El Andalous - Settling In

My Cleaned Balcony

My return is now almost a predictable routine, but somehow the same things still surprise me at this stage.

I entered my flat and was pleased to see it was clean. Like last time, they’d put things back in different places, and they’d obviously not been able to fit all my bathroom stuff back into the cupboard, because they left a basket-full of stuff sitting on top of the cabinet.

Interestingly, in the kitchen, they’d put my knives, forks and spoons in that order but from right-to-left (ie, in the direction of their writing) rather than left-to-right, as I usually have them. I left them all in their new Arabic order. After all, when in Egypt…

There are always a few problems. Again, my washing machine didn’t work properly on its first use but was fixed fairly easily.

To my horror, I had mites, or maybe ants, crawling in my sugar, so I had to throw that away. We seem to be overrun by ants this year – I’ve not had that before. As soon as I leave anything out on the counter, ants are swarming all over it. Ants also raided my replacement bag of sugar almost immediately, so I had to buy a new airtight container (my original airtight container was evidently not airtight enough!).

I’ve had the occasional cockroach before, but this time I seem to be getting around 3-4 a week (they are gradually getting fewer now). They’ve visited me frequently enough for me to buy some spray. I feel a bit guilty about this environmentally-unfriendly approach, but I’ve heard treading on them can spread their eggs and they won’t cooperate when I try to usher them out of the flat. Still, at least I don’t have rodents of any description (touch wood), so it’s not too bad.

The wall in my bedroom was looking quite bad as it still hasn’t been repaired. It was never fully resolved (see blogs of 21/22 Dec 2013) and about a year later they decided it was a leak after having protested for 12 months that there was no leak. They were supposed to start work on it in January while I was away, but forgot. And then in the mean time another flat above me had a leak, so now they claim they need my wall to dry out again from that. There are huge cracks and bubbles in the paint and some of the paint has even peeled away to reveal the bare brick.

I arrived back to a bit of a heatwave and I needed my fans on at night. At first, I thought I could smell the paint peeling off the wall and drifting into the air with the breeze of the fan as I lay there in bed. As I inhaled the bad air, I fretted that it wasn’t healthy to sleep in a room with decaying walls. But the next day, when I turned on my ceiling fan on the balcony, clouds of dirt exploded onto my newly-cleaned furniture; it was my very own localized sandstorm. Obviously, although they’d cleaned the flat, they hadn’t cleaned the top of the ceiling fans. So, what I could smell at night was the dust from the fan above my head and not my decaying wall after all.

I never seem to learn about the internet. I’d gone to Senzo Mall on my way back from the airport and bought some top-up cards so that I could get my internet working as soon as I got back. However, as on previous occasions (see, I don’t learn), I couldn’t work out how to get it to accept the cards. So, I had to go all the way back to Senzo the next day to ask how to do it, and I discovered that it wasn’t possible because my internet SIM had expired. The SIM shouldn’t really have expired because it’s supposed to be able to be dormant for 4 months and I was last there in December, but it always does expire (but I insist on remaining optimistic and am always let down). Weirdly, my personal mobile SIM card was still working even after one year, but it may be because I don’t have a package on that but just credit.

I also stocked up with some wine; I order this online as it’s the easiest way to get alcohol in this country that is predominantly Muslim. I knew they usually delivered your order pretty quickly (within 2 hours of ordering online, usually), and I was pleased to see they’d got a new size of wine box that complied with the minimum order amount. This meant I didn’t have to order a rogue bottle of wine or two on top of the box of wine just to make up the minimum order. I ordered at about 9.30pm and by 11pm it hadn’t arrived.

I assumed they would deliver the next day at this time of night and also reasoned that due to lack of tourists these days, they may not be working such long hours any more. I was feeling tired, so went to bed. At midnight, my doorbell rang, and it was my wine order, so I had to scramble out of bed and receive the mysterious item in the black bag giving them the payment in return. It always feels as if you are doing some underhand deal like in the films.

I don’t know if I’ve mentioned before that the Egyptians are a night-time people, so Spinneys, for example, stays open until 2am. I like this aspect of Egypt, but I’d completely forgotten about it.

And they still haven’t really quite got the right idea about wine boxes. The bag inside the box is never packed with the tap facing the hole for the tap; the bag is always packed in the box upside down. Consequently, you have to rip the box open, shift the bag round in the box, put the box back together, then pull the tap out of the allocated hole. It’s a right fiasco!

So, I was back in Egypt, warts and all.