Author: Robin Chartier

I guess you better start calling me “Robin O’Hara” cause I now have my own household help. Josh and I interviewed and hired a woman to take care of the cleaning and laundry starting tomorrow. Well, he did the interviewing in a mixture of English and Arabic and I just smiled and nodded and looked like I understood the Arabic parts. I didn’t.

So now I have a mountain of clean laundry that I feel like I need to hurry and fold before she gets here, lol. The plan is for her to come 4 hours/day, 4 days a week and I think, “there’s no way she can clean for that many hours. She’ll run out of things to do.” Until I remember that I have 3 boys who are incapable of keeping food in their mouths, clothes off the floor, and pee in the toilet. God bless her.

Each day we have gone out for a walk to explore our neighborhood. When I’m not taking pictures of cats, I’m trying to capture the feel of our neighborhood for my friend Leslee, who is moving here in 30 days. There is a whole bunch of beautiful and ugly mixed together in the streets surrounding our apartment.

breathtaking.

expansive, pristine, and luxurious.

 

 

like this one

while the kids turn a fallen telephone pole into a balance beam.

 

turns into piles of dirt and trash. There is a lot of trash.

 

This post is for Caleb, my little cat lover. We are in a city with rich history, amazing old buildings, sights and sounds we’ve never seen before and all he wants me to do is take pictures of the stray cats we see in the streets. It’s kind of like when we took Calvin to Sea World when he was 2  and his biggest excitement all day was when he started screaming, “Duck! Duck!” as we walked by a random pond on our way out of the Shamu show.

We went on a 1/2 hour walk around our neighborhood and saw at least 25 cats. These are not pet cats, they are scrawny, dirty, trash rummaging cats. But Caleb sees one and says, “Mom! We can take it home with us and then it can be a friend for Daisy!” Um, no baby. I’m not going anywhere near these cats.

Now imagine me trying to subtly take pictures of these cats. I already know I stand out as a crazy American with my crew of blond haired children and a baby strapped to my back. I can only imagine what the Egyptians thought as they saw the white lady with her camera pointed at cat infested piles of trash . . . but he was so excited about all these gross cats, I couldn’t bear to say no.

We passed one trash barrel that had 4 cats rummaging around in it. One was in the process of yacking something up, and two other got in a hissing, spitting brawl over said yack. Seriously. I couldn’t make this stuff up if I tried.

This one was begging at the cafe where we had lunch. She kept running around under the different tables crying for scraps. The boys wanted to pet her, but I reminded them that she is the reason why they had to endure 3 rabies shots each before we left, ha ha.

This one almost looked cute and less dirty and mangy than the other ones we saw. But we’re not getting a cat — Caleb will have to settle for pictures of cats.

So we made it onto the last leg of our flight. Bye bye, frigid Germany, hello desert! The boys (and their mom) were thrilled that this flight had individual screens, unlike the shared screens of the previous flight. First up, a little 30 Rock for me. They must have known I was coming. Bob was happy with cartoons.

This is a picture of the unwashed masses who had to wait in the long customs lines while we skipped through with our diplomatic passports.

And here is where my documentation of our trip failed. This is the only picture I have of our arrival in Egypt. I guess I was too busy experiencing it, huh? From here we went to baggage claim where my smugness at beating the customs wait was replaced by annoyance as we had to wait and wait and wait for our bags — that early arrival in SF ensured our bags were last off the plane.

We were greeted by an expediter named Ahmed who was holding up a sign with our name on it as we came out of customs and the boys all went to retrieve our luggage as I found a place to change the baby before the drive to our house. As I walked in the bathroom, an Egyptian woman motions at me, offering to hold the baby, and I say, “oh, I don’t have to use the bathroom, I’m just changing her diaper.” As I scan the bathroom for an appropriate space, she leads me over to the sinks and points to the counter. I say, “OK, thanks” and then as I pull a diaper out of my bag, the woman starts to undress Camille and take off her diaper. I say, “I’ve got it,” but she just keeps going. And in her defense, she was very sweet and cooing at the baby and making her smile so I wasn’t scared of her, it was just very strange to have this lady take over the diaper changing process.

I let go of Camille for a second to grab the wipes out of my purse and in that split second, the lady picked her up, ran the water in the sink, and started rinsing her privates and behind with her hand! And in the thick fog that was once my brain I realized, “ohh. . . she’s going to want a tip and I have no cash on me. I’m an idiot.” So I try to regain control of the diaper changing situation and as I’m fastening the diaper, she has her hands over mine, “helping” me. And as I pull on the baby’s pants and she takes her from me and pulls them up the rest of the way. Then she coos at Camille, kisses her head and hands her back. Then she puts out her hand and asks, “tips?” I mumbled something like, “sorry, but thank you very much” and hustled out of there, feeling like I failed Traveling the Middle East 101.

Now it’s after 1am and as we exit the airport the air is warm and smells like a mix of cigars, old campfires and sand. It was great. There were masses of men standing at the doors to the airport, all jockeying for position, calling out “Taxi! You need a taxi?” We followed Ahmed through the crowd and he brought us to our driver where we met our sponsor Christy and someone from the embassy. We loaded all our people and our stuff into the car and the van and headed for home.

Within the first 3 minutes I saw 2 cars driving in reverse down the road coming straight at us, but our driver swerved around them without ever taking his foot off the gas. His night time driving technique was interesting. As he would approach intersections he would flash his lights and honk his horn, but never slow down. Considering I couldn’t find the seat belt to my seat, I probably should have been nervous, but I think I was too busy taking it all in . . .

After the initial delay, flying from SFO to Frankfurt, Germany was relatively uneventful. The boys mostly played their PSP and ipod touches. Baby slept.

 
Ah, coming into Frankfurt. It looks like a winter wonderland.

We got off the flight to find out that our connecting flight had been delayed by 5.5 hours. Not so bad, except the Frankfurt airport was FREEZING. Oh and the baby had projectile vomited all over me as we were descending and then 6 more times all over herself and her car seat as we came in for our landing — she looked like a fountain that kept bubbling over. So before we could do anything we had to find a bathroom and I stripped her down and gave her a bath in the sink in the Frankfurt airport.

Thankfully I came prepared with several changes of clothes for her and a set for myself so while Josh put clean clothes on her I tried to get the rest of the yack out of her car seat. Then we spent many, many cold hours waiting in the airport. 

It was so cold inside the airport that you could see your breath in some places. People were walking around in hats, scarves, and ski jackets like it was totally normal to be experiencing the great outdoors indoors.

Here is where our lovely little plan fell apart. The older boys had stayed awake and we were going to make it through to Cairo by 6:30pm, go to our apartment and sleep all night and wake up on Cairo time. But we were so cold and tired that we just huddled up in these chairs and tried to stay warm and sleep so we didn’t have to think about how cold we were.