Viva la Revolution! (but can someone please clean the toilets?)

AUC students demonstrating in support of the maintenance worker's strike

Today marked the fifth day of the custodial staff's sit-in on The American University in Cairo grounds. This is an event that has captured the attention of the entire country, because it reflects a trend in the economic downturn. In Egypt, as elsewhere, the minimum wage has stayed the same, but the prices of goods have skyrocketed. For Americans, this means cutting back on luxuries. However, for Egyptians, this means that the working class is on the brink of starvation. These custodians make about 400-500 Egyptian pounds a month. To put that in perspective, that is the equivalent of $70-$100 (USD) in take home pay. Although the cost of living in Egypt is lower, the discrepancy is not enough to justify paying AUC custodians so little. I spend on average 300 EGP on groceries every week for one person (they make 400 EGP per month to support an entire family. . . get the picture?)
The most despicable part of this debacle is that the people who run this institution are Americans. Not only that, but AUC also spent $300 million on building a new campus in the middle of the desert. So, you would think they could spare a little bit so that their workers don't starve.
The university has tried to keep the press out of the affair by barring journalists from campus. Instead, students have sent in eye-reports to local news media and CNN. I even brought my camera to campus today, because I realize that this is Egyptian history in process (or if not, it is the closest that I have come to the political process in action).

                                          
The major downside to this is that the campus is filthy. I blame the AUC administration, and the spoiled students who don't seem to know how to clean up after themselves. The toilets were so unsanitary that the administration locked them. I had to go seven hours without a bathroom break. Why am I so lucky?

Addendum: The AUC strike ended the day after I wrote this. There was no definite resolution, because the university promised to look into the issue of their lower paychecks, but may have threatened their jobs (as far as I heard), thus calling off the strike. 

The Chronicles of Desperation: A Cookbook

Recipes for the study abroad student who only has access to a microwave, a stovetop, one skillet, and a very limited selection of groceries:

Saudi bread pizza:

1 panatha bread, frozen

½ cup mozzarella cheese

1 medium tomato, sliced

2 tbsp extra virgin olive oil

2  tsp garlic powder

2 tsp Italian spices (basil, oregano)

Steps:
1) take frozen panatha bread and heat it in warm skillet for two to three minutes (turning it over when appropriate)
2) when properly cooked, place on a plate and brush olive oil onto bread
3) top with mozzarella and tomato slices
4) sprinkle Italian spices and garlic powder
5) place in microwave for 30-40 seconds until cheese is melted.

Grilled Eggplant Sandwich

1 medium eggplant, sliced   

2 tbsp olive oil (to fry in pan) + Italian spices (garlic, oregano, basil)

1-1/2 tbsp mayonnaise (to spread on sandwich)

1 small Italian bread

Side of chips

Steps:
1) In pan, fry eggplant in olive oil (meanwhile adding Italian spices while it cooks) for 4-5 minutes
2) When tender, place eggplant slices in Italian bread slices (either put mayo in before eggplant or after, it's up to you)
3) add side of chips

 Italian Egg sandwich:

3 eggs

1 tsp pepper

2 tsp Italian spices (basil, oregano, garlic) 

1 Italian bread

Steps:
1) Stir eggs in a small bowl
2) Add pepper and Italian spices in bowl
3) Pour bowl of eggs into a frying pan (heat stove on medium)
4) Scramble eggs and add more pepper and garlic
5) When cooked, place in Italian bread

            Side dish:

Breaded and lightly fried eggplant

Ingredients:

1 medium eggplant cut into ¼ inch slices

1 egg (stirred in a bowl)

½ cup breadcrumbs (if possible, Italian breadcrumbs . . . if not add a generous helping of basil, oregano, garlic) on a plate

Steps:
1) Dip eggplant slices in egg
2) Place "egged" eggplant slices in bread crumbs
3) Heat olive oil in a skillet, and proceed to place breaded eggplant slices into skillet
4) Cook for 4-5 minutes, turning over slices every minute or so

What else do I eat?: 

A little bit of this

A little bit of that

                                          It's better than Nutella

And a lot of this: 

Life @ AUC- New Cairo

I just thought I would compose a few brief thoughts about my temporary academic home, The American University in Cairo. Overall, the atmosphere is a lot less stressful than Lawrence, though I have more domestic responsibilities so the time commitment evens out. As for the student body, the university is filled with the sons and daughters of the Egyptian elite, for which reason the school and its students are heralded as the cream of the Egyptian crop. So why am I not impressed? I will proceed to answer this question with a haiku. No, not really, but that would be impressive. However, I will demonstrate my feelings to you through photos and selections from the AUC publication "The Independent":


Reason number 1: The intellect

This article chronicles how the art majors feel pitied/ looked down upon by the rest of the student body.
Fail.

Reason number 2: The talent
There are no words.



Reason number 3: The food
You're probably wondering what this picture captures. I will enlighten you. It is the chlorine stains on a girl's shirt after she spit out portions of her toxic salad from the AUC salad bar. In an ironic twist, the chlorine solution that the cafeteria uses to make sure Nile bacteria on vegetables does not make students sick, actually made students sick.

Reason number 4: The dress code

According to the general guidelines in the AUC handbook, "students are expected to wear attire that is appropriate to the academic setting and the Egyptian culture."
Thus . . . .
Mennonite chic.

Yet, AUC has one redeeming quality. . . It's so damn pretty.

Let Petit Appartement

As I wait for my running water to turn back on, a routine neighborhood-wide occurrence, I thought I would reflect on my apartment and surrounding neighborhood and post pictures for the first time on this blog. Despite the fact that the sources of electricity, running water, and internet are not reliable, I have an extreme fondness for my little abode on the outskirts of Cairo. The area in which I live is called Maadi, named for the ferries that docked here in ancient times to bring cargo and passengers down or up the Nile. Jesus, Mary, and Joseph are believed to be among those people who stopped on their way to Upper Egypt. There is also a story that Maadi is where Moses' mother floated him down the river to safety.
Whatever the truth is about the past, today Maadi is a quaint suburb that hosts many foreigners as well as middle and upper class Egyptians. I have complained about its problems with trash removal, but it is one of the cleaner areas of Cairo, with lovely foliage, and it is delightfully quieter than downtown. Just a few blocks from my apartment building is a street called Road 9 that has among other things, fast food restaurants, sit-down restaurants (including Mori Sushi, a place I'm slightly afraid to try), patisseries, book stores, a CD/record store, a bank, a grocery store, pharmacies, convenience stores, and many cellphone shops. On a related note, did I mention that Egyptians are obsessed with cellphones? I pass a cardboard shack on the way to the bus stop every day, and a few times its tenant was sitting in front talking on his mobile!
Egyptian girls also found a clever use for their headscarves as a hands free phone set (they stick the phone near their ears and secure it with their headscarves).
But I digress . . .
Also near my apartment are a series of French schools through which I see nuns and monks walking to and from to teach. Having the schools so close to my building makes it especially difficult to walk in the street around 7:30 am and 3:00 pm when students are commuting by bus to school. Yet, the overall atmosphere of my area is one of quiet and calm.
Now, let me take you on a virtual tour of my apartment.
Upon entering through the door you are greeted by this single dining/living room.


Welcome to my gracious drawing room.

The view from the front balcony.

A now the kitchen.
Notice that a dishwasher is conspicuously absent. While I do have a laundry machine, I don't have a dryer so I have to hang up my laundry.

This stove is my adversary. I need to light it manually. Beast from hell.

This sink is possessed.

Hallway.

The bathroom which is currently unusable due to no running water.

My roommate's bedroom before she moved in. . .

My bedroom before I moved in . . .

My bedroom after I moved in . . .


Yet sadly, three hours into this running water shortage, and facing the possibility of peeing into a water bottle, I'm beginning to hate this beautiful apartment. Dear Allah, someone please fix that broken pipe.

Blogs More Blogs!

Abdeen Palace gardens

~This post is fondly dedicated to my good friend Emily Mohr, who sadly, cannot be in Egypt with me. ~

Today could have been the beginning of a Greek tragedy, but ultimately ended beautifully. My computer charger has been on the fritz for a while, which troubled me because my computer charges my iPod, allows me to do my online homework (AUC is much more technologically advanced than Lawrence), and is my only source of contact with family members and friends. This morning as I was getting ready for my ex-pat excursion, I tripped very lightly on the cord and yanked it into two parts, shattering all of my hopes and dreams that I would be without computer problems here in this third world country.
As I went about my day I brooded about what to do: wait until my mother gets here in three weeks and have her bring an American charger or try or figure out how to buy one here in Egypt.

Today's excursion to Abdeen Palace, the former residence of the modern kings of Egypt, temporarily distracted me from my problems. The facade is quite impressive, and once inside the palace walls there are tranquil green gardens, a contrast to the noisy, bustling, polluted downtown just outside. I know, you get it, Cairo is dirty.



An inner courtyard

I was a bit disappointed that the majority of the trip was dedicated to visiting the king's weapons collection and the silverware and diplomatic gifts exhibits. I nodded with fake enthusiasm each time our guide pointed and exclaimed, "Look at this sword, it belonged to __________ (insert famous person I don't care about here)!".
Some objects in the exhibit were amusing, and some were downright bizarre.
A swiss army knife with 90 gadgets

A breast plate with thirteen pistols . . .


and a canteen made from a crab claw.

I have to admit, I want this sword.


The interior of the palace that we weren't allowed to see is supposed to be in a beautiful 19th century European style, but because of government restrictions, only people with government permission can go inside. Instead we watched a documentary in the museum about the interior of the palace that was just upstairs, but out of reach for us mere mortals.

When I returned from my excursion, I decided to look up local computer stores in the Egyptian Yellow Pages, and found an Apple retailer about ten minutes away. They had what I was looking for (but with a thirty five percent mark-up), and in an instant I solved my problem.
Riding on a high of excitement over finding an Apple store in Egypt, I jumped in a taxi and headed to Alpha Market, an Egyptian version of Target on the Nile. It was absolutely amazing! I almost felt like I was in the United States again. I was able to pick up toilet paper, dish soap, and Fulla, the elusive Muslim Barbie doll that I had singled out as my personal souvenir.
Fulla is pretty flippin' awesome, and it really wasn't difficult to choose which doll to buy. When I had a choice between "Karaoke Princess Fulla" and "Evening Prayers Fulla," the Religious Studies major in me couldn't help herself. Fulla wears pink hijab, has a pink prayer rug, a purple prayer book, and a button to press that makes her say her prayers. I haven't taken her outside of her box because I don't want to ruin the cardboard cutout mosque inside. I'm such a nerd.

I must be a poltergeist

because everything around me is breaking or dying out. My electricity has gone out too many times to count, my water turns off, and now, not only had my charger become temperamental, now it has broken into two pieces rendering my computer a useless hunk of junk. Until my mother arrives in three weeks to bring me a new charger, I am not going to be able to post photos. We'll see if the school computers allow me to write my blog. This will now become a great experiment in living not only in a developing country, but living in a developing country in the 1980's.
I love my life.

Half-way point

I have been in Egypt for a very arduous, very brutal 59 days, 4 hours, 21 minutes, and 6 seconds. It seems like a lifetime since I've been in the United States, and I find myself getting restless to return.
In honor of this special occasion marking the "half-way-over" portion of my trip, I thought I would devote this blogpost to a candid reflection of the experience, without sarcasm or humor to hide behind.
Undeniably this has been one of the hardest experiences of my life, being so far away from home, and completely isolated. (My living situation is not the greatest, and I rarely get to meet with other study abroad students).
The only real human interaction I get is through skype calls to family and friends, without whom I would be lost. The environs here are harsh, and I have never had to fend for myself to the extent that I have had to here, in Egypt of all places. I travel everywhere alone, have to cook for myself (I will appreciate a meal plan so much when I get back to Lawrence), grocery shop, laundry (the old fashioned way), deal with visa issues, money, and credit cards, as well as street harassers, and taxi drivers.
Luckily, I have not suffered some more horrible fates, the tales of which have been circulating around the study abroad population at AUC. Many students have lived through multiple bouts of food poisoning, bedbugs, inappropriate touching from locals, and horrible travel experiences. Those people who came here idealizing this country are going to be leaving sorely disappointed.
I came into this experience understanding the difficulties I would encounter, and will leave with an appreciation (but no love) for them. Egypt is not and never will be among the things that I love. Yet it will be a place that sticks with me, because my solitude here has facilitated a lot of soul-searching, through which I have learned a great deal about myself and what I can handle.
I can't wait to come home. Now I just need to hold my breath and pray that the following 60 days, 2 hours, 57 minutes and 8 seconds go by at the speed of light. In the words of a fellow classmate "I'm so over Egypt."

The stuff of nightmares

Was it a masochistic mission that possessed me to find myself on a tour bus headed to a place called "Garbage City"? Perhaps . . . I do have a self-punishment streak; after all, I am living in Egypt. In reality, I was a bit misled by the advertisement for this ex-pat excursion, thinking I was going to see some Coptic churches. I had no idea where they would be located.
For a split second, I thought about dashing away from this vessel to hell, but decided that since I had paid $30 and made the effort to get up at an ungodly hour, I would at least see what this "Garbage City" business was about. The name is definitely not a misnomer. This place is "Garbage City" home to the "Garbage people" who sift through the 100,000 tons of trash that Cairo generates every day. The area, called Mokkatam, is the poorest I have ever seen, and now I can skip out on any trip that I had planned to the slums of Calcutta. I already get the picture.
There were ten foot (or more) high piles of garbage lining the tiny streets that our tour bus edged through to get to the church complex.
This image is blurred for your protection (and sanity)

Women carried bags of garbage on their head, children made sandcastles with garbage-laden dirt, and men picked through the fresh garbage with their bare hands to find bits to recycle. To be fair, the place didn't actually stink, which I find characteristic of Cairene garbage. Perhaps it is the dry heat that prevents rotting and the other natural processes of garbage decomposition.
The people were very friendly, smiling and shouting "hello" and "welcome" to our group as we disembarked, and not expecting any money from us. Maybe they were happy to see foreign Christians, whom they feel more of an affinity to than their Muslim neighbors. Or maybe we provided a bit of amusement to their otherwise routine lives.
The first stop on the trip was the complex of Samaan al Kharaz church. These churches were built into the rock hills surrounding Mokkatam by a Polish missionary in the 1980's. The outside of the churches bear huge and intricate carvings of scenes from the Bible, for the illiterate "garbage people."


Then we went into some of the churches, all dedicated to St. Simon, whose claim to fame is that he plucked out his own eyeball to prevent himself from yielding to sexual temptation. Recently, some excavators found a skull that belonged to a one-eyed man, which is believed to be this saint. His remains now lie in the main church in the sanctuary pictured below.

The main church which is a colossus that can seat between 7,000 and 10,000 parishioners.

Another church

I found these churches quite interesting, but unfortunately there were those on our tour who didn't. Now I shall immortalize them in shame. The couple from Germany, decided after the first church that they were bored, and refused to go into any more of the churches, all the while looking on at us (and our amazing tour guide) with snotty expressions, evocative of their poor attitudes.
It's too bad because they missed a cave church that was used by the persecuted Christians during the diocletian purges (300's AD).
I wanted to punch them in the face!
They also missed a "zoo" which is something that I could have missed out on too, because it actually made me want to cry. The zoo was just two monkeys sitting in a dirt floor enclosure that was strewn with garbage. Then a little boy climbed up on the cage and started banging on the metal bars to get their attention. It made me feel sick inside.

Afterward, we proceeded to the Mokattam recycling center, where women take recycled fabrics and make rugs and other textiles by hand, as well as paper products.

They wasted no time in ushering us into their "showrooms" so that we could buy stuff. I briefly thought about purchasing a camel stuffed animal as a souvenir for someone, but then realized it was made from fabrics that had been taken from Cairo garbage, and there is probably a better way to show my love for family and friends. You can all thank me later.
Last, we went to the Virgin Mary Church in Maadi (my neighborhood) where it is believed the Holy Family stopped on their way to Upper Egypt while fleeing from King Herod. The church is situated on the Nile where the Egyptian Christians believe that Mary, Joseph, and Jesus took a ferry down the river. Maadi actually means "ferry" in Coptic.The site of the ferry . . .


Although interesting, the whole experience was akin to an OCD exposure treatment. You can be sure that when I got home I washed my hands thoroughly and took a really long shower. FIN.