Poverty?

When we arrived near Cairo the sherut stopped under a bridge and tried to hand us over to another taxi. The background of the story is that we had agreed on 100 Egyptian pounds with our first driver from the border and he had already transferred us into another sheruts hands. Since we had given him 75 pounds, there was only 25 pounds of payment left as far as we were concerned. The driver almost broke down in tears as we argued about the agreement, knowing full well that 25 pounds was little more than 4USD for the last two and half hour ride. When the deal was complete we gave him 10 pounds (less than 2USD) each and got into the taxi for 15 pounds (little more than 2 dollars each) to take us the remaining 10 miles.

The poverty and low cost of living is incredible. When we arrived we grabbed a bag of 6 pita for 33 cents. Yet everyone is dressed nice and very few people are outright begging for money (instead they try to wash your car or take your picture and then demand payment). The food is so cheap, I wish we could eat it. Here one can get a lifetime disease from consuming anything with a trace of the water. If we wanted, we could get steak for 5, ice cream for 1, and probably feed the country for a day on 100 or so. The fresh fruit looks absolutely incredible and is dirt cheap! Instead we stick to bags of whole bags of chips for 50 cents.

Today we visited the Gaza and Saqqara Pyramids by personal taxi for 200 pounds (less than 40USD). Our driver was very kind and dressed well regardless of the fact that he was getting 35 dollars to spend 9 hours driving us around in his vehicle. Everywhere we went people tried to make a pound off of us. Everyone wanted us to ride a camel or buy a trinket. 2 boys told us that they just wanted to take our picture. They loaded us on their camels and dressed us up spend 10 minutes taking photographs with our cameras for us. Then they were frustrated that we would not pay them. I was not surprised, but didn't know how to respond. We told them from the beginning that we didn't want camels and didn't have money. Throughout the day we became more dogmatic. Arabs would begin a tour of a particular tomb and we would tell them, "You don't need to show us, we have no money." They would have a quick comeback with pleading eyes and then finally leave us to ourselves. Every once in a while we would hear, "I give you good price. No tourists anymore. Any money."