Impressions of Egypt

Within the last week, I had some time to mull over our adventures in Egypt, and all I can say is how great Ancient Egypt was and how unprepared and shocked I was for my observations of Modern Egypt. I guess I had not realized how poor and underprivileged some people were in the country. In Cairo, Luxor and Aswan, donkeys were being used as vehicle and were pulling wooden carts loaded with fresh vegetables, trash, sewer pipes…just as they were used 1000 years ago in rural areas.

We saw women and children begging for food and money in the souk, barefoot and hair tangled. In certain areas of town and in the countryside, some houses were still built of mud and roofed with palm leaves. We saw young tweens sweeping the streets and picking up garbage in the middle of the night in Aswan as well as teenage boys working as camel handlers around the pyramids, instead of attending school.

Streets in the tourist areas were paved…but as soon as you moved away from those highly frequented streets, we found ourselves walking on dirt roads…in the middle of cities. No curb, no sidewalk, no water evacuation systems, and just highly trampled mud. In Luxor, our hotel was situated right across from a mosque at the end of the tourist area and at the beginning of the traditional market street. One side of the cross street was paved; the continuation of the same street was dirt. In Cairo, we again took a side street from the Souk and found ourselves the only Westerners walking in areas where people appeared to be barely making enough to survive.

Although poverty is high in the country, it seems that not many are starving. The availability of fresh produce helps sustain the people who help each other in hard times, paying it forward on a regular basis. After all, Egypt is a very fertile land, producing huge amounts of fruits and vegetables that are consumed in and out of country. My favorite strawberries come from Egypt!

Street vendors are also selling very nutritious dishes at low cost. One that we tasted daily was the Kushary, a typical Egyptian dish, consisting of several kinds of small sized pasta over which are spread chickpeas, lentils, fried onions and tomato sauce. On the side you are also served lemon juice and a hotter version of the red sauce. Kushary comes in big filling portions and the most we paid for one was 5 Egyptian pounds, or about 75 cents, with the least being 3 pounds, or less than 50 cents. Kushary quickly became Emma’s favorite! You could also buy falafel all dressed up for about the same amount. Meat dishes such as kebabs were more expensive. After seeing the butcher shops, we didn’t buy any of those. Not being a meat lover myself, I get easily turned off by meat, but these butcher shops were more than I could stomach! An animal carcass hanging from a hook on the street, people pointing at the piece of meat they want and the butcher carving it on site. These shops have no refrigeration systems and I don’t even want to imagine how the meat looks in the desert heat of the summer! The carved bones are just thrown to the side and pile up as the day progressed, with flies and stray cats all over them.

What mostly shocked me was how dirty everything looked and actually was. Egypt, just like Saudi, is in a desert climate, except for the few miles on each side of the Nile. And just like Saudi, it doesn’t get much rain either. So, everything gets dusty and dirty quickly…and stays that way. There is very little efforts put toward cleaning up and picking up garbage. We saw mounds of garbage bags, pilled up under bridges in Cairo, on the side of the road and in holes, even just in piles in the city or overflowing the few dumpsters spread around town.

Cairo is the largest city of the African continent with its close to 20 million inhabitants, where garbage pick-up is organized by private companies, thus economically excluding those who cannot afford to pay. In Giza, in the streets leading to the pyramids, is where I saw the most shocking filth, with camels, horses and donkeys being kept on the streets, eating and relieving themselves right there, with people living and taking care of their business, selling produce and other merchandises, cooking meals and selling them right there. The stench was unbelievable, a mix of rotten garbage smell, animal refuse, and people Body Odor…and again this was in the winter. I cannot even imagine the smells in 45 Celsius/110 F temperatures!

Before leaving, we had received ample and repeated warnings about not drinking tap water nor eating green salad in Egypt, for fear of catching nasty bugs and having stomach issues for several days! Well, there are reasons for that. The public water system uses the Nile water that is somewhat cleaned before being distributed. Green salads in restaurant are washed with that same tap water. We wisely decided to abstain from salads for the duration of our stay and we purchased liters of Dasani and Aquafina water and none of us got sick!

Again, these are my observations during our stay in Egypt. We saw all this in part because we did not stay in 5 stars hotels but instead in cheap accommodations, which are thus located in cheaper/older parts of town. I wouldn’t think that a tourist, who stayed at the Intercontinental or Four Seasons type hotel, did a Nile Cruise for several days and used tour groups from beginning to end would have the same observations or have experienced Egypt like we did. However, I don’t regret being able to see that part of Egypt and being able to contribute to the local economy or helping a few people. The children have opportunities to travel but need to see that not all places are tourist haven and that local people struggle and live in what we perceive difficult conditions. It is part of developing that understanding of the world and becoming open-minded and caring.