Cairo Chronicle, Issue #2, September 6, 1999
Ahlan Wa Sahlan! (Hello and Peace!)
We just had our first two days of school here in Egypt. You know, Barbara was expecting it to be much harder. We had been warned that Egyptian children were very sweet, but that they loved to talk all the time, and since they were rich kids who had been waited on hand and foot, they were not used to responsibility. Amazingly, the first days went very similarly to school in the U.S. The kids were nervous but excited, and they do like to talk. But when she asked them to sing loudly - they did! No shyness here! Time will only tell about the rest... Todd's class is a wonderful mix of shy and bold, each individual student is bright-eyed and sociable -- perhaps way TOO sociable at certain times of day. He's been reading _Half Magic_ to them, and poetry by Shel Silverstein and Jack Prelutsky. They are fond of both, and laugh at all the jokes.
The biggest difference about school here is the enormous bureaucracy!! You have to fill out a form for EVERYTHING! Thankfully, there isn't a form to fill out if you have to go to the bathroom. But, there are quite a lot of forms to fill out. If you need help to move your filing cabinet to the other side of room, if you want to give an unused item (like a broken recorder) to a member of the staff, if you want more than 20 copies, etc, etc, etc! If there is something you throw away that belongs to the school, and someone wants it, the teacher must write a note saying that it is all right for this "trash" to go home with that person. Whew!
There is a person to do every job here. We have three blue uniformed staff members in every section. They clean everything BY HAND. There are no vacuum cleaners used here! If paint gets on the carpet, there are no machines to get out the paint, just lots of hands, hands, hands. These workers run errands. A "copy Nazi" (as one returning teacher put it) copies everything for you when you need less than 20 copies. For more than 20 copies (get this) you need the PRINCIPAL'S APPROVAL! I don't think that would go over too well at Ponder or Degan! Teachers never have to carry anything, if they don't want to. There is always a person at your disposal. Sometimes that's good, and sometimes you just (by golly) wanna carry things yourself. The business office has 20 people who all have a different job, most of them menial and simple tasks. The nice thing about it is, even though there are 10 million forms to fill out, things get done astonishing quickly and efficiently.
Adjusting to life here is in some ways easier than we thought. Getting around is not too hard, since taxis only cost about $1-2 dollars US. Barbara learned how to say right, left, straight ahead, turn around, stop here, how much, and Arabic names for landmarks VERY quickly! Todd on the other hand..... Actually, Todd has been acting as bodyguard and serving other functions in Cairo. He's learned how to communicate with his bowa'ab and can get around Cairo just about as easily as Barbara. He has learned the arabic number system quite well, and thinks the US should adopt a cool-looking set of numbers like these. Of course, it's all squiggles and dots, right?
Heliopolis has a trolley system that connects to three main areas of downtown Cairo. We only paid 25 piasters (7.5 cents (yes, the decimal point is in the right place!)) to get to the famous Khan Al-Khalili. The Khan is a large shopping area. I imagined stalls of vendors stretching every which way - instead the vendors are in a large enclosed area, kind of like a huge twisty-turny mall. The difference is that it becomes a maze after a while. The corridors between shops are very small, and our first time there was a bit confusing. We unintentionally stumbled onto (or is it INTO) the restaurant where several teachers were meeting. All in all, our haul for the day was: a pair of Ray-Ban (maybe!) sunglasses, two traditional Egyptian robes called galabiyyas (Barbara's looks like Joseph's amazing Technicolor dreamcoat with decorative embroidery), a papyrus scroll with ancient Egyptian musicians, and an order for a hand-embroidered wall hanging of a cat using Arabic calligraphy. We probably spent $130 dollars on the lot. If we were skilled bargainers, we might have done better. BUT... we didn't pay full-price, either! I think we would have speant boatloads more if we had.
In other ways, our work here is as much a challenge as promised. Todd spent at least an hour trying to get our apartment phone line and modem connected, but since we didn't have the right tools, it never quite happened. We finally got enough wire stripped to connect the four wires in a touch tone line to the two wires in our rotary line, and it worked! It wasn't that easy; we had one glitch. We could dial up on the modem, and we could call up anyone in town, but no one could call us. The phone didn't ring. So we got to experiment once again. A teacher friend came over with some specialized wiring, and it worked for a while, then died. Finally, we got another wire from Radio Shack, and we finally have both a modem and a phone connection. Funny what you learn when you have to!
Well, Todd's birthday is tomorrow, and we're going on an adventure on Friday evening. He is COMPLETELY clueless about it, and Barbara's not telling a soul until it's over. But expect a tale and pictures pretty soon!
