (3 South Africans and 3 Irish) arrived in Cairo to start a 6 month adventure cycling from Cairo to Cape Town!

Only one girl (I was at school with her), the rest are guys (one of which was at varsity with me). They got hold of each other on a Facebook group called “Cycle from Cairo to Cape Town in 2008” (or something along those lines) – amazing! Some of them had only met each other in Cairo.

What I find truly amazing is that they are carrying everything they need for 6 months with them – tents, clothes, food etc etc.  Definitely not something that I could ever cope with…

We took them to Sequioa (one of my top 3 restaurants) for dinner on their first night – possibly a bit pricey considering they have had to budget for a 6 month holiday – but a great way for them to celebrate the start of their adventure…

On their second night we joined them at the Irish Embassy. The Embassy put on a whole shin-dig to send them off – very impressive! There was even press and speeches! But most importantly good food, and lots of South African wine (good old Nederburg).

The embassy had organized a police escort all the way through Egypt for them. When we met Mr No 2 from the South African embassy we asked him why South Africa hadn’t even managed to acknowledge that these guys were in town. His response was that everyone was still on holiday!

 

Drinking in Cairo

How to drink in Cairo… More importantly how not to drink in Cairo…

Drinking is one of my favourite past-times. I’m not talking about getting smashed every night, rather the appreciation of a good bottle of wine while preparing dinner - it can do wonders for the soul (and usually helps to improve the end result of said dinner, one way or another). But this small pleasure is absurdly difficult to fulfill, for many reasons…

The first one being that this country is Muslim, so alcohol does not feature high on the list of priorities. It does, however, feature very high on the list of those commodities being taxed heavily. Which means a good bottle of imported wine will cost you more than R500. To drink the local wine takes a fair level of desperation and bravery, as it is more than likely that the next day will be greeted with a blinding headache. (There is one exception: Chateau de Reve. This local red wine is drinkable – tastes slightly like the glass still has dish-washing liquid in it, but has a much more palatable price tag of only R220).

The best solution of all is to convince all visiting friends and family (and complete strangers if you can!) to bring the 4 bottles of wine that they are allowed into the country, and then ration it carefully! I do miss my supply of very delicious Boschies… 

Vodka (I miss those Fitzies) and whisky is another whole chapter in the alcohol saga…

A single shot of vodka or whisky in a restaurant can cost up to R60. On top of that, you cannot buy inported vodka or whisky in any shops (and you absolutely do not drink the locally produced stuff). The anser is to get hold of a dealer’s number (yes, a bit like buying drugs I would assume) and he will deliver Absolut and Johnny Walker Black Label to your house – at vast expense!

If you do decide to have a rip-snorter at a night club, you just take your bottles with you, pay a corkage fee, and then buy mixers and the bar staff will just use your bottles. At the end of the night if they have not been finished you can leave them there until next time, or take them home with you…

 All part of that learning curve – essential to surviving comfortably!

 

Last of the out-of-order updates

This is the last of my updates that are in the wrong order – only just getting to grips with a blog – thanks for bearing with me J 

8 December 2007  

I think I will be happy here, and that I will survive for two years! I think the major difficulty is going to be making great friends – I underestimated the fact that this country is Arabic! The people are really friendly and make a lot of effort – but communicating with someone in their second language is exhausting for both parties! 

Still no internet connection – apparently there are not enough IP’s in this building for everyone… I am also perched on the edge of someone’s desk, and we have just had another person joining our desk – so we now have 3 people sharing one desk (and it’s honestly about 2m x 1m) – a serious lack of space in this joint!  

Our housie is great – the guy that we recruited to do the cleaning is driving me up the pole, so I think his days are numbered… Apparently a Filipino maid is the way to go, but they are very expensive (we also have the fairly interesting job of hunting one down – not that easy when you don’t know anyone to ask!) 

And we have a licensed car – it’s been sitting in the work garage for a week now with no number plates! Eventually Luke threw all his toys and told our driver (Amr) that he had three hours to get it done – he didn’t care that the department had closed already at 12… and a couple of pounds later, it was all done! Amazing this place!  

It’s funny – when we did a mini budgeting exercise, one of our main expenses was tips…   

15 December 2007  

It is pretty cold here at the moment – I really thought I was heading to this country that never dropped below 25 degrees, but alas, I am in boots, a spenny and a thick poloneck… Apparently in Jan / Feb the temp drops to 10degrees – how horrifying…  

Ha ha – in the process of writing this we have had a fire in the building, and I have just spent an age standing in the road waiting for them to put it out (fire engines, the works!)… things are going to have to explode before I am surprised these days! 

Having a driver is something else I am going to have to get used to…he fetches us in the morning, takes us home in the evening – and when we go out for supper he just hangs around until we are done (normally around midnight)… One great thing I have to say, is when I go grocery shopping (an absolute nightmare I might add!) he meets me at the checkout, takes my trolley, and I just hop in the car while he unloads everything. I’ve tried to help, but he really doesn’t like that, so now I just do what he says… 

Shopping is my worst thing ever! You know me and how squeamish I am about fruit and funny smells… well, to buy any veges you have to hand pick them from a huge mound… Sounds fab, but you really have to dig to find anything that is not rotten… oooo, I have nightmares about it!  

29 December 2007 

On Christmas eve we went to a restaurant (we were going to cook roast chicken etc at home, but figured out that our oven doesn’t work – only after all the shopping was done!) in Zamalek called La Bodega (very nice!) – anyway, we met two South Africans there… So I am now on the South African expat list, and have been invited to the monthly get-togethers with the SAfrican ladies (apparently they used to just meet for tea, but have now moved onto wine – a good sign I think…) 

I interviewed a Filipino maid (Estrelia) last night (they are apparently the best – one would hope so, they are damn expensive), so hopefully our house will become less of a dustbowl soon. Our furniture is scheduled to arrive on 9 Jan – just in time for Luke’s dad’s arrival on the 10^th… Not entirely sure what we are going to do if the furniture is delivered in Egyptian time (ie. a couple of eons late) – we have no linen for Marc to sleep on! Anyway, I have been assured that Mark is looking forward to a holiday of unpacking boxes… 

Luckily Luke and I don’t seem to mind spending sh1tloads of time together – its actually been really fun… We are heading to Sangria for New Year’s eve – a really cool restaurant come night club (a bit like the Fez) that is on the banks of the Nile… It’s in a garden with those 4 poster beds and white curtains – very cool… We even know a couple of people going, so will be festive!

But drinking in this place is ridiculously expensive! A shot of vodka in a restaurant is R60, and a beer is R25. Apparently what you do on a night out, is bring your own bottle of booze, and pay a corkage fee (about R250) and you drink that… but to buy a bottle of vodka (that’s not made here) costs about R250 too… so life is pretty sober here! Luke has quit smoking, and I am down to about 1 every few days, so that’s pretty good (although we both smoke sheesha – but only once or twice a week)  

 

“Funnies”

I thought I’d better keep some sort of list of the very different, sometimes strange things that happen here – just in case one day I don’t remember how different things really are…  

1. “Janni” - the first arabic word I picked up because people use it all the time, whether they speak in Arabic or English. It means “I mean” eg. Yesterday I went to the place janni that sells sheesha pipes; The correct number to use janni is 30. Sort of the equivalent of “um”..
2. The Eid festival was all about sheep (my details are sketchy). So everyone wanted to slaughter a sheep to celebratere. The laws of supply and demand meant that on every street corner there were dead sheep hanging from their back legs outside most shops… And to top it off, sometimes the alive sheep were waiting underneath the dead sheep for their turn to be hung up… Pavements outside butcheries were covered in blood, and often you would be able to watch the butcher carving up the sheep using old knives while they sat on the pavement and watched the cars go by… Any animal rights people would have had a cadenza (never mind my mock charging…)
3. Because I am a foreigner I have a large sign on my forehead saying “Please rip me off!” This includes taxi’s, shops and just about anything to do with everyday life… But I am learning what I should be paying for certain things…
4. When I catch a taxi I have to sit in the back seat because I am a woman. Men can sit in the front if they choose. You also don’t ask how much the ride is going to cost (a real foreigner move!) - when you get to your destination you just hand the driver an amount that you think the trip was worth… 
5. Parking is a problem in Cairo – there is just not enough of it. But the people have come up with a solution. They parallel park their cars on the side of the road two deep – the trick is to leave the car out of gear and the handbreak off. If your car gets parked in, you just push the offending cars out the way… What I find particularly amusing is that you just push a car hard in the right direction, and leave it to stop by bumping into the car in front of it…
6.  Another strange parking phenomenon is that when you get to your destination, you get out of your car and walk inside. Someone will then get in your car and drive it away. When you walk out, your car will be delivered to you and you tip the deliverer about 1 egyptian pound (R1.20 – shows the SA carguards are a serious rip-off!)
7. We go through at least one roll of toilet paper every day at home (when you consider we are at work all day, that’s quite something). Not because we have the sh1ts, because the cardboard thingy is so huge and the paper is wrapped so loosely (strange I know…)
8. I have very little control over who goes into my house. Every time I leave the house I lock it one way, and when I get home it’s locked differently. It’s turning into a game of “spot the difference” each time I get home. And big things change – like one day I got home to find a washing machine had arrived and was plumbed in…
9. The first time I bought beer in the shops I didn’t realize I was buying alcohol free beer: you can buy alcohol free anything, including a Smirnoff spin! Hilarious!
10. People smoke at their desks at work – a lot! It’s pretty grose!
11. Egyptian music is not my cup of tea. Thank goodness for Nile FM which plays western music with very annoying Egyptians dj’s with American accents…
12. A lot of public holidays depend on the sighting of the moon. This is particularly annoying, because you can’t make long weekend plans until the date has been confirmed (sometimes this happens the day before the holiday). eg We booked a holiday to go to Luxor from 20 – 23 Dec. On 16 Dec HR confirmed the holiday was from 18 – 22 Dec… I can’t tell you how annoying that is!
13. The traffic lights in Luxor are horizontal, and underneath each light is a timer that counts down the seconds before they change
14. Traffic lights in Cairo – absolutely no point! No one listens to them, so instead they have policemen with whistles to control who goes when at busy intersections – surprisingly efficient…
15. Last night (the equivalent of a Sunday night at home) we went grocery shopping at 10.30pm – and it was seriously busy…
16. Luke picked up my phone (a prepaid number) and answered what was clearly a prank call. The guy said “where you from” and on Luke’s response – England – he yelled “I am crazy like a donkey!” and hung up!

This list is far from being complete. I will keep updating it…