Traveling Beans

Walk like an Egyptian???

This is one comes two weeks late...I should have posted it from Egypt, but things were going by so fast and Hilary, Jackie, and my self refused to let anything like posting up blogs interupt our time.

Now I'm a couple of time zones and a few thousand miles away from Cairo in Mok'po, Korea. This is the beautiful port city that Jackie has been reporting live from. We're having a wicked cool time with mom...doing all sorts of crazy Korean thing (like stripping naked in a Korean bath house...but more on that in another post). In this post we talk about Cairo.

Cairo was a crazy trip for me. Nothing what I expected a city in the Middle East to be. That being said...we have to consider that Egypt is not like most Middle Easter countries in a lot of ways. For one, it's has been considerably influenced by the "west," with a history of British occupation and then a more recent history of American capitialism. For this reason, Egypt (and even more so Cairo) was warm and welcoming to three Americans. This may come as a supprise, given the recent policy our President has taken on people who pray to Allah, however, as the three of us came to understand....Allah has no beef with America. Even more intersting was the way Egyptians welcomed me as a long lost brother...or maybe a distant cousine. Everywhere we went people were confused at the fact that I couldn't speak Arabic and even more confused that I wasn't Arab, but Puerto Rican. That didn't stop them from treating me as one of them, in fact, I think in a lot of situations it put the three of us at favor with the locals.

It was a drastic change coming from Ghana, a country where if you are not black then you're white. No in between. The term Puerto Rican meant nothing to them. They saw me as a rich, white, American...something that was extreemly frustrationg for me...and often got in the way of relationships. It wasn't what I expected at all. In my head, I thought that once I explained the history of my people....or rather Puerto Ricans, a history that connected me and my ancestors to the very same land that is now Ghana and Nigeria....the Ghanians would welcome me as a brother. Well...much to my supprise my history meant nothing to Ghanians...and the fair color of my skin (fair here is a relative term) meant much more as a social marker. It was a total mind trip...especially because for the last 22 years I've been raised in a country where the color of my skin often has the reverse effect.

The short of it is that it was amazing to come to Cairo and be accepted as one of them...even though I have no acctual links to the country, religion, or people (although I do have a suspicion that maybe I...some where...way way back...I may be connected). In fact, for a few hours I almost did feel Egyptian. Hilary, Jackie, and I watched Egypt and Corte D'Ivorie play for the Africa Cup of Nations with our pyramid tour guides. In those last few moments of the match...as Egypt and Corte D'Ivoire took the match to the very end in a shoot out I felt as if Egypt was my team. And when Egypt won...it was my team that won.

I have to admit here that even though I am much more progressive and left of center than most Americans, the propoganda that we've been fed had made me a little apprehensive about my trip to Cairo. Now I realize that Cairo (and probably most Arab countries) is just like any place. With people who are and welcoming, cool cafes, and great food. The most common theme of my travels has been this: The more places I see, the more I realize how much we are all the same. It's nice to know that no matter where I go next, people will be people.

posted by Radio Ríos @ 2:31 AM