Detour through Cairo!

Today we landed in Cairo, Egypt after a VERY long flight from the JFK airport in New York.  I must say that I didn't mind the trip though.  The food on the flight was great, and I got to catch up on some movies I hadn't seen before including Michael Jackson's "This is It" and a new Hugh Grant film.  The real experience today came from our journey from the Cairo airport to our hotel.  The cultural differences were apparent right away, and this served as a huge wake up call for me!


Exiting the Airport
I flew into the country with my classmate David Watterson, a young, white, eccentric male.  After waiting for about half an hour, we exited the airport where we were greeted immediately by about 40 cab drivers who all wanted our business.  However, while I had to approach cab drivers and ask for travel information, David was bombarded by one driver after another.  I took a moment to let him negotiate with the drivers since they seemed so eager to do business with him, and during this time glanced back at the airport exit.  It was then that I saw the same trend repeating over and over again.  The cab drivers seemed to flock towards whites because they assumed that they were not from Egypt.  I didn't take any offense to this, but I wondered "What is the ratio of races in Cairo?"  Furthermore, "Are these race classifications similar to American distinctions of race?"...Perhaps I'll get clarification before I leave.


Alternative Transportation
The lowest cab fare we could find was around 75 Egyptian pounds (roughly $13.50 USD), but we thought that was too expensive so we opted to take a cheaper route...the public transportation system.  We went back inside the airport where a tour information specialist (i.e. some guy behind a desk) told us to take an airport shuttle to the bus station.  From there, we were supposed to take the #327, or #400, or #27 bus downtown, get off on the Tahrir stop, and catch a much cheaper cab to our location.  Seems simple enough, right?  We proceeded to get on the airport shuttle which dropped us off at the bus station, and this is where the fun began.  At the bus station NOBODY SPOKE ENGLISH!  We found about three people who spoke broken (bits of peices of) english, and working together they seemed to come up with an appropriate solution...go back to the airport and catch a cab.  But we were determined to have this cultural experience, and so we kept searching until we found our bus (which happened to be mislabeled).  We loaded it, and smiled at the thought of being that much closer to the hotel. 


An Interesting Bus Ride
Once we were on the bus we noticed a few cultural differences versus the system in the US.  First, we didn't pay our fair at a pay booth at the front of the bus.  Instead an older gentleman with light brown skin and a head full of gray hair approached David and asked him for the correct fare.  To our surprise, we had to buy tickets for ourselves and for our bags.  But it was still much cheaper than a taxi at the airport, and so we paid and found our seats.  Secondly, buses in Egypt don't necessarily stop at every bus stop sign.  Instead people stand in large groups around the bus stop and as the bus approaches (still moving, but slowing down a bit) people just "jump on!"  It was strange to me see older people sprinting to latch on to a moving bus and then walk on board as if this wasn't stressful or tiring.  Lastly, people who ride the buses in Egypt have a very different interpretation of "personal space."  The bus easily held 60 people (standing) and so it didn't seem odd at all to the gentlemen who leaned against me as if I was a wall.  But their kind demeanor made up for it all, and several people on the bus helped me perform a tough balancing act with the two bags I was carrying.  They would brace the bags for me as the bus swayed to and fro, and shoot an earnest head nod my way to let me know that my stuff was okay.  All in all, I appreciated the close-knit community that I built on that bus, and the hour ride seemed to go by swiftly.


A Game of Frogger
While riding the bus to our final stop, I noticed that all of the cars driving around us were scratched and dented.  As I kept observing them I notices that, in fact, there wasn't a single car on the congested road that wasn't scratched or dented.  Then, as I watched the never-ending traffic I realized that there was no rhyme or reason to how people drove in Egypt.  Yes, there were stop lights...and yes, there was on a divide separating the directions of traffic, but THERE WERE NO LINES TO DIVIDE CAR LANES!  This meant that at any moment I could see four cars stretched side-by-side on a two-lane street.  Cars were busy cutting each other off, and there were tons of people on motorcycles who would weave through all the traffic with great maneuvering abilities.  This made me a little nervous because I could see several potential accidents that seemed to be avoided at the last second, but I felt safe in knowing that I was riding a bus.  If anyone hit us, they would more than likely be hurt.  However, as we reached the Tahrir stop downtown I came to the scary realization that to finish our trip to the hotel...we had to cross the street!  As a city-kid growing up in the heart of St. Louis, cars never scared me.  They would zoom down the street with noisy engines and loud pipes and it wouldn't phase me at all.  I like to think of my younger self as a street-crossing pro.  However, today was a different story.  We literally were going to have to play a game of FROGGER to get across this treacherous road, and I was already exhausted from the bus ride.  To make matters worse, I was hauling 70 pounds of luggage in my red roller, blue duffelbag, and bookbag, and I was questioning whether this combined with my body weight could move efficiently across this lane.  I took a deep breath, looked both ways, gave off a manly war cry, and proceeded to play the most dangerous game of start-and-stop running in my life.  Luckily, a minute later, I crossed the road and boarded a cab to make it here.  The hotel is nice, and the neighborhood seems good, but the crazy thing about the whole journey is that in the end it cost about $1.50 less than if we had just taken the cab.  But I wouldn't have changed the journey for anything. I MADE IT TO AFRICA!