Always Something New

Every day in Cairo is a little bit different. There are new adventures to be had, a new bawab guarding the entrance to our apartment building (a bawab is like a doorman or bellhop, and they chill on the ground floor and open doors for us), new bug bites to be futilely ignored, new types of street food to be attempted, and new places to explore.

When Fernando and I go to Ardilewa (or, Ard al-Liwa), our new adventure is the trip over. The metro ride is pretty standard, give or take the different looks and/or comments I receive, but the microbus ride is always something special. Our first real microbus ride was on the way over, just the two of us, with no one to explain as everyone in the bus began to pass money to a random passenger on the bus. At first, I didn't notice. I was too busy looking out the window, worrying that we were going to miss where we were supposed to get off, and ignoring the man who would not stop staring at the arm I was using to brace myself. Note that we were in the front of a quite crowded bus, facing the rest of the passengers, in an area where very few foreigners venture and certainly, if they do, they don't take the minibus. When I eventually realized that money was going around the bus and I had no idea why, I gave Fernando a panicked look. Did he actually work for the bus driver, but just sit in the back? Was it a low-key holdup that none of the Egyptians cared about but was going to rob us of all of our money? Was I missing some vital, culturally significant activity?

Turns out, it's just easier for everyone on the bus to pass their money forward to someone close enough to pass money to the driver, so my initial fears were unwarranted. But every day on the microbus presents some kind of new puzzle, whether it's how to get the driver to stop, whether or not we should just jump off, how to get around the fold-down seats full of people blocking our exit, or discovering which microbus we should actually get on.

The microbus isn't the end of our adventure, although the market area through which we weave in order to find the correct alleyway down which we meander in order to arrive at the building containing our site is actually usually less exciting, despite its overflow of people, vehicles, animals, goods, and food. But, all in all, pushing through all this is more than made up for by our students, because they are more than worth it!