Sahl Hasheesh - Progress

BestWay, now in Sahl Hasheesh! (photo (c) Nicole)

Businesses come and go in Sahl Hasheesh fairly quickly. It’s a tough life for the shopkeepers, although if you talk to them, they’re usually hugely optimistic and never really appear to see themselves as having a hard life. Most shopkeepers have more than one shop.

It’s always interesting to see what’s new and about to open, but rarely is it so exciting as the first proper supermarket. Yes, this is the pinnacle of excitement over here in Sahl Hasheesh.

I should explain that by Egyptian standards, BestWay, our new supermarket, is a “proper” supermarket – it sells cold meats, bread, cheese, fresh fruit, butter, frozen meat, fresh meat, as well as food that will in any case keep for a while (chocolates, cereals, canned and jarred items, coca cola, etc). Usually in Egypt something that calls itself a “supermarket” is actually just a small shop selling a few items of food with no meat, no bread, or anything that needs cooling or freezing. It’s not the type of shop that you could rely on for your weekly shopping.

BestWay provides pretty much everything in some form; it also sells some basic stationery, washing stuff, kitchen utensils, personal hygiene items, coffee makers, DIY items, light bulbs, games, bicycles…. To my delight (or is it horror?), it also has a café with some delicious cakes, so I can already see my waistline expanding just by looking at it all.

However, to put this in perspective, I’m now making it sound huge and it’s probably still just a “little shop” by European standards rather than a “supermarket” which I, at least, always imagine to be on huge grounds and having rows and rows of frozen cabinets and cooling shelves. BestWay has two small cooling shelves, two small freezers for frozen goods, and another freezer for ice creams. That’s it. But for Egypt, this is pretty good. Spinneys in Senzo Mall, which is just like a European supermarket, is called a hypermarket over here. I guess BestWay is closer to a Tesco Metro.

Anyway, it’s life-changing for me. Up until now, I’ve had to have a taxi drive of 20 minutes to do my weekly food shopping and it’s really annoying if I forget something. Now, it’s just a 10 minute walk away and it’s there all the time, open until midnight. No need to worry any more. They are even promising home delivery.

The prices are a bit more expensive, but then I save myself the taxi fare and I gain the convenience, so I’m eager to shop there and to support it so that it makes a go of it in Sahl Hasheesh. It will do well if all these new buildings / apartments actually get finished and ever have people living in them. But over here, that’s a big “if”; BestWay may even have been brought in to try to help sell the apartments (lack of supermarket was definitely a major reason why I considered not to buy originally). So far, it seems to be getting a fairly steady trade, but it’s early days yet.

There’s lots going on here at the moment. I was also astonished to hear that a butcher’s shop is going to open up next to BestWay as well. It’s almost as if I’m living in a proper town! I’m a bit sceptical that there will be enough trade for it, but I guess if enough tourists rent apartments and want to buy their meat in the resort rather than venturing out to Senzo or Hurghada, it might just work! It’s called “The Butchery” (this is what some people rudely called my hairdresser when I was in Edinburgh) and also appears to sell pork (that’s the advantage of living in a tourist resort); obviously it’s being run by Christians. I hope it will do well – we’re just waiting for it to open, but the cabinets seem to be in place and the signage is up.

Less exciting is the opening of a Moevenpick ice cream shop where my old ice cream shop used to be. I’m happy it’s there, but I’m still grieving over the old place at the moment. And an “optics” shop also seems to be preparing for opening. This I found a bit astonishing as we already have one optics shop in the same road and I can’t believe that we could possibly support two of these shops, but, hey, worth a go. And, as I was thinking that to myself, I suddenly noticed that the existing optics shop was actually quite busy, so maybe I’m completely wrong.

It’s really good to see some new things opening up after seeing so many shops close. It would be even better to see some stability, both in Sahl Hasheesh, and in Egypt as a whole.