I have a white
knight in shining armor who is never more than a few feet away from me. His name is Carrier. I know this because he proudly displays his
name on a little blue badge located on his lower left body. He is about two feet wide and about a foot
tall. My life here in Cairo without
Carrier would be a veritable hell. He
protects me from the evil Red Dragon.
He senses when the Red Dragon has begun to mount an attack on me and my
family. His green digital eyes click and
beep to life when the Dragon begins to draw near. My Carrier comes to life with a gush of delicious
cold wonderfulness that forces the Red Dragon to retreat, keeping him at bay.
“Carrier” is the air conditioning unit that is mounted on
the wall of the room where I spend the majority of my time.
I thought that description was a lot more fun than “I have
an air conditioner”. It was….right?
The Red Dragon
is, of course, the crushing heat that threatens to drown me whenever I am brave
enough to leave the cool confines of my room.
I came to Cairo armed with a ton of movies to watch on my computer and
an armload of books. I KNEW I would be
spending an enormous amount of time in the bedroom where my beloved Carrier
resides.
I know I have mentioned this once before, but
I will mention it again for sake of my brain’s inability to think of a better
example. There is movie called “Biloxi
Blues” that came out in the 80’s that stars Matthew Broderick. He plays a young writer named Eugene Morris
Jerome who has been drafted in to the Army during World War II. As he steps off the train in Biloxi,
Mississippi to begin his basic training, he is overcome by the heat of the Deep
South. He struggles to describe it and
finally comes up with “Man it's hot. It's like
AFRICA hot. Tarzan couldn't take this kind of hot.” When I first heard
that line, I laughed. I never in a
million years thought I would one day, quite literally, understand what that
line meant.
Good GOD it is hot here.
It’s NOT like the heat back home. It’s indescribable to anyone who has never
experienced heat like this. I have not
spent a lot of time in any of the southern states of the U.S., but I know heat
like this does exist there. I looked
like I had taken a shower a mere 15 minutes after I stepped off the plane at
the Cairo airport on June 11th.
The sweat was pouring off of me.
I of course had spent a small amount of time preening and trying to
erase the 24 hours it had taken us to make the journey from Albuquerque to
Cairo. Unfortunately the dark circles
and greasy hair caused by hours and hours in a packed aircraft fuselage told
the real story. I was liberal with the
concealer and managed to dab on a bit of mascara as well. As presentable as I appeared when we stepped
off the bus and in to the terminal, all my cosmetic efforts slowly began to
melt off my face as that famous Egyptian heat began to have its way with me. I
impatiently glared at the customs man and willed him to work faster as he read
paperwork, made his inquiries, and stamped the passports of those who managed to get off the plane faster than I could. Slowly but surely we made our way to the
front of the line, the whole time drops of sweat tracing their way down my face
taking my makeup with it. Sigh. When we finished going through customs a very
enthusiastic man had marked me as an American….ah…..a chance to make some REAL
money. I knew what he was up to and
allowed him to hurry me along to the rotating belt in the baggage claim area. I then allowed him to pull all five of our
overly packed humongous bags off the belt and load them on to
a single cart. He then said “Please, I
need twenty dollars now”. I think I
laughed out loud and then said “Wallah la zeem?
Ai-ape”…which basically translates in to “You swear to God? You are
really asking me for that? That is SO wrong.”
A look of surprise registered on his face and then he slowly put his
hands up and turned and walked away. I
could just hear him thinking “Damn! Stupid American woman is on to me”. I would have tipped him something, but he
scurried away in shame before I had a chance to do so.
Twenty bucks my FOOT.
My point in all this is that I ended up
pushing the overly loaded cart through the terminal myself which did absolutely
nothing for the whole sweat situation. I
was now drenched.
We finally
reunited with Hany who mercifully took over the cart and lead us out to his car
where he promptly loaded us up and jacked up the air conditioner. Ah sweet bliss! My hair had managed to dry out some by the
time we made the half hour trip to his mom’s apartment. We said our hellos, dragged our bags in to
the room and I immediately greeted my little white savior and switched him on.
Almost
immediately another Cairo truth reared its ugly head. I became aware that my little white knight in
shining armor had an even more sinister enemy that rendered him useless and
allowed the Red Dragon to attack! What
was this evil force you ask? The power
outage. Flippin power outages. ACK!!
“You must be
kidding me”. I think that’s what I said.
Only a short
while after we arrived from the airport, the power went out and stayed out for
over an hour. I had forgotten about the
power outages. Hany giggled and said “Welcome back to Egypt baby!” Not funny.
The strain of air conditioners on the power grid is overwhelming here,
so in order to ease that strain and prevent a greater (perhaps catastrophic)
outage, they must have rolling blackouts.
We have been here for six days now and we have experienced no less than
10 outages. They last anywhere from a
half hour to two hours or more. They
often occur during the heat of day when the air conditioners are in full swing
and not a breath of a breeze is to be had.
Sheer, unadulterated HELL. The
temperature in the room becomes uncomfortable within minutes. The shutters fly open and folks make their
way to their balconies with their makeshift fans and glasses of ice water to
sit out the outage and wait for their power to return. I actually prefer the night time outages as
at least the air is a bit cooler. You
can’t see a damn thing inside the apartment, but the street down below remains
busy. Most homes now have a battery operated lighting strips that switch on
when the power goes out. Most are
equipped with obnoxiously bright LED lights that will blind you if you look
directly at it. I shouldn’t complain, at least we can make our way around. I actually washed the dishes by the light of
one of these small LED lights the other night.
Interesting experience! In most cases the other side of the street is
still lit as the outages usually occur on just one block at a time. After what seems like an eternity, the power
pops back on and you can audibly hear the cheers in the nearby apartments. Back
to business as usual. It seems to me
that the strain on the power grid is INCREASED when they shut off the power as
now every A/C and fan is immediately switched on to try and bring down the
sweltering temperature. There is no
rhyme or reason for when an outage will occur.
There might be one in a single day, or maybe two. You may go several days without a single
outage. (We have had at least one a day since I have been here.)
The power outages
will be a daily inconvenience for me, but I will survive. I will have to further arm myself with
powders and creams in order to keep the sweat at bay and the heat rashes that
are sure to follow if I am not diligent!
At least they are saving money on heating water as I have yet had to use
a single drop of warm water while showering.
No point really as the water comes out of the shower head cold, soaks
through my hair and actually runs down my back completely warmed by the heat
trapped on my head! Ahhhh……ya gotta love
the experiences you have when you travel to the other side of the world. It can be difficult, but I wouldn’t change it
for anything. Roll with the punches
baby.
Goodnight my sweet Carrier.
I shall now switch you off for a few minutes as I am actually feeling
chilled. No worries, ten minutes tops
and I will once again be in need of your services.
Yes, I am a drama queen.
Looking forward to the next adventure. Inshallah.
No comments:
Post a Comment