I recently received a comment on the Foreign women and orfi marriages in Egypt post. It was addressed as “Hi All” so I thought I’d post it here to maximise responses. To you all you lurkers, yes you, you know who you are (and I know you’re there!), this is a time to delurk and put in your 5 cents worth. You don’t even need to introduce yourselves!

“..I have just returned from Sharm el Sheikh where I met this wonderful Egyptian man…A ll we did was talk about everyday things a few days before I left. He was being ulta nice to me and I do believe he is genuine, as he didn’t seem the type to come on to girls, he was rather quiet – there was many girls around and he never seemed interested in any of them. I had only been there a few days when I first noticed him. You look and watch their actions etc., but all he did was work, work, work. During the last few days he was telling me I had the most beautiful eyes…on the night before we left, he was at our table all the time, so on leaving we said nice to meet you etc., gave him a good tip [and] said we may return in the autumn… The next day when he..finished work, he came to the pool where I was sitting and said he had to say one last goodbye. I gave him a hug and he had a tear in his eye. We exchanged mobile numbers and I never thought for one min he would text. I was at the airport and he should have been sleeping..he texts saying he had great time meeting me… to be honest I was flattered. Well 6 weeks have gone by and everyday night he texts me..now he wants me to go back. He will take 2 weeks off work and we will rent apartment, which he will pay for – he offered. He wants to cook listen to music and ???? I said I was worried about law in Egypt. He then [mentioned] a contract to stay together, which i believe is the orfi marraige. If I want to get that we will, if not we won’t, as it will be ok for us. Its up to me what I want. He says [I can] just put [the]paper in my bag and after [the] holiday if I still want him keep it for when I visit again..or put in the bin, but hopes i would keep it if we get one. He then says he wants me for life and one day we both stay in Egypt and go to Cairo for full contarct marraige if I want. I guess alot of people will think WAKE UP but he sounds so trusting and to be honest I do believe him. We now text when I wake in the morning, when he goes to bed at lunchtime, before he starts work and before I..go to sleep. Sometimes he calls around 4 in the morning because it’s quiet then… and this is everyday. Does anyone think I am getting taken for a mug?????? How can he know he wants me if nothing really happened when I was there?”

………

How can he know he wants me if nothing happened when we were there? Exactly. He doesn’t know your personality, not from when you were there. He doesn’t know how amazing you are, what makes you truly happy, or how horrible you are when you’re grumpy. You’re right.

Let’s look at what he does know.

He knows you have money. It doesn’t matter how much money you think you have or don’t have, at minimum you have enough money for a holiday abroad and enough to plan another holiday abroad. In Egypt that is something only the very rich can imagine doing. In Egypt, working as a waiter in Sharm is respectable, but imagine Bill Gates staying in a hotel in London and a waitress starts telling him she likes his eyes.  Shouldn’t he be just a little bit suspicious? Imagine she sends him texts for weeks and calls him sometimes. If you were Bill Gates’ friend, wouldn’t you be highly sceptical of the waitress’ intentions? If you were the waitress and you saw that the millionaire was flattered by your advances, wouldn’t you continue? I mean, what’s to lose?

He knows you have a foreign passport. As much as he probably loves Egypt, as much as he may (and you haven’t mentioned this, but as it’s a common story, I’m filling in this blank) say he does not want to leave Egypt, the truth is that working abroad will make him far more money than working in Egypt. Leaving Egypt is not so easy as other countries get tougher on immigrants, but if you get married and after some time, get the passport, suddenly hundreds of doors open.

He knows that you will sleep with him. Sorry, this isn’t exactly tasteful, but it’s something that cannot be overlooked. While it is totally accepted in our culture to have a ‘fling’ in Egypt it is absolutely and utterly not.  Not at all. No way. Sex before marriage is pretty impossible. It doesn’t mean people don’t want it though – we’re all human. Imagine the thought of two weeks of sex, in a country where having a phyisical relationship with a girlfriend means holding hands.

Something worries me slightly: you do not know this guy. Staying in a flat with someone you hardly know,  other than through phone calls, in a foreign country and culture, is a risk. Chances are the risk is minimal, but why put yourself in that position? And what would you do in the worst case scenario? Sharm is incredibly spread out and very difficult to get around without a car. If  you had to get to the airport or hospital in a hurry, how would you manage that? It’s not as simple as just dialling an emergency number, or calling a cab. If you’re not staying in a hotel in Sharm, life it really not as straightforward. The hotels are there to make things easy. Taxis wait around them and reception will organise pretty much anything you ask them to.

Think of it like this: would you want your best friend to go and stay with someone she hardly knew in a country where she doesn’t speak the language and get a contract/marriage she doesn’t fully understand?

The other thing that this guy knows is that you like attention and flattery. Really, who doesn’t?! It’s not a weakness, it’s totally normal, but just because someone pays you a lot of attention, does that mean that you should be considering marriage – either full or orfi?!

If you feel like having an adventure, by all means go back to Sharm, with a friend to look out for you and stay in a hotel. Don’t get any sort of contract, don’t stay with him. Don’t make it so easy for him: if it’s true love, he will understand why you don’t want to stay with him just yet.

…….

It would be fantastic if you lurkers would get in on this. In case it adds to anything, our commenter is 35 and the waiter is 24.

This post is not about Egyptian men. There are no generalisations made other than this: women are women, men are men and nationality does not determine ‘goodness’ (or ‘badness’). All comments are moderated and no rude, rasict or otherwise derogatory comments will be accepted.

Image from stock.xchng

It’s difficult to get married these days in Egypt. It’s not that Egypt has Australia’s ‘man drought’. Nope. It’s hard cash that’s the problem.

Just as in the West the bride’s family traditionally pays for the wedding, in Egypt and elsewhere in the Middle East, there are traditions about who pays what. As couples don’t leave home until they get married, buying a place to live is key to tying the knot. Tradition dictates that the groom buys the home and white goods (picked by the bride) and the bride furnishes it – completely.

The problem is that house prices are so high that the majority of people cannot afford to buy. For those that would never be able to buy anyway, rents are also on the rise. This often results in children living at home until well into their mid-thirties when enough money has been saved to buy a small apartment.

There are a multitude of problems arising from this, not least, that with sex before marriage severely frowned upon/forbidden amongst both main religions here, unmarried twenty and thirty somethings’ lives just aren’t what adults would define as ‘normal’ in the West. It is even worse for the women, as they are often living with curfews right up until their marriage. I am not joking on this either: a friend of mine, unmarried and in her forties, who had previously lived and worked in Dubai, sans parents, had a 10pm/midnight (depending on circumstance) curfew imposed and upheld upon her return to Egypt.

There are so many ways in which our cultures are different that it can be hard to understand why on earth a 40 year old woman would accept a curfew. Parents are held in such high esteem in this part of the world, that openly disobeying them is an almighty disrespect.

Anyway, back to marriage. The issue about lack of affordable housing has been cashed in on over Ramadan with a TV show offering unmarried couples the opportunity to battle it out and win a two bedroom apartment. It’s been essential watching. Luckily for you, I’m not going to attach a youtube clip in Arabic, the good old BBC has helped me out and made a short report that you can watch here.

Ask any Egyptian right now what’s on their mind and the chances are that the ever rising cost of living will be foremost in their thoughts (for more, read this).

The government announced on Labour Day (1 May) that it was going to up public sector salaries by 30% – an interesting figure given that the official rate of inflation is somewhere in the teens, but unofficially everybody knows it’s, hmm…30%.

So there were a few days of rejoicing coupled with queries about where this extra money was going to come from.

A few days later it has became all too clear: 30% increase in the price of cigarettes, removal of tax-free status for private schools and 35-47% fuel increases. The last one is the biggie.

The whole world is suffering the problem of increased commodity prices, but Egypt has far more people living on or around the ‘bread-line’ than most other places. A large swathe of society cannot absorb these rises in the way that the majority of the developed world can i.e. grumbling about having less spare cash at the end of the month. These people have no spare cash at the beginning of the month, never mind the end.

There are plenty of forecasts of doom and gloom out there about Egypt’s future. What I haven’t seen these predictions take account of is the natural resourcefulness of Egypt’s people. Many will suffer and I don’t mean to down play that, however, humans are great at finding work-arounds and I have to say that Egyptians are absolutely superb at this. So while health and safety is an unheard of luxury, money-saving devices and ideas are likely to be making an appearance sometime soon.

On a completely different thread, is the Grand Hyatt’s decision to go ‘dry’. It is a large 5 star hotel in central Cairo with Saudi ownership. Rumours abound about why the owner/chief shareholder decided to take this route with some newspapers citing his personal religious beliefs, some saying it was the result of a dispute with top management and others saying that in the competitive summer market for tourists from his native land and the Emirates it was a marketing strategy. The result is that the story has made all the newspapers in Cairo with further talks about the Ministry of Tourism downgrading the hotel to 4 star status or even that the Hyatt will pull out of this hotel.

Meanwhile, H&M is apparently going to open in Cairo on 5 June. Whatever the state of the economy, this place is going to be packed out. Fashionistas won’t know what to do with themselves: a foreign brand with fashionable clothes at equal to and cheaper than Egyptian brand prices. It’s pretty amazing really. Three years ago I still had to go out of the country to buy clothes (unless I wanted Versace and the like – not really affordable on an NGO’s salary!) and now there are: Next, Evans, Accessorize, Karen Millen, French Connection, Mango, Top Shop is coming and there are more that I can’t remember right now. Not bad for three years!

Lastly, to follow up from this – we did change the clocks! Apparently some other countries in the region didn’t and next year Egypt won’t either.

Queue for subsidised bread taken by and copyrighted to Les Parents

There was a little cafe in the wee village I grew up in that offered a ‘clean plate surpise’ for children who finished all the food on their plate. It was a good tactic and the ‘surprise’ ice cream seemed to work with everyone (apart from Lil’ Bro – but that’s a very boring story about the world’s slowest eating child).

Then there was the “There are starving children in the world who would love your food” when those greens were lying around on dinner plates.

Now, chances are, if you’re reading this blog, you have not been to my little village in the Central Highlands, but you are very likely to have heard about the starving children somewhere far away in the world when you were a child.

Recently I was lucky enough to have dinner at a swanky hotel restaurant. It happened to be buffet night so the choice was endless (well, for Cairo anyway): Australian beef, New Zealand lamb, sushi and sashimi carefully prepared by the Japanese chef with produce flown in from afar, mountains of desserts with Swiss chocolate. You get the picture.

It was as I reached for my plate and realised I had to decide what I would eat that it suddenly occurred to me how obscene this was. The world is currently facing a crisis of food. Multiple causes of course, but the end result is rising prices on the international market.

No doubt wherever you are in the world, you’ve noticed that your pint of milk costs more, that a loaf of bread is more expensive than a year ago and that fuel prices are rising. More than likely you’ve absorbed these costs, albeit begrudgingly.

Egyptian’s too have faced price rises over the past year, but the effect is incomparable to what we have felt. According to a World Bank study in 2005, one fifth of the Egyptian population live in poverty with a further 13% just above it. Baring in mind that prices were significantly cheaper back in 2005 and wages (for those that have a job) are not much different, it is probably safe to say that a good part of that 13% have now dipped below too. Add to that the size of the population: the UN’s 2007 estimate is 77 million. All in all, that is about a third of a lot of people.

The problem in Egypt is compounded by essential governmental subsidies on wheat and fuel (amongst other things). So, while the Egyptian people have been experiencing rises, they have not yet felt the full brunt of the international market’s gains. The government, however, has seen subsidy payments eat further into its budget and logically, cannot sustain the situation for ever. In a country where much of the population is dependent on the government, difficult times for all may be ahead.

While I have a curiosity in things such as this and am lucky enough to have had an education combined with experience that provides me with a modicum of understanding about daily life for the ‘average’ Egyptian (ok, who exactly is ‘average’ is an issue in itself) most expats do not. For somebody arriving in Egypt to Maadi or Qatameya, living in a comfortable apartment/villa with a team of staff, getting used to a new country, it is absolutely understandable that life struggling to buy bread that costs about US$0.01 is extremely hard to imagine, even though it’s on our doorstep. It is also not that easy to see as our normal hang out places are quite removed from the subsidised bread queues.

I am not apportioning blame: this is a local problem caused by a global phenomenon. It cannot hurt, however, if those of us who live cheek-to-jowl at least in global terms, offer a little more patience, and perhaps at the very least slightly larger tips, to those who are in our lives and are struggling to eat half decently, while we gorge at the smorgasbord life has given us.

When it rains, the streets turn into mini mud swamps.

As I walk down the road treading carefully between puddles and mud sludge I notice hundreds of filthy toes in flip flops squelching by.

Egypt’s Suez Canal, tourism, oil and gas reserves and foreign aid are not enough to provide shoes for it’s population.

Dying for a burger, I called McDonald’s yesterday (yep, home delivery in Egypt!). First time I didn’t get through. Second time I didn’t get through. Third time… At one point I was lucky enough to be answered and then I was hung up on. Undeterred, due to this craving for nasty fast food from the deepest pits of my belly, I called a few more times and finally placed my order. Within half an hour I would have my burger.

An hour later I called up and asked where my burger was.

“On the way” came the answer. Nothing to argue with really because it could mean it’s just come out of the freezer or it’s just downstairs.

As fortune had it, this time it was just downstairs. The delivery man handed me the bag and I could feel the cold fries and minimal warmth coming from the burger.

After speaking to the manager I sent it back, refusing to ‘wait ten minutes’ for a hot one to be delivered after a similar event last year that took 3 hours. I did mention that I was going to call Hardees instead though.

Twenty minutes later, the doorbell rang. “Yum, yum” I thought, although now, I was kind of wishing I’d just had some bread and cheese an hour and a half earlier, as not only would I not be hungry, but the guilt of eating a juicy processed burger was beginning to settle somewhere in my stomach.

I opened the door and there stood the McDonald’s man with my original order piping hot AND free.

Apart from my shock, because this isn’t a standard policy in Egypt, I faced a dilemma: with my Hardee’s now on the way, I definitely couldn’t tuck into a MaccyDo’s. I asked the cleaner if she’d like it. She looked at me in a state of bewildered wonder, like she’d just won a competition she hadn’t entered, and said yes. I told her to go take a plate if she wanted and she paused a bit. By now she’d looked into the bag and was beaming. “I think I’ll take it home with me, if that’s ok” she said shyly.

I suddenly realised that this junky burger that I ordered partially because I couldn’t be bothered slicing a bit of cheese was gem enough to her that she couldn’t imagine eating it alone: she was taking the bounty to share with someone.

How gluttonous, wasteful and downright over-priviliged and spoilt I felt when my Hardees arrived.

So much was my guilt, that each mouthful was difficult to chew. I wolfed it down, trying to get rid of the evidence, because as much as I wasn’t enjoying it, after seeing the look on her face, I couldn’t possibly throw any away.

Well, I was going to get down from the soap box and move onto matters of a much lighter nature, however, after reading Mothers of Prevention* in the Sunday Times (Sept 30), I’m not leaving just yet (although lighter matters will be the next posting, promise).

When I first came to Egypt I was very much of the opinion that everybody should live and let live and the solution to race issues is tolerance. I still believe that, in as much as it’s what should happen. I have far less faith now in human nature and our ability to live together when reality is added to the equation. Inequalities and ego are too prevalent in the world today for tolerance to be a total solution (I haven’t figured out what the solution is though).

I had a discussion about this with a Dutch friend once who said that if we believe in tolerance then we have to keep on believing it all the way through and have hope that eventually things will change: essentially tolerance is infectious.

Apart from the obvious horror of what is happening in the towns mentioned in the Times, assuming the article is correct, what struck a chord is the deep seated racial hatred that exists. I have met people here, albeit a very small number, who have a profound hatred of all things western and by extension white. It’s not the mundane hatred that Bush conjures up in his speeches and blankets over a region, this is a little seed of blackness inside a very small number of individuals that gnarls away at them every minute of every day. It tends to centre around how they view the unfairness of their life in comparison to that of ‘the other’ as well as because of ‘the other’. If an opportunity were to present itself to these people to significantly degrade ‘the other’ in a way they feel they have been treated by members ‘the other’, these people would jump at it.

Added into the equation in Northern England is that these are people have an extremely conservative cultural heritage. A girl without her hair covered in such a tradition is seen as ‘loose’. Any girl. A married woman in the company of a man who is not her husband or a close relative is seen as ‘loose’. A married woman wearing makeup and uncovered hair in the company of a man who is not her husband or close relative is basically viewed as a prostitute.

A prostitute, certainly in the country I am in, is not someone who hangs around on street corners wearing short skirts and thigh-high patent leather boots (the crude form barely exists). In this country, and culture, they often spend days with their client. He’ll buy her gifts, they go to the cinema, and out for dinner – they have a mini ‘relationship’. It can also occur over a longer period. Now, if that’s your definition of prostitution, how can you easily argue that western girls are not prostitutes? After all, ‘good’ girls, will be at home with their mother, sisters and aunts. ‘Good’ girls would not be outside in the shopping malls alone, ‘good’ girls do not have boyfriends (or friends who are boys) and ‘good’ girls don’t live outside the home until they are married.

Nothing, obviously, excuses what the article describes these men as doing. The article does, however, highlight an area of our society that needs more than a sticking plaster. It’s not always enough to say that we all have the same basic needs, we all know what it feels like to have loved ones, to get up and go to work etc, and therefore we can all get on.

Our culture does not want to admit the problems of reaching full integration. Anybody who stands up and highlights a problem is fearful of being branded racist. This fear is compounded by incidents like the BNP jumping on an issue, confusing matters, further tarring the promlem-raiser with the racist brush. Out of fear, this results in the issue getting swept back under the proverbial carpet, a heavy chest put on the carpet and the door to the room the carpet is in being locked.

There are millions of people who have the same cultural heritage as the men mentioned in this article and do not behave like them. The inability to confidently differentiate and be allowed to differentiate results in a situation akin to not dealing with neo-Nazis because white people might get upset.

Tolerance may be infectious, but some people have a strong immune system.

*For some reason the link isn’t always working, so here is its in full: http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/crime/article2538090.ece

My silence over the past few days can be put squarely down to my mother’s adage, “If you don’t have anything nice to say, don’t say anything at all.” Not that I was really sticking to this. I did sit down a number of times and think of some things to say, however, decided against posting them as I’d probably have got sued, or had leather jacket and sunglasses wearing men knocking on my door in the middle of the night.

I’m currently surfing on top of an ‘I hate Egypt’ wave. I know it’s temporary because I, and countless others, have been on it before, and it always passes. Usually it reveals something new about this country and culture to the surfer as it crashes, and happy times follow. I’m hoping the happy times hurry up and get me.

My problem at the moment is that the extent of the poverty and suffering is hitting me, from all directions. The result is that I’m fed up with people asking for money, I’m fed up with people doing stupid things because they haven’t been taught to form thoughts properly and I’m fed up of simultaneously feeling sorry for them. Most of all I’m fed up feeling that stabbing straight through my heart as I drive past a little girl standing with bare feet in soapsuds, washing clothes for her mother who is inside their makeshift home, which is contained within the open air garage of an apartment building.

There’s nothing that can be done. Not about the little girl, or the countless others like her.

I, on the other hand, am extremely privileged within this society and have to hold onto that thought, molding it into something that makes me love the things that irritate me so passionately right now.

“What do you want to do?” Mr S asked as we walked into the centre of a French town.

“Hmm. Let’s go and take pictures of the poor area. According to the map, there’s a run down housing estate near here, so let’s go and see how the real French live.”

How utterly ridiculous that sounds: offensive to take pictures of people who are unemployed, or employed in menial jobs, struggling to make ends meet. Yet this is what happens every day in Egypt and countries like it. How many people go to India and take pictures of people in the slums? “It’s amazing, they’re so poor, but they’re so happy. They’re all smiling,” is commonly heard coming from former slum day trippers and something I’m fed up of hearing here as well.

This isn’t the first time I’ve been on this subject, but it keeps coming up.

I’d like to set the record straight. A smile does not mean that someone is happy in their life or happy with their circumstances. Cultural body language is a complex issue that could be a thesis in itself, but this business about poor people in a dusty, run down part of town being really happy with life is something that drives me nuts. What is it that makes Western tourists think that people living without running water or electricity, or who are subject to frequent water shortages and power cuts on top of scrimping to survive and holes in their flimsy roofs are actually happy with the situation? Gain their confidence and perhaps unsurprisingly, it will not be hard to find that not being able to wash their children’s clothes, or struggling to feed their offspring is as much a problem as it would be for the tourists themselves. The only difference is, that these people are used to it, and don’t spend their time complaining about it. Offer them the opportunity to change their circumstances and the chances are they’d jump at it.

And they do. The number of Egyptians who leave families behind for years to earn a bit of money sweeping streets, or working in low paid construction jobs in Saudi Arabia, where, incidentally, there are also a lot of Indians, or, more recently, in Israel, is a clear indication of this. There is a generation of children being brought up with more money than their parents were, but by a lonely mother and without a father because he is abroad working to better their circumstances.

This desire to have a better life extends across the parts of our planet that are “developing” and those that are still in the “third world” status and is what drives people to set out on arduous, long and often fatal journeys to cross our borders illegally. These are not people who are happy with their circumstances.

So, how about this as a suggestion: before taking the picture of a poor family on a donkey, or a kid smiling through a mask of dust, or someone in a similarly difficult situation, the interested tourist should pause. If the potential snapper would be comfortable photographing a tired single parent standing at a bus stop in the rain with his/her children, back in their home country, then they should snap away. If not, perhaps the camera should stay in its case?

Yesterday I had successfully lined up three potential new cleaners for interview. All had agreed on the working hours and pay, so it was just a matter of us meeting and them having a look at the apartment.

Candidate number two was from the Philippines. She was lovely and had a fantastic reference from someone who is still employing her part time, so I could even check it out (unlike the others). She told me that her daughter was coming over in September.
“Oh that’s nice. How old is your daughter?”
“She’s fourteen.”
“So is she coming to visit or to stay with you?” I asked thinking that fourteen was a difficult age to be changing schools, and wondering which school she would go to here as I don’t imagine that any school here, other than the outrageously expensive, is better than those in the Philippines.
“She’s coming here,” candidate number two said giggling, “I’ll give her to you!”
“Ha ha!” I laughed back.
I showed her the rest of the apartment and then we sat down to chat.
“So,” I said, reiterating what I’d said on the phone, “The hours and pay are acceptable to you?”
“Yes, Madame,” candidate number two replied, “I work for the other lady on Saturdays and have another part time job during the week.”
“Oh, that’s a lot of work. Are you sure you will be able to manage it all?”
“Oh yes, it’s not a problem, Madame, my daughter will come in September.”
“Hmm? Your daughter will come here with you?”
“Yes, she needs a job, so she can work here.”
“I’m to be involved in child labour?” I thought. Luckily she continued, “She’s not got experience yet, so she needs to get some cleaning. I think this would be good.”
“I’m sorry,” I said apologetically, thankful that I hadn’t interrupted earlier, “but I’ve had problems with inexperienced people before, so right now I’m specifically looking for someone with a lot of experience. I don’t think that your daughter will be good for me.”
“Ah. Ok Madame. That’s a shame.”
“Yes, but I think it’s good that we both know where we stand from the beginning. It’s better that we are clear about what we want so we both don’t run into problems later.”
“Very true Madame. Ok. Thank you for seeing me.”
She amicably left.

I have no working experience with the Philippines, but Filipino maids are famous. All the Filipino women I interviewed for cleaning had a lot of family back in the Philippines that they were supporting, most of whom they were supporting through university. The reason that this fourteen year old was coming to Egypt was because she was going to be supporting her siblings too. A future sacrificed for siblings: such a common tale in developing countries. Somewhat shocking for us in the West, who get free education or repayment mechanisms that at least allow us the option of going to university, the thought of sacrificing our education so a younger brother or sister can have one instead.

Then I started feeling doubly bad. By not employing this girl, I was possibly denying someone the opportunity of going to university.

But child labour is child labour and by employing her, perhaps her neighbour’s daughter, or one or her friends would be sent away somewhere to clean so her sibling(s) could have an education too.

It’s not fair, but I can’t make it worse.