Smile, you're in Cairo!

The title of this post is but one of the many things I have heard said about Cairo since I got here only five days ago. As far as I've understood, this saying sort of sarcastically encapsulates both the difficulties of being a rich tourist and those of being a poor Egyptian living here. I have to say I have really learnt a lot about this country already, despite the short time, much of it is probably thanks to Lotta, the incredibly nice Swedish woman I live with here until I get my own apartment (tomorrow yii-haaaa).

My new apartment is in the same house as Lotta's, and it is guarded by the doorman Salama, who sleeps in a tiny space on the ground floor. As you can imagine a doorman doesn't make a whole lot of money here, but Salama has amazingly started a little business around a big tree standing right outside the entrance of the house. He uses it as a parking lot and gets paid for parking the cars there for the people living nearby. Of course some of it will then go to bribing the police to avoid any problems, but he still makes quite a bit and has apparently built a very luxurius house for himself and his family in his home village. I will try to take a picture of him and his tree one of these days...

I think my first conclusion, surprising nobody, is that Cairenes are a little crazy. A few days ago in the wake of the news that the bird flu had come to Egypt, a rumor was spread in the city that the government had dumped all the killed chicken in the Nile, which caused people to stop drinking the tap water and stocking up on bottled water. In general people seem to be really scared the bird flu and you can't see chickens being sold anymore, and even if KFC is still open the tables are empty. And the other day, a fresh survey claimed that 50 % of Egyptian men were being beaten by their wives. Somehow I have a very hard time believing this, but I guess another thing they say here might be true in any case, namely that in Egypt you have lies for breakfast, rumors for lunch and conspiracies for dinner. I'll keep you posted on the latest conspiracies. :-)