I'm Still in Egypt

After living in Cairo for ten months, I find myself getting used to all of the things around me that once seemed so odd. The once insane traffic is normal. The women walking around in berkas (fully veiled clothes), the men walking around in galabayas. It's all so normal to me now. I leave my house and pass a man selling fresh vegetables that are on a cart pulled by his horse. Around the corner I swerve around a donkey and his cart as I make my way towards the walkover. Nothing out of the ordinary here. But every once in a while things happen that cause me to realize that I'm still in a foreign country. Yesterday I noticed a couple of those instances.

The first one occurred while I was getting my bike fixed (yes, AGAIN). As I walked up to the bike shop, I noticed a car alarm going off. Nothing too odd there. But as I sat at the shop for the next hour, waiting for my bike to get fixed, the car alarm continued blaring... For the entire hour! Nobody did anything about it. Nobody seemed to mention it. They just kept going on about their day. I rode by there later on in the day and the alarm was still going. I imagined what the situation would be like if this happened in a more Western nation:
After 5 minutes people would be cursing to themselves about it, and grumbling about it to the people around them. After 10 minutes a crowd would gather around the vehicle and people would try to figure out how to disconnect the alarm. After 15 minutes, someone would come along with a sledge hammer and beat the tar out of the car until it stopped. Or at the very least they would shatter a window, pop the hood, and disconnect the alarm. A tow truck might even turn up and impound it as well.

Not in Egypt, though. People just went about their business as the streets echoed with this car alarm. The best part about this whole ordeal was the car that was equipped with the alarm. It was a beat up white car probably from the early 80's. The alarm probably cost more than the car.

Now, onto the second incident that reminded me I'm still in Egypt. As I rode home for dinner I made my way to the walkover that leads over the Metro tracks. I made it half way up the walkover and then got caught up in a huge traffic jam of people, motorbikes, and donkeys. In fact, it was a donkey that caused this whole mess. The donkey was so overloaded with watermelons that when it came down the ramp it collapsed under the weight of the load and refused to move. There I was, on a walkover packed with Egyptians and delivery bikes, and before me lay an injured donkey blocking the way. It's situations like these that remind me I'm still in Egypt and not just another copy of a Western country. I think I'll miss all these crazy adventures when I return to Canada.