Cairo Investigated 2

On Saturday, 8 October, we went on a most unusual bus trip whose focus was on Cairo, the city and its growth. Associate Provost at AUC John Swanson, a former Michiganite who has lived here 30 years, conducted it and if he took breath, we didn’t notice! As we began in Maadi, Swanson pointed out how the area became a retreat for rich Europeans and Egyptians in the 19th-early 20th centuries, who built villas and planted what is now relatively lush vegetation. The name “Maadi” came from an ancient pre-dynastic agricultural civilization dating from about 3900-333 BC. Who knew?

This is what we breathe

One of Swanson’s themes was the changing course of the Nile, which has moved east over the past 2000 years, and thus, changes in the city and its settlements. What was most striking to us was what we saw standing atop the escarpement of Muqatta Hills, a wealthy settlement just outside Cairo. Its main allure is its elevation, not that high compared with some places—maybe 85 meters above Nile level—but with one huge advantage over the city. Its elevation means that the prevailing winds (more or less north to south), which sweep over the Nile valley and keep Cairo impressively smoggy, keep Muqatta Hills air clean. The “view” from the top was less a view of the city than of the air. All we could think was “that’s what we breathe everyday.” Some put Cairo just below Mexico City in air quality, some put it third—but it’s bad. Yet there are gorgeous days (like the end of September when we went to the Pyramids) when you can see for miles.

Informal city east of the Nile

Informal city from the air

Another feature of the evolving city is class and location. Other than the Nile valley, Egypt is a desert. As the population grows, as people come from the country hoping for education for their children and economic opportunity (and are usually disappointed), the population of Cairo grows daily. It’s somewhere between 20 and 25 million. Folks who come from the country live hand to mouth—there is a respected occupation of picking up garbage, going through it, and recycling, for example—and the city has seen a ring of what are called “informal cities,” what we might call slums, grow up like mushrooms. Informal cities are unplanned, tightly-packed areas of shoddy buildings jam-packed with people.

Those who can afford to leave the city do so, and increasingly, they are moving to the desert. New Cairo, where AUC is located, is but one of many desert communities that are increasingly stratified by income. Since there is no water, and it must be pumped 25+ kilometers from the Nile, the costs of living in the desert are high. As a result, those who decamp there can pay the tab, usually those who work in the private sector and make between $10,000 and $20,000 USD per year—not affluent by American standards, but very much so by Egyptian standards. The New York Times has reported (as have many other observers) on this growing trend of the middle and upper-middle class moving out of the city into what are essentially gated communities. The official figure for average income of Egyptians is around $6000 per year, though Swanson pointed out that many economists regard this as far too high, suggesting instead $2000-4000), if this gives perspective.

Egyptian Museum, Tahrir Square

Yet the core of the city remains a lively and vibrant area, crowded and a bit crazy, despite the movement of the private sector class to the desert. We ended our trip in Tahrir Square, with the Egyptian Museum and, of course, its more recent history. This is not to undermine the seriousness of Cairo’s urban challenges (air quality and crowding in particular), nor to suggest that the informal cities are not extreme and challenging places to live. Now we know why this is not Zenith, Ohio.

PS: The coolest cell phone towers are giant reinforced steel palm trees. I hear LA has them, too.

Which is the cell tower?