A weekend in Cairo

Two weekends ago I took a little trip to Cairo for a change of scenery and to see friends. It still blows my mind that I went to Cairo for the weekend, and talk about it like it is nothing out of the ordinary. While I went for the weekend, it is by no means close by. It took a little over 13 hours on the train, which probably sounds long and uncomfortable, but the sleeper trains that travel over night are quite comfortable and you can get a half decent sleep while saving a lot by not flying. Dinner and breakfast are included in the ticket and the beds were comfy. All in all, a good experience.

I arrived in Cairo, known as a chaotic, dirty, polluted and crowded, and found almost none of these things. The haze I remembered was still hanging over the city, and is a little worse at this time of year when the fields nearby are being burned, but the city had a feeling of relative calm and quiet. This is the beauty of a Friday morning in Egypt before noon time prayers after which the city really comes back to life. As well, the trip on the metro after leaving the train station and the short walk to Rachel's flat was familiar, lessening the feeling of chaos I often felt in my first few weeks here. After making a tentative plan for the day Rachel and I met Reem (another colleague who lives in Cairo) for breakfast. Reem took us to a little diner where we had an 'american' breakfast...bacon and eggs with hashbrowns and toast, and free refills on the coffee. Our next stop was al-Ahzar park for a potluck picnic for Carolyn, Akino, and Rike, friends who by tomorrow morning will all have left Egypt for the foreseeable future. Round two of the goodbye gatherings happened on the rooftop terrace of a downtown hotel, after which I fell right to sleep (the sleep on the train was good, but not that good).

Saturday we mixed a little work into the weekend and went to Doweika, where a week or so of training for new staff was wrapping up, but by Sunday I was back to exploring more of the city. Carolyn, Rachel and I visited the home of two of the n

ew staff in Doweika who later took us through their neighborhood to an amazing amphitheatre church carv

ed in to the mountain. The community in the area is about 80% Coptic Christian and it is also home to a group called the

 zabaleen, the community of people known to be some of the world's best recyclers, making it their daily work to collect the garbage of the city of 20 million, bringing it back to their home where it is sorted and recycled. While they do provide an important service to the city, they are often sorting decomposing materials in or just outside of their homes and they also have to live with the smell on a daily basis. Once we finished there I left Rachel and Carolyn and took the metro to Coptic Cairo to visit 3rd and 4th century churches in old cairo. It was the most hassle free tourism I had experienced so far I Egypt where you take a set of stairs down below street level and wander narrow passage ways finding small churches around corners and in small doors in the wall.

The last stop of the day before getting to the train station for my ride back was the grocery store, supplemented by Rachel’s fridge, for things that I haven’t been able to find in Aswan. Those of you who I traveled with in South Africa will understand why peanut butter has been a highlight of the week.