The Trek to Coptic Cairo

Today was my greatest adventure thus far. Heidi and I took the Metro (subway/LRT type train) up to Coptic Cairo. We went all by ourselves so we could get used to finding our way around Cairo and interacting with the culture. It was quite the enjoyable experience. First we went to the Roman towers and explored there for about an hour. It was unlike any tourist attraction in North America. Heidi and I were pretty much the only ones walking around it. Nothing was artificially lit, so it was necessary to bring a flashlight for parts of it (which we didn't have). So we stumled through a few dark passageways, and avoided the ones that had weird squeaking animal noises coming from them. There were some really neat places inside the roman towers. It wasn't too photo-worthy, though, because it was fairly dark for most of it. Just imagine exploring an abandoned castle, and that's what it was like for us. You can check out my Coptic Cairo Photo Album for pictures of most of the sights mentioned in this blog entry.

After the Roman Towers, we made our way over to the Monastery of St George and the Church of St George. I don't know who he was, but apparently he was a good guy. I think he was probably a martyr or something like that. We didn't have a tour guide, and we don't speak Arabic yet, so we only knew what our Lonely Planet guides told us about each place. They looked neat, though! After that we went into a massive graveyard area with all these really fancy graves, some of which I have in the Coptic Cairo Photo Album. Some of the graves look like fancy miniature houses or shrines or something, but they are indeed graves. Following the graveyard, we walked through a bunch of small alleyways and passageways around Old Cairo. There were a lot of annoying white tourists walking around them, so we tried to find cooler, unpopular passageways. We didn't want to be seen as the typical ignorant and annoying tourist. Some of them were wearing very revealing shorts and tank tops, which are very offensive to this culture. Both men and women are expected to wear long pants, or ankle length skirts/dresses.

Eventually we moved away from Old Cairo into the surrounding culture which was all Egyptians, and less tourist friendly. We ate "fool" at a tiny little street vendor in a small alley. Fool is similar to re-fried beans mixed with oil, garlic, and other spices. It is a paste that is often placed inside of pita-type bread, they call it "local bread" in Arabic. I'm not even going to attempt to spell the Arabic words for it. I had two of those, and it cost me only two egyptian pounds, which is about 30 cents, US. We probably could've gotten it even cheaper if we tried, but it seemed so low that we didn't bother.

Following our lunch we visited the Mosque of Amr, which is a direct decendant (which means it's been added to from the original form) of Egypt's first ever mosque, built in 641. To enter this building, we had to remove our shoes, and Heidi had to wear a green robe that they gave her. She had to cover her head and walk around looking at the ground. She said she felt a lot more comfortable doing that. We went there during one of the daily prayer times, so there were a lot of people in there, and only one other woman that we saw. I didn't want to look rude by taking pictures, even though they seemed all right with me taking my camera in, so I held it at my waist and snapped a couple photos. These are also available in the photo album. Outside of the mosque, we found an odd looking garden that was located beside a very poor area. There were lots of cats and dogs running around, and children that were begging us for money. It's pretty sad to see areas like these that reek of gargabe and sewage. One man, Ahmed, joined us as we walked through the garden. He sort of directed us as to where to go, and kept us from doing anything stupid or culturally insensitive. We gave him some baksheesh for doing that. Baksheesh is Arabic for "tip" or something like that. Everyone demands baksheesh, even when they don't do anything! Ahmed didn't even ask us for any, which is why we were happy to give him some. Everyone was always so happy to hear that we were Canadian, so they would be much nicer to us (Heidi would tell people she was Canadian because Canadians are treated much better than Americans). There were many checkpoints that we would have to walk through where armed gaurds would look through people's bags. When they saw that I was Canadian, they would flag me through without even looking in our bags. So, even though everyone makes fun of me for saying "Eh?" and "Aboot", I'm happy to be a Canadian.

After meeting Ahmed, we had a very enjoyable encounter with an Egyptian shopkeeper. (I apologize for the length of this blog, but it seems like so much happened today) As we walked by his shop, he ran out and asked me if I spoke good English (which I guess is kind of funny if you think about the grammer, but hey). I told him yes, and he begged me to come into his store to do a favor for him. I was a little reluctant because I thought it was just a ploy to get us to buy some stuff, but I'm all about going on adventures these days, so I followed him inside. He had me sit down on a stool, then he handed me a postcard and asked if I would write a letter for him. He said that he could speak 17 languages (one of them being English), but couldn't read or write those languages. He went on to tell us that his wife had a baby girl the previous night and he wanted to write to his South African friend to tell them the good news. So he dictated a short letter to me, and then signed it. After that, he made us tea and coffee (Heidi and a Turkish coffee, which is really small and potent, and I had some Egyptian tea which was also very tasty). After our tea, he excitedly told us more about his family and how happy he was to meet us. He told us that in celebration of having his baby daughter, he would allow my wife and I (Heidi is always called my wife, when asked, because women are respected when they are married) to pick out one item each, and he would sell it to us for the factory price. I thought that was clearly a ploy to get us to buy something, but I thought it would be neat to have a little keepsake to remember this man by. Eventually I picked out a cat carved out of stone. He said it was worth $20US, but because I helped him out, and he was celebrating his daughter's birth, he was going to sell it to me for 80 Egyptian Pounds. I was pretty sure that was an inflated price because I'm white or something, so I had fun bartering with him. Eventually I got him down to 10 pounds! That is less than $2US. I was pretty pleased with myself. Then he had one of his assistants take pictures of us with him. He insisted that we bring back copies of them that he could display in his house. He said that when we return, we can have lunch with him and his new family. He gave us his card and address and everything, so that was kind of neat. For the most part, he appeared to be a very genuine guy, aside from his salesman tactics. At long last we said goodbye to our friend, and carried on with our adventure.

Next up, we crossed over the Nile and visited the Nilometer. I know that sounds like something out of a comic book, but it's actually an ancient stone contraption that was used to measure the depth of the Nile. The man who was showing it to us didn't speak very much English, but from what I gather, when the river rose higher, the Pharaoh would raise taxes, and when it went down, the Pharaoh would lower taxes. All the holes in it are plugged now, so you can actually walk down these stone steps to the base of the Nilometer so you are actually standing at what would be the bottom of the Nile. It was kind of freaky walking down the steps because it was so far down, and the steps were narrow and worn and there were no railings. We made it out alive, though. After walking around this island in the Nile a bit more, we walked to the closest Metro station and headed back to our part of Cairo.

Once home, we had a family over who has a few of their children in our youth group. We ate some wonderful homemade Mexican food and played CatchPhrase. It was an all around great day. It's past midnight now, so I really need to get sleep. We're waking up early and going to the US and possibly Canadian embassy tomorrow to get our Visas (we only have 30 day tourist visas at this point). So now I must say goodnight to you.