Celebrate good times, come on!

I was listening to a podcast the other day by Sundae Schneider Bean, an expert in the whole expat/living abroad thing. The podcast was about celebrating successes, even tiny ones. A lot of the time, I find myself feeling frustrated about what I can’t do yet, or my lack of progress in certain things such as learning Arabic. So the podcast got me focused on my successes since I moved to Egypt, which, believe it or not, was 18 months ago.

My most recent success happened just the other day. The Cairo International Book Fair was on, so I arranged to go with a few friends. It's at a place described as “Nasr City Fair Grounds”. Despite searching online and on Google maps, I just couldn’t work out where this place is, which makes things more difficult with Uber because you can’t put the destination in. So the options are to get an Uber with an unclear destination (always a risk because generally they haven’t got a clue where they’re going and can’t use the GPS), or get a taxi. In such situations I did what I always do – I rang my husband and asked him to speak to the taxi driver. He refused. He said if I tell you what to say, you can say it to the taxi driver. The pressure! Having to say new Arabic words to a taxi driver and risk that completely blank look! Anyway, I did it. He told me the words and I said them to the taxi driver, who understood, and sped us off to the book fair. Where I spent too much money on books, predictably.

I was inordinately pleased with this success, even though it may seem tiny. Arabic is a hard language to learn for a native English speaker for many reasons, so it’s daunting trying to speak new words when it really matters, especially as Arabic has some sounds that English doesn’t. For example, there’s one letter that sounds like you’re trying to swallow an A. I tried to say Ma’adi to a taxi driver once, and it took him about 5 minutes to understand me because of this letter. We spent the rest of the journey with him drilling me to say it properly – without much success it would have to be said.

It’s all got me thinking about how much Arabic I do actually know, and I surprised myself again. As mentioned above, a lot of the time I feel frustrated by my lack of progress. I think it’s because of the huge number of other things I’ve had to adjust to; my brain can’t take learning a new language on top of all that. Having said that, when I think about it, it’s surprising how many words I know. Inevitably, most of the words are the ones I need to live an independent life in Cairo, but I have learned quite a lot of others. Some of them are even useful, especially for scaring the living shit out of my team when they think I can’t understand them (laughs evilly…)

As well as the small successes with the language, there are many other things I can do which terrified me to begin with. I look back at my early blogs, and buying toothpaste was a challenge. I have lots of small shops where I live, and I like to shop in them. I can buy fruit and vegetables (and ask for a bag), and most other groceries. The only shop I have a problem with is the butcher, because I don’t know the words yet. So I buy most of my meat from the supermarket. I can ask for a kilo of mince though (which turns out to be quite a lot of mince). I’ve found a clothes shop which sells really good clothes for work, and it’s not even an expensive Western shop in one of the malls. It’s a proper Egyptian shop. For the first time in my life, I own a cat. In fact I own three cats. This resulted in a number of new challenges; finding a vet, a pet shop, a cat sitter, and a driver prepared to transport cats.

I’ve travelled all over Cairo by myself, in Ubers and taxis. I’ve got the train to Alexandria on my own (not without incident as you’ll know from my previous blogs). I can cross the road on my own (a significant achievement in this city I can tell you!) I don’t feel inclined to drive in Cairo, and I haven’t managed to get the metro yet, but all in good time.

The incredible Mohamed Ali alabaster mosque

Probably my most important successes have been about building my life here in Cairo, and part of this has been because I forced myself to get out there and meet people. Obviously I’ve got my job, but the majority of my social circle aren’t people from work. I’m an Internations consul for the Arts & Culture group, and also The Written Word. I’ve been to parts of Cairo that most tourists don’t get to, because they spend two days seeing the Pyramids and the Egyptian Museum then move on somewhere else. It’s a shame, because Cairo has layer upon layer of history and is absolutely full of fascinating places and hidden gems. The writers’ and readers’ groups have become extremely important to me, in fact discovering that I can write stuff that people want to read is a complete revelation, and probably a bit more than a small success. I have been published! And my article in Egyptian Streets was trending for a while! I have a small circle of close friends that I see regularly, in fact I go out a lot more than I used to when I lived in Britain.

I’ve managed to get through a lot of physical and health challenges. Inevitably there have been stomach bugs (I’ve definitely had e-coli and giardiasis – the latter of which made me ill for weeks). I battled all summer with heat exhaustion; I’ve discovered my tolerance for heat is extremely low, and I need to take twice daily rehydration sachets. I know this because of another success – I’ve found my own GP. Well they don’t really have GPs here, I just call him my GP because he said I can come and see him about anything. I picked him because he had a kind face, which turned out to be a highly effective strategy. I’ve also had to go to the hospital to have my trigger thumb dealt with and also when I had the giardiasis because it gave me acute gastritis. I’ve also been getting more migraines, probably because of the heat, but I’ve dealt with that too. It really does help that you can get the drugs delivered right to your door by a guy on a moped.

And on that subject. You can get absolutely anything delivered to your door in Cairo. There’s a brilliant app called Otlob with all the restaurants that deliver, including a pudding restaurant. I remember the first time I plucked up the nerve to order – my shawarma and chips arrived half an hour later. I do realise that being able to have pudding delivered to your door any time of the day or night is not necessarily a good thing, which is why I’ve now got myself a personal trainer and have started going to the gym. I feel like I’ve got to the stage where I can start focusing on something other than just surviving the day to day challenge of living and working in a country with a fundamentally different culture.

A friend asked me the other day if I feel settled here in Cairo, and I would have to say that I don’t. It’s not an either/or situation though; every day that goes by, with the small and the big successes, makes life here less strange and more normal. I’m pretty sure I’m close to the stage where the normal outweighs the strange. There are a lot more good days than bad days, and it is truly a privilege to live in a city that is riddled with multiple layers of culture and history. A friend told me recently that she really admires how I’ve built my life here in Cairo; and two friends have said to me how much they appreciate the effort I put into the Internations groups. Both these things made me feel all warm and fuzzy.

So I think I’ll stay. For the time-being, anyway.