Week 1 in Cairo

I went to Cairo to visit my friend Dani, who is studying there for the semester. That, and because Cairo's cool. So here are the accounts of my 1st week in Cairo.

Day 1: Arrive at airport to Dani's friend Jacqueline and 5 random Egyptian guys as Dani looks for me elsewhere. Drive to Dani's apartment (which is huge and super nice with free wireless and a washing machine) in Egyptian guys' car. Decide to not sleep and go on a boat along the Nile at 8 am. Jacqueline, Dani, and I go to the boat place to find out they don't sell tickets until 9:30 am. Go get breakfast, return at 9:30, buy tickets, and then wait for 30 minutes to be let onto the boat. Then wait an 1 1/2 hours before the boat leaves. The boat finally starts at 11:30 am and we enjoy our journey along the Nile. We went on this boat because it's not meant for tourists, is cheaper , and goes farther up the Nile. We weren't sure how long it was - Jacqueline said either 1 1/2 hours or 1 1/2 hours there and 1 1/2 hours back. I take a 20 minute nap and am awoken by five adult Egyptian men surrounding me. We find out from them that the trip is actually 3 hours there and 3 hours back. And we're landing in some random village for a couple of hours (but the time wasn't specified - we leave whenever people show back up). When we get to the random city, we're swarmed by taxi drivers, carriage drivers, and people leading horses. We also witness Fight #1. Two men screaming and fighting. One of them was a horse driver and had a whip. He hit the other guy with it a few times. It was legit and scary. But no worries. My survival instincts kick in and I move away from the fight.

Once the fight breaks up, we set off on foot to find a train station, ignoring the men trying to get us to take their transportation into town. Most of them finally give up on us except this guy offering his ONE horse for the THREE of us. He follows us for TWENTY minutes and he won't listen to our protestations. He disappears once we run into an army guy. The army guy says he thinks the train station is near but taxi drivers around us start to argue that it's 2 hours away. Figuring they just want to take us to the middle of nowhere to charge us a ton, we listen to the more credible and trustworthy army guy. Those survival instincts again.

We trek on, run into a guy who offers to take us to a minibus. The first minibus driver refuses to drive us; he didn't want to take Americans. So we get on another minibus and some random guy pays for us but then harasses Jacqueline for her email. Ah, the hidden agendas in Cairo.

Once in Cairo we go home and nap. That night we meet Waleed, one of the Egyptian friends Dani made, at a soccer game. A police man wanted to upgrade us to the upper class section because he said the police were trying to set a secret trap for the rowdy crowd, which often times can get violent. Dani, who has no survival instincts, insisted we sit in the crowd area. Waleed suggests a compromise: we sit in the stands above the crowd. We agree and sit down. A random spectator comes up to us and warns us about the "secret" police plans. We thank him and he sits next to Dani. Then this random guy with a walkie-talkie sitting in a chair near us asks us how we're doing. He says he's been planted to watch over us. While he's talking to us, he gets called over by the police in uniform and reprimanded for blowing his "cover."

The game is exciting. It's between the national team of Egypt and the police force team (perhaps the motivation for the "secret" plan to arrest the crowd, hmmm?) We see Fight #2. It happens 6 feet in front of us. This time a guy pulled out his belt. Our "secret" policeman went "mysteriously" missing. Fight eventually got separated by men in the crowd and not the hundred policemen in the area.

The crowd never got rowdy during the game. Although Dani, Jacqueline, and I did attract a lot of attention. It's rare for women to go to a soccer game and even rarer for American women to go to a soccer game (especially ones who got their faces painted in the national team's colors). But people just crowd around us after the game and nicely ask to take their picture with us. I feel like a celebrity.

End of Day 1 in Cairo.

Day 2: Sleep 11 hours. See Fight #3 on my second day, at the airport, when we went to drop Jacqueline off. This one goes on forever. A man pushes another man into a woman. Woman gets angry, takes off her shoes, and starts to hit the men. Fight is really loud and yet aiport security never come. In fact, some are even in sight of the fight and don't do anything. One security man does come over and, instead of breaking up the fight, pulls aside a nervous American couple and sits them down, assuring them everything will be alright. Egyptian police take pride in their competence and thoughtfulness towards foreigners.

Rest of the week I just go out to eat with Dani's Egyptian friends and meet them all. They're super nice and all play in a band. Go to band practice with them at the most famous Egyptian music studio. I don't see anymore fights.

Ramadan starts. Our neighborhood gets quiet for a day or two and then picks back up.

End of week 1.

Amsterdam

Hi! I will be posting pictures soon, in the next day or so, I promise. I'll post a link on the blog.

Here are 25 thoughts about my time in Amsterdam, all 9 hours that I spent there.

25. I love Amsterdam.

24. The Anne Frank house is a lot bigger than I imagined.

23. Amsterdam, considering how much of a tourist city it is, does not have a very good system set up for transporting or directing tourists. I waited in a 45 minute line to be told that I could take any tram to the center of town (except 26) or that I could walk. Then, when I noticed there were no signs pointing me in the direction for me to walk, I paid 2.50 euros for the tram ride just to find out where I wanted to go was around the corner and then a 5 minute straight walk.

22. Bikes are huuuuggggeeee in Amsterdam. And they don't stop for pedestrians. As I am not fond of bikes in general, this is not a practice I condone.

21. The canal water is refreshed and replaced every 3 days, which is why Amsterdam doesn't smell.

20. Amsterdam is built in an onion shape. This means that the roads are either really short or long and curved.

19. I went on a free 3-hour walking tour in Amsterdam. The tour company Sandeman offers it. The tour guides really know their stuff and have a lot of personality. They know exactly what toursists want to see and hear. Sandeman also offers free tours in Berlin, Brussels, Dublin, Edinburgh, Hamburg, London, Jerusalem, Madrid, Munich, Paris, Prague, and Tel Aviv. If you are in these cities anywhere in the near future, you should definitely check them out. They are for people of all ages. The tour guides work on a tips-only basis so tip well!

18. Amsterdam is definitely a city to be taken on foot.

17. To get into the Amsterdam airport through customs and security with a trasfer is super easy. A guy glances at your passport and lets you through. There is no security.

18. Europe is expensive.

17. Almost everybody smokes and drinks and sleeps around. A lot.

16. For this reason, it's a great party city.

15. For this reason, it's also a place where it seems like people don't go anywhere with their lives.

14. I traveled alone pretty well for my 1st time.

13. The Dutch have a lousy sense of humor (meaning practically nonexistent).

12. I fell asleep on the train on my way to the airport from Amsterdam (hey, 3 hours of sleep in 2 1/2 days people!) . I woke up at a stop and the ONLY time I ran into someone who didn't speak English was when I frantically asked the people around me, "What stop are we at?" "Stop?" the teenage boy next to me asked with a quizzical and skeptical brow, as if I spoke not a foreign language, but a nonexistent one. I ended up getting off just to see a sign for a station I did NOT want. So I ran right back on. Turns out that the sign told of the next stop and that I had been in the right place. And then I preceeded to take the longest 10 minute ride out of a city of my life. I kept praying it would stop but the train chugged on. I passed windmills, cows, and a house here or there, but no city with a train stop. Finally it let out and I got on the next train back. Made it to the aiport with a little time to spare.

11. My lunch was relatively cheap. Mozzarella cheese, tomato, cucumber, and lettuce on a wheat baguette. Light, but filling and delicious. Along with my meal I had my first legal Heineken.

10. Amsterdam is located on marshy, inhabitable ground. The reason people moved there and made it a big city is to see The Magic Bread. This bread kicks all other breads' asses. This bread refused to be digested. And that is the wonder of The Magic Bread.

9. If your house leans backwards, that's bad. It means its foundation isn't built right. Waterfront houses naturally lean to the side so that's alright. And it's very Amsterdam to have your house built foward. In the 1700s and 1800s Amsterdam had a problem with flooding and people would try to store their food at the top of their house. So people built a pole at the roof to hoist supplies up because it was too dangerous to carry heavy boxes up tiny stairs. But the boxes kept hitting the side of the house on it's way up to the roof and breaking. So the people of Amsterdam built their houses leaning forward so this wouldn't happen. It took them a 100 years to realize that, if they built houses with longer poles that stuck out farther from the houses, the supplies would be safe. But that's the Dutch for you. Creative, resourceful people, but they always go the difficult route (they did settle in swampy unlivable land and developed it into a modern metropolitan city, now didn't they?)

8. My tour guide had the strongest Irish accent I've ever heard in real life. It was awesome! Less awesome - she preferred Amsterdam to Ireland.

7. A shockingly large number of Spanish speakers visit Amsterdam.

6. In 2006 it was declared illegal to sell both pot and alcohol in coffehouses. The mixture kept making people throw up in the streets.

5. It is common for drunk or high people to throw random people's bikes into the canal. There is even a special magnetic machine that goes around and picks up the bikes on a regular basis.

4. As much as people ride bikes in Amsterdam, you would think they would consider that their biggest luxury and buy really expensive, nice bikes. Nope. I would say about 1/3 were nice, 1/3 were average/relatively inexpensive, and 1/3 rusty and old.

3. Taxes use to be based on the width of the front of your house. So people built their houses really small so they wouldn't have to pay as much. They also didn't have to pay taxes on unfinished buildings so many houses in Amsterdam don't have roofs.

The bright pink house in the middle of the two other buildings in the picture is the thinnest building in Amsterdam.

2. The red light district is insane. It's like another world. Prostitutes chilling in windows, men openly propositioning them. Tourists unapologetically staring wonderingly at this process. Women strolling along with their 5 year-old daughters past the prostitutes as if there was nothing wrong with the picture. That part freaked me out a little bit - I'm old fashioned and think children should not walk around in the Red Light District. I had trouble wrapping my mind around how Amsterdam thinks about sex. It's cool to gawk at and people watch because it is so different from any world I've ever entered. But I'm a little too prudish to fully embrace the Red Light District as Amsterdam does.

1. Amsterdam is STUNNING. Just gorgeous. All of the buildings are built in the old style as if they're out of the 17th century. And with the waterfront just, sigh, I didn't want to leave. It made me wonder why I ever left Europe 4 years ago. Why would anyone ever leave? I don't know how I would have gotten on my flight if it hadn't been for the fact that I was on my way to somewhere cooler than Amsterdam.

Next up: Cairo!

"It is a joy and a privilege to live in Soviet Russia"

Hello my lovelies,

As I mentioned in my last post, I wasn't feeling overly confident about my abilities to be completely dependent on myself. Fortunately the plane ride calmed my nerves or, rather, my seatmate did. He was a Russian seafarer by the name of Sergei who was returning home with his crew. He spoke little English but that didn't deter him from engaging me in stunted conversation. He is one of the nicest people I have ever met. Not only did he offer me his pillow and his blanket, even though mine were plenty comfortable, but he made sure to always get me a drink when the flight attendant came by. He even programmed my watch, a cheap, complicated device that took him no time at all, considering his watch was an expensive, complicated navigation device for the sea. He insisted I listen to his music and play a game on his computer until the battery ran out.

He and his men proved the Russian cliché that Russian men like their alcohol. I had some good laughs over their schemes to get more alcohol out of the flight attendants. The flight attendants had a good humor about it but it's probably a good thing they were wise to the Russians ways. Nobody wants rowdy Russians in a confined space.

Sergei showed me pictures of his family and pets, along the way teaching me Russian. All I remember is that "zdravo-something" means "hello", "fox" sounds like "Lisa," and "wolf," "wook."

Something I noted is that, at least by my encounter with Sergei, Russians are not private about sexuality. He drew my attention to his motorcycle screensaver, telling me about his bike, seeming to not notice the naked girl draped across it. It didn't bother me, but I found it interesting. If you are familiar with Russian culture, let me know if this experience was odd or fit with their views on sexuality.

The only other note-worthy moment on the plane is my first legal glass of wine!!! I must compliment KLM/Northwest on their delicious food and free alcohol. The wine was a Merlot from Chile and tasted sweet. Then again, mockery of U.S. puritanical values towards alcohol and glorifying in my escape may have influenced my enjoyment. I finished the whole mini-bottle :)

Lots of love,
Nancy

Independent or Alone???

Hello again. Bear in mind that this post was written 4 days ago. I am just copying it word for word.

As most of you know, I have had my sights fixed on Africa for many years now, dating back all the way back to my 2nd grade geography lesson: "This is Africa." I liked the shape.

Well, considering this has been a dream ten years in the making, one would have expected more excitement, more expectations, more gut-wrenching energy. But no, this summer was much like any other. Even in these last 2 weeks, when I have spent many hours everyday preparing, I was strangely calm. Disturbingly so. I chalk this up to the fact that I just can't fathom that it's happening. That, and that my whole world is about to turn upside down and I don't know what to expect.

Well, it still hasn't "hit" me that I am going to AFRICA. There have been moments where the intensity of this coming experience washed over me, but they quickly subside to be replaced by a collected demeanor. My travel-wise friends have assured me that I will feel "it," that all-consuming passion and excitement for travel, until I arrive.

I was still calm and collected when my dad took me to the airport. It wasn't until he said his goodbyes that the magnitude of what I had taken on hit me. He was leaving me ALONE to travel the world. I am going to navigate many foreign cities on my own, where English is not the primary language. Oh, crap. Sure I did it with GWU and DC, but there I didn't have the language barrier and, if something went wrong, I could always fly home for a weekend.

Africa is far away. And things will go wrong. And there will be no comforting antidote of thinking I can fly home. I'm trapped. In the developing world. With limited communication to home. With no understanding of the local people, their language, or their culture.

This semester will be a challenge. I will certainly learn my own mettle.

Lots of love,
Nancy

And off I go!

Hello all,

My trip, the one of exceptionally epic explorations, has officially begun. Actually, I'm already in Egypt. I haven't really had time to blog until now, but I've been writing everything down to post later. So I won't post my first Egypt blog for a couple of days now.

First and foremost, I want to layout my schedule for this semester.

August 17th -leave for my trip

August 18th - Arrive in Amsterdam with a 12-hour layover. I went into Amsterdam for the day.

August 19th - Arrive in Cairo, Egypt. I am visiting my friend Dani in Cairo who is studying abroad there for the semester. Will be there for 2 weeks.

September 1st - Fly out of Cairo to Entebbe, Uganda with a small stopover in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. This is the day my program begins.

Now I will give you the itinerary that my program gave me, with a little additional information about the places.

Week 1: Orientation in Entebbe and Gulu

Week 2-4: In Gulu, Uganda with excursions to other districts in northern Uganda; Gulu homestays. This is the area where the rebel leader is from and where the civil war began.

Week 4-5: In Kampala (capitol of Uganda), with excursion in central Uganda; Uganda segment wrap-up and final exercises; Rwanda segment begins

Week 5-6: In Butare, Rwanda, with excursions in southern Rwanda

Weeks 7-9: In Kigali (capitol of Rwanda), with excursions in central Rwanda; Kigali homestays; Rwanda segment wrap-up and final exercises

Weeks 10-14: Independent Study Project (ISP) in Rwanda or Uganda, depending on the topic of your research

Week 15: Evaluation of ISP at a site to be determined

So this is my plan for this semester. I am studying Post-Conflict Transformation in Uganda and Rwanda, which means I will be examining the Ugandan Civil War and the Rwandan Genocide. As of right now, I intend to get my masters in Peace and Conflict studies (with a focus on African peace and conflict of course!).

My goals for this semester are to improve my understanding of the conflict in Rwanda and Uganda, to learn the application of Peace and Conflict studies, and to observe the people and cultures of where I travel as much as possible. Expect my blog to be peppered with my many observations of the people and cultures, as I am intrigued by people's behaviors and the reasons behind their actions.

I hope this blog will also be away in which my friends and family at home can learn about Africa with me, expanding our understanding of Africa into a more complex conception.

Hope you will join me on my journey and enjoy reading about my adventures almost as much as I will enjoy having them.

Also, before I post this, I MUST give a huge thanks and tons of love to Zorica and Brandon, who spent their night helping me pack. My life being my life, as much as I prepare for my packing weeks ahead of time and check everything off my detailed checklist, I am still running around like a chicken with its head cut off the night before I leave. Enter Zorica and Brandon. They are the reason I did not pull all my hair out. So they get the credit for my curly hair being in its proper place (on my head) and for me being on my way. Thanks for being awesome people!!!

Lots of Love,
Nancy