Technical Difficulties

Nothing works in this country. Correction, nothing works exactly as it is supposed to. Elevators, for example. None of them have internal doors so you see every floor as it passes and if you lean over far enough you can see through the crack between the elevator floor and where the door ought to be you can see all the way to the ground floor. The one in my building only stops on odd numbered floors. The one in my building at work can only be called to go up, which means at the end of the day when all you want to do is go DOWN to the street to go home, you have to go up to the seventeenth floor first, then head back past the tenth, where I work, and finally down to street level. The one in my friend’s building rests inside a shaft of heavy wire like if chickenwire were used to make prisons. The cage door on her floor is so heavy, I actually couldn’t open it for a minute the other day and had to call her from about five feet from her door to announce “I’m stuck in your elevator.” Neither of us was much surprised.

Another example: my entire office is moving to new digs downtown. A whole new address so all the shelves, doors, etc. CIHRS has added to its current office over the last few years needed to be disassembled, transported about 10 minutes away, and put up in the new office. Same with internet, phones, furniture, etc. An American office would simply move stuff a little at a time starting with the non-essentials like storage cabinets, the shelving and contents of the library, etc. Then either a moving crew would be hired over the weekend or staff would be enlisted to transport all the essentials and set up the office in time for the new workweek. Not in Egypt.

I am now in my second day of “working from home” because even though the move supposedly started after work on Thursday, there are currently no computers, phones, office furniture, or internet in the new office. They are not in the old office either, which begs the question of where exactly in the time-space continuum these items ended up. Unfortunately, my entire job depends on me being able to surf the internet for new grant opportunities and access web-based applications for the projects I’m already working on. And I don’t have internet at home, so this “working from home” thing has turned in to two days of me reading novels. Which is great for my mind but kind of tough on the neck and shoulders since I am famous in my family for my awkward reading posture.

Worried I might read myself into a migraine, I took a field trip from my apartment and bought some internet time at Cilantro, the Cairo equivalent of Starbucks. Actually, Starbucks, I suppose, is the Cairo equivalent of Starbucks, since they do exist here, but Cilantro is more common, even though their iced mochas are a little more watery and made w/ lower quality chocolate.

My roommate and I joke that we are WAY more tired than we should be at the end of a normal workday because just getting through eight hours and the trip to work and home requires so much more mental and physical energy in Cairo than it would take in our home countries. Cobblestones missing from sidewalks and curbs that actually seem to rise to meet the street, sometimes almost two feet high demand that we constantly watch our feet or risk a bad fall. Unfortunately, omnipresent young Egyptian men known for near-constant sexual harassment also require us to watch the street at least twenty feet ahead to avoid coming within arm’s reach of anyone who looks a little too smug or eager to see us. The safest bet is actually to walk in the street, though this means that every car will honk at you as it passes by, either to tell you it is there, in the case of private cars, or to ask if you want a ride, in the case of taxis, which account for about 80% of vehicles. So between all this honking, close driving and narrowly-missed vehicular collisions, watching the feet with one eye and assessing threats in the street ahead with the other, turns a normal day into a mental marathon.

Rather than coming home to the relaxing, spotless, cozy, air-conditioned palace that we deserve, we have had constant problems with the plumbing, electricity, and landline (which we need to get internet in the apartment). The plumbing is finally fixed except a few wayward drops in the bathroom and the fact that we have to crank the cold water handle in the kitchen about twenty turns before the water EXPLODES out of the faucet with frightening force that rebounds and splatters everywhere before finally running smoothly. We’ve decided to postpone the electrician until we both get paid at the end of the month, which means that for the next two weeks we have only a red plastic flower-shaped nightlight as the sole source of illumination in the kitchen and I need to stand on a chair to reach up and PRESS my tube-shaped fluorescent bulb into the wall socket above my door until it flickers on (about 20 seconds) each time I want to turn on the light. Now, I just don’t turn it on during the day. Still not sure what is wrong with the land line, but once we finally get it operable, to get internet, we need to rent a router from the GOVERNMENT, turn in copies of our passports to get SECURITY CLEARANCE and permission to have the internet, then wait SIX WEEKS for someone to bring the router and plug it into the phone cord.

These same sorts of labyrinthine bureaucratic procedures rule everything in Egypt, with similarly spectacular results. In addition to human rights education, my NGO does projects on democracy and freedom of expression. We are specifically preparing for next year’s parliamentary election and 2011’s presidential election. Yet only ONE woman in my office of nearly 30 employees is registered to vote. Not even the director is registered. Why? Because you can only register to vote for two weeks out of the year and it requires filling out paperwork and presenting your ID for inspection at the POLICE DEPARTMENT, where they tell you several times to come back in a few days until you either get so sick of coming back that you refuse and are denied your voter ID or until you run out of time in the two week registration period, or until you miraculously are added to the voting registry.

In other news, I was asked by JURIST, the Webby award winning legal news website to write a commentary on private military and security companies and human rights violations. I finally turned it in and their editor said it didn't look like it would require much tweaking before publication. I'll let everyone know if/when it eventually makes it onto the site.

Also, in my own gloating, competitive, American way, I am proud Obama won the Nobel. Now I can say to other foreigners, "Yes, but does YOUR president have a Nobel?!" But in my Hillary-supporting heart of hearts, I am dismayed and annoyed that this award comes when he has promised everything but done nothing. Not "done very little," but actually done nothing. We are still in Iraq and Afghanistan. We still have not extended the rule of law to contractors that commit crimes abroad. We still have hundreds of thousands of immigrants without legal status. Drug companies and insurance companies are still kicking citizens around. I still can't get health insurance or a job in my own country. If they are handing out Nobels for the simple act of NOT BEING GEORGE W. BUSH, then I will take mine gift-wrapped, please.

The internet connection I purchased at my dear Cilantro is, unsurprisingly, phasing in and out so I had better post before it, like everything else in Egypt, stops working for the day. Rest assured, however, that this is not a depressed or negative post. I am taking everything in stride and all the hassle, so far, at least, for the most part rebounds right off my ironclad sense of humor.