degree surplus or job shortage?
Judging by the way they look or they way they speak, one would think that most taxi drivers in Cairo do not have a university education. And one would, for the most part, be right. But there is a small percentage (perhaps growing) of taxi drivers that do indeed have a university degree, some even from Cairo’s more ‘prestigious’ institutions such as Ain Shams or Cairo University.
A took a taxi ride the other day and ended up talking about my studies with the taxi driver. He said to me “I have a degree too, you know.” I was slightly baffled; why would a taxi driver need a university degree and why would someone with a university degree be driving a taxi? He had been a student at Cairo University and obtained an undergraduate degree in law (enough to work at a law office but not enough to be a lawyer). Upon graduating, he discovered that clerks in law offices make very very little, maybe 350 LE per month. He found out that taxi drivers can make more – sometimes over 500 LE a month – and so became a taxi driver. That part makes some sense to me: go for the job that pays you the most despite your previous professional preparation.
But this driver also mentioned that there are plenty of students who graduate and can not get work in law offices or hospitals because there are not enough positions available. So, they who have studied for a professional or semi-professional career are left having fairly wasted that time.
This job shortage is definitely a problem throughout Cairo. One just needs to look at a gas station to tell – they have 10 or 15 employees wandering around: one to fill the gas, one to take the money, one to put air in the tires, one to wash the windshield, and so forth. Western-style coffee shops also have an over-abundance of employees in an attempt to create more jobs. The fact that starting a small business in Egypt is absolute hell does not help the situation; instead of supporting opportunities to create more jobs, the Egyptian government very nearly suppresses them.
But – something to consider – it might be the case as well that Egyptian universities are over-producing degreed students. This is something that I think we might not be familiar with in the United States. But here in Egypt, it seem that there just are not jobs for such students. True, more doctors are needed, for example. But there are not doctor jobs available and it is not necessarily possible to create doctor jobs out of thin air. As with everything else, the Egyptian government (read: Hosni Mubarak) could not care less.
intestines and worms
Those of you who did not believe that I’ve eaten cow’s intestines, I bring you proof. Though, this time it is sheep intestines instead. Ones stuffed with green onions, cilantro, fresh cumin, tomatoes, and liver; boiled and then baked.
In the spirit of the last post, this one is again about delicious Libyan food. My aunts prepared stuffed sheep intestines and a pasta known as “worms” for lunch yesterday. Though it was delicious, I have the supicion that I’d gain weight rapidly if I lived in Libya and ate like this every day.
We dropped my father off at the airport this morning, after a week long stay at my uncle’s place. It was great to hang out with him, mostly at different street café’s and restaurants where we were able to do some good talking. Cairo is also a great place to walk (great in the sense of interesting) – if you don’t mind walking in the street because the sidewalks, well, either don’t really exist or are more like stairs – so we got some good walking in. He also got the chance to connect with some Libyans who he had not met before and see some friends from Iraq.
And most importantly, he was my Libyan dictionary. At first I had to keep demanding that he not give me English summaries of the rapid, Libyan-dialect conversations that he and my relatives were having. If he was going to explain something, I wanted it explained in Arabic. Eventually I didn’t have to remind him, but I still asked plenty of questions while I had the opportunity and learned more Libyan Arabic than I ever have at one time, I think. A full Libyan house 24/7 was a good chance for me to forget some of my unpleasant Egyptian, but I’ll probably have to revert to it when I communicate with my Egyptian friends. At least I know one Yemeni (whose language is similar to Libyan) and my uncle with whom to practice speaking pretty Arabic.
food adventures continue with libyan ‘baseen’
Hauling their heavy suitcases up the stairs to my uncle’s flat, I wondered how many clothes and things my aunts could have possibly brought for a week-long visit. Turns out their suitcases were not full of clothes but full of food from Libya!!!! Homegrown tea, olives, homemade dough and baked goods. Then my father informed me that we would be eating a Libyan specialty called baseen this afternoon. It is made of thick dough boiled in water and then stirred/churned with a paddle. Yes, like the kind that you use on a boat. You eat it with your hands and get nice and dirty, then lick your fingers to signal that you’ve finished eating from the communal bowl. Here is my aunt churning the boiled dough in the sink:
Here is the final dish, meat sauce with spices, eggs, and a semispherical loaf of the thick, moist dough:
You scoop off pieces of the dough with your hand, knead it into shape with sauce and chunks of egg and chicken, and then pop it into your mouth:
We just finished eating, had some Libyan red tea, and now everyone has crashed for the afternoon nap. I wish I could get more into this schedule and lifestyle: eat a small amount in the morning, huge lunch, afternoon nap, socializing at home until dinner in the late late PM, and then more socializing until about 5 in the morning, wait for the dawn prayer, sleep until 11 or so, and repeat. Unfortunately, my university has morning-ish classes. Ah, well. Bottom line, I’m moving to Libya as soon as possible so I can eat cool stuff like this every day
obscure jokes, arabic-lit style
At dinner Tuesday night with my father, uncle, father’s friend from Iraq, and his two sons the subject came up somehow of Arabic grammar. That is, classical Arabic grammar. Someone, I can’t remember who, had asked about subject and predicate constructions. One of the sons gave an answer, which I supported because I had learned about it. But my father shook his head. Then his friend gave an explanation, but I didn’t really catch all the Arabic. My father must not have agreed, because he launched into a lecture on the fine points of such a sentence as we had been talking about. As with any good spoken Arabic paragraph, it was accompanied by lots of hand gestures, and my father clapped his hands when he finished (with a look of “oh yeah I just owned everybody in grammar; look how educated I am”). Then uncle Muhammad says, “what, are you Sibawayh?”
That was the funniest part to me. Sibawayh was one of the first Arabic grammarians (that is, he studied the classical Arabic language and wrote a grammar of proper usage) way back in the 8th century. He wasn’t even Arab, he was a Persian who had learned Arabic. But he is pretty well-known, if you are like in the field of classical Arabic literature or something. I had read about him, but I wouldn’t have assumed that even old-generation educated Arabs like my uncle and father would know about him. I mean, I have no clue about Middle English writers, for example. But maybe Sibawayh is super famous or something. The point is, it was a delightfully erudite comment. More delightful, perhaps, is the fact that one can make an extremely obscure-knowledge joke like that and have it not be, well, obscure.
Anyways, my two aunts (well one is an aunt and one is not really related to me but comes from a family which has close ties with ours) are coming today from Libya! It’s notable that I’ve never met them before; they weren’t in Egypt when I was here as a kid. Exciting, no? But also kind of sad. They were supposed to arrive this afternoon, but we went to the airport only to find out that their flight was delayed three hours from Benghazi. Well, it does not take three hours to fly from Benghazi to Cairo….so basically the plane hadn’t left yet because it had a flat tire and they had to wait for a spare to come from Tripoli. “Libya, great country!” said my uncle. Point is, they are coming for about a week so I am really hoping for some amazing home-cooked Libyan food!!!
end-of-meal, arab pay-the-check fights
My father flew in early monday morning and uncle Muhammad and I picked him up at the airport. I had not seen him in about ten months…since last winter vacation, and he had not seen his brother for about four years. Monday night we went out to Trianon – my uncle’s second, possibly first, home – and met up with two Libyans from related families who had not met my father before. Of course, I was kind of looking forward to when the check came to see how the fight to pay for it would progress and who would end up paying. That moment is always great fun, I have to usually try rather hard to suppress a smile. It is definitely an Arab thing; everyone reaches for their wallet and swears that they will pay. But it somehow also always seems decided in advance who will pay or maybe it is just that by now I’ve developed an intuition for these things. Call it the telling-which-arab-will-pay-for-the-meal sense. That time is was Shokri, I…think.
We met with one of my father’s Iraqi friends for dinner on Tuesday night. Nice big stationary restaurant boat in the Nile – the food was good but overpriced as such places are wont to be. I was hoping there would be a nice big fight for the check, but my father’s friend handled it without much ado. Maybe it was pre-arranged that he would or something.
But, luckily for me, we went out to dinner with him again last night. We sat for several hours talking (mostly listening on my part) and then someone signaled for the check. My father’s friend stood up like he was going to go over and pay it but my father pulled him down. ‘I got it,’ said my dad. ‘No I swear I will pay,’ said his friend. ‘Actually people, everyone calm down because I’m paying,’ said my uncle Muhammad. ‘Whoa,’ said his friend ‘no you’re not because actually I’m paying, imagine that.’ ‘Very funny, people,’ said my father, ‘we all know it is I who will pay.’ ‘Nope, I shall please refrain from paying,’ said his friend. And with that he walked over and paid. Like I said, I had to try to suppress a big smile, I wouldn’t think it is very appropriate to smile when these things happen, although Arabs joke about it all the time.
We also went, on Monday, to visit the famous and major tourist trap market of Khan Khalili. It was a completely different feeling to be walking around with other Arabs than to be walking around with non-Arabs. No harassment, people give you correct directions when you ask, and shop owners let you look around their shop without major pressure to “buy, is so good, is sixty pounds only, what is too expensive, what you like pay, is so good, is real leather, look i not burn with lighter, look so good, go on go on.” We were completely left alone, and that never (add your preferred emphasis here) has that happened to me at the Khan.
a reference to america in an egyptian colloquialism
Yesterday I got together again with my friend Yehya to do a little bit of studying (actually more like language-practicing than formal studying). We met at his favorite local cafe on Sudan street separating Mohandeseen and Imbaba initially, but ended up meeting with another Egyptian and another American and having a group session, which was pretty productive. Yehya complimented my progress in Arabic and insisted he wasn’t flattering me. I hope he wasn’t because I hope I’m actually making progress. Later I asked him how my accent was…he responded that after another month or two it will be quite good, but for the moment I speak clearly and no one has a problem understanding me. That was nice to hear, but even better: he said that I don’t have an American accent. al-hamdu l-ilah, that is some of the best news ever. Maybe not that big of a deal to some, but I personally don’t like being associated with America and typecast as American here unless I choose to reveal that information about myself. Egyptian strangers act in a completely different way with you when they know (or think they know) that you’re American. So, if when I speak Arabic I’m not immediately identified as American, that is a really good thing.
Anyways, I learned something funny yesterday. Turns out there is a popular slang saying here, said to joke around with people about their origins: “what, do you live in Chicago or something?” Yehya had asked me if Chicago is really the worst and most dangerous city in America, and I told him no, not really, but asked why he wanted to know. Then he told me the saying and explained that people refer to Chicago slangily as a way of saying ‘really dangerous and ghetto’ . Seems strange at first when one thinks about Cairo itself, but then, almost any Egyptian will tell you that they always feel safe walking the streets.
Interesting update: I was at al-Azhar park last night, which is really nice but overlooks some poor, ghetto areas in the southeast of Cairo, and Yehya was telling me how Bataniyya (one of the poor areas) was like Chicago. The security guard standing nearby, who has doubtless never been to America, immediately understood, laughed, and agreed.
library of endowment manuscripts in sayyida zaynab
Today, after having planned and set in motion the planning process over two months ago, something which I’ve eagerly been anticipating occurred. I joined AUC library’s director of Arabic books at the Library of Endowment Manuscripts in a section of Cairo called Sayyida Zaynab. He is a consultant there and used his position and contacts to get me permission to receive training from the library’s staff in the preservation, digitization, and cataloguing of Arabic-Islamic manuscripts in the library’s collection (which numbers about 12,000 in total).
From Sadat station in Tahrir Square, I took the Metro two stops down to the Sayyida Zaynab station and walked about 10 minutes to the very old mosque which the library is attached to. Today was mostly for me to meet the appropriate people and get an overview tour of the collection and the various departments. One of the directors of the preservation department showed me how the library makes its own natural, high-quality paper with which they back damaged manuscripts. They then will put the manuscript into a bound-book form with a locally-made leather binding. Then, a custom-fit box of acid-free cardboard (also made locally in Sayyida Zaynab) houses the finished manuscript-turned-book. The boxes are color-coded by type of manuscript (Qu’ran, Hadith, science, etc); there are a few red boxes, which hold magic/alchemical manuscripts (which are not allowed to be copied, only looked at, because such magical diagrams are prohibited in Islam and the library doesn’t want that knowledge to spread. I found that quite interesting, but the library is a library concerned mostly with manuscripts of religious endowments). That was a very rough and quick description, but I didn’t get a detailed description of the process myself (since today was introduction only and I’ll be working in it myself eventually) and I really hope they will allow me to take some photos so I can document the process and the really cool rooms filled with manuscripts on shelves, in boxes, people working on manuscripts and the like!!!
Everyone I met was incredibly friendly and made a point of informing me several times that this would be a very good opportunity for some Arabic lessons. I agree, in fact they don’t speak English but for a few words so I will have a lot of practice opportunity. I’m looking forward to starting my training with much excitement!
Then, on the walk back from the library to the Metro station I noticed an alley which was not filled with trash and cats, as most small alleys are in Cairo. It was filled with wood shelves of hot, fresh bread!! I hadn’t brought my camera, either!! So I walked over and there turned out to be two bakeries filled with amazing looking baked goods and workers taking hot bread out of stone ovens with wood paddles and refilling the shelves as customers bought bags of bread. So, of course, loving fresh food and being in Egypt (home of fresh street food if there ever was one), I bought a bag of “aish baladi,” literally “local bread.” Soft, still slightly warm, delicious: I filled half of one with some cheese and corned beef and melted it in the oven.
scramble from the sidewalk, the government is coming
Yesterday I saw my friend Yehya for the first time in over a year. We went to my favorite restaurant for some lunch together (where I had a great chicken, mango, and apple salad) and talked about a lot of different things, as we had a bunch of catching-up to do. He has been studying “legal translation” at AUC and hopes to become both a lawyer and court/legal translator. He only started learning English for the first time two years ago, but when I met him last summer he was already quite quite good. Anyways, after lunch we took a cab over to the Imbaba/Mohandeseen border (which is Sudan Street) and went to his favorite coffee-shop for some drinks. I had been there a couple times with him last summer; I may have written in a blog entry about this fabulous fruit and yogurt concoction which he introduced me to there. They also have the best Nescafé-and-milk that I’ve ever tasted. And again yesterday he introduced me to another exciting drink: Helba Muhallab. It’s made from helba seeds, hot water, milk, and cream. Absolutely amazing!!!
So we were sitting just outside the café (called “ahwa” in egyptian arabic) like people sit at most ahwas, when Yehya said to me “ok, let’s move and sit inside.” Sure, that was fine with me. But then I noticed the café workers rushing outside and pulling in all the chairs and small tables as all the customers moved inside. Why was everyone moving inside? I asked. Apparently it is illegal to have chairs and tables on the sidewalk (which is rather wide) because it impedes people walking on the sidewalk and forces them to walk in the street. It’s an example of one of those Egyptian laws which makes no sense and is completely ignored: Egyptians walk everywhere anyway – sidewalk, street, median, between cars, what have you. So the government comes up with some complicated, side-stepping law like removing tables from the sidewalk. Instead, they should just say walking the street is illegal. But it wouldn’t matter either way, I guess. Anyways, the café’s lookout man down the street had sent word that a local policeman was walking that way and they quickly rearranged their stuff. About 15 minutes later, their other lookout man sent the all-clear and the tables and chairs moved back out to the sidewalk. Business as usual.
This picture below isn’t of the police in the post but of an Egyptian mukhabarat (secret police) officer near Khan Khalili. Note the real gun sticking out of his pants!
tea, butcher paper, and fiteer
Practically every day that I don’t have to go to campus, I take refuge from the afternoon heat, browse the internet, eat delicious fiteer, drink lemon&mint juice, and draw on the paper-covered tables at Arabika café near my flat.
It is a cozy, colorfully painted, dimly lit café hidden on the second story of a high-rise in Zamalek. They provide crayons, free internet, comfortable chairs, and powerful air-conditioning. And they have fiteer – thin pastry dough shaped like a pizza stuffed with fruit, meat, greens, or cream – as well as various amazing wraps, soups, and juice combinations (like apple-ginger-orange). The first time I ate fiteer was here last summer, and now coming here and working my way through every item on their menu is a habit. Lots of foreigners study here as well, so coming here is usually a good way to meet people. (Unfortunately, they recently got supplanted as my number one fiteer supplier by a shop which delivers cheaper fiteer – the other day I got a basboosa-filled fiteer for only LE 10. Basboosa is an Egyptian dessert made of semolina, honey, and sometimes pistachios). And I don’t even need to bring a notepad, because I just make lists and notes on the paper with which they cover the tables!
Today I woke up, had some ful and eggs with my flatmate, read some of the 3rd volume of Marshall Hodgon’s The Venture of Islam as a way of preparing for my “Gunpowder Empires” course which I am not doing any assigned reading for, did a few exercises in Coptic (the current lesson covers the simple past tense, which in Coptic is a really cool and logical system), and then headed over to Arabika, where I am now.
I just ordered some hot tea and tomato soup, completely defeating the point of coming here for a/c. There are only three or so people that work here (it is a small place), and I think they all know me by now because they smile really big when I walk up the steps and say good afternoon. I don’t talk to them much, though, so I don’t know any of their names. I met the owner the other day, though. He’s Australian-Egyptian, and explained a bit about how hard it is to start a small business here (mostly because the government taxes the crap out of them).
Time to put some sugar in my tea like a real Egyptian and get to work on grad school stuff.
a typical day at gezira club water polo
I live about a 20 minute walk from the Gezira Sporting Club on the island of Zamalek in Cairo. Leaving my flat about a half hour before practice starts usually allows me enough time to get to the club and hassle with the guards for entrance. Since I’m a foreigner and have not quite officially joined the water polo team, I don’t have a membership card. And the Gezira Club is extremely strict about letting in non-members. Obtaining membership is difficult enough….according to the Egyptians I know, the club only opens up to membership applications every few years and the applications themselves are ridiculously and prohibitively expensive. On the order of a few hundred thousand egyptian pounds for a family lifetime membership, apparently. Foreigners can get memberships for a year at the cost of about $1000. But I am not planning on getting one while I can practice for free. Anyways, most of the guards know me by now…I tell them I’m the American playing water polo and they let me in.
After getting to the pool, I sit around with the other guys who have arrived and wait for the rest of the team. When someone arrives, they typically shake hands with everyone else who is there. So I go through several rounds of handshaking, and kiss both cheeks of those players that I’m closest to. Here in Egypt, guys do the cheek-kissing greeting with other guys, and girls with girls. It is also customary to shake the coach’s hands when they arrive – a level of formality between players and coaches that doesn’t really exist in the States.
Then we go change into workout clothes. Changing is a really hilarious and rowdy process. One might imagine that athletic teams’ locker rooms are rowdy, but I’ve never seen anything like an Egyptian locker room. The older players chase around the younger players, eventually catching them and getting in a few slaps before returning to changing. There is more yelling and chatter than I would have thought possible (and the joking and comments continue all throughout practice, I mean, Egyptians talk non-stop even when they have something to do). All that is fine with me, it is more practice for my Arabic. Before successfully getting on his speedo, any younger player has probably been wrestled to the ground, whipped with a towel, and had a yelling back-and-forth. But all in good fun and no one ever seems to get upset at anything.
We alternate weight-lifting and running/dry land exercise each day for about an hour and a half. After finishing, we change into swim wear and do on-deck stretching with elastic bands, then hop in the pool for about an hour (3500 or so meters) or swim sets. Since it is preseason, we haven’t been playing too much water polo; most practices, we only get in 30 minutes or less of passing and ball drills. Then it’s over, usually about three and a half hours each evening. I walk back, too, usually in shorts and a t-shirt. Sometimes I feel inappropriate walking around in shorts even though Egyptians do it, too. It only seems people look at me more when I wear shorts.
trip to alexandria during eid vacation: a journey prompted by promise of fresh seafood
The fasting month of Ramadan having ended Tuesday past, we have a week long holiday from university for the Eid al-Fitr or End-of-the-Fast Festival. Most students travel around the region during this time: I know students going to Kenya, Cyprus, Greece, and various Middle Eastern countries. I decided to stay in Egypt and go north to Alexandria with some friends.
We left Wednesday afternoon from Cairo’s Ramses Station, taking the train to Alexandria’s Masr Station. Before this, I had not taken the train in Egypt – I had rather low expectations, keeping in mind the general quality of technology in Egypt. But the train was rather nice and air-conditioned, if somewhat slow. I’ll write more about trains here in another post. I had been to Alexandria when I was little, but I remember about nothing of the actual city so I was looking forward to some good wandering about. And some good eating…Alexandria has plenty of fresh fish and seafood restaurants and several friends had given me restaurant recommendations. We picked a cheap, $16 a night hotel, walked there from the train station, dropped our stuff off and headed back out to find some food. First meal: hummus, tahina, bread, fetta (rice with sauces and bread pieces), and kofta at an Egyptian restaurant. We then spent some time walking up and down the Corniche, the wide boulevard which winds along Alexandria’s shore for about 15 kilometers. We grabbed some ice cream at a shop by the 500-year old Citadel which overlooks the harbor (filled with colorful boats) and sat for some tea in a makeshift café on top of the cement blocks which make up the harbor’s breakwater. Then we hired a garishly decorated horse carriage to take us back to the hotel. Second meal: midnight koshari at a lively joint across from our hotel.
We started off Thursday with some delicious chocolate pancakes at a patisserie in Sa’ad Zaghloul square. We then headed east towards the new Biblioteca Alexandrina, a UNESCO-sponsored attempt to recreate the legendary Library of Alexandria. One can look across the harbor from “downtown” Alexandria and see the huge, discus-shaped glass building from across the water, so walking over there was simply a matter of following the Corniche towards it. Unfortunately, the library was closed because of Eid so we could not go inside. We had set aside time for exploring it, so what to do with our extra afternoon hours? Buy some sweet basboosa and konafa, hire a boat, and float in and around the harbor for an hour!
Having developed an appetite, it was on to a restaurant called Fish Market for some highly-anticipated fish! Third meal: fresh grilled Grey Mullet, Sea Bass, Crab, and Grouper with steaming-hot bread, eaten overlooking the Alexandria harbor while the sun set. Stuffed, we headed back to the breakwater by the citadel for some tea before going back down the Corniche for juice.
Friday morning I set off to search for my father’s school and the street where my grandfather used to have a villa. I took the tram east nearly as far as it could go (about 40 minutes). The only city in Africa (I believe) with a working tram system, Alexandria’s four lines run more or less parallel to each other and quite slowly but are convenient and fun to ride. Finding Victoria College was not too difficult, since it is a well-known secondary school, but it was closed and though I tried really hard to get in, the doormen wouldn’t let me. I explained how my father had attended it, but I came away only with a picture of the gate. A bit harder was trying to find where the villa used to be. It was torn down after being sold several years ago and I do not have very distinct memories to guide me. My father gave me directions but I still had a difficult time figuring out exactly where the house would have stood. I took a bunch of pictures of the street, so I will get him to look at them. Too bad the house is not still there….it would have been a nice place to stay!
I took the tram back to Sa’ad Zaghloul square to meet the others, and we went to the renowned ful joint Muhammed Ahmed for some “ful iskandrani”, shakshouka (eggs, tomatoes, peppers, and beans), and falafel. The place was packed and the service extremely fast. We gorged ourselves, managed to pack in some mahalabiyya (milk and rice pudding), and strolled down the Corniche to digest. Then it was the late afternoon train back to Cairo. I’ve several days remaining in the vacation and a lengthy to-do list of reading, writing, graduate school miscellany, and the like. My camera filled up about halfway through the trip, so I’m waiting for pictures from my friends and I will finally post an album!
egypt’s train network
4 October 2008 at 2:56 am (asides and comments)
The trip to Alexandria was the first time I had taken the train here in Egypt. My expectations were based on what I had seen of Egypt’s only other public transportation system, the Cairo Metro, and so my expectations were rather low. The Metro isn’t bad by any means….it is just that there are only two lines that serve the city, it is slow, and the cars are not in great condition. I had also seen some of the super-slow, cheap, non-air-conditioned trains which don’t even have windows coming out of the station. I was really hoping that we wouldn’t be riding one of those, but I really had no idea since we had paid only 19 pounds (about $3) for our tickets.
Turns out that our train was in fairly decent condition on the inside, although extremely dirty on the outside, and was air conditioned. It was painfully slow, however. After having ridden the TGV in France, anything that travels less than 180 miles per hour just is not fast enough. But at about 1/40th of the price, I suppose I couldn’t be too displeased. There are 4 types of trains which run to Alex, differentiated by, it seems, their speed and cleanliness. The slowest have no a/c, no windows, and take about 4 hours while the fastest are quite comfortable, a/c’ed, and take about 2.5 hours.
It was the French who set in place Cairo’s Metro system, and by the look of the train and station, I think that they might have been involved in the train network as well. Cairo’s Ramses station is built almost in the exact manner as the train stations of Paris, except for the fact that it probably hasn’t been cleaned or repaired since it was built. That is characteristic of a lot of foreign-built large technologies here in Egypt: they are imported or built by foreign companies, and then left to deteriorate. This happens, I think, either because the Egyptian company in control either does not have the money or knowledge to keep their technology in good condition. The two examples I can think of are the train and subway. But it is also that way with several old buildings.
Anyways, the train is extremely convenient and much more comfortable than a bus. In the future, it would be nice to see high-speed trains running from Cairo to Alexandria, Aswan, Luxor, and the Sinai. As a matter of fact, it would be nice to see a high-speed train network running throughout the Middle East and North Africa. Unfortunately, the priorities of most of this region’s governments do not seem to be anything that could benefit the public.
Permalink Leave a Comment