No, You’re Quirky
Welcome to my random musings about the world, on a weekly-to-occasional basis.
Where we are: We’re in Kenya. After a few days in Nairobi (which turns out to be a fantastic city), today we’re heading to the Masai Mara. This not-a-morning-princess was up and at ‘em, excited by the prospect of seeing All The Animals. (I wrote the following while we were in Cairo, before we went to Kuwait and Dubai. Seems like a lifetime ago.)
No, You’re Quirky
Every country has quirks. Most are, by definition, in the eye of the outside beholder—quirks are things that are not the norm, so if everyone in the country is doing it, it’s clearly normal to them.
Egyptian quirks are multitudinous. Most of my amusement stems from hitches in translation, but I am amused nonetheless.
My favorite: most waiters say bon appetit—when they clear the table. NOT when the food arrives. I think it’s funny. Lee has decided it’s a comment on how much I’ve eaten. He is in deep trouble.
Several men have asked if I’m married; when I say yes, they ask where my wife is. I know it’s just a grammatical glitch, but it makes me laugh, given the relatively conservative religious situation here.
We had a taxi driver the other day who was using the map app on his tablet to navigate. It looked about as wieldy as navigating with a waffle iron.
Our drive from the airport took us on a sixteen-lane highway, jammed with cars barreling along at frightening speeds. There were women sitting in the median selling packets of tissues, people standing in the shoulder trying to flag down the ubiquitous ride-share vans that serve as public transport here, and about every tenth vehicle in the right lane was a horse-drawn wagon. I reiterate: this was a major superhighway.
Electronic communications are difficult, if not impossible. Businesses claim to use WhatsApp, but they rarely respond to messages, and if they do, the response is likely to be a cheery hello, followed by radio silence. I really don’t know how anything gets done.
There’s always a restroom attendant. At a museum, I walked into an empty restroom, and the attendant followed me in and waited outside the stall while I used the toilet. I saw no evidence of a tipping situation; she just stood there. I COULD SEE HER FEET UNDER THE DOOR. So weird.
Opening hours, like traffic lanes, are rough approximations.
Several times drivers have asked if we want the AC; when I say yes, they turn it on, happy to accommodate me—and roll down the windows. Sadly my eight words of Arabic don’t include “Dude, you’re doing it wrong!”
Which is just as well, because I know I’m doing a thousand things wrong, by Egyptian standards. Quirky, like beauty, is strictly in the eye of the beholder.
Take care—and beware the Ides of March!
Lisa
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