Extraneous matters

Garbage. Every city has it. Every city manages it differently. The vibe I am getting these days (and the stench) is that Cairo decides it won't manage it in the summer. The "Department of Public Works" diverts their attention to far more urgent matters, yes, concerns which require immediate commitment of manpower and funding. Like, say painting the lamp posts black once a week. That is correct. Three men, usually different men, re-paint lamp posts at least once a week with a fresh coat of black paint. I have seen them in action. In addition to the fact speckles of fresh paint reside beneath the posts, and the posts are often wet. It's yet another ingenious solution of Mubarak's for unemployment. Anyhow, bags of garbage, and garbage sans the 33 gallon plastic shroud litter the streets...food wrappers, cans, paper, and yes, even dead cats much to my dismay and disgust last week. Raw and heady aromas dominate in the late afternoon as the thermostat rises. Urban living au naturel. Life in Cairo is a perpetual series of hyper-stimulating forces which have the senses on the highest level of alertness. Garbage is certainly a factor. Gritty and human smells. And strangely, that's part of why I LOVE this city so much. It's humanity. This is a city of 22 million people (the left column summary is incorrect, that's an old estimate). It's ALWAYS alive. Never calm. Certainly never boring. It's bursting with life.

On other tales of pollution and environmental hypocrisies...entire books could be written of toilet paper in Cairo. You see, bathrooms don't provide toilet paper typically. Therefore, five year old boys scramble and duck through rush hour traffic to sell it to you. This was not initially evident to myself or others. I don't know, maybe toilet paper costs too much for places to provide. Cut corners where possible. I sense it is not a measure of conservation. There's this one boy, Goha, he's seven, not a word of English, who had been trying to sell me a package of tissue/toilet paper a couple weeks ago. Rule of thumb is you shouldn't respond to beggars or kids here. That's what everyone tells you. But that evening, I was particulary sympathetic or irritable maybe, and was walking casually back to the dorm, it's maybe 10pm. He's persistent. He snatches at my hand, motions to his mouth. I can't proceed walking. I continue eye contact. I have a vague plan. I see a convenient store ahead. I take him there and let him pick out a drink and something to eat. His eyes assume a new dimension wide and stunned. He grabs a Sprite and a bag of these bagel chip things. Of course there are no price tags on anything here, so I just slip the owner 7 LE hoping that covers it. I figured out he lives in a little blanketed hut under the entrance to a mosque down the street. I see him nearly every night. He often doesn't see me, he's distracted. If I can I dodge into a market and buy him a Mars bar, or his Sprite and bagels chips deal. He's always thrilled. I think I should be buying him sandwiches and fruit, he doesn't look any worse for the wear with the Mars bars, his Body Mass Index still about six points too low.

I bore witness to quite the "situation" this afternoon outside one of the AUC's entrances near the bookstore. A situation I believe I may have been the only bystander to have appreciated as the commotion which transpired allowed the outside world to infiltrate the urban oasis which is the AUC, frustrating my colleagues. Let's see, it's around 3pm, 110 degrees, and there are perhaps two dozen random, unidentified Egyptian men attempting to unload two large, white pick-ups of big, apparently heavy cardboard boxes. They're obstructing the entrance, and the pick-ups are parked atop the curb, blocking street and pedestrian traffic. As I approach, what do I see on the sides of these boxes? "Wiley Publishers...Thomson Learning...Reed Elsevier...O'Reilly...Cambridge Press...Pearson Learning..." all your goonie publishing friends my darling publisher readers, of which there are a few here. And their shipments are being HURLED off of these Ford trucks onto the curbs of Cairo, some of the boxes torn open and packaging in shambles. The walkways into the university are lined with boxes as well as the street. The "movers or shippers" are screaming as torrents of sweat pour down their backs and faces, grunts heard as they attempt to dislodge larger boxes from the truck at once. And we are departing campus through a labyrinth of a publishers worst nightmare. What would Mr. O'Reilly think if he saw this? Rhyme or reason needn't prevail on the streets of Cairo, but I should think publishing houses wouldn't have shipments distributed in this fashion. But this was how the delivery was being performed. There are better ways, like, I don't know, FedEx, DHL, Airborne anyone? Maybe I'm crazy, but you don't want your books strewn on the street. And maybe only you publishers appreciated that too.