We had tried to go to
the market area in Garbage City, APE, the day before, but our driver told us
that the van would get stuck in the mud.
It rained randomly a
few days before, which is pretty disastrous in Cairo – everything becomes a bit
of a muddy pond. Cairo is quite a flat city, without any noticeable sewer
drains, so the water doesn’t really have anywhere to go.
So, it turns to mud.
Anyway, he promised us
that another driver would take us the next day in ‘a proper car’ that wouldn’t get
stuck in the mud.
The drive through
Garbage City was just as interesting the next time around. All of the buildings
have big garage-like areas at the bottom in which they store the big garbage
bags and then sort them. Each family is in charge of a certain type of
material: one area will do only cardboard, whereas another will do a certain
type of plastic, and others will do the less –than-appealing (in my opinion)
task of recycling cat carcasses. For reals.
We had driven with our
windows up the day before, I think our driver was a bit snobby, but we went
through with our windows down this time and it actually didn’t smell that
badly. I can only imagine what it gets like in the heat of the summer. It is
crazy to imagine growing up in this type of environment, but humans are
amazingly able to adjust to different circumstances.
We made it all the way
to APE only to discover that it was closed for Egyptian Christmas time.
Sad trombone.
Our driver was
extremely sorry that he didn’t foresee this, and asked if there was anything
else that we wanted to see.
Heck yes!
Khan Al Khalili Market
Khan Al Khalili
market, typically called the Khan market (as opposed to the ‘con market’, which
I thought everyone kept calling it) is a big area in Cairo where you can buy
all sorts of goodies – lamps, obsidian candle holders, bags, clothes, jewelry,
bags, scarves…the list goes on!
We spent forever
wandering around the tiny alleyways filled with all sorts of treasures, with
Egyptians yelling things like “you dropped something…my heart”, “come take a
look in my shop…looking is free!”, and “you want to spend more money here, my
friend?”
Again, we were kind of
like a walking circus as the only tourists in the area, but everyone was very
nice and we were able to haggle with a few nice shop owners and got some good
deals.
We then had the bright
idea of taking the metro back to Ma’adi.
My Mom and Sherri
brought it up as an option as if they had done it before, but turns out they
hadn’t haha so, as per usual, we relied on the kindness of strangers to point
us in the right direction.
The next thing we
know, we’re packed into the back of a mini bus with two teenaged drivers who
didn’t speak a word of English and thought that we wanted to get to the Metro
grocery store, so lots of hand motions and chug-a-chug-choo-choo sounds later,
they dropped us off in the middle of a crowded square and exclaimed ‘metro!’
This is where I start
to wonder why we listened to complete strangers.
Then I see a big ‘M’
sign and tell Ryan to walk towards it like he owns the place. We push our way
through the crowd and turns out it really was the metro – Halleluiah! We even
somehow figured out how to buy tickets and get on the right train all by
ourselves, although we all piled into the men’s car since we didn’t want to
leave Ryan by himself in case he got off at the wrong stop or something while
we were on the women’s car.
Another eventful day
;)
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