It has been strange living a more simpler life but is oddly normal for us now. We have noticed we don't need as many "things" as we did back home. We did not really figure this out until we went on a trip to Cairo, Egypt this past week.
We were told, before we came to Nairobi, that we'd have the month of August off for free time. We have been arranging a few trips during this month since we've been here and going to Cairo is the big adventure. We have both wanted to always see pyramids and figured if we're in this part of the world, why not.
While here we have met an American priest, Fr. Douglas who now lives in Nairobi. Prior to living here, he lived in Egypt for 20+_years. He has set up a handicapped home for people who need assistance. He helped us get a room there, showed us the area of Cairo on google maps prior to going, and couldn't have been more helpful.
Another person who helped us tremendously in getting to/being in Cairo is Ellen Jarvis Brooks. Ellen is one of Katie's swimming teammates from UCLA who has lived in Cairo for the past year. She was so helpful with us getting there and being the best tour guide. She had worked at the American University in Cairo and now has a new job in the bustling city of Cairo, a city that somehow holds 25 million. She has been able to learn Arabic (even though she swears she barely knows any), get anywhere in the city using an extremely dangerous taxi driver, order the best foods to eat, and live in an Islamic county which couldn't be more foreign to her native home of Baltimore. She was a savior for us and it was a lot of fun to hear the stories of her life in the HOT HOT country of Egypt.
We arrived in Cairo about 1am on a Saturday morning. We didn't get to the handicapped home until 2:30ish and we had to bang on the gate outside of the home for a good 15 minutes. We later learned that the gate keeper was asleep (which we understand, being 2:30am) and that he is also deaf which made it hard for him to know we were there. After waking everybody else up in the home, we made our way into the room, and caught a few hours of sleep.
The next morning we walked a bit, caught a taxi, viewed this amazing city for the first time during the ride, met up with Ellen, and she took us on a trip to Islamic Cairo.
We met Ellen at her apartment then walked through the area of Zamalek (a island city in the middle of the Nile River in Cairo). We ended up at the Cairo Marriott, which is a beautiful hotel, catching a taxi and started our day adventure.
Our first stop was at the Ibn Tulun mosque, which is open to all people. We learned not all mosques are allowed to foreigners, women, and non-Muslims. This one though was open to all, the building was just beautiful, very very old, enormous, and had a beautiful spiral minaret where the daily prayers are projected from.
This is a view of the center of the Ibn Tulun mosque. I feel bad not remembering all the "specifics" that Ellen taught us about Islam, mosques, and Cairo, but I do remember her teaching us that: legend tells how Ahmed Ibn Tulun was asked how he wanted it constructed, at the same time he was twirling paper around his finger, then looked at his finger and said "like this". This "paper around the finger" gave the idea to the spiral concept of this entire mosque.
Patrick and Anita
The rooftop view of Islamic Cairo from the top of the mosque we climbed. It displayed many other mosques in the area, smoggy smoggy air (that made LA look like Big Bear), cemented apartment building after building, and a sea of satellite tv dishes on top of every possible place that one could fit.
Anita with Islamic Cairo in the background.
...Cairo is HOT. It was at least 100 degrees Fahrenheit daily, extremely humid, and we walked a lot. I do recommend people to go to Cairo, just not in August (the hottest time of the year) like us smart Yanks.
The rest of the day consisted of sitting in a nice air conditioned restaurant, enjoying some traditional Egyptian dishes, walking around the town more, checking out more mosques, drinking lots and lots of water, taking the train a few stops down to a very very old Orthodox Christian church, seeing a small Jewish temple connected to the Orthodox Church (where supposedly Moses was found in the basket on the Nile). Of course the temped hasn't always been there if the Nile used to be there but since the canals were built, the river doesn't flood any more, which would not allow water to be there.
It was an amazing day, HOT, but amazing to see something so different not only from back home but also Nairobi. We just talked at the end of the day how blessed and lucky we are to be able to see another part of the world and experience something new, again.
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