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A Day in the Loitering Life
7/23/09
This is my life in the land of tea and loitering.
4:00 am: Marsha and I fall through the slats of wood that make up our bed. Too exhausted to get up and re-build our sleeping quarters, I send Marsha to the couch and I sleep “slanted” the rest of the night. Number one item on the list of things we take for granted: beds you don’t fall through.
7:30 am: Marsha wakes me up and we half-consciously attempt to get ready for work. I use the bathroom and when I’m finished, pour a bucket of water into the toilet to flush it. Numbers two and three items we take for granted: toilets that flush and toilet paper.
7:45 am: We are really thirsty but are out of bottled water. We can’t drink the water from the tap because there may be parasites. So we boil water and drink it hot. We sit in front of the fan and sweat profusely, laughing at how ridiculous we look. Number four item we take for granted: easily accessible clean water.
8:00 am: I ponder which of my two shirts I should wear today. This shouldn’t be such a hard decision.
8:30 am: We take the microbus to Found. The microbus is this VW-type van whose mission is to fit as many people in it at once. The microbus would fail driver’s education. It would get marked down for no seatbelts, rolling stops, driving off without first shutting the door, and occasionally hitting parked cars. The microbus is always an adventure.
9:00 am: School begins at Found.
9:10 am – 11:00 am: Students show up for school.
12:00 pm: School ends, but the bell hasn’t rung. Teacher Daniel says, “Hold on,” disappears for a few seconds, and the bell rings. School is officially khalas, finished. We stick around a bit to loiter with the teachers.
12:30 pm – 4:00 pm: Marsha, Liz, Marshae and I make our way to Sakakini where we teach night classes. During this time we travel on the metro, pick up shawarma (roasted lamb pita) from a street vendor, and meet interesting people like the Sudanese man who calls himself Charles Dickens (“Have you heard of some of my books? I’ve written quite a few,” he says).
4:30 pm – 8:00 pm: We teach English, Time Management, Report Writing, Running a Meeting, and Music to a group of Sudanese college students from Universities all over Cairo.
9:00 pm: As we head to the metro, because I am busy looking up at the building, I trip on a volcano-sized crack in the sidewalk. Number five item we take for granted: flat sidewalks. We ride on the women’s car in the metro. The women who surround us cover their mouths. They think we Americans have swine flu. Number six item: innocent until proven guilty of carrying H1N1.
10:00 pm – 1:00 am: Arrive home, shower with a bucket, play with the kids, dinner, English/Arabic lessons with Aisha, tea, sleep.
Khalas.
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