Cairo, Egypt

I said I wouldn’t leave the airport in Cairo on my way to Kenya and I meant what I said. Having a layover for approximately ten hours, is far longer than I would have liked, but thinking back on my fiasco in Bogota, Columbia during a long layover almost two years ago, I thought better of venturing the streets of an unknown city, especially given the little I knew about the country, culture or language. Yet despite my good intentions, I did leave and got a peek at the city.

The situation was strange, and I’m still not sure how it all came about, but things fortunately did work out. After hearing remarks from a few other passengers, it seems as though this situation is normal in Cairo, but it was a bit disconcerting to me and a few other passengers, particularly to me and three other young Americans who I met, all going on separate volunteer service trips for the summer in Uganda.

Just after arriving in Cairo, we exited the plane and followed signs directing us towards international connecting flights. Because our flights were not for some time, we were refused admittance to that section of the airport and were directed to a booth near a waiting lounge of about 30 seats and one small kiosk with expensive snacks and drinks. Other than that, we had access to nothing in the airport. At the booth, we thought we were going to be given a boarding ticket or some such thing allowing us to head towards the gates from which our connecting flights would depart. They asked to see our passports, which would seem normal, but then they took them and kept them, not allowing us to have them back, began bombarding us with tourist package deals to see the pyramids, and told us that we must leave the airport, our passports would be withheld as they processed mandatory transit visas for us and we could collect them upon our return to the airport in the evening. This was upsetting. To make an understatement, a passport is a fairly important document to keep track of if you want to board an international flight.

Anyhow, after questions, complaints and demands had been made, be felt helpless and allowed ourselves to be transported away from the airport. Two of the other recent college grads from the USA and I decided to watch out for one another and decided there was nothing we could do about our situation, so complied. The three of us along with seven other passengers refused to pay to go see the pyramids or pay for any of the other deals with “special prices” that we were offered... especially since we were being told different things from people on all sides of us and the price was consistently dropping. We were taken to a very nice hotel, where we were fed a meal. It was good, but we were concerned about the catch. I sat with a Ghanaian woman during the meal. I chuckled aloud at one point at the absurdity of it all. We were served good food, but their was no salad dressing on the salad, and this lovely, sophisticated looking woman whom I faced, grumbled about how this same thing happened to her last time, then called the timid, young waiter over and chewed him out asking how he expected her to eat a salad without sauce. At the end of our meal, there was no dessert, so she once again scolded the waiter and asked how he could dare serve a meal without something sweet to finish it off. He hurried away and of all the guests in the dining room, only the two of us were brought fresh fruit for dessert.

We were then given rooms to stay in and it took three times of explaining to the receptionists that neither I nor the other girl from the US were married to the young man from the US and that we desired separate beds. We finally succeeded in our explanations, then went off to our rooms to rest for a bit. We woke one another and went for a walk around the area, returned to the hotel and waited in the lobby together for our transport back to the airport.

Back at the airport, we went to the customer care counter to retreive our passports. We simply told them the destination of our next flight and they handed us a stack of passports from which we could select ours. I’m sure glad no one else wanted to be me! From there, things went smoothly and relatively normally and I had a pleasant flight to Nairobi.

In the few hours that I was in Cairo, I can see how it may be a city to be loved, with its quaint shops, chaotic traffic and the music filling the streets, yet I know that deserts are not for me. I suppose I’ll never know what that was all about, but it was an experience that I won’t soon forget. I’ll post more about my time here in Kenya as soon as I get a chance.