ohh..not so good

Yesterday was quite the adventure. I leanred a lot the hard way. It was half good, half bad day.

The first part of the day I spent walking around in the morning. I visited AUC and the library and just walked around the city. I was approached by a man my ge dressed very nice. He started talking to me and walked around with me. His name was Hakim and he took me to an 'ahwa and bought me a cup of tea. Then we walked around some more all the while talking and everything. He tried to get me to get in a taxi with him to the pyramids and to his bedouin village. I said no, (which was smart of me, one of the only smarat things I did yesterday) and he said well come to my cousin's shop. It was then I realized that he was not being friendly but was trying to get a sell. I was talked into getting two paintings on "papyrus" which I think is really banana leaves for about thirty us dollars. I paid too much money, and I left knowing what had happened.

I then went to a lecture at AUC with my roommate Ahmed. He took me and I rode in a cab for the first time. Cabs are crazy. The drivers are grumpy and try to take your money, and they drive crazy old cars. The alignment and tires are all off and the car leaks fumes of petrol and they smoke in the cars. It's madness or it has character whichever you prefer. But the lecture was very good. It was an American professor, who talked bout leadership and corruption in Bolivia.

After the lecture I walked back to the hotel..that is when the "fun" began. A man asked me the time, I told him and we started talking. He told me a lot of things, that he was in the military part of the equilavent of the green berets or sas. He said he wanted to show me the real side of cairo. His name was mustafa and he seemed like an upstanding gent, so I walked round with him. He showed me some of the markets in cairo at night where they sell everything. and by everything I mean everything. We walked through thousands and thougsands of shoes thousands and thousands of clothes, candles, every such thing. The most interesting and different market I saw was for meat. There was raw meat cuts and dead fish everywhere. I saw whole cow carcasses hanging by hooks, pigs feet, and many other cuts just lying in open air stalls. Blood ran across the ground and stone, children played among the market, and cats walked around looking for food I guess. He also took me to a local mosque, it was kind of used and I sat while he prayed for about ten minutes. The mosque experience was cool. I was even in there while others were praying. It had rugs on the floor, korans at the front. and a set of small wooden stairs that led to the wall. I don't know what that was for. The walls were painted and there were columns throughout the stone structure. Very different from being in church.

I then had him take me home and went to make a phone call. I talked to my brother for a little bit and went out with Mustafa again. I hd put my trust in him and he wanted to take me out to a dinner. I stupidly got into a cab with him and we went across the nile into giza. We then walked to this club or something. Let me describe it to you:

You had to walk into the building, go up some stairs, go pas the guards (I didn't relize that they were this at the time) and then through these closed doors into a closed off room with lots of tables. This room had odd odd decor. It was all dark, the tables and booths had dark table white table clothes with dark triangle patterns on top. Their were santa claus plstic faces all over the the walls, there were streamers and balloons on the ceiling for a birthday party. The waiters were all men who were dressed in black. There were women their not dressed like I had seen on the streets. They were wearing high boots, short skirts, low cut tops, and all skin tight clothing. Their job seemed to be talk to the men who were the customers. We were seated and served a platter of fruit and stella beer. It is an okay beer, light and kind of bubbly like 7up. The show consisted of a woman singing and some men playing instruments. I thought this was a really cool place to be, that I was getting to see something that only Egyptians get to see. Then the show ended and we had to pay the bill. It was 292 pounds about 60 us dollars. He asked if I could pay for it because he didn't have any money. I said okay but I only had us dollars and not a lot of pounds. He said that was ok and he would work it. He did and then said we should stay to see the next shift, we sat around for about a half hour. All the customers had left, the girls had left, and the men were cleaning. Then he asked for hashish, a joint. He got it from one of the men who worked there, and had one of the girls come over who smoked it with him. I did not partake. The girl started talking with him and me and wanted me to speak in arabic to her. I said hello and everything. Then I had to leave, by this time I knew I was getting scammed again for the second time in a day. He asked for forty more dollars to pay and then we left. He acted mad like he was getting hustled and on the street he got me a cab. He asked for twenty more dollars and then five more for a cab. The cabbie then took me back to my hotel. I tried to pay him five pounds, but he wouldn't leave so I asked for change for a twenty to pay ten and he shorted me on purpose five pounds and then drove off.

So thats how I lost 130 dollars that day. I realized it was going south after I paid the first bill, that something was not right. And I sat there for the next hour with a bad feeling in my stomach. I started to think his story was not true and that he acutally knew some of the people at this club. Oh and on top of everything else, I had to pay a protection fee, to this big chested egyptian man who flexed his muscles for me and introduced himself as "hogan". A protection fee! Thankfully I got home safe and in one piece and just learned a lesson the hard way.

I talked to my roommate afterwords and he told me that yeah you paid too much. He told me that the girls were hookers and that usually when you go to those places you pay at most 200 pounds. For those of you who don't know, that is about 40 us dollars. At that club I paid 135ish dollars. Ohh, made my stomach hurt that night.