A Different Drummer

Early this morning the Egyptian government arrested 45 members of the illegal but influential Egyptian organisation, the Muslim Brotherhood. Protests were expected in response and thousands of riot police lined the streets out the front of the parliament building in downtown. The protesters were clever though, and shifted locations at the last minute to another part of downtown, Ramses Square. They showed up there in large numbers (estimates vary from 2,000 by the government to 5,000 from the organisers) , with the riot police quickly following.

I heard from Tamer that his company are advising employees not go go into the city centre right now - probably good advice. I just called Thea, who was actually riding on the underground metro right underneath the center of the protests - the conversation, over a badly crackling line, went something like:

- "ummm...babe.....were you planning on getting out of the metro?"

- "no, I am going home"

- "ahhh....cool....ummm....dont get out of the metro. I'll explain later.."

Anyhow I guess more news will become available on all this in the next few hours. It is hard to categorise though - the protesters are calling for fair, free elections, the ability to form political parties, and repeal of Egypt's "emergency laws". Is it part of the "wave of democracy" spreading across the Middle East? The Muslim Brotherhood have been arguing for this kind of thing for almost half a century - they are fairly confident that if a free election was held where they could run as candidates, they would win comfortably.

I don't know how true this is today - I'm sure the whole Misr crew will post their thoughts on this in the next few days - but it is to me a sign that not every step towards immediate, western style democracy in the Middle East will lead to the "desired outcome", unless the desired outcome is a religious based government.

Someone is SO getting sued for this.....

Well, Luly and Tamer are hitting the topic so I might as well chime in as well. I'll cover the serious aspects in a later post - but here, I wan't to make a point that all the non-Arab readers of this blog might not understand.

In Egypt the vast majority or women seen in public are veiled, meaning a scarf is covering their hair. The unveiled remainder are either part of a young, progressive, western oriented minority (nearly everyone I know), or Christian (10% of the population). Within this majority of veiled women, you will find a good number, say 50%, dressed in a veil, with otherwise normal, slightly conservative clothes - long flowing skirts, long sleeved shirts, looking fairly normal. A small percentage, maybe 5%, are wearing clothes that do not match the veil - skin tight designer jeans, fashion label tops pulling tight over the cleavage, make up with red lipstick etc. Another bunch are wearing the veil in combination with conservative long flowing robes, normally black, white or dark blue in colour.

All of this is fine to me, although still a little weird. I don't personally see the need for this kind of dressing, but its not something that really concerns me. And I can tell you one thing, it definitely achieves its purpose - there is no more effective way for a woman to put a "not available" sign on herself than to be veiled. It is just impossible to look at a veiled woman in a sexual way.

I'm going to let my more naieve female readers here in on a little secret. Are you ready for it?

Every male friend you have ever had has considered what it would be like to have sex with you.

Its true, so horribly true. Unless you are related by blood, already in a relationship with one of our best friends, or horrifically unattractive, we have thought about what you would look like, naked, in bed. Its not a bad thing, or done in any nasty context - its just that our flawed male characters need to think about sex a lot, and something needs to provide that input. And most of the time, its you, the women in our immediate surroundings, who provide that inspiration.

Now most women don't really mind this fact, and some actively support the idea, by doing everything possible to encourage us to focus our thoughts on them. But some women don't like the idea of being thought of as potential sex partners to every guy they spend time around. For whatever reason, these women want men to look at them purely as sexless humans, with no accompanying naked bedroom fantasies playing through out minds. If you are one of these women, you need to do one of two things:

1) Fundamentally change male human nature
2) Make some kind of "don't even think about it" sign public to all who see you.

Option 1 is next two impossible. Option two can be done in a number of ways, the most effective way I have ever seen being the wearing of a veil. I don't know exactly what it is, or why, but trust me, from experience, there is no possible way to think sexual thoughts about a veiled woman. It just cannot happen. And in this sense, veiling achieves some tangible purpose, however valuable that purpose may be.

Tamer, the newly elected president for AIESEC Egypt in the coming year, is blogging.

This definitely makes me and Tamer the only NCP current/elect team to be blogging. But are we actually the only two NCP's blogging at all? A sorry state of affairs.

Tamer Zikry, my team mate this year on the Egyptian national team and next years National President of AIESEC Egypt, is up and blogging on nomadlife. Tamer is one of the smartest and hardest working people I have ever met - and his blog is already showing signs of becoming a nomadlife must-read.

His thoughts on current developments at the American University in Cairo (AUC) are definitely worth reading:

"AUC is not arresting people but then it is taking away their right to be on campus when they had actually paid loads of money to get access to it and why? not coz the girl with the face veil was a serial killer or coz the guy with the stickers was a thief but coz they were expressing an opinion or a belief in a completely non-violent and civilised way....

If one of the most reputable American institutions in Cairo can't do this right...how are we expecting the governments to get it right??!!"

Absolutely. Whether it is banning girls from wearing religious clothing or banning students from displaying political statements (pro democracy ones at that) - the AUC is definitely not living up to its name as a home of enlightened thought in Cairo.

Jen is making Morocco sound pretty nice.

Poor Jen. Based in New York, having to do all this stressful travel to horrible places like Egypt, Dubai, Morocco, Tunisia....then back to Egypt again.....then back to New York. I really don't know how she copes sometimes....

I have just moved into a new house - my seventh house in my 9 months in Egypt. Housing can be complicated here, although it doesnt have to be. Nearly all the other internationals I know here in Egypt have arrived and settled into a permanent place within a couple of weeks - but somehow I have had the curse of Ramses II following me wherever I go - causing a shopping list of random reasons why I end up packing my bags 4-6 weeks after moving in somewhere.

Anyhow, the latest place, which will hopefully be the last, is great. After living in Maadi for most of the time, I have missed out on a lot of the goodness of life in Cairo. Maadi is everything that Cairo isnt - green, leafy, quiet, peaceful and spacious. It is where the bulk of the city's expat Americans and British live, as well as ambassadors and diplomatic staff, and well off Egyptians. It's a great place to live when you first arrive in Egypt from another country, it is almost like a retreat back into your comfort zone when the madness of Cairo gets too much. But it is also massively disconnected from the rest of the city, and you really can live in Maadi and never leave the area, and effectively not be living in Egypt.

This is what a lot of the expats, especially the older ones, do - find a three storey villa in Maadi, complete with cook, cleaner and driver, who drives their giant imported SUV. You snd your kids to Cairo American College (CAC), the best school in Cairo, complete with yellow school buses and basketball and wrestling teams for the boys and the cheerleader squads for the girls. You shop in air conditioned supermarkets stocked with all the stuff from back home (Maadi is the only place in Cairo where you can find M&M's, Reeces Pieces and Hersheys Bars in the corner stores). You go for dinner at TGI Fridays, Fuddruckers or Chillis, or any number of the foreigner friendly Maadi restaurants that proudly serve bacon, beer, and anything else you could find back home. When you brave your way into Cairo, it is in the chauffered SUV, with the tinted windows up and the doors locked. Before you know it, you are in the flashy downtown areas of Zamalek or Mohandiseen, out the front of the cafe, restaurant or hotel where you are adventuring to that night.

Well, my new place is pretty much the opposite of life in Maadi. I'm in something of a baladi district. Baladi means "country" in arabic, in in Egpt the word is used to describe something authentic, old fashioned, lower class or rural style. If you are ordering food or drink, there will often be a baladi option, which is normally reminescent of the way mamma used to make it, or the way it used to be done before all this modern high tech shenannigans. Think of a steak sandwich at a country truck stop restaurant in Australia, or country style fried chicken and biscuits in America.

Baladi is about more than just food. An ahwa (coffeeshop) where old men sit on the street, smoking, drinking tea and playing backgammon, is known as an ahwa baladi. And a suburb where chickens run free in the street, donkey carts distribute fresh fish, tomatoes and other essentials, and the public space is pulsing with the noise of cars, donkey carts, buses, people, animals and every other major feature of egypt, is known as a baladi area.

I am smack in the middle of all of this and much more. My house is right across the road from a great ahwa baladi where a cup of tea and a shisha set you back LE2.50, which is about 40 cents US. Today for lunch I had half a grilled chicken, with a bowl of spiced tomatoes, fresh potato crisps, bread and tehina dip, for the grand total of LE6, about $1. And I just bought a kilogram of tomatoes for LE1, about 15 cents. What a great place.

I am amazed at how cool all the locals are with me. In most baladi areas in Cairo you would be getting funny looks, weird comments, and all sorts of people wanting to liberate you from your money in new and exciting ways. "No, I really don't need a statue of a stuffed rabbit smoking a shisha, but thank you very much anyway". In my area though, the people have been great, by really not caring at all about the fact that I am a big doofy looking white guy in the middle of a place with an astounding lack of big doofy white guys. They just go about their business with me like I was a local - but with a bit of extra curiosity about what I am doing there, day after day. For the first couple of days they probably just thought I was a tourist who had become fascinated with the area, but now that I am buying groceries and shampoo and spending some good quality time in the ahwa, I think they are getting the idea. And I asked the landlord and their kids to get the word out that I am here long term as well.

I am also working on getting some strategic people on my side. I am paying over-generous tips to all the guys at the ahwa, so that they know it is in their best economic interests to keep me feeling happy. And yesterday I bought Snickers and Mars bars for all my bawwab's (door-man's) little children - which he and his wife seemed elated about. The kids looked a bit confused about the whole thing, I'm sure they enjoyed the chocolates.

In these areas, it is vital as a foreigned to have the bawwab on your side. He transcends social and economic circles, and plays a fairly central role in the "talk" of the locals. When my "wife" comes down and starts being seen around the place with me, especially staying in the same house, having the bawwab on my side in the perceptions management phase will be very useful. I am an honourable man, whose wife lives here with him. Thats the story, and I'm sticking to it.

Anyhow, I'll get some photos up of my little baladi house and my little baladi neighbourhood. Its a really great place to live, and when Arthur and Brodie come here to visit, they will definitely get the full Egyptian experience. Be ready, boys.

Todays two minutes hate, which is brought to you by.....Tim Blair, who manages to inspire some remarkably uncivilised anti-Irish comments from his readers, who are possibly the only people in the world outside of Northern Ireland who still seem to enjoy kicking the shit out of the Irish.....Check it out, and look at the comments for some real gems:

"their genuine accomplishments, was created by people who usually had to leave Ireland to do it. This includes every ragged paddy who had the stones to get on a boat during the Famines, and every mick who survived transportation at the Crown’s pleasure...."

"of that 3% which represents genuine Irish accomplishment, 2.5% of it was done by Protestants"

"The Irish were a wild and savage people who...........brought the famine of their own heads as they were too damn lazy to grow anything other than potatoes.... Many Irish like the Arabs love to live on their victim status"

Charming. Sometimes I think the best hope we have against the modern right wing is that it will get too crazy, introverted and self indulgent, until random hate-rants like this become accepted and mainstream. Just like the cultural revolution of the 60's which was shot to pieces by the excesses of the stupidest "hippies", maybe these loonies will become mainstream enough to make their idiotic philosophy out in the open for all to see.

We were driving around in Heliopolis tonight when I saw something that has been in my head ever since. We got to a point in the road where a lot of people slow down and do a U-Turn to get onto a different road, and there was a young kid sitting on the side of the road. He looked like he was crying, with this head in his hands, rocking back and forward. In front of him on the edge of the road was a big tray of eggs, or more accurately, smashed up egg shells.

It quite obvious what happened - he was one of the thousands of people in Cairo who stand on the side of the road in busy traffic areas where the traffic slows down, selling stuff - tissues, cigarettes, oranges, whatever they can get their hands on cheap. In this poor kids case it was eggs, and obviously he had manged to drop the whole tray on the ground, losing not only his income for the night, but also the money he spent on buying the eggs in the first place. It was really quite sad, like when you see a little kid drop their ice cream, except in Australia the little kids livelihood and quality of life does not depend on them selling their ice cream to passing motorists.

"Poor bastard", I said to the guys in the car. "All though is is a stupid place to be selling eggs - and they arent exactly the smartest thing to be selling in such a situation". I was about to tell Aly to stop the car so I could give the guy a couple of pounds, when the guys in the car let me in on the truth.

This kid is famous in Heliopolis. He takes a tray of broken eggshells (which he probably collects for free from a restaurant), and sits on the side of the road in prominent places, looking like he has just dropped them and that his life is over. This cunning little ploy is apparently effective enough to earn him a healthy income of donations each night, as long as he changes locations every few days to stay fresh.

This news put me in two minds. Firstly, I thought that it was such a clever, detailed plan, that it deserved reward based on admiration alone. Then, on the other hand, I thought that if he had such a great mind to develop a plan, why not put it to use in a street side enterprise of actual value, rather than in a pathetic kind of begging that depends on the kindness of Egyptians and foreigners - a kindness that would obviously not exist if everyone, or even a few people, did what he was doing?

Begging is an interesting topic, and is one that I have really come to understand is far more complex than you think. When you have an economy and society structured in the way Egypt is, it isnt a simple case of beggars being lazy, or drug addicted, any of the other typical reasons that we have in western countries for feeling little sympathy or obligation towards such people.

What I have learned for sure is, the more industrious and experienced a beggar is, the better their method of attracting donations. I suppose this shows that innovation and product development arent the sole domain or management consultants and large companies. Its a knowledge economy out there, even in the least likely of places.

I guess if you are a regular reader of my blog, you would know my opinion that Egypt is one of the most amazing countries in the world to spend some time in. An intense cultural experience, with lots of really amazing places to travel to, wonderful food, cheapness galore, brilliant people and an opportunity to learn more than you would ever imagine.

Well, right now here in Egypt we have a whole bucketload of management and technical traineeships available - and we're struggling to match them! We're having all the usual problems, slow response times, IS breakdowns, disinterested people etc. Anyhow, I've decided to use the nomadlife target audience - clued in, well connected, interesting AIESEC'ers to see if we can find some people wanting to come here.

We have lots of really cool jobs in marketing, IT and web development, customer service and market research. They all pay solid salaries which will let you have a good lifestyle in Egypt. They all offer cool working experience. And most importantly, they all give you a chance to come to what I believe is one of the worlds "must-see" countries. And if you speak Dutch, Portugese, Italian or Greek, we even have one company here who will cover 50% of your travel costs, give you free Arabic classes at work and drive you to and from work for free.

Don't just take my word for it - look at the blogs of any number of current or former trainees or visitors to Egypt. They all, uniformly, had or are having an absolute blast. It is impossible not to.

So, if you would like to have an unforgettable Egyptian experience, or think you have friends, contact, LC members etc who would like one, get in touch with me, tom.gara@aiesec.net, or drop a note in comments. I can't talk up these opportunities enough, this is just a country you really have to experience at one point in your life. Spread the word!

via Tim Blair, a great example of three brilliantly Australian characteristics - an obsession with amateur sport, creative ingenuity and casual marijuana usage:

"The Nerrena cricket club in Gippsland was playing a vital away game when host team Inverloch served up an afternoon tea of green-speckled cupcakes.

"I thought `gee this is pretty good, they usually feed us crap'," Nerrena's Tim Clark said. He ate five cupcakes.......

Three visiting players ate the cakes, which they now believe were laced with either hash or marijuana. Returning to the field following tea, Nerrena's game went to pieces.

One player took almost 20 minutes to put on his pads. Others broke out in hysterical laughter and fled the field during play to drink water........

Mr Clark was still light-headed after the match as he tried to put a kit bike together for that night's club fundraiser.

"After a small lie-down, I tried to follow the instructions but I was all over the shop. I was putting the handlebars where the seat was meant to be."

When he eventually completed the bike, he was four hours late for the club function."

Cricket is also the best sport in the world - what other sports have an afternoon tea break? A Gentleman's game through and through.

In follow up to the 10,000 hits, I have a simple message. Actually, Hugh McLeod over at gapingvoid has a simple message, that I am happy to reproduce:

Its bottle of non-alcoholic champagne time here in the office in Cairo after I log on this morning and see that Shisha and Shawerma has has its 10,000th hit! According to my user logs, someone in Madison, Wisconsin (Trent - was it you??) pushed me over the edge at about 9:25PM US time last night. Huzzah!

Of course some of the more prominent weblogs are scoring 100,000 hits per hour on a good day, but then why benchmark myself against the best?

Speaking of not benchmarking against anyone good, I'm still trailing Digs (just kidding Digs we all love you) who hit 11,000 last week and is probably pushing 12,000 by now, but I'm happy with the growth in readers. Just the fact that there is a few people who don't know me who actually read this is really really awesome. Now give me all your money.

Also I had my best day ever last Thursday, with 260 unique visitors, meaning 260 different people (or at least different computers) loading up this page in 24 hours. Stoked. All I have to do now is start expressing my excessive right wing anti immigration views and posting pictures of my gun collection and I can enter the major league of bloggers.

Womad is on in the Adelaide parklands again this weekend.

Womad (World of Music and Dance) is a special time and place. On the outside it is just a big world music festival, held in the parklands. But for anyone who has actually spent a weekend at one of the festivals, it is much more. First, the location. It seriously must be one of the best festival locations on earth. Adelaide temperature at this time of year is, scientifically speaking, perfect - sunny, in the mid 20's, dry, with a cool breeze and clear blue skies. The Adelaide parklands are just beautiful - lush grass and giant swooping willow trees, creating that secret garden feeling, 5 minutes walk from the city centre.

Second is the people. Womad has a weird target market. It is attended by a mix of hipppies, yuppies, world music fans (who normally fit into the first two categories) and curious locals. Now say what you like about hippies and the cultural legacy they left behind - but they sure are nice people to share a festival with. And the yuppies, well they get off on feeling sophisticated and worldly, so they show up, behave themselves and have a good time. And the locals - well, Adelaide people enjoy having something big show up in the city - kind of like a backwoods country town when the circus arrives, and we like it even more when the thing tht shows up involves reggae, weed smoking and lazing around in the grass.

The outcome of all of this is that Womad is blissful and peaceful and friendly in a way that almost no other large public festivals are anymore. People fall asleep on the grass with their wallet on the ground next to them and their mobile phone on the other side - and the only annoying thing that might happen is if a stranger wakes them up to warn them that they are missing some really awesome Algerian hip-hop on stage 3. Parents take little children to Womad - there is nothing threatening or uncool happening there that you wouldnt want a 6 year old to see. I know Jerry Seinfeld once said this was impossible, but it really is fun for the whole family.

I put a lot of Womad's success down to the people who don't come. In particular, Womad features a startling lack of drunken yobbo beer boys. Obviously Mick and Bazzo don't find the idea of Packistani prayer singing a great concept for a friday night, and even better, they don't see the potential to feed off the energy and exuberance of the crowd for their own purposes of getting drunk and picking up girls. Thus, Womad benefits from a complete abscence of fights, vomiting, shouting, aggression and all the usual things that blight any place open the great unwashed. There is also a secondary benefit - Womad is held at the same time as the Melbourne Formula 1 Grand Prix race - which acts as a "flypaper" in many ways for the beer boys, who are either on pilgrimage to Melbourne or in front of the TV watching the race.

There is a great story behind this particular bit. The Australian Formula 1 Grand Prix used to be held in Adelaide, and was about the only big recognised international event that Adelaide could boast of. So, of course, we small town people got all proud of hosting such a shit-boring event, started talking up "sensational Adelaide" (two words which should never, ever go together) and began feeling like the weird kid in the playground who is suddenly befriended by some cool guy in a leather jacket. The whole thing came tumbling down when Melbourne and its brilliant, ruthless State Premier, convinved the F1 people to move the race to Melbourne.

So now, Melbourne has a F1 Grand Prix (held without fail in shithouse Victorian weather) and on the same weekend each year, Adelaide has a world music festival. We win. So anyone up for a festival in the park over a few sunny days, with peaceful, stoned vibes and a complete lack of assholes? And a larger than usual amount of live salsa, African reggae, Hebrew folk and Argentinean dub? Well if you happen to live in Adelaide, then its on right now, and you are probably already there. And if you are too far away to make it, well, just wail away in a fake Hindi accent, bang a few pots together, roll a fat one and lie on the grass. You're practically there already.

So I am back home in Cairo, and realising how attached I have become to this city. I really missed the place while I was away - especially at night times, when the silence outside at 1 am was unthinkable by Cairo standards. I have also condolidated my opinions on how great Central and Eastern Europe really is. Arthur says it very well in his posting but basically, I would take any one of Prague / Budapest /Vienna/ Bucharest / Bratislava over Dublin / London / Paris / Brussels in a second. More dynamism, better food, cheaper, more different and the unescapable energy of growth.

In the 50's and 60's, the young counterculture types made their way to Paris. In the early 90's, the hotspot was Prague, which was soon dubbed "the Left Bank of the 90's". I wonder where the next hotspot will be? What will be the next treasure city of the world which has remained closed, introverted and poor - but will soon be filled with young optimists, moving to find a wild west of energetic living culture, low prices and growing opportunities?

My hope is Cairo, and the Middle East as a whole. Geographically, it is a fairly easy region for Europeans and North Americans to travel to. Economically, these countries have impressive potential growth to clock up if they turn towards open markets and good governance. And there is the Gulf right next door, the vast sea of potential investment dollars just looking for a decent workforce and resources to invest in.

We already have Dubai showing potential to be the worlds most cosmopolitan, multicultural city within the next decade, with a massive, rich expat population and the worlds best business enviroment. Other states in the Gulf, especially Bahrain, Kuwait and Qatar are also getting there. If this region opens up and becomes a focus in the way Central and Eastern Europe did in the 90's, then Cairo will clearly be the big-daddy of all the Middle East capitals. Key cities will probably be Cairo - Tel Aviv - Baghdad - Beirut, and don't be surprised seeing Tehran in there as well. Damn smart people them Iranians.

Anyhow, I can only hope. I really do see some similarities between the Middle East and Central and Eastern Europe. Historic, beautiful old cities in superifical disrepair, but still throbbing with the energy of a brilliant people. A diverse region of unique nations and cultures being thrown together into under one generalist title and image - "Eastern Europe" being a grey land of misery and Soviet uniformity, or "The Middle East" or "Th Arab World" being a desert land of ignorant religious fundamentalists and repressed invisible women living in squalid poor cities. Neither images are, or ever have been, true - but way way too many people believe(d) one or the other.

So enough of that. Bring on the Cairo / Middle East renaissance.

"When Marine Lance Cpl. David Battle learned he'd either have to sacrifice his ring finger or the wedding band he wore, he told doctors at a field hospital in Iraq to cut off the finger....

Doctors were preparing to cut off Battle's ring to save as much of his finger as they could.

"But that would mean destroying my wedding ring," he said. "My wife is the strongest woman I know. She's basically running two people's lives since I've been gone. I don't think I could ever repay her or show her how grateful ... how much I love my wife, my soul mate."

With his approval, doctors severed his finger, but somehow in the chaos that followed, they lost his ring."

Reading this article made got me thinking. So the EU is being pressured by activists to ban the import of dog and cat fur from China. Apparently there is some sort of scam going on where Chinese manufacturers are keeping costs down by using Cat/Dog skins for the "real fur look" on export products.

I'll elaborate my ideas on this later, don't have a lot of time....but I'd like to open this one up for contributions - does anyone have any good reasoning as to why the import of cat or dog furs should be banned? Let loose in comments.

A law where you simply had to mention that your product is made of the actual animal the fur comes from would be fine to me. That way, people who wanted the expensive fur without the guilt of killing a cute little puppy can be happy, while the cheapo kitten-stompers more concerned with price than morality can live it up on their labrador bean bags.

The KittenSkin debate with be the polarising political force of 2005 - Either your in with the banning or you support the right of the individual to purchase meeow-skin if that is what truly floats their boat.

Make your decision, and stand and be counted.

Click the pic to see the Budapest Skyline in full power....