12 August 2009
Since I promised my family to be a better communicator than I was the later part of my stay in Russia, I figured five days in to my new assignment would be a good place to start and give you some of my initial impressions. Let's see, the flights over to Egypt were pretty uneventful. My "business class" ticket on Egypt Air was just what I expected it to be, crappy. I don't think they had upgraded the interior of the plane in at least 15 years so it was the old uncomfortable seats and really tacky looking. But before I complain too much, I could have been jammed into economy like cattle. I managed to sleep over half the way, so when we arrived in Egypt, I was not suffering too much (unlike my recent trip to Ireland). It has been about six years since I was in Egypt and it looked pretty much exactly as I remembered it on arrival, lots of sand and dozens of old (hopefully retired) planes sitting around the airport grounds covered in dust. I lucked out and was able to use the brand spanking new terminal which had just opened two weeks prior and it was truly a huge improvement over the old dilapidated one. For anyone considering a trip over, you wont have immediate culture shock upon arrival now (just when you walk out the main entrance).
I had someone from the immigration service to meet me, help me get my luggage, whisk me through customs and deliver me to a driver from the hotel. I stayed at a decent sized place about 15 minutes from the airpor in a part of Cairo called Heliopolis. I had forgotten how hectic it is driving in Cairo and am glad I will never have to do it. They say Cairo's traffic and driving is the worst in the world and after a brief 15 minutes I tend to agree. Even the traffic in Dhaka seemed to have some orderly chaos, in Cairo its just a mass of cars on unlined streets, in no particular order, following no evident rules, belching out exhaust, honking horns, and cutting each other off any chance they can. After watching the road the first few minutes, I decided the best solution was just not to look.
So back to the hotel, if you've never been in the Arab world it's hard to describe how they tend to overdo everything. You can't just have a nicely appointed hotel lobby, 90% of it must be gilded and there must be a local in indigenous dress to grovel upon your arrival. You also have the slightly disconcerting fact that any time you enter public buildings in Egypt you have police (tourist police in hotels) and the ubiquitous metal detectors. An unpleasant reminder of where you exactly are. So I freshened up, took a short nap and then connected with my friend Hossam. He and I met on my last visit to Cairo and ended up meeting in Malaysia for a vacation way back then. We've kept in touch and he met me at the hotel for a drink and then took me out for an authentic Egyptian meal at probably the largest shopping mall I have ever seen bar none. But before I get to the dinner/mall, I have to tell you a bit about the people (or at least my observations). Now granted this was a fairly nice hotel, so certainly isn't indicative of the average Egyptian, but it one again amazed me the number of women who wore not only the hijab (head covering), but the burka, while managing to show how much money they had, i.e. big honking diamond rings over their long black gloves, Dolce & Gabbona sunglasses over their full face covering, elaborately embroidered and/or beaded scarves. etc.
While Hossam and I were sitting their having a beer, there was a huge wedding reception of a clearly well-heeled conservative family. They had the whole lobby decked out with garish lights and white flowers and just as the bride and groom came down the stairs, a "band" of about 12 men dressed in long white robes and turbans with traditional drums and horn-like instruments played loud music and sang while the guests crowded around and just stared at them and took pictures for like 15-20 minutes. The bride was actually very pretty in her long white dress, long gloves, and head scarf. Hossam later told me that that night both sets of parents would wait outside their bridal suite while they sealed the deal waiting for the bed sheet as evidence of her purity. I was pretty appalled and asked what would happen if it didn't confirm she'd been a good girl, and he told me there had been some very high profile divorces for this very reason. I clearly have a long way to go in understanding the culture…
So anyway, I hung around the pool the next morning waiting for my bus to take off for north camp. It was so blindingly sunny and hot that I could not sit outside for more than like 15 minutes, a bad sign of things to come. The bus ride out was relatively uneventful. It takes about five hours to get to North Camp from Cairo and it takes you north of the city and then up to the Peace Bridge across the Suez Canal. It was constructed in partnership with the Japanese and it is really an impressive massive bridge in the middle of nowhere. The size of ships moving up and down the canal necessitate such a huge bridge, but it is really shocking when you see it in the distance. Up until the canal, it was dry and scrappy vegetation, but once you crossed it, it was immediately void of all life period! It was like a line was drawn, semi arid area/full on desert. From this point on the ride was pretty monotonous sand dunes, occasional palm trees, scrappy plants, piles of rocks, "rustic" Bedouin settlements, and small depressing villages. The first decent sized town was right up on the Mediterranean named El ' Arish. Any other place in the world and it would be a perfect resort spot, here it was a rather threatening, terribly crowded, dusty, and poor area. There were some hotels and you could see people down at the beach (women in head to toe burkas mostly), but not someplace I'd like to hang out. It turns out I've learned since then, this is a place we are not allowed to go because there are some seriously bad characters hanging out around here.
We got to North Camp around sunset and you could see it from afar because there are actual trees (thanks to an ambitious irrigation program with our treated waste water) My first thought was it looked like a prison camp due to the not one, but two layers of tall barbed wire fending, rolls of razor wires between them, and elevated perimeter security outposts. Once I made it through the maze of security manned by Columbians and Hungarians who didn't speak a word of English. I was dropped in the middle of the base at the bus stop. There was not a person to be seen and I was like "okay…now what??" Thankfully a moment later one of my new co-workers pulled up, drove me to my new hooch to drop my bags and then brought me over to one of the Blackhawk pilot's house who was having a cookout. I met most of the other civilian observers and the US pilots and it seems like a fairly nice group. I ended up the night playing Xbox Rockstar until about 1:00 a.m. The next day was Saturday (their Sunday here as they work Sunday through Thursday) and we all met for lunch to say goodbye to an outgoing observer. I got a driving tour of the base (all 1 x 1.2 miles of it) and met up for a volleyball game at the gym in like 115 degree heat. Although they try to make North Camp as nice as possible, it's still in the middle of frickn nowhere, baking in the sand and sun. Since we've been here for over 30 years, there are some permanent buildings (FX, dining halls, some dormitories, offices, library, gym, movie theater, etc., but there are just as many temporary trailer-like buildings serving mostly as living quarters. Everything is painted the color of sand so it's pretty bleak. There are three roads running north and south and probably a dozen east west. My hooch-sweet-hooch is of course at one end of camp near the main gate in the Twin Palms area (sounds much nicer than it is). I've taken some pics around, but don't have my computer yet, so will have to include them in my next email. I have a very small sitting room with a loveseat book shelf, small coffee table and desk connected to a kitchen-like area with a sink, large dorm style fridge and couple cabinets next to my bedroom which has a queen sized bed and an attached tiny bathroom with a shower that I can barely turn around in. All in all, it's not bad, I have two serious a/c units which keep it a nice cool temperature in spite of the sun beating down on it. I even have a little fenced in patio with a couple pitiful trees. It looks like someone attempted some landscaping a while back, but most of it is dead. I have a table and chairs out there and would like to fix it up a bit and use it. Believe it or not, once the sun goes down, its actually quite pleasant out.
Okay, I'm at 2+ pages already and think I'll wrap this up for now and tell you more about life on a multinational forces base and my job so far in my next email. Hope you are all well.
Steve
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