(Modern) Egyptian Society Part I

I know that I promised to discourse on my debauchery in the Cairo night, but I have decided to instead defer that post until some more research is done (this of course justifies me going out on more "fact-finding expeditions"). Rather I thought I would ramble on a bit about my impressions of Egyptian society (as in people) since I have arrived.

First, a disclaimer (a passing of the buck if you will): I am a foreigner (ana men Ganoub Afriqi), in another country, another culture and another language. Unless gifted with supernatural levels of social insight (despite my engineering education), there is no way that I would be able to begin to understand all of the exchanges that make up this (or any) society, never mind from a neutral perspective. The only assurance I can give is this: I will try my best and correct for my bias, and failing that I apologise. Wow, that was quite heavy, so enjoy the picture of the Me and the Nile. See Ma - I'm OK. The big boat on the left is a restaurant we went to on Friday(the equivalent of Sunday), for a Mashhour family lunch.

Another picture of the Nile

The Egyptian people are extremely friendly to foreigners (and each other it would seem, my Arabic is non-existent), although cynics would attribute this to the fact that tourism is one of the biggest sectors of the economy. While I do think this is a factor, from general behaviour, I suspect that Egyptian society is very courteous in nature. People great each other enthusiastically and seem to take an interest in each other's well being. Ismail and his family have been especially hospitable, insisting that my every whim is of the highest priority, but don't worry, they'll get sick of me soon enough.

A Nile barge (part of the restaurant I gathered)

There seem to be no major racial or ethnic divisions, with a sort of ethnic nationality pervading. If you asked some one, they would tell you they are Egyptian, if you asked them what they considered their race to be, they would look at you confused, and repeat that they are Egyptians, a bit more slowly. Explaining concepts like Apartheid and Affirmative Action would be pretty tough, and I have avoided the topics (I appear very unknowledgable about South African history). The only major division I have noticed is that between rich and poor, and the only determinant I have of this is type of job. I assume richer people do skilled labour like engineering and investment banking and poorer people do more menial labour - construction work, cleaning (like SA, domestic workers seem to be in evidence) and the like. Of course this is probably related to level of education. Interestingly enough English language ability often seems to reflect education, with the more well off speaking English pretty well (better than most people's Afrikaans back home). Once again I must plead insufficent data, and hopefully will be able to provide more insight into this topic later.

An Interesting Bank in Mohandiseen

Oh well, I suppose I better get back to something productive. I'm still wading through the documentation of the Motorola Dimentra System, although now I'm looking at some code (C#!) too, so there is a bit of variety, and more importantly, stuff to fiddle with. It is hard to believe I have been here a whole week!

Coming Soon: Algeizira Sports Club: How I'm keeping fit in Cairo.