Double Dipping

Illegal in most major cities in America, cabs in Egypt are allowed, and frequently will try, to pick up more than one fare at a time.

I call this double dipping.

What generally happens, is you're sitting in the cab say, on your way to a meeting. To which you are already a few minutes late.

Then, someone screams from the side of the road their desired destination, the cab pulls over, you protest, but the cab driver turns and says "M3lish, m3lish" (which translates roughly to "don't worry, everything will be all right there is nothing in the world that should bother you") and in the person gets.

This one time when I was on my way to a job interview, this rather obnoxious middle aged Egyptian man got in, and when I very angrily said to the cab driver that I better be first to be dropped off because I was late, the man turned around and in English said in a very Egyptian accent "Don't be angry, don't be angry."

Of course, this got me even more angry, made worse when the guy tried making conversation by asking my name and if I was married.

I responded that I didn't want to talk to him (in Arabic) causing the cab driver to giggle, and the other passenger to glare at me and then talk about me in Arabic like I couldn't understand (I could).

So I'm reviewing possible interview questions in my head and preparing my answers to why I would be such an amazing person to hire and trying to calm myself down. We get to where we have to make the turn and the other passenger asks to be let off, and says to the guy in Arabic "Is 3 okay?"

(The fare in question should have been about 20 Egyptian pounds and we were in a metered cab so there was no discrepancy).

Guy gets out. We continue. We arrive. The fare on the meter read 23 LE, and I gave the 20 LE since I didn't have change and didn't feel like arguing over the fairness of the other guy not paying half the amount. Driver gets angry.

Why do I call having a second fare in the cab double dipping?

The last one in is stuck with the person's leftovers - and I don't mean leftover food.

People in the Numbers

Since I've been sick for the past few days and have been unable to venture far from my bed, I thought it was time for a reflective post.

Egypt is a point of transit. Not just for ancient sailors using Alexandria's port, but for people - legal and otherwise.

Because of Egypt's geographic location and proximity to a number of war torn and politically dangerous places to live, there is an ever-growing and difficult to number population of refugees. Ethiopians, Somalis, Nigerians, Sudanese, Palestinian, Iraqi - to name a few.

This post isn't about the reasons they come to Egypt - a country still undeveloped enough that many try to leave - but about how meeting these people changes your perspective.

One of the first refugees I met and spoke with was this amazing Iraqi woman who was a lawyer. She and her family had been in Egypt for a couple years having fled Baghdad. Because of the difficulty of getting refugee status, they hadn't applied, which meant that her children couldn't attend school and her and her husband couldn't work. Thankfully she was among the lucky few who had enough money saved to support her and her family.

Another time, I was attending an event for a story at the magazine I was working for held at a NGO that helped women refugees, mainly among the Sudanese community in Cairo. These women talked about how they couldn't educate their children, couldn't return to their homelands, couldn't get official refugee status - but still here they were trying to see how they could better themselves and make a living.

Seeing poverty is never easy. Living in a country where poverty is many places you look is even less easy. Meeting people unable to move forward and even less able to move back is heartbreaking.

Meeting refugees either makes me angry at the world for putting people, good people, in these types of situations or it makes me want to do something to help.

It also makes me feel guilty.

What separates someone like me from someone like them? An accident of birth? How easily could I have been among the countless women raped, tortured, or abused because of war or politics? How lucky am I to not only be from a country that affords me opportunity but from a country I can return to at all?

When I meet these people, these people I can touch and see and hear, its hard to take in the unfairness of the world that could disallow the person standing next to me from any basic rights or freedoms, like being able to live in safety in their homeland or send their kids to school.

These people aren't the "countless made homeless" you read about in newspapers, or the "millions forced to flee" from persecution and oppression. These are people. Real people that you can talk to and ask their name. It's easy to take a few steps away from these situations and only see the numbers and the statistics of those hurt and say that it is awful. It's easy even to be sad after reading a depressing news article. But living and interacting with people in the numbers is not the same.

In America, we are told that if you're smart enough and you work hard you can make it, but what if for some people that just isn't, will never be, enough?

So, what do we do, those of us blessed with things some people can only hope for? We work a bit harder and appreciate the things we have, because otherwise, how do we give others something to hope for at all?

Of Cabs and Fares

Unpleasant surprises usually happen when you don't think they're going to happen.

Almost a year ago, the Egyptian government introduced a new plan to get the antiquated black and white taxis off the streets and replace them with new, white, metered taxis.

The reason this was a God-send for everyone living in Cairo - and especially expats - is that the older taxis do not have meters and rely on the passenger either knowing the fare, being ripped off, or a huge fight ensuing over whether the fare is fair.

So, new taxis introduced (see link above), fares set, everyone happy.

But not quite.

Ingeniously, the drivers of these new air-conditioned cars found a way to rig the meters to charge more than they're supposed to.

Which leads me to my story.

The other morning I hailed a white cab (as the new cabs are known) from my normal place on 26th of July in Zamalek near my apartment. One of my good friends had recently written an article for a popular Egyptian magazine on the subject of cab fares and whether the government was doing anything to prevent drivers from fixing their meters, and I thought to myself - man, something must be going on because I haven't gotten in a rigged white cab in a long time.

Famous last words.

My normally 5.6-6 pound cab ride skyrocketed to 12 LE - noting that the cab fare jumped from 7 to 12 LE just a few buildings away from where I work.

I employed my normal tactic in these situations of just giving the driver the right fare and walking away.

When I handed the guy 6 LE he smiled and pointed to his meter, which indicated 12 LE. I smiled back and told him his meter was broken and if he'd like to go talk to the security in front of the building to settle the issue that would be fine (this all said in Arabic).

He quickly took the money and drove away.

Lesson: know thy fare before thee ride.