7:50 - This had been the earliest either James or I had woken up since being here. We didn’t actually go to sleep until about 3 or 3:30.
8:00 – David, one of the guys we are staying with, drove us and his younger brother Mark, our friend and interpreter for the day, to a bus station of sorts.
8:15 – (2.5 LE/person) We find the micro bus heading towards Ramses (an area of downtown Cairo). (For those of you who have visited Kenya, a microbus is the exact same thing as a matatu. If you haven’t visited Kenya I’ll do my best to describe the experience. A microbus is like a van that picks people up on the side of the rode, usually without stopping completely. It is a very cheap way of going from place to place but maybe not the safest. The drivers are crazy, the passengers are crazy, and you have to be plenty brave to exit one while it’s still moving. Microbus travel is utilized by a large chunk of Cairo's population everyday.)
9:15 – Get out of the microbus and walk to the real bus station several blocks away. The area of downtown we walked through smelled strongly of urine. At this point the sun’s rays came upon us with a vengeance. It's early but we can tell it'll definitely hit 100 today.
9:45 – (2 LE/person) After waiting for half an hour we got on a bus headed from Ramses to Nasr City. James, Marc, and I were the only three people on the bus leaving the bus station. Within five blocks the bus was full. People actually jump onto the bus while it’s moving. Bus fares are passed forward to the person lucky enough to be standing closest to the driver, change is made and sent back with a bus ticket.
10:15 – Jump off the bus past where we wanted to leave it amidst a flurry of yells from around the bus. We had to back track about a block and cross a highway in order to get to our next bus stop. We waited about twenty minutes for this bus to arrive and almost took a cab the rest of the way to the university but a very helpful police officer informed us the bus runs a little late and would arrive soon.
10:37 – (1 LE/person) Got on the most crowded bus I’ve ever been on. Being the last person on at the stop I literally stood on the last step between the open door and the road with the bus traveling 60 km/h. Needless to say I held on as tight as my grasp would allow. Luckily within the next hundred or so meters half the bus decided to exit. We rode this bus for about fifteen minutes until having to jump off while the bus was in motion.
10:52 – (1 LE/person) Walked across the street and in circles looking for the last bus that was supposed to take us right to the university. We found it, however it did not take us straight to the university and after about six minutes the driver told us to get off because we passed the road the leads to the university and he wasn’t going that way after all. Some people on the bus yelled for us to go faster and Marc responded “You guys are angry when you are fasting” the Muslims didn’t like that. At this point my frustration level was high. We had planned on arriving at school around 9:30 or 10 and it was almost 11. I was definitely anxious to see the University I am spending the next four months at.
10:56 – (10 LE) We stand on the side of the road waiting for a taxi to take us to the university for ten minutes. We finally find one. It’s 11:05. The driver asks us which gate we wanted to go to and not knowing that the university even had a gate let alone multiple gates James and I responded “the closest one.”
11:13 – We get dropped off at Gate #1, the visitors gate. Well the guards told us that the school was “off” on that day and that we couldn’t go in. We tried to explain we were international students and had orientation and so they asked for acceptance letters. At this point I had a question: “Who carries around their college acceptance letter without being told to?” We didn’t but seeing as this question arose about thirty more times in the next three hours it became obvious that Egyptians hold those acceptance letters near and dear to their hearts or else Universities there have yet to find a more efficient way of doing things. Halas (enough). The guard at gate one took our ID’s to hold until we exited from gate #1.
We spent about two hours on campus and got virtually nothing accomplished. The campus sits in the desert. It's about an hour from the old campus in Downtown Cairo. The landscape out here is much different. The campus is beautiful with fountains and architecture that flows much like middle eastern towns of old. The sun is hot out here and in three directions the sands of the desert fill the back drop. Leaving the university was almost as difficult as arriving but no need to get into that.
Thankfully James and I now walk about five minutes to the end of our street every morning to catch the bus. It goes straight to the University and takes about forty minutes.
DJM
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