Part 2 - playing catch-up. (mango mania)

so im rapidly becoming addicted to mangos. theyre SO GOOD. how did i miss them back in the states? i feel like ive spent my whole life deprived and must now make up for that deprivation by eating them every. single. day. and the mango JUICE. omgoodness. filled with mango goodness. thick and smooth with yummy mango chunks... mmmmmmmmm. the actual eating of a mango is quite the process though. first, one must buy the mango. off the street they cost about, you know, 75 piasters. which is about 15 cents. of course these are the homegrown ones. the imported ones (which im sure contain many lovely hormones making them bigger and, therefore, better) are about 4 pounds. (for the record, this is like 3 hrs of work with the average egyptian's salary of 1.5 pounds/hr. and we whine about minimum wage.) so once you buy the mangos you must peel them. this is harder than it sounds. especially when you dont own a peeler and the smallest sharp knife you own is about a foot long and looks like its straight out of the 'psycho' shower scene. inshaallah i will come back to the states with all my fingers. at least if i do manage to amputate a finger ill have a story to tell. about cairo. and mangos. maybe ill add some ninjas just to keep the blood pumping.

anyway once its peeled you get to the hard part. you see, mangos have pits. big pits. evil evil pits that are shaped like an obese woman with lots of unsightly lumps that dont fit into her clothes very well. so i am totally incapable of cutting the meat off the pit in the nice, edible little strips i crave. instead i cut into it, make it about an inch then hit a lump and have to swerve, ending up with a pathetic little Morsel of Mango Meat on my plate. (alliteration. i should write a poem.) very unsatisfying. all this was done with the psycho knife, mind you. so i spend FOREVER mutilating the mango in a futile attempt to avoid making a mess, get about half the potentially edible stuff off, and then give up and just gnaw on the pit. to be honest, thats probably my favorite part. by the time im finished with that not only are my hands covered in mango juice, but so is my face, and usually most of my shirt. i look like a toddler let loose in a candy store. this is also the most frustrating part because post-gnawing it is revealed to me - as all those of you who have ever eaten a mango already know - that the pit is less than lumpy. it is, in fact, quite the opposite of lumpy. so all the hacking and swearing and losing of the fingers was TOTALLY unnecessary. despite this however, i exercise my reasonable human being-ness and resist chucking the damn pit out the window. i place it gently in the trash, and then after washing my face and hands, i put the rest of the mango (a pathetically small amount) on a plate, get a fork, and walk into the living room to finish the rest of the fruit in an extremely civilized fashion. which takes about 30 seconds.

ah well. such is life in cairo.

so yesterday i found a new hero. he's this long beanpole of a black guy (i almost typed 'african american'. ha.) i saw him riding a bike yesterday. now, just riding a bike in cairo in itself is something worthy of admiration. those streets are a death trap for anyone not encased in a few hundred pounds of steel. perhaps even for those who are encased. traffic accidents are the second most common form of death in cairo. have i mentioned this before? its sort of constantly brought to mind. anyway, so he was riding a bike. but he wasnt JUST riding a bike. he was riding a bike while balancing a long wooden plank on his head. id say it was about 4 ft long and 2ft wide. just kinda hangin out up there. and balanced on top of THAT was a whole pile of mouth-watering pita bread. i mean, ive seen ppl with these boards balanced on their heads before - ppl here seem to consider using their hands to carry things a bit too much work - but while riding a bike??? and here i was impressed with myself and my ability to talk on a phone while biking around stanford. oh but that wasnt all he was doing. while i watched, he biked up against moving traffic, and wove his way across the street. he almost died maybe 5 times. it was amazing. and he didnt drop a single pita. straight out of cirque du soleil. normal cairo antics.

yesterday when i walked back from class i found a fruit vendor in front of my apartment. he had a cart stacked high with different types of fruits, pulled by a donkey. and he was this grey-haired, wrinkled little old man in a blue robe and a white hat. classic. guess what i bought from him. mmmmmmmmmmyum.

oh and ive made a break through in anthropology. i have discovered why egyptians are always holding on to each other. linking arms, holding hands, piggy back rides. not really. this is actually a really interesting subject - when you see middle aged men walking down the street holding hands with each other, dont you have to wonder what theyre thinking? its just something that would never occur to a man in the states. im trying to picture my dad strolling down the street holding hands with mr. gibbons or someone... lol. right. never gonna happen. anyway, i was crossing a street last night with a few ppl. we were doing it frogger style - there was no crossing guard available to stop traffic - and as a car barreled past us, the wind ruffling my clothes, all four of us, at the same time, grabbed the hands of the person next to us. and held on. tightly. thats when the answer came to me - egyptians are all holding hands with each other because theyre scared of dying. all the bloody time. its the only possible explanation. and i dont blame them - it is totally impossible to predict where those cars are going to go. if they werent all muslim i would hypothesize that every driver in egypt is just permanently drunk. i bet the longer i stay here, the more i will come to realize the true precariousness of my situation - ie being alive - and will start holding on to ppl more often. ill keep you updated.

oh right so i was going to talk about my trip to alexandria. alexandria is... beautiful. it is not, however, the sparkling white city of so many ppl's imaginations. i got this really cool picture out my hotel window (9th floor) of the rooftops of alexandria; picture roofs as far as you can see covered in junk and satelites. and then the mediterranean. its a really sweet picture. unfortunately its on my phone and i cant figure out how to send it to myself, or i might post it. anyway, alexandria is basically cairo with less traffic, less people, and a goooooorgeous view. my trip to alexandria actually made me realize how beautiful cairo is - and i have a metaphore. wait for it... cairo is like a junk shop. a dark little hole-in-the-wall shop with a sketchy owner. when you first glance in it, all you can see is the disorganization and dirt - an overwhelming mess. however, when you actually go inside and bother looking around, there are some really cool things in there that you could easily have missed if you didnt bother looking closer. so parden my profundity but basically cairo, at first glance, is really really hot. and loud. and pretty much a mess with crazy traffic and no littering laws and people hissing at you. but when you actually look at the buildings and the smaller, day-to-day scenes that you start to notice after youve gotten over your original shock, its a really cool place. honest. just hold in there.

oh right so alexandria. we smoked hooka (really STRONG - cough - hooka) and drank mango juice with a view of the sea. i bought fake, really unattractive, fendi glasses after we tried on about a million other fake designer brands. all really unfortunate looking. i was sort of guilted into buying them, and i was totally overcharged. payed 9 whole dollars. cringe. we got lost in downtown and tried some fried chick peas off the street. very. very. salty. we got harassed by a really nasty taxi driver, which was a first in terms of true nastiness. i thought of reprimanding him on behalf of the egyptian goverment but thought better of it. and this really friendly egyptian guy and his brother bought me some jewelry saying "no no this is egypt. in egypt women do not pay. men pay". i could get to like this place. we visited the library and its goorgeous (although inaugerated in 2003? wtf) the architecture is really funky - i like. i also bought some prints of sketches done by a guy named shadi abdul alsalam who's work is being displayed in a gallery inside the library. he does drawing of egyptian cultural scenes. my favorite is of a belly dancer. yummy. decorations for my new home. and i really seriously considered getting my dad a nail-clipper that came in a mummy case. the actually clip represented the shriveled little body of a dead egyptian king. it was so ridiculous i almost felt obligated to buy it. maybe next time.