Five things I adore about Cairo

Cairo is a dirty, hot and crowded city, and how I love to whinge about it! but I should make it very clear that it's my choice to live here and there are a lot of things I absolutely adore about the place... It's not all bad.
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Things I adore about Cairo:

The city never sleeps
It really doesn't. I know its a cliche, used to describe most capitals in the world, but here in Cairo its 100% true. I can get what ever I need any time, night or day.
The Egyptians are night people (they have to be, as its too damn hot to achieve much during the day) they live by night and rise late in the day. Especially so during Ramadan. This suits me just fine, it means if I want to get my hair or nails done at 11pm its no problem. If I decide I want to fill the fridge at 2am, no problem. If I run out of shampoo at 4am?? You guessed it, no problem.
Shops and restaurants are open almost all night long, most of them also offering home delivery so I don't even have to leave the comfort of my own home. It's possible to take a felucca in the early hours of the morning and if I felt like drinking a beer after my ride I could just stop by at the Odean palace which is open 24 hours. If I decide to partake in the smoking of a shisha I can pick from one of the hundreds of street cafes that are open until dawn.
This is perfect for me, as I am by nature a late person. The only thing stopping me from becoming a full time vampire is my job, which requires me to be there at 8 am (horrifying early by Cairo standards, but run by Germans, what shall I say?). Right now it's the school holidays so I am in vampire mode and I am dreading adjusting myself back to "normal" when school begins next week.

Home delivery 
I touched on this one above but I have to mention it again, the Egyptians have taken home delivery to the next level. You can get everything and I mean everything delivered to your door.
Feeling sick? Call the pharmacy. Thirsty? The juice stand is just a phone call away. Hungry? Take your choice from a seemingly endless list of restaurants. No more credit on your phone? Out of eggs? Call the local shop.... it goes on and on and its great for lazy days off. Just make sure you dress appropriately to answer the door. We are in Egypt remember.

The Metro
The metro is cheap, one journey  in any direction costs 1le. They have a special carriage reserved for the womenfolk and it runs regularly (every 10 minutes or so). There is nothing more I can say, its fantastic! We can't manage a service like that in the UK and Germany is not much better. All hail the Cairo Metro.
"Mubarak's gift to the people" ;)

Baladi bars
These are cheap and cheerful places, found scattered around Cairo's downtown area. The toilets normally resemble the one featured in "Trainspotting". Aside from that they offer a great atmosphere, wonderful company and cheap, sometimes cold beer.
A few weeks ago I was in one of these places with some friends and yes the toilet was super, super yucky but the highlight of the night was a cucumber eating cat. The thing must have waffled down about three cucumbers. Crazy

Juice stands
To anyone who hasn't tried Egyptian juice: COME TO CAIRO RIGHT NOW AND TRY SOME!!!
I have never seen such an array of different juices in my life, these people will squeeze juice out of anything, and its wonderful. Date juice, prune juice, kiwi, rocket, mango, lemon, orange, watermelon, pear, peach , mulberry, apple, you name it, they juice it. You can either stand and drink it from a big pint glass, or you can have it brought to you in your car. When you have finished the juice, just reach out of the window and place the glass on top of your car to signal you are done and want to pay. If you want a take away they will put it in a plastic bag for you and stick in a straw.
Just make sure you pick a stand that is fairly busy though, then there is more chance of it being fresh.

Toilet humour

Toilets are different the world over and are often a hot topic with expats. In Germany, it was the "poo shelf" that got us talking. I mean do Germans really inspect their poo? Where do they learn what to look for? How do they know the difference between a good poo and a bad poo? All I can say is that they are a pain to keep clean and it's sometimes very hard to flush the offending items away.
When I moved to Egypt, I dont really know what I expected of the toilets, maybe a hole in the ground? what I didnt expect was for my whole bathroom experience (like the way I put that?) to be revolutionized! You see the Egyptians have a little pipe that sprays out water and cleans you when you are done, eliminating the need for toilet paper and cleaning you very well indeed. I love it!! in fact if it wasnt for my room mates I would give up on toilet paper all together. Its now at the point where I get quite panicked if I dont find the knob at the side of the toilet to control the water. The Hyatt doesnt have it in their toilets and I failed to locate it in the Ace club in Maadi. The problem is once you have started with it, it's very, very hard to feel hygenic when not using one. I have to say I am also very proud of myself for adapting to the "Egyptian way". I just need to stop hovering and actually put my arse on the seat to complete the full transformation.
The water pressure can sometimes cause problems, in some places the pressure is so high that the water sprays out of the toilet, soaking the bathroom floor. Tip if the floor is wet when you enter the bathroom then turn the knob with caution. A problem we have at home is the temprature of the water. For some reason the water gets very hot very fast and sends you jumping off the toilet at a speed equivilant to a pilot being ejected from an ejecter seat. One great complait I have about my bathroom experiences here in Cairo isnt related to the toilet itself but the people banging on the door. I dont know if men have the same problem but every time I go to a public bathroom here the story is always the same. I get myself comfortable for a few seconds and then the banging starts, sometimes accompanied by a "hallo, hallo". What is that? Do they not see the toilet is locked therefore engaged? Do they want me to let them in so they can join me? What do they want exactly? And really its every single time. I learned to cherish those few seconds of peace at the beginning. I also have become very stubborn with them and make a point of taking longer once the knocking starts, its not hard to do as I normally have a book stashed in my bag. When I open the door they always see my glare and say sorry. So if you have to say sorry then you know what your doing is not right. So why do it? Why, Why, Why, Why, Why?. I asked a girl at work about this a while back. She was doing the same and actually asked "who is inside?" When I got out I asked her why? She told me she was checking the toilet was busy.... Er the door being locked isn't a clue? I actually said this to her and then she said she wanted to check I was ok and not dead or something. Yeah that's my Cairo toilet humour

Garbage city

I want to tell you all about a place I had heard about for a long time, but actually went there for the first time the day before yesterday.

Let me begin by telling you about a group of people known as the Zabbaleen (garbage collectors). They originally moved to Cairo 60 or so years ago from villages in the south of Egypt (known here as Upper Egypt). They were farmers by trade, Coptic christian pig farmers. They settled at the bottom of mount Mokattam with their pigs, and began scavenging for scraps to feed their animals. In doing so they realized that they could collect people's rubbish and feed the pigs from scraps found in that; they could also sort the rubbish and find small treasures. This grew and grew and nowadays they pick up 1 third of Cairo's trash, recycling a whopping 85% of it. The men go from door to door in the massive city collecting bags of rubbish, while the women and children stay in Mokkatam sorting through the trash by hand. The plastics, paper, tin and aluminum are separated and the organic waste is fed to the goats. (The Egyptian government culled all of the pigs in the swine flu hysteria).
I don't want it to seem like some dream place where the environment is the main concern. Its not! these people live in a slum, its a slum they have built from nothing and they have  managed to upgraded their metal huts to brick apartments, which I think says an awful lot about their durability. But the place is awful and very, very poor. If you have ever walked past a small heap of rubbish rotting in the Cairo heat, then you can try to imagine how rancid the place smells. They are literally living on a rubbish dump. The name garbage city is by no means an exaggeration this is a city full of garbage.
Things are improving slowly, a school has been built and at least some of the children are getting an education of some sorts. Big companies like Proctor and Gamble have made deals with the garbage collectors. They pay them a small amount to take back used shampoo and beauty product bottles. This helps the Zabbaleen a great deal and aids the big companies in fighting the trade in forged products.
The women and children sort through the trash with their bare hands (they might miss something precious if they wore gloves) so the rate of disease is high. Hepatitis is a real problem. After saying that, they have reached the level where almost all of their children are immunized with the standard Egyptian immunizations and the rate of death in infants has been greatly reduced.
I admire these people, they are moving on up, they live in terrible conditions but have progressed from shacks to brick homes, with water and electricity many of them have TVs in their homes and a few have even made it to university and are serving the community as lawyers and doctors. One guy, a second generation plastics recycler has even managed to build a villa and garden at the entrance to the slum.
There are levels within the slum, the bottom level being the people who don't have a truck to collect trash. They are the most poverty stricken and scavenge what they can from other peoples collections.
Then come the collectors, as I mentioned before the men of the family have their area of Cairo to collect from. In some areas they receive a small payment for collecting the trash, in other more affluent areas they actually have to pay for the pleasure. The rubbish is then taken home (actually home, many sort it in their houses) and sorted by the women and children. The sorted trash is then sold to people on the next level "the recyclers" the poorest of them being the paper recyclers. It then moves up and up to metal and plastics and finally to the middle men, who export the end products to companies all over the world. They basically run garbage city.
what amazes me more then anything is how adaptable these people are, they can make something from nothing. 30 families have now installed solar  panels on their roofs and heat their water through solar energy. They use the organic waste, that was once fed to the pigs in compost heaps, this is turned into methane gas and they cook with it on their stoves.
In the west we recycle 40 percent of our trash they manage 85!
Apart from this they are doing a great job for the city without actually being paid for it. A few years back the government wanted to put a stop to this for hygiene reasons and they contracted a few European waste management companies to take over the work. The Zabbaleen were at this time very unsure of their future. Thankfully the companies failed. The skips placed on street corners were stolen and the residents of Cairo, who were so used to having their trash collected at the door, couldn't adapt to taking it down the street. The Zabbaleen kept making their collections and slowly but surly the European companies disappeared.
Granted they concentrate on more affluent areas of the city. But they really are the only effective method of waste disposal in a city of millions.
The cull of the pigs affected them greatly. They discovered that goats simply don't eat enough organic waste. The street cats have started to eat the waste instead of rats, leading to a bit of a rodent problem in the slum. There are tales of rats so big they have actually killed cats.
I am looking into volunteering there right now and just felt the need to share the plight of these people.

Here comes ramadan

Ramadan started last week and as my Mum was over I was dying for us to get a beer before it actually started and I wanted for her to experience a night spent in Horreya.

We got there and I was relieved to see the the masses of empty beer bottles on the tables. Yayyyy a night of Stella and dingy surroundings. I signaled to the guy that we wanted two Stella's and he informed me there was no beer left! A smug looking guy popped his head around the corner and informed me that he had taken the last beer. What did he want for that? A medal? I stopped myself from scratching this smug gits eyes out and returned to the table to work out a plan B. After a few phone calls it was decided that we would meet in the Odean palace roof top bar, who apparently served beer through Ramadan (even though it hadn't even started)

We hopped in a taxi and headed in that direction, it took a while to get through the packed streets of Cairo's downtown but we finally reached our destination and after the mandatory fight with the taxi driver about the fair we found ourselves to be sitting on the cool roof of the Odean Palace. We met a friend there and started sipping our refreshing Stella's.
Another friend called and informed us there was a concert at the citadel and if we wanted to go he would pick us up. Happy to show my Mum this experience (and to get into the citadel for free) I jumped at the chance. So along he came to pick us up. Now this friend is an Egyptian, but he is a Christian Egyptian and I was pretty shocked to see what happened next.....
I still had about half of my beer left when he arrived and I cant really drink beer as fast as I could 5 years ago, so I asked him to help me with it. The waiter was leaning on a nearby table watching us like a hawk and the second my friend put the glass to his lips, the waiter ran over like he had a rocket up his ass.
He told him to stop drinking immediately unless he had a passport to prove he wasn't Egyptian. My friend protested that Ramadan hadn't even started yet and even if it had he was a Christian. It didn't matter the law is the law, Egyptians are not allowed to consume alcohol during Ramadan. Regardless of their religion.
My question is and really I dont want to get too political or critical of the system. But shouldn't the choice to refrain from alcohol be the persons own? Surly it is your own relationship with god that matters?
Anyway I was a little unnerved by this but then we went on to have a great night at the citadel so I suppose that's all that matters.... oh and we got in for free ;)