Egypt continues

Sammy told us a bit about Egypt today. He told us about their democracy, it is a little different than ours. According to Sammy, in Egypt today, the society is divided into villages, and each village has a leader, the leader is the only one who votes, he votes for what he believes will be in the best interest of his village. Sammy believes this gives the incumbent a huge advantage. Right before an election the incumbent goes around to all the village leaders and asks them what they need. Changes in government rarely happen in Egypt.

Medical care is free to everyone. However, if you are having a heart attack and show up at the Emergency Room you will surely die before a doctor sees you. So many people so few doctors. If you bring money and bribe the nurses, bribe the doctors, etc. you will get medical care.

The same is true with police or pressing charges against someone within the legal system, you need to grease some palms to get things in Egypt. Sammy felt the government was a bit corrupt. He is under the impression ours is the epitome of fairness and justice to all, rich and poor. I didn't say anything, but I really don't agree, ours sucks too, something we have in common, a sense that our government doesn't always have our best interest at heart.

There is a lot of poverty in Egypt, many people who cannot afford to feed their families or to own a home. Some interesting laws have come about in their attempt to work through this problem. For instance, it is illegal to evict someone from their home. So if someone happens to be living in a home, and that home happens to be on your land, well that is your problem, you cannot evict them. It is illegal to build a home on someone else's land, but once you are done, you can live there with no worries. This means that many people will build a rudimentary home by themselves, or with friends, in the middle of the night, knock something together quickly without getting caught. You see many homes that appear to have been built this way. Homes that look like someone with no knowledge of architecture or carpentry slapped something together in the middle of the night. It is also a law that the government is required to provide everyone with water and electric, so if you slap together a house the power company and water company will also come out and hook you up.

Sammy took us to see one such home in a small village outside of Aswan. It is there that he taught us about the Evil Eye. On the door there was a symbol to ward off the evil eye. For the life of me I cannot remember what that symbol was. As I said their were 25 American's in the tour group. We arrived at the door of the home, from the street it didn't seem that there was any way that we would all fit into this home. I was very anxious about the whole thing. As we entered we went down a narrow hallway and then the house opened up to us, what had appeared on the street as a poorly thrown together hovel was actually a lovely spacious home. The outward appearance of the home was meant to ward off the evil eye of envy. We had a lovely cup of hybiscus tea, saw the wedding photos, had a tour of the home, it was fun.