Egypt: Goodbye Cairo

Today is our last day in Cairo, which means (sniffle) that I have only one more bowl of kushari! : ( Though this makes me quite sad, Rich seems quite relieved as he has been dragged to kushari shop after kushari shop across the country for weeks. Possibly out of embarrassment that we keep returning to the same shop for lunch each day, he's now taken to overbtipping the staff. Yesterday I saw Rich (newly nicknamed G Money) slipping cash to not just our waiter, but to the cooks and cashier as well! I know as a bartender he enjoys being able to tip generously everywhere we go. In fact, I've never seen him more tickled than the day the (male) maids folded our blankets into giant swans on our bed in Sinai- he was ready to dump his entire wallet contents on the bed!

Before you think that G Money is out of control, I should explain that tipping here is a way of life (called "baksheesh"). People (both Egyptians and foreigners) are generally expected to tip for everything- opening a door, directing you to the restroom (four yards away), giving you your mail, hailing you a cab, showing you the exit (four yards away with a big sign that says "EXIT"on it), etc.). Thankfully, due to the exchange rate, this is easily affordable, which is why G Money has adapted well to this new custom.

Anyway, today as we were walking around the city two men bicycled past us balancing trays about 4-feet long on their heads. Each tray held hundreds of pieces of bread stacked over a foot tall with nothing to secure the bread down. While they were deftly balancing these hundreds of pieces of bread on their heads they were also expertly dodging and weaving their way through hundreds of honking cars and pedestrians, chatting with each other and laughing. This is a scene that we see a dozen times each day. Yet if you were to put me on this same task, I can pretty much guarantee I would make it about ten feet before simultaneously hitting a child, skinning both knees and spilling all two hundred pieces of mama's freshly baked bread all over the pavement.

The absolute hardest thing to do in any country is to capture everyday life on film. Cairo is no exception. I will miss seeing women in burquas, watching mothers balance a basket on their head and a child on their shoulders, people doing their dishes on the street, paying a pound to use a toilet that is nothing more than a hole in the ground covered in flies, and the mayhem on the streets.

As I may have mentioned previously, we were supposed to be here in 2000. When that fell through, I felt like a part of me was missing, and now it's been filled. Horribly cheesy, I know, but so true. I will never ever forget the site of the pyramids (the last standing Wonder of the World) or riding a boat out to the Philae temple (it was under the Nile and later moved painstakingly to higher ground). If you ever get a windfall of cash, I promise, this country will not disappoint.