The upper chamber of the Parliament is burning. Being German that does give me the creeps. Anyway, it has been burning since hours and the fire fighters can’t get through. For a while they tried to attack the fire with helicopters - yes the ones which they usually use to fight fire in the jungle. That’s the urban jungle of Cairo for you. They seem to have given up on that though. I guess, when dropping water or powders from a great height in a city, the collateral damage would be rather devastating.

In a couple of hours I will drive to the airport. Tonight I will fly to Khartoum. It is a first initial visit to set up some contacts for my PhD. I am looking forward to see how Khartoum has developed since I was there in 2000. They say it has become expensive, that there is malls now and moving stairs, that there is lots of big new buildings and other things. They also have a new currency, which is much easier to calculate. In 2000 it used to be 150 Dinar to the Dollar. (Prices however were usually quoted in thousand old Pounds. One Dinar equalled 10 old Pounds. That means that a product advertised for “10″ cost actually 100 Dinar.) Now the Dollar (and of course the Swiss Franc) is 2 Pounds. (Practically the new Pound equals 1000 old Pounds.) As that may be - now I will have a last beer and something to eat, before it is Tea and beans for ten days.

What a week. The week end - i.e. Friday and Saturday - was directly followed by Coptic Easter (the Christians here work with the Coptic calendar which is synchronous to the Julean calendar). Monday we celebrated Sham El Nessim, a celebration for the arrival of spring which dates back as far as 2700 BC. Tuesday and Wednesday were normal working days, but many people made a bridge (can you say that in English?). Thursday was the First of May of course and Friday and Saturday were again week end. Tomorrow we will finally celebrate the Pharaoh’s birthday. Old man Mubarak is going to be 80. Calls for a national strike and demonstrations have been made, but I do not expect much. The last strike basically did not happen and therefore there is no reason to expect more commotion this time.

The week before Easter my flatmate’s mother was here and she brought tons of food with her. It was good to have some real wine and real salami for a change. During the same time the One Minutes workshop was taking place at the townhouse. The One Minutes Foundation is an organisation which is trying to spread the medium of film in its technically easiest form, the one minute movie. Two facilitators were sent from Amsterdam, a Dutch and a Serbian video artist. But first things first. On Thursday I went to the Opera to see the Swiss mime group Mummenschanz. I don’t remember when I saw them the last time, but it must be approximately 20 years ago. Their performance was loads of fun, although maybe a bit too long. On Thursday was the screening night of the one minute movies produced during the workshop. The high quality of the movies was really stunning. You can see all the movies in full quality on Wuala. After the screening most of us went together to the 100Copies electronic music festival at the Goethe institute. Finally we ended up in Cairo Jazz Club.

On Sunday I finally saw Juno. More on that in another post. However on the way back from the cinema we passed a church and of course noticed the commotion and heavy security around the place. We decided to have a look inside. It was the church just down the road from my apartment. The church is very new and the crowd was more or less completely upper class Christians. Inspired by this first stop, we decided to visit another church close by, where a more down to earth crowd had gathered to celebrate Easter. Finally we decided to go to Cairo’s cathedral to see the pope. It was an interesting trip. The festivities were extremely well organised and separate areas in the church had been designated for various groups. But they seemed unsure what to do with us, that is three foreigners. Therefore they seated us at the first free space they found, which was in the section for the speech and hearing impaired. In front of our section stood a special priest translating the whole singing into sign language. It was fun to observe how many people in our section were chatting with each other, sometimes over long distances. In the row before us stood a young man and a young woman, two people between them, and they were quite obviously flirting for at least half an hour in sign language.

Monday I went with Hisham to a pool party at Muhammed Ali club. It is extreme to see how different the cultures are, which are existing in Egypt. On the way there, one crosses through rather poor areas, where women are deeply veiled, often completely in black. The pool party was the absolute opposite. Here the youth of the affluent Egyptian upper class was celebrating their own arrival of spring by practically making out in the pool, while enjoying the available alcoholic beverages. It is funny how the sight of a woman wearing a bikini is already becoming weird for me. Nevertheless - or probably because of that - we enjoyed our day at the pool to the fullest. My personal arrival of spring had been a couple of days earlier, when the local police switched from their fully black winter uniforms to the white summer uniforms. I really think it makes Cairo a happier, less threatening place.

On the evening I went with my flatmate and her mother for dinner at Hyatt. The two of them had never been to the roof top restaurant and therefore we decided to go there, even though they were not serving alcohol. Yes you heard that right - the Hyatt is currently not serving alcohol. For some reason their license to sell alcohol has expired and there is problems to renew it. The manager of the restaurant was unable to explain us, what the actual problem is. But it is quite stunning that the Egyptian state allows a situation which potentially affects tourism. Usually tourism machine is the only thing which works more or less flawless in this country. We were equally surprised that there is non-alcoholic Whiskey. I tried to explain to the waiter that long drinks were invented during the time of prohibition - expecting him to fail following me on the term prohibition. However he already failed with the term long drink. Ah well, the state seems still in control.

In control - that is in control of the social control - not prices or infrastructure. Electricity had a number of lows within the last week and we had one complete black out in our street, which lasted maybe two hours. Water pressure is notoriously low and having no water at all is no complete rarity either. But this is not what the state cares about. The state cares about bread -they raised the salaries of civil servants by 30% and we now have a fix installed bread kiosk of the Egyptian military down the street - and the social order, which is basically upheld by banning the first Egyptian graphic novel. I guess old man Mubarak did not like it.

Well that is it for now. Happy birthday oh Pharaoh.

Anna 50 CHF
Felix 60 CHF
Florian 40 CHF
Léonie 50 CHF
Wuala Team 400 CHF
DB 50 CHF
AE 50 CHF
MIM 100 CHF
HR 100 EGP
CW 200 CHF

I will also contribute 100 CHF (which are included in the bar above) plus all transaction fees etc. The exchange rate is based on Google.

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Update: My little fund raising has succeeded. Together you contributed 6000 EGP to the education of a boy and the living expenses of his family. As described in my comments on the long term perspective, the plan is to establish a proper fund, in which more kids can be integrated and which has a proper institutional ground work. If you feel betrayed to have missed a good cause to contribute to, feel free to contact me and we will find a way to include your money in said fund. The fund is planned to be at least partially based on private donations and a certain start funding is for sure beneficial. However, for the moment, thanks a lot to all who have contributed. It was good to see that so many people responded so quickly.

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Dear friends,

I need your help… and even worse: I need your money!

Why? There is an Iraqi refugee kid at the Townhouse. Two months ago, the Townhouse provided him with a limited art scholarship, as the kid turned out to be very talented. Problem is his family is in a very bad state. And if I say very bad, I mean sick and malnourished. They are doing so bad, that the father of the family decided to return to Iraq instead of staying in Cairo. For the last couple of months the family was depending on the kid’s artwork and his very limited scholarship. Here comes the other problem – the boy, who just turned 16, is in his final year for receiveing a certificate in secondary education and since now is the exam season in Cairo, he has to stop working and prepare for his exams for two months. Obviously, going back to Baghdad now, would be absolutely disastrous for the boy, since he just started an education in Cairo. Therefore we need some money to pay for his familys basic expenses, plus school exam fees, etc. and give the boy a breathing space to get on his feet.

Townhouse? The Townhouse is a local gallery, which is very active in art education as well as working with the civil society. The Townhouse is considered as one of the most important galleries in the Middle East. It is running a large program for underprivileged groups, which is funded by CIDA.

So why money? Currently no funds are available to transferred from the already very overstreached funding resources of The Townhouse. However the money is needed now and quickly. It is so to say an emergency situation.

Long term? The Townhouse will set up a proper fund to deal with issues like this and to include more young refugees and local talented kids, like the kid I am talking about. This fund should be able to take over the responsibility in approximately two months. Meaning: If we can get the money together the kid and his family have a long term perspective to stay here, at least until the situation in Baghdad calms down. If we do not get the money together, the family will return to Iraq within the next couple of weeks. Interestingly the Iraqi embassy is giving out free plane tickets to anyone who wishes to return to Iraq.

How much money? We are talking about 6000 EGP (approximately 1200 USD). This covers the live expenses of a family with six people for two months (2000 EGP), the cost of the kid to take his exams in Alexandria and the cost of special courses, which are necessary to take the exams (4000 EGP). Any amount of money is welcome, be it only 30 USD. If I can get enough people to give me 30 USD, I will have the amount together. If you are ready to send money, please tell me by mail or write a comment on my blog and I will tell you how the money can be transferred.

I would be very thankful for your help and it would be very nice if you could get back to me quickly.
My best wishes from Cairo,
Moritz

I just walked down the road on the way home and a guy comes up to me and asks me if I have an Anti-Virus CD-ROM. What was that about? Follow the white rabbit? Some weird code? Is that a local pick up line in the gay community or was I supposed to answer something equally abstruse to be able to join some strange club or political conspiracy? Or was he really just looking for an Anti-Virus software? He looked like someone who owns a computer. I imagine him writing an important paper, trying to finish it before the morning, and now at eleven o’clock his computer crashes because of a virus. Cairo is a good place for late night shopping, but software might very well be an exception. And so the poor man is roaming the streets talking to strangers like a beggar in despairing need for this piece of software. When I shook my head in surprise he merely smiled and marched on, determined in his quest, as it seemed.