Culture shock (or culture fatigue)

I've been mulling over writing this post for about a week now, and I think I've sorted through my thoughts enough to write a comprehensible post. For about the first 10 days in Cairo, I didn't have culture shock because I was too focused on just fitting in in this new culture. I dutifully greeted people in Arabic, boldly crossed streets by cutting off as many speeding cars as possible, and adventurously ate the local cuisine. About Day 10, that started to wear off. It's difficult to explain just how alien Cairo is from Woburn, or from DC, but I'll try.
1. The status of women. Women get catcalls and other sundry harassment here. Period. It's not an Islamic thing, or an Arab thing; the same behavior is probably tolerated from Italy to Afghanistan. But it's a reality nonetheless here, and it's one that really, really pisses me off. Women are expected to tolerate men accosting them on the street and telling them that they want to have sex with them. And they're supposed to tolerate men trying to rub their bodies against theirs. And women are supposed to tolerate cabbies trying to grope them as they exit cabs. This kind of "culture" isn't culture anywhere in the world. But what kills me is when I hear our guides tell women in our program to ignore the behavior, not to fight back because then the perverts will only escalate their behavior. And so our group of women has been cowed by the half-assed attitude towards sexual perversion that dominates in this country. Shame on our guides for giving such "advice." It seems like women here suffer death by a thousand indignities. It doesn't matter what women do to attempt to avoid the harassment. I've heard women in the program say things like, "I wore a headscarf and I still got harassed." As long as Egyptian women put up with this behavior, it will continue. As long as tourist guides tell women not to stand up for their dignity, the behavior will continue.
2. Nobody here actually works. The Egyptian government says that the unemployment rate is about 10%; academics put the figure much higher. To bring this point home, the first Friday I was here, a bunch of us went out to a club. When we came home at 4am, we were greeted by about 12 men sitting around or sleeping in our lobby. They were all security guards charged with a.) keeping the building secure, and; 2.) preventing men from sneaking into the women's side of the dorm, and vice versa. 12 men, most of whom were doing nothing. They were getting paid to sit around and do nothing! I could provide many more examples of people (read: men) being paid to "work," but they'd get repetitive pretty quickly. For about a week, I had been feeling almost suffocated by amount of people on the street, regardless of the time of day. After some reflection, I'm pretty sure that a big reason I feel like I never get a quiet moment in Cairo because there are 3 or 4 times the amount of workers just sitting on stools on the sidewalk watching me as I walk by. There are just too many people here for too few jobs, but rather than create new jobs, President Hosni Mubarak just pays people to essentially do nothing.
3. The food is terrible. If you were newly arrived in Cairo from the US, and you sat down on a bench in a busy square and just looked at the people around you, you'd probably notice how skinny the men are, and how overweight the women are. This obviously isn't true universally, but it's broadly true that most men I've seen are skinny, and that many women are overweight. I'd be willing to bet that the food is the prime factor that explains this trend. Lack of exercise would be my second guess. The diet here, like probably a lot of other developing world (read: poor) countries, consists mainly of carbohydrates. According to an article I read before I left, the average Egyptian family of 4 earns 400 EGP per month. At the current exchange rate of 5.34 USD, that means that the average Egyptian family subsists on $75 US dollars per month. $75 a month means that most Egyptians don't eat meat very often, and indeed an article in a magazine I read while waiting for my BBQ Burger in a trendy cafe in Zamalek tonight used the term "the average, non-meat-eating Egyptians." Anyway, the point is that Egyptians can probably pick out American students & tourists because, well, we just look different. And not just in a "we're white people" kind of way. We look healthy.

To wrap up this mammoth post, I thought you should know that this trip has shown me that Egypt is so much more than classes and weekend touring. Egypt is a developing world (formerly called 3rd world) country, and if you walked the streets of Cairo, you'd quickly figure that out. So, if you had been romanticizing Cairo as being a place you "have to visit," temper your romantic notions with 3rd world reality a little bit. Definitely visit for the pyramids, Alexandria and Luxor, but be prepared for what Egypt looks like on the days you're not touring.