It’s Tuesday, the best day of the week! I’m sitting in a McDonalds in Maadi, using the free wireless and preparing for the English class I’m about to teach. There are about twenty-five kids behind me celebrating a birthday and popping balloons surreptitiously when their moms aren’t looking. Is it hard for me not to join in? Oh, you betcha.
Maadi may be one of the strangest places in Cairo. It’s well known as an ex-pat haven, littered not with trash but rather with baseball fields, foreigner-only clubs, and these familiar Golden Arches. The streets are winding, tree-lined, and quiet. In a couple minutes I’m going to hop into the women’s only car on the metro and ride a few stops to the edge of Maadi – an area that rather abruptly changes from Little America to donkeys, street food, and dusty alleys. If you weave your way down the alley across from Jamaica clothing store, you’ll find my classroom – crammed with mismatched chairs and cheerful Sudanese refugees mixing up their tenses.
This is what constantly bugs, intrigues, and excites me about Cairo. It’s a thousand different cities in one. You can walk out of a swanky, upper-class area and be knee-deep in refuse within ten minutes. And, get this: the people in the swanky part (see al-Azhar park) have no idea that the other part even exists (see Trash City)! I mentioned the trash collectors to my Arabic professor today, and she didn’t believe me. She assured me that the trash collectors make loads of money selling their recycled goods. Wealth out of waste, huh? It’s a pleasant idea, but the utter opposite of what you’ll see if you direct a cab driver into the Moqattam Hills for a visit with the Zabaleen.
The rooms of these buildings are stuffed full with unsorted trash.. and people.
Class misunderstandings (and that’s the friendly way to say it) are frequent here. In Dahab I was told that the Bedouins are rich – even though Bedouin kids start hawking bracelets before they’re five years old. In the city it’s the Christian trash collectors who are supposed to be the undeservedly wealthy – even as Cairo’s filth piles up beneath their dining room tables.
Sheesh. I’m getting in deeper than I thought. Living in Egypt has really made me value my right to vote. There was a big screw-up at the Embassy here where they gave us the wrong information about mailing ballots, but some clever voters fixed the glitch. I’m filling out and fed-exing my Federal Write-In Ballot tomorrow. If you’re abroad – don’t forget to vote! If you forgot to request a ballot, it might not be too late! Email your local government! I myself got a personal email from the mayor of Somerville (nice). In the words of Colin Powell, Fareed Zakaria and the Chicago Tribune: Barack Obama for President!
Stay tuned, dear readers. I have much more to tell you soon. Here are some teasers: The Time I Crawled Down a Robbers Tunnel Into a Tomb (or, Mummy Dust in my Lungs), The Time I Watched Experimental Spaniards At the Opera, and finally, How I Messed Up (or Kicked Butt) My First Time Teaching.
wihishtokoo katiir aowy! !!وحشتكو كتير اوي
