Summer in Cairo

Image courtesy of: Egypt Travels

Sure there are pyramids, but why Egypt?

As a Masters of Development Practice candidate at the University of Minnesota, my degree requires that I complete a field practicum. For the summer 2013, I will be working with a team of four at Nahdet el Mahrousa, an Egyptian NGO. We have a vague idea that we will be working on youth labor market needs in Cairo, but we’re still not sure exactly what we will be doing for them. We plan to figure that out in the first few days of our stay. We know that we have to present the work we completed this semester, but what we are going to do after that is still undecided.

Lost in transit

Each member of our team left the States on Sunday evening on a different flight. My teammates left from Minneapolis, and I left at 10:30 p.m. from Atlanta’s new international terminal, which is very spiffy and not crowded at all. Even though we all left at different times, three of us had a layover in Amsterdam's Schiphol airport and took the KLM red-eye to Cairo together and landed at 2 a.m. Tuesday morning. If you are ever traveling internationally, I highly recommend Delta/KLM. For an average-size female, even the economy seats have adequate room. Plus, the food is the best airplane food I’ve had. I also discovered that the little bottles of wine are free when Josh pulled one out our first night in our new apartment. I had always thought people were buying them (New trick for future travels!).

We stayed our first 3 nights at the Tiba Midtown Hostel in Downtown Cairo (Wast el Balad to locals). A major selling point for this hostel was that it offered free airport pick-up, which was so helpful at 2 in the morning, and breakfast. Our first day was spent attempting to find an apartment and getting familiar with the area. We found the NM office fairly easily, but none of our apartment leads panned out. Our second day, Josh’s friend Razan, from Syria, met us at the Egyptian Museum and helped us search for an apartment.

Now where do we go?

Razan was so wonderful. She walked all around with us and talked with random strangers to find someone who knew a guy in the apartment finding business. We ended up in a small perfume shop rather quickly. We waited and had tea while the man called his connections. After an hour we started to think that his connections were probably going to prove unprofitable, so we left. However, as we walked down the street, the man and a friend of his chased us down. They explained that they would take us to the man with the key to the apartment. We followed them a few blocks to a random alley, which doesn’t sound like the best of ideas, but after only a few moments of waiting we were following the man and additional men another few blocks to a tall apartment building near Tahrir Square.

Several floors up in an old-school elevator, we came to an apartment that had become stuffy from the midday heat. It had everything we would need, but it still wasn’t really what we were looking for. There was no a/c, and there were only 2 full size beds. While one could look past the poorly kept facilities, it would be a cold day in hell before I was willing to live a hot summer in Egypt without even the option of turning on the a/c. We thanked the men and asked to see the other option they had. Once again we followed them down winding streets filled with cars, children, and food.

The One

The building was even taller than the last, and the elevator was not one I’d be sending pictures of to friends and family. Of course we stepped off on the floor with a flickering light and a suspect smell. However, it was as if the anticipation and accumulated concern was simply to make the apartment glow in comparison. The hardwood floors were surprising, the balcony kept the living room and two bedrooms cool, and the kitchen was one in which I could clearly make meals. It only took a few moments to bargain and agree that this was the apartment we needed. It was only a few blocks from our office and the Metro.