El Andalous - The Community

Ramadan Kareem!

As I said last week, I was quite surprised on coming back to El Andalous to find that I had rather a lot to do; my life seemed to be a hive of activity. This is in addition to my hardship of eating out on a number of occasions and spending days on end finding a place for my hard-earned cash.

First of all, I needed to do the newsletter for our residential block. I’ve managed to cut down the frequency over time – at first it was weekly, then it was monthly, then when I returned to Zurich, I promised to keep on doing it, but only quarterly. So, this was now the time for the quarterly newsletter. Since I was returning to El Andalous “fresh”, it was much more obvious than usual as to what was new since I last reported back (which was when I was over for Christmas). When I was in Sahl Hasheesh all the time, I tended to forget what happened when. So, although it was an easier one to write this time, it still had to be done.

Then, to my surprise, Ajaz and Xenia had got very active in finding out about how other apartment blocks were run so that we could have realistic expectations for our complex. Before I knew where I was, we were all going out to meetings with owners of properties in other places and discussing all sorts of things (so quite interesting to get to know some other people).

Nicole had become determined to get more television channels, so before I’d had time to blink, I was trying to get our manager to sign an agreement that we could proceed with a new satellite if need be, and I had a man in my flat (well, two men, with one of them watching the other) setting up a new internet connection to get me more channels. Sadly, it appears that the Astra satellite which used to give UK TV in Egypt is no longer available at all, so I didn’t get any of the UK channels that I really wanted.

In addition, I found myself volunteering to speak to the management on behalf of the owners about putting in back-up lighting for when we have power cuts and to clean up all the disused shop fronts along our building façade. I need to follow up on both of these, but it’s Ramadan at the moment, so you can’t generally expect much to get done during this period. Also, for my own selfish needs, I complained about the bus not running to the local supermarket as often as they'd promised.

Asking for things to be done in Egypt is always quite exhausting because they rarely get done on your first request, and sometimes there are misunderstandings, and at other times you just haven’t got a clue what’s going on. In this case, cleaning up the shops required discussion among several people (that should set warning bells off!) and I don’t think I successfully conveyed why the safety lighting was important, because I was a bit astonished that this needed to be explained (they seemed to think if they did it for my floor only, this would be OK; I said no, all floors, and now they still haven't done anything).

Before I moved over to Egypt, Julian warned me not to get involved with residents’ associations (or the like), since nobody ever agrees and it’s just a lot of aggravation. This is very true and in El Andalous, it’s particularly difficult because the owners are from several different cultures, all of which negotiate in completely different ways, and we're negotiating with Egyptians, which is then different again. And all of this is prone to misunderstandings and misinterpretations of intent. And, of course, for different people, and for different cultures, priorities are also different. However, this diversity makes it all interesting and although it is stressful sometimes, it’s also been a great way for me to integrate. In fact, it's been a great way, too, for all of us to come together and create a mutual ground between us all, regardless of our backgrounds.