In 1998 I went to Egypt as part of a team hired to set up an American curriculum school. The opportunity came suddenly, and I had little time to prepare. I didn’t do any reading or study Arabic phrases… it happened fast.
We were incredibly welcomed by the Egyptians, not only in generosity, but in smiles and warmth. We were treated as special guests by the owners and administrators of the school and the parents. The people part was ideal. It was a wonder to all the teachers (from the US and UK) how spirits of the Egyptians were so high when daily life was frustrating.
I don't think what I have written is out of date. I presume that some of problems below intensified as the poor economy got worse. My guess is that people noticed the wealth of their leaders and realized that one solution was having a more responsive government.
Our first month was spent in first class accommodations at the Meridian Hotel, a statement in itself, on the generosity of our employers. When school started and we moved to a flat in the middle class neighborhood of Nasr City, we learned how Egyptians lived.
While “everything works” at a “western hotel”, if you have a problem with plumbing, electricity, or a broken window in your flat or at a school, finding help, even if you speak the language, is near to impossible. Electrical failures are not uncommon. If you’re in an elevator, you’ll be there for minutes or hours until power is restored. Our landlord sent a “technician” for our broken air conditioning unit, who arrived wearing a galabaya and flip flops with his only tool – a tire iron - which he used to pound the unit. (One of the teachers eventually fixed it.) At the school, frequently and without notice, water was shut off. Teachers recoiled at the unflushed toilets but students were unfazed.
You could not count on getting mail or any delivery. While we had a post office on our campus, no one “back home” was ever known to have received anything mailed from it. We soon realized the only way to successfully mail anything was the through mail drops in the “western hotels”.
Our text books, ordered weeks in advance, sat for almost two months at the airport. We had a number of recommendations as to who needed “baksheesh” (a gift) to move them, and tried a few. I’m not certain which “gift” eventually worked, but one day a man in a taxi arrived with a load of unboxed books. Each subject area was short by 10-30% and some books had pages or pictures cut out, (where would you complain?) but we were thrilled to get them. Teachers had a rough time teaching without texts. Parents, who paid private school tuition for their children, accepted these text-less first two months of school.
Cell phone use was just beginning then, and seemed to be needed since our apartment phone could not be counted on. Even if you got a line and successfully dialed, there was no guarantee of an answer. International calls and important local ones were usually made at an internet center near our flat. At the school’s administration office, phones could ring and ring and no one would answer them. I never understood why. Several times, just to stop the noise, I picked them up, but since I didn’t speak Arabic, it was hardly better for the caller than if I hadn’t.
I could go on about the conditions of the country. Traffic was too impossible for most westerners to drive in and our garbage was dumped a vacant lot on a busy street near where we lived. When one of our libertarian teachers complained of the litter and deferred maintenance, I mentioned this was what life without taxes looked like. I didn’t know anyone who paid taxes in Egypt, but everyone gave “gifts”. Civil servants can issue document stamps or get your computer out of airport “inspection” once they are gifted. I was told they made $300 - $400/month, so I presume these “gifts” were a necessary part of their families’ budgets.
There were no visible labor laws. The results of this are most striking in the treatment of the “dada”. These working women are the targets of everyone’s frustration. They clean, deliver tea, tend to children and in our school moved desks, furniture from building to building. They are yelled at, hit, kicked and generally abused for very little or no reason. They make under $100 US a month and have no access to baksheesh. Two dadas at our school set up a stand to sell candy and soft drinks to the students. When administration (quickly) put a stop to it (the school had its own concessions), they tried to sell the inventory on the QT, for which they were slapped and/or kicked when discovered. They received no support from the American faculty (who often took their part when this sort of abuse occurred) because they objected to adding more sugar to the kids’ already unhealthy eating patterns.
Another result of the absence of labor laws was the pay system. In our school, pay was in cash. No one signed for it, so who is to say that your pay was not delivered to you if it wasn’t? US/UK teachers had leverage, since we were difficult to replace. US/UK teachers were paid first and paid much better - the ratio was roughly 6:1.
There was no scheduled pay day. When distance between checks got large, teachers pressed the administration who pressed the owners. Sometimes US teachers when were paid and native Egyptian teachers had to wait more days or weeks. Native Egyptian teachers quit their jobs on the day they were paid, because if they left before, they would never be paid. The unpredictable pay date meant that the company would always get extra weeks of service while a departing staffer waited for pay, and made it difficult to leave a bad work situation. The erratic pay day had ripple effects on landlords, household dadas/boabs (the male equivalent), transportation (bus/taxi) and food for the whole family.
The students complained that the American teachers did not beat them. They said that they were bad and needed to be beaten to become good. Teachers told me stories of domestic abuse they had heard from the kids. While I never heard students talk about this, the stories were frequent and reports of siblings in different grades with different teachers all seemed to add up with what I knew of these specific kids and their respective families. There were no intervention programs and what counseling there was, was through religious authorities.
Dating was very restricted, and marriage out of the question for much of the middle class since the groom was required to provide a furnished apartment. One Egyptian staff member who was caught watching porno on school computers asked, given the hopelessness of this situation, “What do you expect me to do?” When a couple manages to become engaged, they can see each other at family functions.
We had a very beautiful tour guide who told us she was waiting for her father to select her mate. She knew her father loved her so the man he selected would be wonderful “Inshalla”. In a family with four daughters it is not uncommon for the girls to play up to their father to get the best prospect. This and other customs diminish the mother, her role and the respect she is given.
While I saw a lot of soldiers with machine guns and many "no photo" areas, I did not see any political persecution. Egyptians didn't speak much about the government and they didn't seem to know or care much about it. They used a familiar US expression “It’s a free country” (which, come to think of it, you hear less and less in the US). I did see though, what happens when the government is not interested in its citizens, that is, life under a libertarian system.
Besides no visible interest in politics, I did not see any awareness of the government's connection to daily life. I presume this has changed as the economy has soured from the low plateau that I saw while I was there. The Egyptian people were marvelously friendly, intelligent and resilient. If they can wrest control of their government, I believe, Egypt, the largest country in the region, can be a model for the whole Middle East.