Ain Sukhna, Egypt

The work week here runs from Sunday to Thursday. My hosts work at an American school and they had a planned trip to the beach and last Thursday I tagged along with about 70 teachers. Being an educator abroad is a sweet racket. For the same amount of education and certification to be a teacher in America one can teach in another country and live the good life. The job is reminiscent of the Foreign service where you can do 2 years here before you move onto 2 years there. Except instead of stamping passports and spreading the policy of the government, one is interacting with rich folks’ kids, working on a Masters or other certifications by correspondence and have every summer off. Other perks include the ability to exotic places, housing allowances and a worldwide network of professionals that choose to do this as a career. And the poorer the country, the farther the Western sized wages go.

The resort was good. It was in this huge beach house community/compound on the beach. The Gulf of Suez is one of the busiest shipping lanes in the world and off in the distance one could see the huge ships shuffling across the horizon. To the north was this chemical plant whose product I couldn’t determine, but whose spherical high pressure volatile organic compound tanks reminded me of home. The water was clear and shallow and when tired of the sea salt, there was this huge pool in the middle of the hotel. Kids were led through the Chicken Dance in Arabic and the adults could lounge all day and then spend the night smoking hookahs, drinking beverages and whatever else old folks do. The food there was pretty good and came in large quantities encouraging gluttony. The buffet rule, which is a coronary of the law of diminishing returns, was in effect; the food just isn’t good the second time around.

When talking to the teachers over cappuccinos and overprices liquor I would hear “third world” a lot. Really? I can count the number of child beggars I have run into on my fingers, haven’t seen any violent protests or people run over, dead along side of the road. The lives of the people I see seem to have value. But maybe I have a skewed view of what third world means and maybe I am not really seeing it all from the luxury resort and the highrise flat. I hear there are places here called Garbage City and the City of the Dead where Cairoians pull survival and shelter from the garbage dumps and people dwell in the mausoleums of the sprawling cemeteries. There are massive closely spaced apartment blocks that spring up from the desert where clothes drying on the balconies of the shaded alleyways probably never see the sun. These homes are not topped with satellite dishes. Every time I passed through Los Angeles I would wonder how an area encompassing Beverly Hills, Compton and Disneyland made any sense. Actually, even with the experience of Cairo I still wonder the same thing.