I will blog about this trip, Part 3

April 12th, 2012, or some of it anyway.

We get one day in Cairo, and it starts with a hotel breakfast.
Here I am, fed and happy in our hotel lobby:

My mom and I joined 11 others who were part of our same tour and boarded a mini-bus that would (somewhat miraculously) carry us safely around Cairo and Giza that day. I could not believe the streets and the traffic and the driving in that place. The concepts of lanes and rights of way and other things that make me feel safe while driving don't exist there. I thanked the universe that I didn't have to drive there but watched out the window in fascination. 

First stop: The Egyptian Museum, by way of Tahrir Square.

I have to start by telling you that I always felt safe in Egypt. I never thought, "Hm, is this smart and safe?" No. I always knew I was ok.  And part of that was because of our guide, our busdriver, and our security guard. Let me introduce you to Wael, our Egyptian guide. He told us that if Wael was too hard for us to say/remember, we could call him Willy. But he just wasn't a Willy. So we called him Wael. 

This is the best photo I have of Wael. Here he's going between us and the street vendors (thank you, Wael!). Behind him is our security guard who spoke very little English but really watched out for us.

Wael stood in the bus while we drove and told us things. He told us his version of the revolution back in January 2011. I won't go into that, but he told us that "nobody knows why" the people are still living in tents in Tahrir Square. He said that the city is only dirty since the revolution. Throwing their trash about is civil disobedience. He told us that "no one will vote for a Muslim Brotherhood candidate for president. No one." He told us not to believe what the American media says about Egypt. He told us there really are no difficulties in relations between Christians and Muslims in day to day life. "Hidden hands" are stirring up conflict and putting it into the news. 

Tahrir Square from the bus window (over someone's head). According to our guide, "nobody knows why" those people are still living there in tents.

Wael was a really good tour guide and I loved him. One wonderful part of our day in Egypt was when we were inching along in traffic to get back to our hotel and Wael came and sat next to us in the back of the bus and talked to us about Egypt--politics, family, and his hopes for all of it. Here is a man who was educated at a good private school and trained to be a tour guide. Why would someone have it be their career to lead foreign tourists through his country? Well, it seems like a logical job in a country where tourism is (or was before last year) the number one industry. But despite his excellent English and knowledge of Egyptian history and culture, he says he now only has work about one day a week, sometimes only one day in ten. Tourism has plummeted since the revolution. He is married and has a little boy, Omar. And his wife is expecting another baby. He is doing all he can to secure a job in America. Perhaps teaching Arabic? I asked him why he would want to leave his country if he loves it as much as he clearly does. He said he would go only for a few years. "Everyone who leaves his homeland must return home again, even if many years have passed." But he says that each generation should be able to do better for their kids than their parents did for them. He says that his parents gave him an excellent education, and in Egypt right now, he's not sure he can even do that for his son, let alone better. He says that he is trying not to disappear with the rest of the middle class.

Initially, I believed every word Wael said, but the more I learned, and as time passed and I reflected on our time with Wael, I realized that he was working hard to strike a balance between selling us on the glories of Egypt, opening our eyes to the realities we may never see in the news media, and networking with us so that we can help him find that golden opportunity in America. He often spoke in extremes, and we got conflicting pictures of how things really are, but I think that served his purpose: conflicting extremes kinda sums up Egypt.

Take the Egyptian Museum. Right next to the torched Parliament building.

Parliament building (center) with Egyptian Museum (red) next to it.

The main entrance to the Egyptian Museum. No cameras allowed inside.

Another shot of the torched Parliament building with the corner of the museum 

The museum itself is enormous and utterly jammed with artifacts. Our guide said that it holds 250,000 pieces. This is a museum unlike any I've been in. But not for the reasons you might think. If you go inside without a guide to show you what is what, you will be lost. Not only is there just too much take in, but most of it is not labeled in a meaningful way. It's clear that the many artifacts are not being cared for and preserved as they should be. The room housing King Tut's mummy mask and other treasures is one exception--most of that is beautifully labeled and displayed and protected. But there are many rooms where the only labeling consists of type- or hand-written yellowing notecards dropped into glass cases seemingly as an afterthought. The place needs some updating and some tender loving care. But I loved it. I stood in a vaulted room that was lined wall to wall and floor to ceiling with minimally labeled mummies in glass and wooden cases. We didn't have time to see even a quarter of what was displayed in the museum, but I wanted to stand staring in front of many things until a bit of the reality of what I was seeing slipped into my brain.

Full size chariots found in the tomb of a king who died 1300 years BC? His gloves and slippers? The jars that held his dead organs? 

What? 

I needed more time to comprehend all this. 

But after only an hour or two, we were off to the Pyramids.