Cairo, 94 degrees

According to my little weather icon thingy it says it’s 91 here. Bull. The last couple of days have been hot, even by Egyptian standards. I know for a fact that it was at least 38 yesterday (102). It’s supposed to drop into the low 90s tomorrow, and I, for one, am ready.

I’m sitting in the hotel bar by myself – the rest of the group has gone off to the annual 4th of July celebration in Maadi at the Cairo American College. I was SO hot today that I just couldn’t deal with it – I was clearly suffering from heat exhaustion and begged Kamran to take the group on his own. I offered tomorrow’s program in exchange – I’ll go on the school visit (which would have bored him anyway) if he takes them to the barbecue. I think some of the group are just happy to be getting Dr. Pepper (jeez, I hope I wasn’t making that up). They don’t make it here, and it’s pretty expensive when you can find it because it has to be imported.

Kamran, by the way, has entered his bitchy phase and I’m quite amused by it. He’s usually not so grumpy.

Anyway. Yesterday morning we went over to the Arab League for a tour of the beautiful building, and a meeting with the Chief of Staff for Secretary General Amr Moussa. For a diplomat he was very open and honest, and I think he did a good job of voicing the Arab perspective on US policy in the region, as well as demonstrating the different styles that tend to work for negotiating in this part of the world. The group was pretty impressed, and I just thought it was freaking cool that we got to go to the Arab League.

In the afternoon there was another lecture at Fulbright on women and the family. The speaker, a female professor at AUC, was very dynamic – no notes. Some of her info was a bit … simplistic, but overall I think that it went very well.

Today we went to visit Rania’s NGO and its work in Manshiet Nasr, one of the former squatter settlements that’s rather well established. The area is particularly uneven – there’s a nice area where Suzanne Mubarak (Egypt’s First Lady who would like very much to be Evita) came to cut the red ribbon: “Oh, look how we’re supporting the poor.” The real work is done by the NGOs. I think a bunch of people were struck by the poverty, but I was kind of blase – after the slums of Jaipur it’s hard to phase me. When you’ve walked through human shit, dirt roads aren’t a big deal.

Here’s an anecdote: my little subgroup got to meet Umm Ashraf. Umm Ashraf is 61 years old and lives in a one room shack. She’s one of the participants in the microfinance program run by the NGO – basically, they give small loans to women to get them going in some business arrangements (and they have a 99% repayment rate – imagine…). Umm Ashraf goes to bakeries and buys their leftovers and sells them to children and others in the neighorhood. She calls herself “Groppi,” after the legendary Greek bakery that was a popular place before the 1952 revolution.

Umm Ashraf is a character. She told us a story about how she doesn’t look Egyptian because she doesn’t wear her gold false teeth anymore. Apparently, this is because her husband hit her in the mouth once, and, being pragmatic, she divorced him immediately (you go girl!). I think our folks liked her because she’s very happy – she’s in a slum, living in a shack with no air conditioning, and she was trying to offer us food. That’s Egypt for you. We had a bit of discussion afterwards – to be continued, no doubt – but the upshot was that the main difference between here and the US is that the poor here are trying to get to the next level, and the poor in the US are trying to get to the top. Realistic expectations make people a little happier with what they have.

At any rate. I’ve finished my hibiscus tea (lots of Vitamin C), and it’s getting dark so I may venture outside. I really hope the cooling trend comes true, because I dunno if I can deal with another day like this …

Tags: arab-league, cairo, egypt, fulbright, media, mubarak, squatter_settlements, women