Oh, hi! Greetings from Egypt.
It’s pretty hot here. And windy!
I came out here to do a retreat thing, focusing on meditation and other shit. It went great!
I’ve since been living in a place called Dahab, on the eastern coast of the country. I can see Saudi Arabia from here!
Buckle up, and let me tell you a bit about this place, in easily digestible form. That’s right: list time!
-It’s presently Ramadan in the Arab world. So that means peoples here can’t eat from sun up, til sun down. For a whole entire month! Some guy on the street tried to bite me, but I didn’t take offense, he was probably just extremely hungry
-There are these guys driving pickup trucks all around offering you rides, and they will either shout “TAXI!??” at you or honk their horn, and let me tell you: having an onslaught of car horns being directed at you each and every time you’re taking a stroll is utterly pant-shitting
-I was the only non-female at my retreat, which was nice! I was also the only one there who was not crying their eyes out due to some breakthrough healing of trauma from my time as a child. By Day 4, eight women had already cried. And there were only 6 of us in the group! Which means, I think, that some of them actually joined our group just to cry and then left
-The flies here are a nightmare, and their incessant buzzing has ruined multiple meals and sleeps of mine. Suddenly, mosquitos aren’t the biggest annoyance in the air; they’re airborne threat number three—right after flies, and Quidditch players
-When you travel between cities, you will invariably run into multiple military/police checkpoints. On my bus from Cairo to Dahab, at least 1 of the 8 hours of the drive were dedicated to police checking passenger’s papers. Now, I had none of the papers required to bus oneself across the country, but I was hiding in the trunk of the vehicle so crisis averted
-One day, our retreat headed out into the desert, for a special session of breathwork. About midway through, a dude named Mufasa shows up and says, “I am private security man. Nice to meet everybody!” Strangely, he said that all while looking directly at me. Only later did I find out that he was there because of me! Because up until recent times, Americans would get kidnapped so that Egyptian terror cells could free their brother-in-arms incarcerated back in the US. (Guess I’ll have to live out my kidnapping fantasy fetishes elsewhere!)
-Arab culture is strict; usually you see women in full burkas and bodysuits and shit. But Dahab is a bit different! One of the more open Arab places in the world. No burkas, Egyptian women free to flaunt their beauty, AND you can drink and smoke openly here. (You still have to pray 136 times a day in the mosque, which seems like a fair compromise)
-There is a coast here. A long strip of it. People sunbathe and sprawl out and act like total degenerate hippies. Dahab is graced with oodles of coral and tropical fish, and the Red Sea (2nd saltiest in the world) is a prime place for freediving and kite surfing and snorkeling, amongst other things. Getting a small army of people to participate in a choreographed dance routine of “Walk Like an Egyptian” is not one of those things… at least, not yet!
-Egyptians have curly hair. This was a surprise, because I was sure that everyone was gonna have big golden hairdos like King Tut!
-It’s so reasonably priced here—some would even say it’s “Cheap as chips!” (although everyone that would say that died 200 years ago.) Most Egyptian meals cost 1 USD, including the mixed falafel sandwich I have every morning. Falafel? More like fun-lafel!
-There are these brigades of wild goats prowling the streets uninhibited. You’ll see like 30 of them at a time. Baby goats, mama goats, grandpa goats, stepdad goats. Goats standing on cars, on walls, on ceilings. And they’ll eat whatever you feed them: strawberry stems, cardboard, virtually anything colored green, peanut butter, my ball sack, etc…
And there you have it! EVERYTHING you need to know about Egypt. If you have any other questions about the place, comment below and I’ll try and answer it in a future blog. Ciao!
