Garbage: A Unifying Theme (Boo!)

I'm still recovering from the last few days so knowing just where to begin today's story is proving a little difficult, but by golly I'll do my best.

At some point this week I went shopping for food. Still doing the no bread thing, so I stocked up on tomatoes, (the obvious bread substitute) which are at an all time crisis-worthy high price of 8-12 egp/kilo. I sucked it up though and bought exactly one kilo. I expect to run out in the next few days because, lets face it, tomatoes are delicious, and my stomach is a black hole for delicious things. Ask anyone.

The week gained momentum on Wednesday night, when Mostafa was scheduled to take me to see another apartment that Anna and Alison had already seen. We arrived, and the apartment's current tenant was horrified at our presence because apparently the landlord failed to let her know we were coming. That and I'm pretty sure she had a customer inside, if ya know what I mean. I'm actually glad not to have seen or taken the place, because living in an ex-prostitutes house is never advisable. Gonorrhea on the toilet seat. Randy men knocking at the door at strange hours. That kinda thing. So we instead went to look at another place that had just opened up. Equally unsatisfactory, but all this apartment hunting has made me truly appreciate what I sweet deal we have now. Having completed these exercises and in the spirit of true camaraderie, I accompanied Moustafa in the role of 'voice of female reason' as he finished up birthday shopping for his girlfriend. I find this conversation excerpt to be an accurate summary of the evening:

Moustafa: Should I get her a teddy bear??

Me: Well does she like teddy bears....

Moustafa: No

Me: ...........................

Karim was our faithful chauffeur for the evening so he deserves a medal and a mention too. In reality, we all love Moustafa and would of course do anything for him.

__________________

This is one of those rare instances where I actually have something entertaining to report about things happening at AUC. As I was walking through campus on Thursday I noticed that the place was starting to look remarkably similar to Cairo proper:

See the similarities now?

Further sleuthing on my part revealed that the workers on campus were in fact on strike.

Productivity

en masse

Just in case things get out of control

I've heard a number of explanations for the strike so far, but the gist of it is that on top of getting paid only Le650/month, the workers are now being required to pay for their healthcare out of pocket(Le200/month), and I believe there's something about the worker's cafeteria being shut down as well. So they're right pissed and are sitting on the ground to show it. As are a number of students who, in addition to skipping class 'to support the workers' have thrown even greater amounts of trash on the ground than they normally would to show how desperately we need garbage men. At least thats what some of them said. I think its pretty obvious that in reality the concepts of the trashcan and personal accountability for one's own waste have yet to sink in with the majority of the Egyptian population. Thats what the garbage men are for, right?

After the excitement of the strike, which, for all I know, is still going on, more on that later, Moustafa picked me up after school and we went on a surprise visit to see one more apartment. Getting there was half the battle since Cairo streets make no sense and Mostafa admittedly doesn't know Downtown quite like he knows Zamalek. After this adventure I was dropped off and given approximately 2 hours to get ready for the opening festivities of Halloween weekend in Egypt. For a number of reasons including but not limited to my lack of flat stomach, non-conservative clothing, and female friends, I decided to go with my 'cold hooker' outfit (long sleeves and tights!). In the process of getting ready, I somehow convinced myself that, given enough stretch of the imagination, in my dress I bore a striking resemblance to:

Snooki, queen of mush mush.

So, daringly, I set out into the night. Ready to fist pump my way into people's hearts alongside my trusty sidekicks:

Batman

The Smegals (Old Men)

Grandpa

And the Rabbi (alongside another smegal)

As I understood it, we were supposed to go to a house party, but in true Egyptian style we ended up somewhere else completely. So the first few hours of the night were spent at the Swiss Club. A large grassy area with some nice clubhouses. This night featured a variety of interesting costumes, from cat woman to cardboard robots. Highlights include: my camera getting lifted in the bathroom by a drunk, anorexic French woman, pure luck led me to her and my camera was returned; the Rabbi making peace with a Scottish Khalif:

Khalif and the Rabbi, peace at last

And my extra large can of Stella. It was its own highlight. Post dancing I took a rest in the garden..

Snook takes a break

After the Swiss club we made a brief stop at the house party that we'd originally intended to go to, hiked up 15 flights of stairs, bumbled around for about 20 minutes during which time I met a Snooki who's poof rivaled mine (but hers was a wig psh). I also had the rare privilege of witnessing a meeting of the prophets

The Rabbi, Jesus Christ, and the French Mohammad

In glorious conclusion to the evening we went to pottery cafe where chivalry lives on in the form of the quesadilla that the boys purchased for me. I fell asleep promptly afterward and woke up around 2 the next day. After a few hours of feeble attempts at pulling my life together I got a desperate call from Mostafa around who needed help with a project for a certain lady friend of his. He came over and, thanks to some generous helpings of tea (a few pots), in about two hours we threw together a soundtrack and managed something of a three legged finish to his adorable homemade video. Unfortunately at around the same time, we needed to be getting ready for Halloween part II, so Mostafa, and Mido, who had joined us somewhere in the middle of the project-rush (it was all a blur), went to procure some appropriate outfits while I was busy painting my face Gaga style (more on this later). We then set out into the night. As neither of these fine young gentleman had a car on them (still not sure why) we attempted to get a cab, but since they were dressed like this....

I dare you to find a finer set of garbage men on the streets of Cairo!

... we had some issues getting one (no one wants to pick up garbage men apparently). It probably doesn't help that Mostafa was really getting into character

Finally though we managed to get a cab and took it to a place nearby where there was a real car waiting for us. What followed next was, unbeknownst to any of us, one of the worst decisions of the evening. We squeezed ourselves into the back of a car with a couple other guys, Mostafa's friends I guess, one of whom ended up being drunk (I didn't know this till we were past the point of no return, that point being Cairo city limits) and proceeded to wander around the highways of Cairo trying to find some party in Saqqara. Note that the original plan was to attend the U.S. Embassy party, but for one reason or another that got nixed. Once we were on the way to Alexandria (FYI: Saqqara is NOT on the way to Alexandria) someone had the bright idea to suggest a turnaround, so, because its an Egyptian highway, and you can't turn around on those, we drove for another God knows how many minutes and eventually managed to turn around. Not before stopping twice to 'wait' for someone to come show us where to go, or to call us and tell us where to go. I honestly have no idea what was going on or what the stops were about. What I DO know, however, is that those multiple pots of tea had taken their toll and my bladder had reached full capacity. After almost accepting Mostafa's offer to let me pee on his leg (there are no limits to Mostafa's chivalry) rather than leave a permanent mark on the drunk guys car, we happened to stop for no reason at all, at which point Mostafa, in his garbageman garb, made friends with some garage workers on the side of the highway...

down there....

And I, in my desperation, descended these very stairs..

And emptied my bladder in a hole in the ground in the back of an impoverished Egyptian's garage. Dressed like Lady Gaga. I'm actually glad I don't have a picture of it; just know that the toilet on the train back from Luxor was 5 stars compared to my experience last night.

Soo about two hours later we ended up back downtown. Where we'd started. But rather than give up, (oh why didn't we give up!) we decided to engage in Mission Saqqara Party Round II. Our driver had sobered up at this point so we figured we had a fighting chance. Plus there was another car involved now, and everyone knows its more comforting to get lost in a caravan. The bright side of all of this was of course that when you spend enough time sitting in the back of a car with someone, doing absolutely nothing, you get to know them fairly well- Mido and I are now pretty tight. Don't mess with us. Needless to say, we got lost again, but at least we were closer to our destination when we got lost this time. We turned around and tried again, and this time, huzzah! Success! Marked only by the fact that we got stopped and patted down by Egyptian cops at a checkpoint (not me) because one kid had cigarette papers in his paper. And what are cigarette papers used for? Rollin hash. And you know those Egyptian cops love them some hash. So they broke the entire car down looking for it and were very sad when they didn't find any. But it was ok, nothing could dampen our spirits now.. the party was so close! Cover was supposed to be Le 200 or something like that, but Sakka has amazing relations with the powers that be and we all walked in free and unscathed (at least I did...). Free food, free drinks, free dancing on this killer stage:

At the end of an experience like this, pictures say it best:

aaaand the winner (click to enlarge)

About an hour, a drink, (a) kofta, and few choice photos later, I was returned to my humble abode where I was faced with a troubling reality, which is best expressed mathematically:

+

=

I know what you're thinking, 'surely Lauren wouldn't be stupid enough to use Crayola marker on her face in her desperation to bear a striking resemblance Lady Gaga'. Yeah.... about that.....

+

FACE

=

Sooo..... the next morning I did some research, scrambled around and using my most sincere efforts, QED'd the following:

+

=

The butter was really the crux of the whole thing. Never again, Crayola!! I wrapped up the weekend by starting my new babysitting job (hence the desperation over removal of the crayola bolt) and thereby returning myself to normalcy.

Egypt Week 10, yalla!!

UPDATE:

Am I incredibly unoriginal or what? 

N.B. Comments give me the will to continue and are much appreciated from people of all size, shapes, relations, and distances. Show your love, comment!

Days 43-58

Yes, yes, it's been two weeks. In my defense though when I sat down to write this I thought it had only been one week. The calendar set me straight pretty quickly. Based on all that I guess I can say that time has been flying here, of course if thats true then I can't figure out why every day goes by so incredibly slowly. I think I'm getting to that point where maybe I should start a diary instead of a blog because it is increasingly the case that I have nothing to say that will be of much interest to an audience, but that I'll probably want to muse back over in a few years.

But maybe I'm just tired. So here:

When I left Cilantro two weeks ago, after suffering a crushing spiritual defeat on train back from Luxor, I went with Anna back to the apartment of Alison's boyfriend, Nork, in Maadi. We all camped out there for a couple nights then returned home Monday evening where the wreck of our former apartment awaited us. All the furniture needed to be moved out of Anna's room and the floors needed to be cleaned and the smelly fumes needed to be coaxed out etc. Anna opted to sleep on the couch for a couple nights, but I had Tuesday off so I decided to just get to work that night.

Well my room looked like this. Naked and sad..

So I decided to just start fresh and clean with the extended window sill thing first, get all the dirt off, then move on to the room itself.

So the sill (what do you call the part outside the window? I'm just going to call it all the sill) is always just super nasty dirty, theres an old chain sitting on it and some rocks and broken flower pots and stuff, so I got rid of them all (pushed a few off the sill... then realized that was a bad idea after hearing all the shouting). Whatever was covering the top was all chipped and cracked so I decided to just get rid of all that too (hence the knife) until I realized that the entire sill, like most things in Cairo, is made entirely of dirt. You can sweep it all you want, pour as much water on it as you want (hence the bucket), but in the end it's just all dirt. If I poured enough water on this building I'm convinced it would just wash away, unfortunately its so hot here that all the water usually evaporates before I can test the theory. So I just got the broom and swept as much of it off as I could. Being the naturally lucky person that I am though, the head of the broom popped off mid-sweep and fell out the window. I didn't hear it land, (previous experience with things falling out the window assured me that someone would let me know if it had landed), so I walked around to our balcony to get a better idea of where it ended up. And there it was, just sitting on a ledge right underneath the sill. So I did the only reasonable thing, climbed out my window and tried to nudge the broom head over to the balcony so I could save it, at the last minute of course the broom stick had a seizure and the brush went flying of the edge. The people below let me know it landed.

It headed that way..

After laying on my stomach in the pile of dirt on the sill. Mission: Fail.

So the next day I went out to buy a new broom, complicated by the fact that I couldn't figure out for the life of me how to say broom in Arabic. After wandering around for way too long looking for a broom on display that I could point to, I finally broke down and drew a picture of one for a shop keeper..

...who promptly brought me a nice new broom from the back of the store. (So thats where they keep them....) I'm cheap so I just bought the head of the broom and used the stick we already had. After sloshing dirty water around all day and killing my knees I cleaned myself up really fast around 5pm and publicly transported myself over to Maadi where I was due to meet with a wonderful American family interested in my babysitting skills. For the sake of preserving their privacy I won't say too much other than that I love this family and their apartment and their absolutely adorable children, especially the hopscotch loving three year old (she insists on having her first initial in all the squares, not numbers). As a parting gift Mrs. X invited me to an amazing dinner that she whipped up from scratch and I'm happy to say we'll be working together in the future; more on that later.

If anything happened Wednesday, I don't remember it.

Thursday, the end of the week, the bottom of the hill, the last stand, the... yeah.... the night we went to party with the Marines stationed in Cairo. I'm still confused about what exactly they're doing here, but they have a great club room and some nice pool tables. We kinda just forced our way in. Overall, good night.

Moustafa is a hoss

see?

Saqa being a gentleman and holding all our bags

Afterward we had the munchies and went to Minousha (sp?) where Moustafa promptly fell asleep on the bench while cuddling his cowboy killers:

I don't remember Friday, but chances are I slept all day. As I mentioned before, we're on the lookout for a new apartment, so on Saturday we went to look at a few potential places. The first one had a really nice location. Cute cafes and a church nearby, clean everything, and a .. resident.. bowab.

The elevator actually works, and there's no trash!! (the bowab lives back there..)

The place was a little small though...

.. And we would have had to make this a bedroom...

.. And the purple plastic chairs were just a little much for me..

..Not as much as the rent though, so we unfortunately declined the landlady's offer and sidled off to another potential place. Though large and clean, it was farther away and in an area not as nice. It was charming and emitted the authentic air of in insane asylum.

They're coming to take me away....

Later that evening the aforementioned Moustafa (who is an amazing and wonderful and thoughtful person, and who reads this blog, so let me heap more praises on him) had a yen for bowling and was trying to rally a team together, but I declined, because I'm a thoughtful student and wanted to get to bed early to start the week off right. I made up for it the next evening, however, when, after a series of unfortunate events, we ended up at the bowling alley. Since I only go bowling about once every two or three years I forgot how awful I am at it and definitely talked myself up way too much.

ouch.

This place is legit.

This guy is legit.

They make you wear special surgical-bootie things over your bowling shoes so you don't mess them up. Lame!

Which reminds me- a special thanks to Karim for buying me three pairs of high quality Nike socks to bowl in, since I didn't bring any (I didn't know we were going bowling.... it was the backup plan. And you guys know how I am about socks)

I'm more or less out of pictures so I'll sum up. On Monday we were going to look at more apartments, but due to some poor timing on a number of people's parts we ended up postponing and by means of (completely unnecessary) apology Moustafa took Anna and I to Orangette (this guys killin me) and bought us dinner (we owe you). I got fajitas and haven't been that happy in a long time. On Tuesday I decided to start my no bread diet because I've started getting a bit fluffy around the bread basket. To get started off right I ate all my bread, that way I wouldn't be tempted to cheat(yer doin it wrong). Thursday night was exhilarating. I forgot my camera though. I went to Stilleto accompanied by approximately 3-4 Egyptian youths. The boy to girl ratio was a little more than off so we didn't get in. We proceeded to another club and also failed to get in , at which point some of the group gave up and went home. This got us down to a better number and it was a more reasonable time of the night, so we ended up doubling back and getting into Stilleto, which is a fantastically wonderful club. Apparently the munchies are good too, but I didn't get that far.

(Not my picture) The windows open out to the Nile! Dance floor to the left.

So I got home that night, full and satisfied (we got shwarma after.... i.e. Moustafa got shwarma for me (more $$ plz, parents!)) and I slept in to an unreasonable hour the next day. And the next day. And then school started, and eventually it was today. Today I went to see The Odd Couple performed by a theater group on campus, it was hilarious, especially with the Egyptian accents, and I enjoyed it immensely. Future plans include Halloween party this weekend, a couple midterms and some babysitting. I sure just can't wait for it all to go down.