Outside Dubai

The UAE is a lot more than Dubai, and we set out to see it. We took a bus tour across much of the country -- the fact that this could be done in a day shows how small it is. We drove through the conservative, overtly Muslim emirate of Sharjah that is becoming something of a cheaper suburb of Dubai. We paused at what our guide called the "Little Grand Canyon," a huge river dry river bed, and at a market with an astonishing diversity of produce given its location in the middle of nowhere. And oases really are strange phenomenon. The highlight of the outing was the couple hours spent in Fujairah where we got to swim in the Indian Ocean! We agreed that the sand on this beach was the nicest our feet had even encountered.

Dubai

Each year Muslims celebrate Eid al-Adha, which commemorates Abraham's willingness to sacrifice Isaac; they celebrate by sacrificing animals (often sheep) and giving all extra food to the poor. We hear that in Egypt the sheer number of sacrifices leads to blood literally flowing in the streets... But we didn't see it because we left the country and spent four days in the United Arab Emirates.

Most people have heard of Dubai, which is one of UAE's 7 emirates -- the most Westernized, commercial, and touristy -- and is where we stayed with family friends. It's a city full of superlatives. In 2009 the Burj Dubai will be open for business as the tallest building in the world. Elevators to the 164th floor are expected to reach 40mph.

The whole city is one big construction site.

Behind me is the world's only "7 star" hotel. It's on its own little island and no one is allowed entrance except guests with reservations. It starts at $1,200 per night, so a bit out of our price range. But we got in anyway ;)

A few of the lesser suites.

The view from the restaurant on the top floor. The bar there has trained "mixologists" who will concont a special drink catered to your taste preferences.

Perhaps king among Dubai's ridiculous offerings is the indoor ski slope. Yes, skiing. In the desert. They have decided the best use of their resources is to create tons of artificial snow.

At the end of a long day...

Christmas!

We wish everyone a very merry Christmas! We hope y'all enjoy good food and good company. We wish we weren't so far away, but are having a great Christmas here in Egypt. Our French friends invited us to a nice dinner party last night, and tonight we're joining a couple new friends from our church. And we recently got back from a great trip to Dubai, where we stayed with new family. All in all, nicer than we ever expected.

This this first (and perhaps will remain the only) time we did not get up Christmas morning. We slept past noon =)

Forget the commercialism I mentioned in the previous post: this is all about Jesus, celebrating the God of the universe and the irrational love that would cause him to live among us. It is in that spirit that we say again:

Merry Christmas!

Christmastime?

We downloaded some Christmas songs and have listened to a Christmas radio station online. We've gone to a couple concerts, one of which featured Christmas songs. We've made cider and cookies. We decorated our building a little bit with some Santas and a "Merry Christmas" banner we found. The little kids at our church did a pageant last week.

But for some reason it still doesn't feel right... We think it's the commercialism we miss. There have been no commercials about presents we need to buy. There are no displays in stores, no ridiculous songs about reindeer. No one ringing a bell outside the grocery store. Our Arabic tutoring place has a (fake) Christmas tree, but they're rare. They actually do sell them here, though -- imported from Holland! -- for several hundred dollars. Yes, $300. Fake ones are significantly less, at around $10, but they're horribly ugly. I saw one with cotton balls on it. "Snow," I suppose.

All this to say, we will be happy to spend Christmas in the States next year. Besides the obvious up-side of being with family, we'll have all the media bombardment we've apparently come to expect. We hate it, certainly. But we also love it.

Phone jockeys

It's rather absurd and fetish-like how much people here love their mobiles. Almost everyone has one, in their hand or not far from it, all the time. People answer their phones everywhere: during lunch, during meetings, during church. And no one puts them on silent or vibrate, always loud; we went to an Egyptian church service last weekend and heard at least a dozen phones ring during the service.

When not talking on their phone, people on the train will fiddle with it or pull it out periodically to make sure no one has called. Or they play games on it. Or flip through the pictures they have stored on it. Or -- our favorite -- they'll play music with it, with everyone else on the train obliged to listen along with them. Once I was waiting in a deserted train station and someone came and sat right next to me, music blaring; he could have sat anywhere else, and yet he apparently wanted to share the moment with me.

Our phone hardly works and we rarely have it with us. We don't even know what the number is.

Amid saints

I recently went on a trip with a work colleague and 20 or so Copts to the Monastery of St. Mina near Alexandria. (Just me, Milli didn't go.) It was built by the beloved Pope Kyrillos VI, who is almost as revered as Mina, his patron saint and the monastery's namesake.





























This monastery was hardly an oasis of calm and meditation. People were everywhere -- and they told me it was a light day. Praying, chanting, singing, taking pictures with their camera phones... Here you can see a bit of that activity.















People praying over the pope's coffin.















The monastery was nice, and it was fun to meet and hang out with people, but my favorite part of the trip was a solitary vigil over the Mediterranean at sunset...

In the barber's chair

I finally gave in and submitted myself to the stylistic whims of a barber who understood no English. The conversation was rather like one between two-year-olds: I would haltingly offer Arabic words I knew, like those for "please" and "short" and "here," to which he responded with hand motions or nods of apparent understanding.

My hair ended up being a little different than usual (parted on the side! at least until I walked outside...), but wholy passable. And it only cost me $2.15, including tip.

In a suburb called Giza...

The only surviving wonder of the ancient world is less than 20km from our flat here in Cairo. And we lived here for over three months without paying the pyramids a visit.



Here's Milli looking for the public bus we took to get there. It didn't stop, so we ran across 4 lanes of traffic, knocked on the door, and hopped on.



Isn't globalization great?



The Sphinx looms large in the public mystic, but is rather small in person.



You can count a few of the 2 million blocks.

Facebook

Since moving here, I've gotten a series of friend requests from completely random Egyptians. Most recently, I got requests from Ahmed Al-Khilefat, Jack Jabbour, and Emad Emad Emad. Many send me messages too, mostly filled with "words" like "ru" and "4". My favorite so far, from Honko Momo, an Egyptian, 26 year-old, male:

i ll gonna to send to u a 3 angels ,
&
i ll aske them to :......
surround u with love ,
touch ur face with a rose ,
kiss u r head ,
&
finally whisper in ur ears "hi"

Really, what do you say to that?

The joys of travel

Much of our day yesterday was spent trying to get a Nigerian entry visa for our supervisor at work, who has a business meeting there in a couple weeks. A few other people at CEOSS had been jumping through hoops and red tape for two weeks prior to our involvement. We seemed to be the last ditch effort, the rearguard.

This was the story: To obtain an entry visa, one must fill out the online application, pay through on online server, and then physically walk a printed copy of the application over to the embassy. Problem: the website didn't work. One woman claimed to have filled it out the online application 30 TIMES, only to have it stall or malfunction. An emissary sent over to the embassy was told (rather snottily) that the Nigerian government does not accept hardwritten applications, and that the website DID work. Or, if it didn't, "Try again tomorrow!"

Now we enter. The application asked for all the normal things: height, "visible identification marks," contagious disesases, drug busts on record, how much money you were bringing into the country... Y'know, normal stuff. But our favorite was this innocent question: Colour Of Hair? The options: black, white or grey.

The first two attempts to fill it out failed. On the third, we made it to the payment page (!) only to discover an insurmountable issue. In the drop-down list of countries in which the applicant's credit card was registered, Egypt was not a member. It had Vatican City and Trinidad and Tobago, but not Egypt. They did not accept credit cards from Egypt. We tried fooling them and listing different countries, but they called our bluff. And then the website got stuck on Yemen for a while and wouldn't let us change it.

Finally, after many demonstrations in front of other staff members and assurances that we'd be paid back, we used our credit card. The Nigerians sure as heck allow those. And it worked.

"What about Egyptians who need to go to Nigeria but don't know any foreigners?" one of our colleagues asked.

What about them indeed.

Al-Azhar Park

Ahhh, green:













Lots of couples:













Sun setting over the city:













Our own philosopher-king:

The start of a new career...?

I now have a second job -- a part-time proofreader for the magazine Egypt Today. I've worked there a few days now. It's going to be only a few days toward the end of each month, during the production period. I'm excited to see the world of journalism from the press room.

It's the largest and oldest English-language magazine in the country. A little ambiguous whether it's a domestic or international magazine -- they kind of claim both. Most of the writers are Egyptian, but most editors are expats. All the proofreaders are American. One of the editors looks and sounds like a young Peter Jackson. The managing editor's named Patrick FitzPatrick; I wish he had an Irish accent.

I doubt my career aspirations will shift too dramatically, but it should be interesting. Maybe I (or Milli) could actually get something published...

Happy Thanksgiving to you all!

We were lucky to be able to celebrate Thanksgiving with 50 or so people from a nearby church and the seminary here in Cairo. And, as we live in one of the few large and freely available spaces around, Thanksgiving was right outside our door! The common dining room held most, and the others spilled out into a beautiful table set in the common living area.

The woman playing the piano below is Martha Roy. She played us some Thanksgiving songs (well, 2 Thanksgiving songs, then we couldn't think of any more) and then Christmas carols!

Subway Ettiquette

I have been genuinely surprised at the subway etiquette in Cairo.

On the one hand, when the doors of the subway open at each station, groups of men push their way onto the train with little regard for those trying to exit (or for anyone for that matter). This is especially true during rush house; I often here someone yelling "Push, push!" (in English) as people get on the train.

On the other hand, more often than not a man will offer me his seat. Men will always get up for women with children, elderly men or women, and pregnant women. Men seem to be aware of those around them and responsive to their needs -- and far more consistently so than I ever experienced in New York.

(Note: The subways are full of mostly men. There is often only a handful of women in any given subway car at any given time. This is partly due to the existence of "Female-Only" cars at the front of the train. That doesn't account for all of the huge discrepancy in numbers though.)

Haircut

Before:



After:


The means (and a little pluck):

Dance party

During breakfast today, music started booming from outside our window. Half Egyptian/Arab, half (bad) American music. Apparently it was the 100th anniversary of the school here. Milli wasn't feeling too well, with a headache. Even with the window closed, it was terribly loud -- not good for the headache. We moved to another flat on our floor that wasn't quite so loud. As Milli was settling in, she said sleepily, "I don't want to just lie down; I want to be entertained." We may be living in Egypt, but we're still American.

Village pictures

At one of the home visits:



This is the kitchen in one of the homes we visited:



One of the water installations:



Those kids going nuts:

Village visit

(I apologize for the length of this post. Hear me out, if you will.)

Our van stopped amid announcements of “Here we are.” Our arrival had hardly been inconspicuous, but then I guess there was little chance of that. Vans probably don’t normally rumble through the narrow alleys of this village in Upper Egypt (which means anything south of Cairo). There were people surrounding us. Children were peering in the windows, teenagers and adults staring at us with suspicion. As we got out, we were herded quickly through a doorway. As we climbed the three flights of stairs we were greeted by a spread of computer pages taped to the stairwell wall: “WELCOME,” they proclaimed, one letter per page. Another identical sign adorned the wall of the office we entered. Milli and I and our translator were directed to chairs behind a small table, and our hosts took their seats along the walls. A woman quickly brought three glasses and bottles of water. We let them sit untouched for a while as our discussion commenced.

The board members introduced themselves; half were teachers, and one man was a public water official. The chairman launched into a description of the association’s work, which centered on issues of sanitation and the environment. He painted an ugly picture of children walking through piles of refuse on their way to school. We sat around a powerpoint presentation that depicted trash piles heaped upon the main road (before), and then the young volunteers collecting the scraps that remained on otherwise cleaned ground (after). Various people interjected bits into the conversation: the houses rehabilitated, both with fees and gratis; water lines installed; school fees paid.

Our water was joined by coffee and cookies. No one else was drinking anything. It was really a bit embarrassing to be so pampered by people without much expendable income. Two board members apologized for the meager offerings, admitting that they had never before entertained foreign visitors and wished they could have served us a full meal. Their sheepishness was as endearing as it was unwarranted. They even brought out cans of soda, which we insisted on leaving behind until our translator said that would be taken as an insult. So we carried them out the door with us, along with the uneaten cookies.

Milli and I asked if we could take a few pictures, which to our delight led to a walking tour of the village and half a dozen house visits. In each, the woman of the house showed us around and fawned over the water faucet that CEOSS had installed for each of them. The homes betrayed a serious poverty: they all had electricity and TVs, but also dirt floors and few possessions. One woman offered to make us tea (we declined), which she would have made huddled over the bunsen burner on the floor in the corner – the kitchen. We sat on the bed as we talked to the matriarch of another home, because there was only one chair.

But of all this, the most vivid lasting image is of the kids. Once our arrival was announced, there was never a shortage of curious, wide-eyed children straining to have a look at the odd-looking foreigners. Their yelling was so loud it was quite difficult to hear anything else. It seemed impossible that I would be the first white person they had ever seen, but a few people asserted that it was true. On our tour of the village, the men of the association acted as riot police, using bamboo sticks as batons to hold the children back – and even strike them when they got too close! We were shocked and hoped they weren't actually hurting them. Our party would round a corner and enter a brief peacefulness, which lasted until the kids ran around the block and again came streaming through the alleys toward us. There must have been literally a hundred of them. Didn't they have school?

Near the end of our visit, once the kids had settled down a bit, I turned my camera toward a group of them in an attempt to capture a sea of cute faces. Instead, my innocent action sparked a mad scramble for stardom, with everyone climbing on top of each other in search of the lens. A couple men were forced to rush over and impose discipline.

In Uganda I encountered many enamored young fans, and eventually grew to hate my celebrity, but they were never quite so enthusiastic as the Egyptians of this small village.

Super Walmart, Egyptian-style

Yesterday we went to the fanciest, largest, and most westernized grocery store Cairo has to offer -- Carrefour. This place sells toys, sheets, clothes, kitchenware, bicycles, pet food, and the like, and also has a full-sized grocery store. We were overwhelmed by the sheer amount of choice present -- not unusual compared to US stores, but pretty incredible for here. At the fish counter, one could buy fresh little shark, and there seemed to be a dozen types of feta cheese. I was a little disappointed, though, as Carrefour didn't have any of the three things I've been looking for each time I go to a new grocery store: 1)baking soda, 2)chocolate chips, and 3)canned pumpkin.

Like a local

At first I thought it was just something people said to be nice, but I was wrong: most people here really think Milli looks Egyptian. People frequently just start talking in Arabic to her. And today an Egyptian pulled up next to us and asked her for directions!

Me? Not so much.

Well, Cairo seems like a good place to speak!

Probably not a thought that crosses the minds of many western, Christian authors. Or many people at all. Yet, this past weekend, we heard Anne Lamott, an American, Christian author, speak, once at the American University in Cairo and twice at a church in an expat-filled area of Cairo. Apparently, each year this church hosts an individual of academic, literary, artistic, or ecclesiastical distinction to give talk with some spiritual theme. Last year, William Dalrymple spoke, whose book incidentally is on my t0-read-next list (Nate finished it a few weeks ago).

Anyway, Anne Lamott speaks like she writes. (Or perhaps she writes like she speaks?) She has one of the most vivid personal voices I have experinced as a reader. She's funny, irreverent, totally sincere, and sometimes quite wise. And she's one of the few authors that makes me actually laugh out loud. Someone said something that I think captures the essence of her writing: "She writes about imperfect things, perfectly." I'll try to find some good examples in the days to come and post them here.

Mt. Sinai/Dahab, Part 10 of 10

So, Dahab.

On one level, it is a fairly unremarkable beach resort town. It's pretty small, consisting primarily of the hotels and restaurants off a single boardwalk. It has the usual band of incredibly tanned beach bums, restaurant hustlers, big-spending tourists, and waiters who act like serving you a milkshake is their single goal in life.

But on a far more important level, it was NOT CAIRO, thereby deeming it heaven on earth. No smog, no grime, no traffic (and no honking), no work, and even no crowds. Instead, it was the water lapping literally at our feet, it was air we could breathe deeply without coughing, it was fish that didn't come out of the Nile, it was peaceful, it was quiet, it was ... something that we never wanted to leave.



Our hotel was nice -- right on the boardwalk, as all of them are. (Above: view from our door, with the water faintly in the background.) They gave us breakfast, and even washed our sheets after we asked nicely a few times. We spent a fair bit of time in the hotel's obligatory restaurant/lounge area on water. It was kind of windy, and not always sunny, much to Milli's chagrin, but still very nice.




We also went snorkeling, one of the Red Sea's main draws (the other being diving). We rented gear from the guy who sits right outside our hotel (picture above), trekked to the other end of town that had the better reef, and plunged in. Hawaii it was not, but still very fun. We sat on the water directly above some divers and felt their air bubbles breaking on us.

Finding dinner spots was rather arduous due to the enormous attention we received from all the overly gregarious men trying to drag tourists into their haunt. A few of them shuffled Milli over to their heaping display of freshly-caught fish, which in her case always accomplished the opposite of their intentions. Finally settling on ones that promised free appetisers, free desert, and 20% off, we gave in.

Dahab is not really Egypt. True, some of the food offered is Egyptian, but next to alfredo and cheeseburgers. True, most of the people who work there are Egyptian, but none of the people they serve. Going there and saying you've seen Egypt is rather like going to Cancun and claiming to know Mexico. (Mmm... no, probably not that bad. Sharm-el-Sheik is probably closer to the Cancun of Egypt.) But in a technical sense, it is indeed in the Middle East: at night we could see the lights of Saudi Arabia across the strait.

I'll end with this:

A very short trip down a very long river...

A couple nights ago, Milli and I became tourists and went on a Nile cruise. Not on one of those five-star Titanics with belly dancing and lobster. This was on a 15-foot sail boat (fellucca), captained by a barefoot, 65-year-old man.



It was amazing. Except for the part when a police boat roared past and splashed the camera, it was peaceful and calm. Very luxurious. A call to prayer rang out midway through the voyage, with mosques all around us combining to form an interesting cacophony. All those voices bouncing off the water made it surprisingly loud.

This was a birthday present from my parents, who had also financed a "picnic" -- which we took to mean all the junk food we normally can't afford to buy! They even threw in the sunset top it off.



Ahh...

Mt. Sinai/Dahab, Part 3

A few more pictures from Mt. Sinai: