Golf at the Mena House, Darshur

Here are some pictures of golf at The Mena House. This is a golf course right by the pyramids, across from the Mena house hotel which was once the bastion of British colonialism in Cairo. I think Winston Churchill stayed here. We (Scott and I) played golf here the last two Fridays.

Scott took this picture. Note the near perfect finish! My arms are shaped like a pyramid.

Some random pictures of the pyramids by the course:

Here I am by the 18th green.

In addition to being adjacent to the Giza pyramids, the golf course has at least 3 mosques right around it. This isn't unusual, there are mosques everywhere in Cairo and I have been awakened by the morning call to prayer from the mosque in my neighborhood. Since we played on Friday, the "church" day for Muslims, we were on the course when the mosques started broadcasting the call to prayer. So it was a true Egypt experience, listening to the prayers with the Giza pyramid in the background. Of course, I felt a bit the crass colonialist playing golf at the same time, but I enjoyed the experience. Here is a brief video I took at this time:

Golf plus caddy plus tip cost me 200 Egyptian pounds, which is about $36. The taxi ride there and back was 100 pounds (about $18).

After the golf game, we ate at the Mena house restaurant across the street, which was good but expensive (you pay Western prices in there!)

Here is a video of the cab ride back to Maadi from Giza. Nothing real exciting, but it does give you an idea of the kind of neighborhood I live in:

Later that weekend, I took a trip down to Darshur, which is where one of the first pyramids was built. It is a far cry from the pyramid scene in Giza (just by Cairo). This is about 50 km south, and is out in the middle of the desert. Very few tourists are here. You really are just out in the middle of a desert alone with the pyramids (except for a few police officers who want to take a picture for you and then ask for 10 pounds).

Here is a picture of the true pyramid at Darshur, which I think is the first true pyramid completed. I went into the tomb of this one, and that was quite an experience. It was 130 steps down about a 30 degree incline through a narrow passageway. You cannot help but feel a little bit "Indiana Jones," but also a bit claustrophobic. A famous Italian archeologist studied this pyramid, and he inscribed his name on the wall in the tomb, sort of like "Kilroy was here" in the tomb of the pyramid.

The other pyramid here is the "bent" pyramid, which starts at one angle and then about halfway up turns in. It made me wonder about the poor engineer who had to explain to the Pharaoh that the angle wasn't quite right, and they were going to have to make a slight revision...

I also stopped by Memphis, which was (I think) the original capital of ancient Egypt. There isn't much to see here really, except for this statue of Ramasees.

Between Darshur and the famous pyramids at Giza is the step pyramid in Saqqara. I think this was the first attempt at building a pyramid. This was the most interesting site to me because it isn't just a pyramid. It seemed to be part of a larger plan with temples and arenas built around it.
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I’m sitting in my apartment just after embarrassing moment #2 in Egypt. I’ve had two rather embarrassing moments since I’ve moved to Egypt. In reverse chronological order, they are:

Embarrassing moment #2. Locked out of my apartment.

The campus is about 20 miles away, and driving in Cairo is not for the faint hearted westerner. So I ride a bus to campus and back. As I’m on the bus home today, I realize that I left the keys to my apartment in the office. I made a few phone calls, but no one answered, so my choice is to (a) take a bus back to campus at 7PM (a 1-hour ride) to get the keys and then bus home again at 9PM (another 1-hour ride) or (b) see if I can get the apartment folks to let me in. I decide for option (b), get off the bus and walk to my apartment. Fortunately, the cleaning guy is outside, and he speaks 10% English. So I manage to communicate to him what my problem is. He makes a phone call, and after some frantic words in Arabic, he tells me to wait 10 minutes and someone will come to help me. I ask him how much this will cost me and he says 20 pounds (that is about $4). So I say OK.

About 20 minutes later someone shows up. I expected the apartment manager with a spare set of keys, what I got what a carpenter with a hammer and a wedge. He follows me up to my 3^rd floor apartment and tries to open the door by driving the wedge in the space between the door and the lock, like you might open a door with a credit card in the US. Now, I have no idea how to say “Sorry, I locked the deadbolt this morning” in Arabic, so I just have to wait until he can figure that out for himself. He does. He says to me in English “5 minutes” and then goes downstairs and comes back in 10 minutes with more hammers. Again, I expected some type of locksmith operation, but his approach now is to hammer away until he knocks the entire lock out of the door. So I’m looking at my apartment door with a big hole in it where the lock used to be, and he then fiddles with a screwdriver until he gets the door open.

At this point, I’m glad to be inside, but I’m wondering how much the university housing office is going to dock my pay for ruining a door and a lock. However, Ahmed

produces a spare lock and key that he puts into my door and everything is good as new. Well, almost—a lot of scratches and chipped paint, but hey! I’m inside.

So now, Mohammed (the cleaning man) comes back up, and tells me in English that the price for a new lock is 50 pounds (about $9). So I pay the 50 pounds to Ahmed. Then, thinking I’m being a bit savvy, I ask what Ahmed’s taxi ride to get here cost him. Mohammed says 50 pounds, but Ahmed quickly corrects him, and after some words in Arabic between them, Mohammed tells me in English that Ahmed needs 70 pounds for his taxi (I expect it really cost about 20). So of course, I may as well be wearing a shirt that says in Arabic “I’m new, I’m an American, I’m an ATM”—but I give Ahmed the 70 pounds (about $14). Then just for good measure, I give Ahmed and Mohammed each a 10 pound tip (so that’s another $2 each) because who knows when I may lock myself out again.

Well, I’m inside, at least. And now I know to leave a spare key in my computer bag. I’m reminded of stanza from Don Henley:

Well we barely made the airport for the last plane out

As we taxied down the runway, I could hear the people shout

They said don’t come back here Yankee --

But if I ever do

I’ll bring more money

Embarrassing moment #1. Wrong bus stop.

So, as I said, I bus to campus and back. The first day I did this it was easy. I got on the bus at Victoria Square, just down from my apartment, the bus drove to campus, and then the bus in the afternoon brought me right back to Victoria square. Piece of cake.

So I get on the bus the next day and ride home. I figured when it stopped I’d get off right by my apartment. This ride, however, suddenly has frequent stops. It is my 3^rd day here, so nothing looks familiar to me. Finally, we get to the last stop, everyone gets off, and I have no %!@#@!% idea where I am. I step off this bus, look around, and then (somewhat pitifully) say to the driver “eye-na?” which is what I learned as “Where is?” in Arabic (but it turns out they don’t use that phrase in Cairo), and I try to communicate to him that I’m lost. He looks at me, and I say “Victoria Square?” and after some gesturing he gets the point and says “I take you.”

So I get back on the bus, sit down, and the driver starts the bus up. Then the bus supervisor gets back on the bus. Now, I don’t understand Arabic yet, but I can tell what he says to the driver: “What the hell are you doing?” in Arabic. After a brief flurry in Arabic between them, the bus supervisor turns to me and says, “You need to go to Victoria Square?” and I say “Yes.” He says, “but we already passed Victoria Square” and would have added “you nitwit” if he knew how to say that in English. So I tell him, “I’m new, it’s my second day, I just missed it, I’m lost.” He then says to me “OK. But you can take that taxi right there; don’t pay him any more than 3 pounds.” I say, OK, but all I have with me are 100 pound notes (taxis in Maadi will NOT make change).

Well, I guess the only thing more galling to the bus supervisor than driving me back to Victoria Square was for a Maadi taxi to make a 97 pound tip for taking me back to Victoria Square, because then he starts giving me directions on how to walk there. A left, then a right, then straight, then 2 lefts, then a u-turn past the camel,…geez. My eyes start to glaze over, but I decide that if I head out and wander through Maadi long enough I’ll surely recognize something.

Then the driver (who I think had some sympathy for me) starts in frantically in Arabic. They go back and forth for a minute or so, after which the bus supervisor turns to me and says, “OK, we will take you to Victoria Square.” I say “Show Kran, Show Kran” (thank-you, thank-you). A 5 minute bus ride later and we are there. I apologize again, say thanks, and get off the bus.

For the next 5 days that I ride the bus, the bus supervisor comes up to me every day and says, “The next stop is Victoria Square.” I’ve got it now!

Saturday, Sept 12 2009 Downtown Cairo

On Saturday, September 12, Scott, Mike and I went down to the Khan el-Khalili market in Cairo. We spent the day walking around and then returned to Tahrir Square where we had dinner at Felfella and then cought the Metro back to Maadi.

The market is a maze of narrow streets (I think until you get the hang of it). Here is a picture looking down one of the streets. Can you spot the tourists?

There are several famous mosques in this area of Cairo, but I cannot remember their names. Here is a picture of one.

We walked through the market down to the old city wall. There were signs on a lot of the structures with the date they were built, and most of this stuff was built around 1100AD.

A few more pictures of the market.

Here are two videos in the cab from the Khan el-Khalili market back to Tahrir Square.

Here our driver is a bit impatient getting around an accident:

After we got around the trouble, the driver opened a bag of dates and offered them to us. We've been here about 3 or 4 weeks now, and most of us are starting to have some stomach trouble.

Scott (who has lived here before) just told me earlier that the best thing to do is stick to cooked vegatebles and bread. So you can hear me asking, "Are we going to regret this?" Meaning,

eating this uncooked, unwashed fruit.

Scott says no, pauses and then adds "en shallah" which means "God willing."

So we ate the dates, which were delicous and as of the next day no problems.

As we were going to the restaurant, we had to cross a really busy street in downtown, near the Egyptian Museum. I stepped out, but

then hesitated (as only a toursit would do) and then stepped back as traffic rushed by. Then I heard a voice down the street yell at me

in perfect but heavily accented English, "Close your eyes, pray to Allah, and go!"

Dinner downtown and AUC faluka ride

On Thursday night my excellent tour guide Scott took Mike and I downtown to meet some other AUC faculty at a restaurant right in the middle of downtown Cairo, near the old AUC campus. Scott & Mike are here as Fulbright scholars. They both study religon, Scott from a political science perspective and Mike is a sociologist. They let someone from the business school tag along in hopes of enlighting me on something.

We took the metro from Maadi to downtown. Here is a picture of the Maadi metro station:

and here is a picture of the mosque adjacent to the Metro station:

This is a clock at the station. I just get a kick out of the Arabic numbers!

This is a picture of the original AUC campus. The campus was in the center of downtown, which was great in some ways, because it really connected you with the city. On the other hand (so I've heard) it also connected you with traffic, smog, noise, etc. So most are happy to be in the new campus, which was built in large part (at least, I have been told) with a grant from USAID.

We had dinner on the roof of a hotel (sadly, I cannot remember the name) downtown. The nice thing about hotels downtown is that the food is good AND they serve beer, which is kind of hit and miss at other restaurants in Cairo. The view was spectacular, although you can't tell it from these pictures. You could see a large part of Cairo all the way to the Nile.

I took a picture of the group at dinner:

Here is the view from our table:

I ate until I was stuffed and we all had a couple of beers. The food was terrific, very mediterranean. I don't know what all of it was, but we had humus, bobagonoosh (however you spell that!), breads, some meat dishes of which one was chicken livers (fried and salty). I tried it all. Our bill for all 7 of us totaled a whopping 550 Egyptian pounds, so my dinner, beers, and tip cost me about $17 in US dollar terms.

Here is a picture on the street downtown on our way back to the Metro station. This is the month of Ramadan, so observant Muslims obstain from food, drink, tobacco, and I don't know what else from sun-up to sun-down for the entire month. Which means that at about sun-down the entire city shuts down as everyone stops to eat. Then everyone is out again later and they stay up late, I think so they can eat again before they go to bed. So everything closes in the late afternoon, and then opens up around 8PM and stays open until about 1am. We were walking home around 9PM, so the city was very busy. The picture doesn't capture the energy.

On Friday night AUC took all the new faculty out for dinner on a Faluka in the Nile. The food was terrific and the views of the city from the boat were great, but it was dark so none of the pictures of the city came out very well. Here are some pictures I took before sundown:

The falukas ready to board:

Me on the boat. I don't know why, but the driver seemed to be having as good a time as we were.

I took this picture from the back of the boat looking back toward Zamalek: