Olive oil in my ear...

I have olive oil in my ear. That's what I get for refusing to give in to the temptation to order lunch every day, like most people do in Egypt. Huge meals of insanely non-nutritious foods like fuul (beans) sandwhiches and kosheri (a startling combination of tiny tube pasta, spaghetti, penne, lentils, garbanzo beans, tomato sauce, onion/garlic juice, and hot sauce) which you can get for one or two pounds (20-40 cents) are delivered right to your office by local restaurants. But since there's no way I can eat that much food at one sitting (or even three), and because eating two pounds of carbs in a single daily meal is probably not the best for me, I sautee some vegetables the night before and eat them for lunch on soft Lebanese flatbread. It was just one of these tupperware containers of vegetables, or rather the oil and herbs leftover after I'd eaten the vegetables for lunch on Sunday, that leaked in my backpack directly onto my right headphone earpiece. Stubbornly refusing not to listen to my audiobook this morning, a ritual that helps me forget the chaos of morning traffic and avoid conversation with my cab driver (and subsequent marriage proposals), I now have olive oil in my right ear. Yick.

Apologies for allowing nearly a week to fly by without a blog post. I have been EXHAUSTED since Saturday's trip to Alexandria, which was one long non-stop day of strenuous tourism and socializing from beginning to end. Also, the guy who works next to me has some kind of cold and I think my immune system is spending a lot of energy fighting it off because no matter how much sleep I get, I want more. Unusually, I have also been busy at work, drafting a grant proposal for the Australian equivalent of USAID (appropriately called AUSAID) to fund some human rights educational courses, publication of a couple books, and an ongoing series of Youth Forums for past participants in CIHRS courses to come together and network, and another proposal for the US Institute of Peace for a course on youth advocacy and democratic participation through social media and an accompanying film series. The deadlines sprang up out of nowhere so I went from having nothing to do at work to having a TON to do in very little time.

I will no doubt be more exhausted after this weekend's upcoming trip to St. Catherine's (site of the famous burning bush), Mt. Sinai, and Dahab. I leave Thursday evening straight after work. We drive all night, then climb Mt. Sinai in the dark (and this is a real, hardscrabble hike up a real, hardscrabble mountain, not some casual tourist stroll) in time to catch Friday's sunrise from the summit, then spend all day hanging out in Dahab (no doubt sweaty and dirty from climbing up and down a mountain and marveling at a not-currently-burning bush). We spend what will no doubt me a long, uncomfortable night in a backpacker's hostel (which I once would have been okay with but am now too old and cranky to endure without whining), then spend all day Saturday driving back to Cairo just in time to go to crash for a few hours and go stand in line to get my visa renewed the next morning, or rather, the entire next day if I've learned anything about Egyptian bureaucratic efficiency.

The good news is that after last week's visit by the plumber (the bolt connecting the input hose to the water heater tank exploaded, creating a spraying leak that necessitated turning the entire water main off whenever we weren't using the bathroom and the showerhead fit the water input hose so badly it forced all the water back down the outside of the hose such that we had to hold the middle of the hose to our heads to rinse the shampoo from our hair) and yesterday's visit by the maid and doorman (whose combined efforts changed the single lightbulb in my room, which had been out for three days), we now have a functional shower and light in every room of the apartment. These simple things will make it much easier to function next week when I will most certainly be too tired to think straight.

I close with two comments on recent entertainment news:

First, I saw GI Joe a few days ago and I think that if movies like this could win Oscars, then the sound guys should definitely be up for a sound mixing or sound editing award. Sound mixing at least. I've never heard so many unique kinds of explosions!

Secondly, I am THRILLED that Roman Polanski has been arrested and now faces extradition for the rape charges pending against him for decades. Shame on Whoopi Goldberg for saying it wasn't "rape-rape" because the girl and her mother knew of his reputation with the ladies and went to meet him at Jack Nicholson's home anyway. And shame on the many of Mr. Polanski's colleagues in the film industry for implying that just because he is an artist he should not face trial for his actions. Shame on his friends for calling it "a little mistake 32 years ago" and "an arbitrary arrest." It is irrelevant that the victim has forgiven him and does not want a trial. I'm glad she's received the therapy she's needed and has moved on but this has no bearing on the fact that he broke the law. The math here isn't hard: sex with a drugged, drunk, semi-conscious thirteen year old girl = all kinds of nasty = ILLEGAL= trial. Moreover, jumping bail + fleeing the jurisdiction + avoiding an arrest warrant by hiding out in a foreign country for decades = even more kinds of criminal = trial. I will be really disappointed if the State Department steps in and invalidates the extradition warrant here and I'm even a little disgusted they've agreed to review the case.

Okay, the IT guy is doing his best Jimmy Fallon impression instructing me that I am to save my files to the public server rather than to my desktop. He is doing everything except the eye-rolling "MOOOVE!" so I have to transfer my files before I annoy him further.

Best to everyone!

Sarene, you are already missed!

I am having a rough morning. On the one hand, now that Ramadan, and the feast holiday Eid that celebrates the end of the month of Ramadan have concluded, everyone is back in the office, laughing, chatting, and drinking tea and Nescafe. On the other hand, I found out that a close, longtime friend of my mom’s died yesterday. We had known she was sick only a short while so the end seemed to come very suddenly. She made beaded jewelry and beads, being so small, inexpensive, and easy to pack, were always something I would look for in my travels to bring home for her. I had already scouted out a couple Egyptian jewelry shops.

I wish I could be home to give my mom a hug.

I also have a miserable headache from breathing in God-knows-what the last two days. It was just me in the closed office with two smokers yesterday, then last night my roommate caught a hoard of ants mounting a guerilla attack on her cereal box, freaked out, and sprayed a noxious cloud of ant poison around the kitchen floor without any warning (not like I could have run for my gas mask or oxygen tank if I’d known what she was going to do, but I could have opened a few windows). The smell of poison (which at least now I know what poison smells like – bonus!) still lingered this morning, along with the early morning smell of pollution rising from the street 8 stories below my apartment. I think I have developed smoker’s lung in 2 weeks.

My supervisor, Mark, came in today with fire-engine red eyes. He and his wife have adopted a second street kitten that he might be allergic to. Yesterday he wore his glasses but he thought he was better and came in with his contacts today so now that his eyes are burning, he doesn’t have the glasses here to switch to. So basically both of us are cranky and in pain. Going to be an awesome day.

A Morning of Sloth and Filth, An Afternoon of Personal Betterment

The day did not start with a bang. I blinked awake in the bright, BRIGHT morning sunlight (I swear, Egypt is closer to the sun than any place I've ever lived before. Dawn crashes through the window like car headlights an inch from your eyes and the light only gets brighter from there. I ususally sleep with a thick navy scarf over my eyes but it apparently slipped off around 9 and I couldn't get back to sleep.

Today was the third day of a four day weekend celebrating the end of the month of Ramadan and I felt, pathetically, like 9 am was just too early to wake up during a long weekend. So I tried for at least a half hour to get back to sleep, without success, and finally gave up, brushed my teeth and climbed back in bed to read the mystery novel I started yesterday. I then ate breakfast and lay on the couch for three hours watching the news, then went back to reading. Fell asleep again around noon, woke up around 2, and proceeded to watch another 2 hours of news.

At this point, I was overwhelmed by my own ridiculous amount of sloth and the continuing grossness of my surroundings. The material covering our livingroom furniture is necessary, since the furniture dates at least from the '60's and belonged previously to smokers. But the material has never been washed either, which, in addition to the ants in the kitchen and the smudges on the walls grosses me out way more than the dirty floors did when I first movied in.

So, driven by the filth I'd wallowed in all morning, and my total lack of physical activity since I've moved into my new apartment, I rallied, tore the offending material off the couch (it was glued in place) for a good washing, did some yoga on the now-pristine floors of my bedroom, showered for the first time of the day (under the still-broken showerhead), and capped off the productive three hours of my day with Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Still one of my favorite shows ever. Right up there with The West Wing.

I've slipped back into my TV watching but I have big plans for the evening: although I have not left the apartment ALL DAY LONG, I hereby pledge I WILL pluck my eyebrows before I go to bed!

Happy International Talk Like A Pirate Day – Insert Obligatory “Arrrrr” Here Matey

I’ve let a week slip between blog posts and have received some well-deserved crap about it from some of you. Apologies! Moving into my new apartment has proven difficult, expensive, and sometimes dirty work and internet and free time have only rarely intersected.

First things first. Jose Hernandez:

For those of you who missed the story several minutes ago on CNN International, let me update you on this amazing bio. From the age of 7, Jose Hernandez went to work with his parents as a migrant farmworker harvesting fruit and vegetables in the fields of Stockton, California. His parents wanted him and his brother and sisters to learn the value of hard work. Now, at 41, he has realized his dream of becoming an astronaut and created some recent controversy by giving an interview from space to a Spanish-language TV station in which he mentioned his support of immigration reform. NASA actually backed him stating that although his opinions are his own, he has every right to express them. So cool.

As you may be able to tell, I have committed to some hardcore relaxing this weekend. I am staying home in the air conditioning during the day and making brief expeditions to explore my new neighborhood once it cools off in the evening. I have watched two hours of Al Jazeera and one of CNN International but I may give the TV a rest (so hard when I have access to satellite for the first time in years!) to go try to wash the footprints off my bedroom wall.

Which brings me to the apartment. My new roommate is a very sweet Mexican girl named Marisol. Between Marisol getting sick for a couple weeks, traveling for a week, her roommate moving out, and the maid going MIA during the month of Ramadan (which, thank God, ends this weekend), the apartment has not been cleaned over a month. I spent yesterday catching up as best I could, with extensive floor cleaning, bathroom scrubbing and ant-poisoning in the kitchen. I spent three hours in full on Melanie mode (for those of you who do not know my friend Melanie, Mel is to bleach what King Midas was to gold) and still barely made a dent. We still need visits by a plumber, electrician, and the very much missed maid to bring the place up to speed but I can walk down the hall and back without shoes on now (not recreationally but at least in case of fire or something).

Once the apartment returns to liveable condition, it will be suitable for guests. I have a large bedroom and even have an extra mattress and box-spring so if anyone has always wanted to travel to Egypt and has just been waiting for a friend with a free and convenient place to stay, give me a holler.

I close with some random suggestions to certain parties based on my experiences in Egypt thus far.

Dear Egypt,

Consider decreasing the circumference of your toilet paper rolls and INCREASING the amount of toilet paper on each role. There is no reason to waste cardboard on HUGE toilet paper rolls to give structure to like a meter of the paper itself. If you’re already spinning toilet paper onto the roll, why not just keep spinning another few second and put a health amount of TP onto every roll. It would be weird not to have to buy toilet paper every other day, I know, but I swear you’d get used to it.

Dear Egyptian Taxi Drivers,

I’m not sure where this crazy rumor started, but American women do not fall in love and proposed marriage and immediate immigration to America in the space of a single taxi ride. This is the case even when the driver assures his passenger that he does not already have a wife in America. It is true even when the driver offers to overcharge his passenger by only five pounds instead of by ten pounds. It is the case even when the driver adjusts the rearview mirror to properly and repeatedly stare at his passenger. It is true even when the driver gives his passenger his phone number and promises to come at her beck and call to repeat the whole irritating, harassing procedure. Want to marry an American? Try to be a friend first. This is accomplished through ordinary, non-creepy conversation, not by simply declaring that you are friends, loudly and aggressively. And work on those pick-up lines. Shouting “I no have wife in America” .2 seconds after meeting me doesn’t exactly make me go weak in the knees, you know?

The smell of burning trash? No! The smell of adventure!

I got the job! I am now a Program Development Coordinator at the Cairo Institute for Human Rights Studies. Making a wopping $640 a month. Which is about twice what Egyptian teachers make but not quite what I had asked for so my fingers are crossed the Executive Committee approves a raise for me next year.

And I’ve found an apartment. With a Mexican woman named Marisol who works for an Expedia-like travel company. It is in Zamalek, one of the nicest neighborhoods in Cairo, filled with foreigners, little shops and even bars, but a bit of a walk to my office.

So I am rapidly progressing toward a normal existence. So now if I can only MOVE INTO the apartment, and OUT of my freaking hotel, I will be set.

I did move into a new desk today, instead of sharing the table in the library with the other interns, but whereas the interns were adorable chatty 20-year-olds, and the library was bright and thoroughly air-conditioned, I now share an office with two smokers and an ancient, sputtering air conditioner that rivals the Model T for functionality. I need to think of a tactful way to wear my swine-flu-esque air-filtering facemasks to work or else leave the room whenever either of the two light-up…which is about every half hour.

In other news, I went to the pyramids yesterday. It is true that the Sphinx seems smaller in person, but it is no less amazing. There is something really calming about its posture and expression, like a cat sunning itself. And boy was it sunning itself yesterday! Temperature was easily 100 and although Angelica and I went around 8:30 am and only stayed until noon I swear we both had mild heat exhaustion when we got back home and we were basically useless the whole rest of the day.

Oddly, three different men trying to sell things to the foreigners stumbling around in the sand of the Giza plateau, upon learning we were American, shouted “Welcome to Alaska!” An ironic joke?

The entire taxi ride back was filled with the smell of burning trash along the Nile. I realized that I kind of like the smell of burning trash. When I was a kid, I had two babysitters who lived way out of town, out in the juniper and tumbleweeds, where burn barrells were common. It was what building forts and jumping irrigation ditches smelled like.

I am very nervous about staying in Egypt for the semi-long term, especially on such a low salary but I am excited to finally be doing human rights work and to be learning the development side of things. Hopefully that experience, plus the time to work on my Arabic, will position me for one day paying down my loans.

Off to read my second Grisham book in 2 days. Missing the law, I guess.

Carnies in the living room...Almost

I have been checking out apartments on Craigslist…yes, Cairo has a thriving Craigslist community…because the school semester is starting here next week (i.e. Sunday, which is the Muslim Monday) so many of the apartments are getting snatched up quickly. And, let’s face it, I cannot stand living in a hotel much longer. I hate the impermanence of not knowing what is going to happen next week, much less next month. I can’t even buy normal sized shampoo because only the travel size will fit back in my suitcase if I need to pack up and leave soon.

Which I think I may not have to do, as I got unofficial word from my supervisor today that I got the program development officer job at the human rights NGO where I am currently interning. I still have not had an official offer and if the salary is too low, I may have to turn it down.

On the off chance that I do officially get offered this job, I went to see a potential apartment a couple days ago. I liked it well enough. It was clean, with a huge main room (most apartments here are built for several families so the living rooms contain at least two full sets of furniture, dividing the room into two sections. There was AC, satellite TV, wireless internet, and a bowab, or doorman, for security and quick fixes when things break down in the middle of the night (kind of like a "super").

The one drawback to the place is that my potential roommates were EXTREMELY weird looking. I mean really, really funny looking. One girl was very thin, and short, maybe like 5'3" with stringy red-orange hair and a hunchback that I didn’t notice but that Angelica, my friend who came with me to help me find the place, says was pretty obvious. The other girl had absolutely no facial features except slightly buggy eyes. She had no chin and all her other features are so flat as to be invisible. She looks almost exactly like one of those round little stress dolls that you squeeze and their eyes and ears pop out...only without the ears that pop out. But you know how those are faces that don't really look like faces? She was like that only with a Tinkerbelle blonde haircut.

Unfortunately, or, maybe fortunately, a girl came by to look at their place yesterday and wanted it on the spot so I missed out. Honestly, I am a little relieved. It would be a lot of pressure to be the hot roommate!

After seeing the place, I rewarded Angelica for coming with me by going with her to a casino in a fancy schmancy hotel nearby. All the machines are American and both the machines and the table games take only American dollars. They serve alcoholic drinks and there are some big money players there with slicked back oiled down hair who smoke like chimneys. Angelica, who is from New Jersey and plays at Atlantic City with her family all the time, lost $60 at the slot machines in less than an hour, and then made it all back plus about $20 at roulette and blackjack over the next two hours. I sipped my gin and tonic and earned my keep by holding on to her last $100 bill (so she'd forget about it in case she lost everything she'd at least walk out of there with $100) and reminding her to STAY ON 16!!!

Last night, Angelica and I went to see Transformers 2. It was actually pretty awesome, with great action and special effects. I was a little distracted by this article that I read about how Megan Fox has a slight deformity of her thumbs so that they are very, very short and the top knuckle is very wide and round with a very short, wide nail. Unsurprisingly, with all the rapidly folding and unfolding cars and exploding pyramids (yes, much of the movie takes place in Egypt), the mysterious thumbs get absolutely no screen time.

All right, it is time for the hideously melodramatic Arab soap opera with English subtitles they play every night for Ramadan. As always, I will keep you all posted on the job and apartment situation as I learn more.

Dear Wikipedia: do you come in audiobook form?

Okay, so the interview could have gone better.

Don’t get me wrong, I KILLED in the handshake and introductions section… it was when we segwayed into the “do you know anything relevant” section that things took a downward turn.

I pumped up all my program development and management experience from the projects I ran during law school, my grant-writing and fundraising experience from the condom casino (without actually mentioning the condom casino by name, of course), my writing and editing work for the int’l law journal, etc. They were nodding along. I felt pretty good.

And then they asked, “how long have you been in Egypt?” Um…. Okay, so this is my fourth day.

“What do you know about human rights in the Arab region?” they asked. Well, now that isn’t fair. Even if I knew everything there was to know about human rights in the Arab region, how does one go about answering that question?! So I sort of meandered around being familiar with the situation in Iraq through my work on contractors, having attended school in Yemen, etc.

Not good enough. “If we were to ask you to write a proposal for a project including several activities aimed at supporting the freedom of association in Egypt, and you were to sit down to begin your research on the issue, what would you do?”

Is there an intelligent way to say “I would type “Egypt” into Wikipedia”??

So conversation sort of ground to a halt around there. There was a little more chatting, an uncomfortable moment discussing salary (why does nobody believe that “I’m flexible” really means that I am flexible?!) and then the old “we’ll let you know soon.” But since I was told this morning that they would see me “soon,” and didn’t have my interview until 2:00, I’m not sure when I will find out if I have the job or not.

Intro to Cairo

First, a note about the title of this blog. Although "Yomummysofat" came in a close second, I picked Misree Loves Company because of its cute pun (Misree is the Arabic word for "Egyptian") and I thought the play on "misery" was appropriate because many of the events I narrate in my letters home are about all the bad things that happen to me when I travel. I tend to be a bit of a crap magnet and those stories always turn out to be the funniest anyway.

I realize looking at my watch that I have been in Cairo less than two full days, though it already feels like I've been here for weeks. Perhaps because I have developed the following bizarre sleep schedule:

I arrived in the afternoon of the 4th, having slept for about 3 hours on the plane. I pushed myself to stay awake for the rest of that day by reading in my room and then going to a mall all evening with my new friend, Angelica. I went to bed around midnight, slept like a freaking corpse for two hours and then snapped awake at 2:30 a.m. I stayed awake for about seven hours, ate breakfast, then finally fell back to sleep around 9:30. I then proceeded to sleep the ENTIRE DAY of the 5th. I woke up at noon when the maid came to clean my hotel room just long enough to tell her to come back tomorrow (which I cleverly described in Arabic as "the day which is not today"), then crashed again until 5pm. This obviously wrought havoc on last night's sleep as well, which also ended at 2:30 a.m., resumed at 6:30 a.m., and was rudely interrupted by my alarm at 9:30.

I blame the very tall Egyptian-American jerk who sat in my row on the plane. We both had aisle seats with 2 empty seats between us and agreed to split the middle row, each taking 1 extra seat. But of course he pushed his size 14 foot into my space within ten minutes of lying down (he was like 6'3", how did he think he could sleep lying down in 2 seats anyway?). At 5'2", I actually can fit lying down in two seats, but not without nudging uncomfortably against his massive foot so after tossing and turning uncomfortably for three hours in a semi-sitting position, I lay down on the floor. Where he stepped on me. To his credit, he then apologized. Then stepped on me again an hour later.

I was most concerned about covering the distance from the door of the plane to the door of my hotel without being robbed or kidnapped. This small victory I did accomplish but it took about three times longer than it should have (an hour and a half for a 30 minute taxi ride) because my driver and I could NOT find my hotel to save our lives. We passed the same shops, the same hotels, the same stretch of the Nile something like NINE times before we finally found a ten year old boy who had heard of the street we were looking for. I totally could have adopted that boy.

My first "day" of work was today, though I was only there for about 45 minutes. My "boss" is a researcher around my age with excellent English and American slang named Dina. I wasn't there ten minutes before she suggested I apply for a paid position in the fundraising department. Within fifteen minutes, she'd arranged for a formal interview for me this week. So we'll see how that goes.

Tonight, another walk along the Nile with Angelica (we're both trying to stay in shape the cheap way, since a gym membership at the nearby Hyatt Hotel costs $5000 per year, yes, I said FIVE THOUSAND DOLLARS PER YEAR. However, the cheap way also involves near constant sexual harassment (the dopey kind, not the threatening kind) by every Egyptian boy out on the prowl along the riverfront. Can't wait.