Saqqara

Saqqara the step-pyramid.



Been there....













Done that.....

Had the beer!

Lots more to come on our visit to Saqqara, Dashur, Memphis and the Sphinxus when we've edited the video. We've got a week off to celebrate Eid and Armed Forces Day

and plan to do tourist-y things and lots of hanging out in Cairo, so hopefully we'll blog quite a bit :)

The frustration of not knowing the culture

Tonight I've been feeling a bit "argh" due to simple things just winding me up. It's only over relatively trivial matters, but my imagination of "what could go wrong" often runs away with me and so I've been feeling a bit headless-chicken-ified as everything is magnified by the language barrier.

Tonight's panic has been about rent. Last month our landlady came round to the apartment to collect the rent in person. However, had she been 5 minutes later we'd have been out as we were going shopping. So...she was lucky!

This time the end of the month falls on the Eid holiday, and as such is likely to be a nightmare for everyone wanting to carry out financial transactions. We've already had enough hassle finding a cash machine that actually had money available to withdraw, but my panic was about getting the money to our landlady. She speaks no English, and we speak no Arabic other than basic words picked up from the phrasebook, so we haven't set a routine for rent collection. My assumption was that she would come round on an off-chance in order to collect the rent, but there has been no sign of her...and we're away for the next two days visiting to pyramids at Saqqara and staying in a swanky hotel downtown.

My over-active imagination has had me panicking about what would happen if she came for rent, but didn't get it for another 2-3 days, and so I was up trying to work out what to do. Fortunately we had her son's mobile number (who speaks very good English) so we sent him a text asking for advice! He told us to leave the rent with the bowab (doorman) and his mother would collect it tomorrow morning. Sorted!

Our phrasebook came in handy to say "rent", "landlady", "tomorrow morning" accompanied with animated gesticulations, but I think that he understood what I was trying to explain. However, he then asked me some other things in Arabic - now presumably mistaking me as fluent in the language following my convincing show - which I completely failed to understand. He asked if "house" was "hallas" (finished). Erm...yes, we've moved in and so it's finished. He looked disappointingly at the rent envelope and said "hallas". "Oh," I thought, "is he asking if we've finished with the apartment and moving out?" "La! (No!)" I said. Again, a puzzled look. Basically, I have no idea what he was asking and he has no idea what my positive then negative responses were all about. I seriously hope it wasn't about whether he should say tell her we were handing in our notice!

I gave him 2LE for doing the favour of handing the money to our landlady for us, and as we made our pleasantries he counted the four 50piastre notes. "Oh no," I thought, and still am thinking. "Did I not give him enough?"

So, basically, I'm feeling a bit lost and a bit helpless at the moment as I so desperately want to get along with everyone here and do the things that are expected of me, but feel I'm wallowing a bit due to not really knowing what I'm meant to be doing, nor knowing the words to ask what I'm meant to be doing, nor knowing the words to understand the reply. Even just knowing what is an acceptable amount to give to the bowab as baksheesh for doing a trivial task like handing over the rent mone to the landlady is beyond me at the moment.

Still, after my worrying it'll probably be the case that everything will work out fine and I'll be kicking myself for getting so worked up about it. I just need to remind myself that the rent is with the doorman, as requested by the landlady's son, and the doorman has made a couple of LE out of it that he otherwise wouldn't have got.

Now to get reading up on Saqqara...

UKNova Radio - 29/09/08

Hello folks,

We've just finished uploading our radio show for this week. We've secured a new regular weekly spot from 6pm-8pm (UK time) every Monday for our freshly-titled show, "Rock the Casbah". You can listen live by visiting http://uknr.dyndns.org/ or can catch up by downloading the podcasts we'll post here every week.

Download podcast here.

Alternatively, stay on this website and listen to the show in the MP3 player below:

A weekly round-up

It's been a busy week for us, so it wasn't until today that we had a chance to do (in Alice's words) "a piece to camera". So, with an exciting view of our back-room, here's what's been going on in Cairo...

PART 1

PART 2

Saturday Morning in Maadi photos

Maadi's own Banksy at work.

And another perfectly framed palm tree.

The interweb commeth!

So we've been online for a couple of weeks now, but in that time we've been plagued by terrible Skype connections due to painfully slow speeds. We asked one of the tech guys at work to look into upgrading our speed, and duly gave him 200LE to get us on a faster package, but then heard nothing. It wasn't until last night, though, that we looked into it. Alice had the almost impossible task of acting as intermediary between me and the chap on Internet Egypt technical support as messages and data transfer rates were passed backwards and forwards.

The conversation was pretty much:

"We should be on a 1 megabit connection, but it's not fast enough."
"I've checked, and you are on a 1 megabit connection."
"But the speed isn't fast enough..."
(repeat a few times)
"Look, we've run tests and we can only download at 512kb, not 1mb like we're paying for."
"I've checked, and you're on 1mb."
"But we're sure we're not."
"Go into your router settings and read me the connection numbers."
So we did.
"Oh," say the tech guy, "I'll speak to my manager about why your speed is too slow!"

This morning, we rebooted the router and our speed had doubled. It appears that they'd updated the account to say they were charging us for 1mb but not actually flicked the switch to enable it! Still, it seems to be sorted now, and Skype calls to the UK are sounding much clearer for everyone involved. Hooray!

Cairo roads

The roads in Cairo are an experience and a half.

Let's start with using the horn. In the UK you might use your horn once a month to warn someone of your position. Here you use your horn every few minutes. You beep to let someone know you are behind them; they then beep to let you know they've seen you and then you beep to acknowledge them. You beep to let someone know you are coming up on the inside, or the outside, or just that you are near by. Basically instead of "mirror, signal, manoeuvre" in Cairo it is "manoeuvre, beep, manoeuvre".

But this doesn't mean that they don't use their mirrors – oh no, quite the opposite. We’ve heard that if two cars run into each other, it is always seen that the driver in front who is at fault. So most drivers in Cairo spend their time looking in their mirrors at what is going on behind them, rather than what is happening in front of them. Most cabs we have been in have either an extra-large rear-view mirror, or multiple mirrors on the door frame – the most we have seen so far is five mirrors, but I am sure that will be topped soon.

Now to inside the taxis as a passenger. Getting into the cab - I haven’t found a taxi yet where the door to the back seat on the drivers side still works – most of them must have been bashed in at some point. It goes without saying that the black and white cabs don’t have air conditioning; so once in the back seat (or passenger seat beside the driver if you are feeling brave – and a bloke) you might want to open or close the window. Whilst this might seem a straightforward activity in most taxis, in Cairo we’ve found that a god proportion of taxis only have one window handle, that then has to be shared and passed around the cab to open or close the windows. For a general idea about the condition of taxis, of the taxis that we have been in only two have had a working speedometer and one was started by putting two wires together under the dashboard.

And then there are the rules of the road. The roads technically look similar to the UK; there are traffic lights and lane markings for example. It is just the interpretation of these that differ. Lane markings aren’t seen as holding any more function than simply decoration. Our route to work for example goes along the ring road, which has four lanes marked, but normally traffic flows in at least six lanes. This feat is repeated on local roads and local roundabouts which might accommodate two lanes of traffic in the UK but can manage at least three here. The traffic lights though are not only ignored, but possibly for good reason. Instead of the Green – Amber – Red combination of most countries, Egypt has gone for Amber – Amber – Amber. These flash in sequence, the meaning of which is lost to all motorists who just drive on regardless.

I must talk about one of the other road users though, who are the boys working for dry cleaning / laundry firms. These lads have adapted their bicycles to their work in the most ingenious way. On the back of their bikes they have attached a little clothes rail that is just the right height to hang ironed shirts and trousers on.

Oh, and a new law in Cairo means that all vehicals must have an emergency triangle. This means a roaring trade has started for this nieche market. Here is a picture of my favourite sign....

! There's been an accident! Brilliant!