Egypt so far...

Salaam,


Haven't written anything properly for a while so i thought i'd delve into what Egypt is saying to me. These are the things i've seen so far*:

1) Several men urinating in broad daylight outside
2) A semi-decapitated sheep lying on the floor, wriggling side to side with blood splirting out
3) Prostitutes **
4) More men urinating outside in broad daylight
5) A decomposing emaciated dog


This said though, i dont know, there's this certain thing about egypt which captivates me. I think it started in primary school when we were learning about the ancient egptians (The Egypt Project) and was fuelled by watching that Indiana Jones film and The Mummy and it still continues here and now.

Even though at first sight/smell there's a lot of negative issues with Egypt/Cairo, there's a certain allure about the hustle and bustle nature of the city and its people. Also in terms of people, everyone, in the area i live in anyway, always look like they need a good bath and to clean themselve up...i just want to go upto them with a scowrer and scrub them clean...and the thing is there's no water issues in Egypt so i dont know why they dont cleam themselves more regularly.

Anyway the area i live in is called Nasr city, and in that area in Area 10 and in that area (Cairo is Big) in Swisri A. I think its quite a unique area though as these parts of town is the hotspot for all the foreign language institutes so there's quite a lot of foreigner knocking about. But then there's the Somalis and the Malaysians. They run this place. I don't know how and why but i would say at least 30% of the people in my area are from Somalia and another 30% from Malaysia (yes thats a total of 60%) and then 10% from "The rest of the world" leaving only 30% for the Egyptians.

This fact has certain repurcussions; it is quite normal to see malaysian guys walking around and going to pray wearing brighty coloured lungis (the national dress of Bengali men; the sarong - I didn't know Malays wore it too, but they do), huuuge groups of Somlian youth standing around street corners, loooooads of malaysian restaurants, lots of people with dreadlocks (the Somalians, not the Malaysians...but That would be sight to see; a Malaysian guy with dreadlocks) and so on with lots of other things which are non-Egyptian.

Its pretty weird to think your in Egypt at first with all this going on, but alhamdulilla its grown on me now, this diverse population, and im liking the advantages of this diversity (i ate this amaaaazing fish curry yesterday at a malaysian restaurant yesterday).

Thats enough from me now.

Salaam.


* - please feel free to ask me to clarify these points
** - just to clarify, this was from a distance, and my good egyptian flatmate was kind enough to clarify that this womans behaviour of walking up and down the street, talking repeatedly to random men in cars, and then getting into a car etc was indeed the actions of a prostitute.