Ninga Triangle

You probably knew at some time or another I was going to mention the vastly differing standards of socially acceptable dress between the sexes here. I thought I would wait a bit. Get to hear what the locals have to say and not knock it till I have tried it.

So the deal is: most women cover from ankle to wrist to face. There are many women who do not wear head scarves they tend mostly to be in the under 25 age-bracket. Some women show elbows and necklines but generally not shoulders and I have never seen a strappy top or mid-drift on a local woman. Some women wear a hijab the piece of fabric across the face or the full burka where only the eyes show (glasses are worn over the top which gives a kind of puppetly look), sometimes eyes are hidden behind mesh or layers of fabric. Men also are pretty covered wearing trousers, but they are a lot more lax in their displays of elbows and necks. A few older children wear the headscarves, and most small children (under 10) wear what a westerner would in the same weather (strappy tops, shorts, short skirts etc).

The shop windows, however, are filled with displays of summer dresses, tiny tops, bikinis and other public-wear that would never be seen in Egyptian public. I wonder if there is a lot of pride in what people wear at home around their family. Posters, billboards, advertisements almost never show headscarves and music videos are comparatively provocative. So really this is just like western culture but on different levels and to different extremes. Generally we don't dress like mannequins in shop windows or like models on billboards, and we most likely wouldn't wear on the street what we see in music videos.



The bit that I find odd is that children have a lot of freedom, in the way they dress and how they behave in public. Children are out everywhere and at all times. They are with their parents at the cinema at 1am, hanging out in the mall at 2am, in the shisha (flavored smoke) bar at 3am. Was in a restaurant with a live singer several wee girls (about 5, 6, 8 years old) were up dancing. This was so normal until I looked around the restaurant giving the activity a totally different context. The children's adult family was covered in fabric, sitting still and reserved. By comparison the kids were strangely provocative and free.

So I decided to try it. I bought a full burka including gloves and walked a block in it. It is made up of separate components. When I bought the hijab the sales girl showed me how to put it on (it is tied around the forhead and four layers of fabric hang across the face, layers are peeled back over the head giving greater visabity from both sides each time). She asked me why I wanted it. I felt saying 'It'll be great for costume parties.' Would be inappropriate, so I said 'protection'. This entered into a discussion of religion. No religion is not comprehended easily, questioned, then judged as either a shame or shameful I couldn't tell. She also was helpful enough to let me know that in some western countries the women are not virgins and this is because they do not protect themselves from men the way they should and this is wrong.

So last night I dressed from head to toe in my new black burka and walked a block. The first 100 meters I felt obvious, the weight and blinkered vision reminded me of wearing a bunny costume. I felt like everyone was looking at me. Then I felt a bit guilty, what if someone noticed that I hadn't tied my scarf right, or my gestures, mannerisms or posture betray me, or someone bumped into me, the moment I open my mouth it would be obvious I am a tourist. Then I got used to it. I was invisible; I walked right up close through groups of men who did not glance away from their conversations. I felt like I was wearing an invisibility cloak. I could have been anyone so was treated like no-one.

Of course that it also displays the gender imbalance. Women feel safer and more comfortable when covered. The responsibility for safety is on the potential victim. It is viewed that men are not in control of their actions if provoked by a woman.

The problem I personally had with the dress is that it is cruel in this heat.

Technical Difficulties

A couple of months ago my email provider lycos did a huge overhall of their website and since then my ability to send emails sucessfully is sporadic at best. I'm also dealing with the frustration of regular power failures... especially while attempting to compose CVs and cover letters.

Missy: I have sent you a few emails but they have bounced back, Thank you for the youtube footage links. The stage seems worlds away.

The Swiss Connection: Hi guys, you have possably recieved a few emails that have a subject title but no text. I don't know what is up with that. Anyway, I have left Scotland and am traveling again. I can recieve emails fine... just can't seem to always be able to send them.

Dave: write.

In other news my left nipple peircing caught on my braclett in the shower and I half ripped it out of my body. I have reluctantly made the very adult decision and removed it completly. if I had left it in it would have healed squint. yes, it did hurt. I feel unbalanced but I'll get over it, I just have to convince myself that my right side will not decend faster than my left owing to the additional weight. I'll probably get my left re-pierced when it is healed. I've noticed things seem to take a lot longer to heal here, it could be a while.

Ramadam has started. no eating, drinking, smoking etc during daylight hours. So for me that means no eatiing or drinking in public in daylight hours. In some places dedicated muslims won't swallow their own spit during the fasting month. I'm glad Egypt is not one of those places

Baldy

By the way, I have re-shaved my head. This time a number 1 (3mm). Which means for the first time in my life the hair on my head is shorter than all other body hair. It it practical, comfortable, easy to clean and cool. It highlights a few scars including a pretty impressive one at the back of my head that I have been told about (something to do with a swing hitting me when I was a toddler) and of course that weird bump that grows out of the top right of my head. The latter shines out like an emerging horn, but not a cool sharp devils horn, more of a hairy rhino horn. I still don't look tough, I will never look hard, even without hair.

Pyramids and punctuation

So I got two things totally wrong in my last post. Firstly, it did not rain. In an apartment above the door of the internet cafe someone was emptying out the contents of their air conditioning system. So the welcome cool air that blew gently through the door was being cooled by the collected humidity of what should have been a sweaty Egyptian flat. eugh.

The other thing I was sadly wrong about was that my feet had adjusted to my flip-flops (jandles/sandals/thongs). On the walk home I became aware of a blister, that swelled, burst and promptly filled with street grime, so I took off the offending footwear and walked the rest of the way home barefoot. This is not a task to be done flippantly given the immense array of items that can be lurking in Egyptian street garbage... From chicken bones, to hyperdermic needles, to cat poo.

We re now teaching actual real live students, I started out with a 12 year old boy, tutoring one to one. The kid could spell and calculate better and faster than myself. I first established his interests by playing a few games, we played hangman I wrote for him "Mission Impossible" which was his favorite move... I noticed later that I had spelt it "Mission Impossable" darn, on his turn he put down a hell of a lot of spaces, I figured it was a sentence without gaps, it was actually "supercalifragilisticexpialidocious" spelt right. In the classes I'm doing ok, I have a good rapport, control, timing, etc but suck arse at grammar spelling and pronunciation.... Which is sadly what I should be teaching.

Emily has gone, she was a really balancing component to our group dynamic. So she is missed. Emily studied linguistics so wasn't getting that much out of the course and has gone to stay with friends in Cairo. I spent a lot of time with Star. She is slowly helping me with grammar (remembering the 'r' now) and spelling. She is very patient and good at explaining spelling through the origin of words.

unfortunately thing that seems to happen, expectations seem to expand size. Every famous site I have witnessed is always much smaller than anticipated. Compared to my perceptions Niagara falls were small, Stonehenge was tiny, The Mona Lisa a postage stamp, so I expected the pyramids to be smaller than expected, but I knew they were big... So they became bigger than my re-adjusted expectations but still small.



I walked around the great pyramid in 10 minutes and that is with stopping every couple of minutes to decline offers of t-shirts, photographs, camel rides and general niceties. I don't seem to get that same size mis-calculation with land, Swiss Alps were awe inspiring and The Australian desert was stunning. I'm looking forward to getting out into the Egyptian desert next week.... I haven't seen a sky full of stars in far to many years.

The course ends in a week. I have no idea where I'm going to go, or what I'm going to do. Soon a lack of funds will inspire me to act. it always seems to be a good motivator.

Introducing the people I share my day to day life with

So I live travel, hang out and attend classes with 8 others. Together we seem to make a diverse group who really look out for each other and get on. There are tiny glimmers of tension each now and again but nothing that I would concider sparks. We are all adjusting to a new culture, new lifestyle, and a pretty intensive course. We do this individualy as well as in the group. This of course as offers the pleasure of discovery, frustration, amusement, joy and stress in a supportave atmosphere, with people who can relate like no others. The flip side of that is you have no right to whinge about a stomach upset when you know everyone around you has recently sufffered, is suffering or will soon suffer from the same complaint.

Introductions to the people that surround me:

Sabrina: English, my flatmate, loves cats, an expert on all films and Arabic music.

Star: Dutch, multilingustic, brilliant on all things grammatical as well as being insightful.

Emily: American, always laughing, one of the most sweet natured people ever.

Jackie: American, seems to have an independance and and knowledge behond her 22 years.

Max: English, he has a quick dry wit and sharpness that is both endearing and disarming.

Ryan: Candian, basketball player, for some reason no one can get his name right.

Jake: American, vibrant and funny, will become one of those teachers all kids love.

Zi'ema: English, delightful and warm, always chatty and friendly even when sick.



The boys: Max, Ryan, Jake
The girls: Myself, Sabrina, Jackie, Zi'ema,
Emily and Star is behind Emily.

Sabrina and Zi'ema both have other languages from home, Star is the only non native English speaker but has better pronounciation and gramma than (I would say) all of us. Ryan and Jackie speak French, Jake and Emily speak Spanish, Max and I are monolinguistic. Jackie and Jake took Arabic classes before getting here. Jake and Star studied comparitive religions. So between us we do quite well.

It's raining outside, This is the first time I have seen rain here, the cool air blowing through the door of the internet cafe (crowded with kids loudly playing computer games) is a welcome change. When I walked here from the school I enjoyed the wind blowing though my wet armpit hairs (under my long black shapeless top of course)... until it became obivious that very same wind was blowing grit and street grime into my eyes. My feet have adjusted to wearing flip-flops but I haven't yet adjusted to my feet being so manky. While I am on the topic of adjustment I knew today that I had reached a certian level of cultural adaption when walking here. Two men moved in on me blocking my path, checking out my black shapeless figure and making general suggestive comments in broken English (as they do)... I expressed my disapproval with a gutteral noise followed by a fake spit to the side, becoming Egyptian. And to be honest my clothes are not really shapeless, I can dress like a rectangle or a triangle.

Tomorrow we go to Cairo for the (friday-Saturday) weekend. I'm looking forward to it, It was supposed to be a day trip, but It seems to much of a waste so we will stay in a hostel on Friday night. Next week Ramadan (the fasting month undoubtably spelt wrong) starts, The focus is not so much on the deprivation of the daylight hours but the partying and feasting throughout the night. The streets will be decorated and It sounds like a similar atmosphere to Edinburgh in August.

Toilets and Tourism

So this is the toilet in my flat. I share the two bedroom place with another student, Sabrina. The obivious things you will notice is that it is a bit grotty, The shower has no curtian and it's toilet seat is not attached. But it's not what it lacks that interests me... it's what makes it different. see the little metal disk at the back? and the thin pipe comming out to the left? that is the clean-your-butt-with-water funtion. The user simply remains seated, reaches around behind them and turns on the jet of water. all cleaning of course is done wth the left hand, that is why the left hand never goes near the mouth. and if you do make the mistake of, say, eating a piece of bread with your left hand in a restaurant, then you will be looked at like you have just eaten poo. I have not been able to use this funtion, as it doesn't work in my flat.

The day of rest here is Friday, and the day of fun is Saturday, so Friday is the Egyptian Sunday and Saturday is still Saturday but the last day of the weekend. On Thursday night (the Egyptian Friday night) some if my class and myself went out dancing, in a coffee-shop-turned-nightclub in a mall. The coffee-shop-turned-nightclub was full of teenage boys, they were lovely, to young to be threatning, and right into their dancing with coregraphed routines, breakdance moves they would teach each other, and at one point a hip-hop line dancing type thing. brilliant.

on friday all 9 of us went to the catacombs (no cameras allowed) it was a bit dull, it was kind of a 5th century BC roman mortary. No skeletons. There was a srange old man who would pop up randomly from behind pilars, or outof rooms to empart on us random facts about the catacombs... if we listened for too long he would expect a fee. Then the remains old libary, an amazing meal of seafood and onto the beach.

I grew up on an island, so I have a strong notion of what a beach is, or should be, it involves sand, bare skin, waves, not paying money and wide open spaces. My perception was a bit limited. The beach here was a clustered with unbrellas, salesmen, plastic chairs and rocks. the water was filled wth men. men who leer, stare, grap, grope and encroach. We went in fully clothed, 3 guys, 5 girls, two of us got groped, four of us got cut on the rocks and another two came out with panful looking jellyfish stings (healed with a bit of pee and some lime juice) .

Hope for a job

I know I'll find a job somewhere, but there are so many really bad jobs out there and looking is always hellish, then I was flicking through the BBC Africa site and noticed ( http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/5317034.stm ) that tattoos are becoming a craze in Benin (a small sliver of a country next to Togo, which is a a small sliver of a country next to Ghana which has really good pineapples... http://www.lonelyplanet.com/worldguide/destinations/africa ) and they do it badly, really badly, I have only tattooed fake skin and vegetables, but I did a pretty good job on a capsicum once... I see a job opportunity here... and any country that has a Voodoo Day is worth visiting in my book. I'm most likely not going to become a tattoo artist in Benin, but it is always nice to know that the the possabilitys are limitless.

I listen to an English program 'Good Morning Egypt' on my radio each morning to get the most poorly delivered news and uninteresting banter (today was a disscussion about types of chocolate... white, dark, some with nuts in it, some plain). But the news is local and the coverage of the Israli conflict differers greatly from the western perspective. What they miss I pick up on the BBC website, Steve Irwin has died and Japan has finally a male heir etc. Actually that, I guess is another job opportunity right there, an English speaking radio DJ, I could deffintally be more interesting and articulate (I speak better than I write) , but I would assume by the nature of the topics they have a goal to be as uncontroversial and inconsequential as possiable. I don't know how good I would be at that.



I'm not convinced that there is any hope for me as an English teacher... one more week of classes and we will start teacher training with real children... I wish we could start wth old people and work our way down gently.

I am adjusting to Arabic, I have learnt written numbers, and basic greetings. Would have helped If I had bought a phrase book before hand, but I'm too cheap.

The dirt, dust and grime here has become a consistant part of daily life, There is no escaping it, I just have to accept it, it's no Switzerland. I have no problems with the insects, I'm not being bitten, I have named one of our more distinctive cockroches (fluffy, as it has a permantly attached bit of fluff on one of it's legs) and the flys are minimal, only about two in each room at a time and they are the little ones. My belly is slowly getting better, but I still can't trust a fart.

Starting the TEFL course

The other students arrived a day after me. Altogether there are 9 of us: three guys, 6 girls. 1 Canadian, 1 Dutch, 3 English, 3 American and me. I'm the oldest at 30, the youngest is 22.

Before they arrived and thankfully distracted me from the musings of my own mind I was overwhelmed by fear. The sudden realization that I may hate this. I may suck at being an English teacher. You would have already noticed my own appalling spelling and gramma. I failed disminally at French and managed to live in Switzerland for two years without picking up German. Who am I to attempt to teach anyone else a language. I don't have a safety net. When I leave here I need to get work. So I was feeling the fear of the situation that I had not actually considered before. It still plays at the back of my head, but it is not a hindrance, it will be what drives me to write up a CV and get motivated to find work.

The classes have started, and they are hard work. But I'm getting it, and would say I'm about the same level as most of my class.



I'm supposed to be in class right now, but I have a belly upset that kept me up all night. I ventured out to go to school this afternoon but couldn't face the tram system knowing that I may need a toilet before my stop. So I have sought refuge in the air conditioned comfort of the internet cafe on the corner. I even managed to get on the only computer with a USB port. I think I am managing to figure out this whole up-loading photos thing finally.

actually having said that I have lost connection with my camera. So I'll have to upload an image of my toilet next time.

I keep my head covered in public. The short hair means I'm still very cool. Others in the class show their hair, as do a few Egyptian women (the minority) but having a shaved head gives me a slight look of an Israeli just out of military training. I also don't visibly show my pentagram here for the same reasons, it can be easy to mistake five points for six.

Egypt, first impressions

My first impressions of Egypt started in Greece. My flight as at 1.10am. The queue at the boarding gate was more of a scrum. I let a crumpled old lady in infront of me, an uncrumpled lady took the opportunity to push the crumpled out the way. Hmmm, we had numbered seats.

Upon arrival, well before the seat belts sign was off, or the plane stopped the same scrum formed in the asles. after a 10 min wait of pushing and jeering (I stayed in my seat) we were off the plane into the airport buses.... that took us 100m to the airport building... that very same scrum formed again this time around the passport control. every page of my passport was checked by four seperate men in different uniforms, some stamped it, some took numbers, some just looked at it and nodded. baggage collection, customs and money changing I covered 20 meters in just over one hour.

A driver took me to the accomidation by 4.30am, who had no idea of who I was and what I wanted. but I eventually got a room for the night and moved into a new room this morning. this is where I shall be for the next month.



Egypt is lovely, reminds me a lot of South Korea in bussle and grime, except more open and breezy. I went out today at lunch time, so caught all the midday prayers, men line the streets in front of loud speakers, some groups all sit, others kneel, others stand. Some preachers sing, others intone verse deeply others sound like they are commentating a horse race, they are all loud. I only understand the context. I will have to learn some Arabic to get by. In Greece everybody spoke English, and in Italy I spoke crude French with random vowels added to the ends of words.

Sadly and stupidly I am still nursing a wee broken heart at the moment so don't feel like I am truly apprecating my journey. it's about time I had my heart broken, and I know there is never a good time for it, but it really makes traveling tough. I was hoping reading a soppy English love story would give my emotions an approperate outlet, but I find it's not something easly contained. I would normally be relishing every aspect of this experience, it is what I love. I just feel my perception and humor is a tanted by my frame of mind.

I never did manage to find someone in the hostel with clippers. So I went to a hairdresser just before I left greece and got a number 3. feels great.

Athens Greece

I had three days two nights in Athens. absolultly stunning. I sought refuge in the comfort of backpacking strangers. Went to Poseion's temple, the beach, mineral springs where little black fish nip the dead skin off your legs and feet if you stay still. Also when to Delphi asked a question and stubbed my toe. The Delphi Orcacal was famous for her criptic answers that where open to interpertation.

I'm not in an overly chatty mood. the keyboard is sticky (best not speculte), the spell-check is unavalible and the USB port is a hole in the hard drive so i'll fill in the details when i add the photos.

Added the photos. (obiviously) But don't really have more to add to the post. The picture on the right is my feet (still with the chipping red remains of brulesque flaking off my toes) being nibbled at by tiny black fish. It tickled.