Field Report 5:
Cairo, Egypt - June 7, 1998

Cyber Cafe above the American Research Center in Egypt, 4:40 PM

By Chris Kostman

 
Hello friends!

I know, I just emailed you all last night, but I now have my own account with Internet Egypt, so I can get online straight from my own computer. All I need is a direct phone line and a US-style phone jack. That's pretty easy to accomplish from Cairo, but it remains to be seen how I'll do it from down on the Red Sea. I'll know, and so will you, once I get there on Tuesday or thereabouts.

As you know, I was up til past midnight at the Cyber Cafe at the Nile Hilton. Then it was back to the Garden City Motel where many of the team is staying, but I was only able to sleep til 4am. Between jet lag, heat, street noise, and a hard bed, not to mention a few pesky mosquitoes and a racing mind, I couldn't sleep too much. So I flipped on the light and read The Horse Whisperer until 7am. Then shower, breakfast, and over to the American Express to get cash. I even found an ATM where I could get cash from my Wells Fargo checking, but I opted to do the Amex thing instead for financial reasons. By 930am I was off in two taxis with Cheryl, plus six of my INA-Egypt teammates.

After ditching the taxis at the foot of the Citadel near the Sultan Hassan Mosque, we hoofed it around the Medieval Quarter, which has over 1,000 buildings of 500 to 1,000 years in age. We wandered through quiet, peaceful mosques and then later the antithesis of that: the Khan el-Khalili Bazaar. I didn't buy anything, though, as I pretty much have one, two, or three of everything they sell from my previous trips here. Back then in 81 and 84, haggling for the right knick-knack was a fun thing to do and I saw most of the country through the viewpiece of my camera. Nowadays I don't want stuff, and only just the right and necessary, useful photos, but I strive to soak up the experience, sights, and sounds (though I'll pass on many of the smells). I'm just here to be.

Misc. notes on Cairo and Egypt: It's a country of 60 million with 17 million of those in Cairo; scarily, half of the country's population is under the age of 15.

Snapshots: Taxis everywhere. Women carrying giant loads balanced on their heads. Men with machine guns in all sorts of uniforms on most every block or intersection. Such an outrageously rich and famous past provides innumerable tourist trinkets of every imaginable material and then some: gold, silver, copper, bronze, ivory, camel bone, alabaster, limestone, papyrus, butterfly wing, silk, cotton, and much, much more. No more beggars on the street since they've been shooed away in a tourist-friendly clean-up attempt. Also, buildings, parks, squares and more have been or are being renovated, cleaned, modernized. Building and "development" everywhere, including a metro that apparently serves many people well and cheaply and cleanly. McDonald's, Pizza Hut, too.

As I sit here in the Cyber Cafe, the stereo is playing the funky, rap-ish re-make version of "Staying Alive" by Electronic Pleasure that I have on one of my spin tapes. Small world.

All for now. My next report should be from the Red Sea, "inshah'allah (god willing).

Best regards from here,
Chris Kostman
 

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