"Impressions of Egypt"

This is by Arvind. A classic bit of navel-gazing/ mountain-out-of-a-molehill/the-personal-is-political . Actually I think the reasoning is fair enough

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The most memorable part of my trip was neither the history nor the monuments but rather my run in with a local guide who was assigned by the travel company to be part of our tour. So the first blog is based on Wael, who is said to have a degree in Egyptology from an University in Cairo.

We met Wael in Cairo, pretty much upon arrival. He spoke English with a distinctive Arabic accent that was given away when he spoke words such as control (pronounced conthrol.) The first sign of what was to come was when he suggested we visit the Papyrus Museum. Turned out this was a massively overpriced papyrus shop and in the calibration phase of our tour we let ourselves get suckered into making over priced purchases. The next stop he suggested was a Egyptian cotton store, and this time we made the stop but did not buy anything. At this point I had pretty much made up my mind about not visiting any more factories or outlets - because they were nothing more than tourist traps (if all you wanted to do was sight see.)

The next day morning, on the overnight train, Wael made three claims that annoyed me. First he tried to get us to go to a perfume factory. Most of the group was really annoyed by this time and we kind of said no (not firmly at this point.) Vibhats mom showed a very very mild interest, she asked if it was on the way to the Philae temple (we were to visit here) and that was all the stimulus he needed to try and sell us on this. Next he tried selling us Gold chains with our names inscribed in Heiroglyphics - these things are called Cartouches, the price of each being atleast 50 US Dollars. Third, he was trying to sell us the sound and light tour to the temple at nearly ten times the price quoted by Lonely Planet. Jing, found out the price of the tour at the hotel and it turned out to be around what Lonely planet suggested. When we asked him about the discrepancy, (we were still trying to work out a reasonable agreement with him rather than ignoring him completely,) his answer was that the way things work in Egypt is not the way things work in the rest of the world. His claim was that the tour to the temple required a boat ride, and that the fare quoted by the hotel would be arbitrarily increased. At this point, every one in the tour was completely upset with Wael and we wanted to take the Philae temple sound and light show through the hotel. Just before the temple tour was scheduled to start, Wael had a conversation with the hotel manager, who then proceeded to cancel our tour on some flimsy excuse. It was pretty clear to everyone that Wael was behind this.

After all these events we went to Aswan and Philae temple but without the sound and light show. On the way back, he insisted that we tip the boat driver a total of 50 Egyptian pounds, or 10 US Dollars The tip was for all 8 of us, and according to Lonely Planet, the boat ride itself cost only 40 or so Egyptian pounds. Next he insisted, we pay a 50 Egyptian Pound tip to the driver as well. At this point, I lost my patience and asked him what the fare was and we would like to pay a percentage of it. He said something that there is no basis for a fare and did not quote a price and said other things that did not make any sense to any of the group. I lost my temper and said "Don't bullshit me." This line became a subsequent pet line for the others in the group and it was one of the clues for the charades game. At this point, he was a bit intimidated and I left the scene, because I was not helping anybody reach any agreement.

Everyone in the group thought that Wael had it coming and he was getting his just desserts. Nandita too thought this guy was not being honest, but had the view that we were ruining our holiday fighting for relatively small amounts of money although the principles we were fighting for ma have been larger - should you just let some one rip you off even if it was affordable.

However, I could not help feeling bad about the situation. I really was in a position of power because I had the wealth - at least by Egyptian standards. Wael had the power of local knowledge and he was prepared to use it to his advantage. But the question that bothered me was this - Should any man have to put up with another man yelling at him? To me the answer seemed no - yelling is a symbol of domination and power and no man, it seems to me, should let himself be dominated and over powered by another. I suppose in a situation where two men are each trying to dominate each other yelling would be an acceptable currency for transaction, but in the situation I mentioned, I felt that I was abusing the power of wealth. No doubt Wael was not an honest person but I still could not condone my behavior. So then it was clear to me, that I could have resolved the issue with out trying to dominate. This should have been the case, independent of whether the person on the other side of the argument is honest or not. Clearly Wael was not honest.

I started developing other thoughts about honesty. It is quite easy for me to be honest, in most circumstances, because of the security I have in my education and the wealth of America, where I live. This is a bit like a batsman who walks when he knows he is out even if the umpire thinks he is not out, but does so provided he has already scored a 100 runs. Now, even in India I would say I was honest, but I would attribute most of that to the security at home, the values my mother instilled in me and in the belief that I would some how be successful. If I did not have all of the above, I tend to think I would cheat and be dishonest. Also, another empirical piece of evidence is worth recollecting. I found it entirely acceptable to copy Engineering Drawing diagrams at IIT. This was a completely conscious piece of action, and to this day I defend and am proud of the practice. The reason is this, no matter what system I sign up to, IIT or not, there will be parts of it that suck. In the case of Engg Drawings, the need for people to do this was made by some retarded, IQ below 15, stuck up Professor who did not understand the importance of specialization and therefore insisted that we all be Jacks of all trades. So I felt and still feel within my rights to not respect the rules of a stupid system. Now, this same thing could be applied to Wael. I can think of many reasons why Wael should not feel any respect for the wealth distribution and generation schemes in his country - an unpopular regime supported by the West. So, if I could be dishonest in one system, are my actions any different from Wael's?

BTW, if some one still does ED at IIT, and he spends more than 15 minutes and does not copy, please let me know, I would like to give him a piece of my mind and ask him to better spend his time else where. Preferably, I would like to pay a local Goonda to give this dude a sound thrashing.

But back to Wael. Turns out the Guy was quite intimidated by us - this is what he told Nandita. Apparently, he used to work on Cruise ships as part of the cleaning crew before he found a way to get to school and study. This is really quite a hard life. Away from family in a pretty cruel environment. He also mentioned the following claims about the tourist industry in Egypt.
( a ) The tour companies charge a fee for usage of services provided by the small dudes - the guys who drive the boats to the temple for example, but
( b ) the tour companies do not pay the fees collected and instead pocket it themselves and
( c ) leave the small dudes to survive on tips.

Now, there was not enough ideas to verify the claims above in the time we had. So this was troubling if true but we had to be skeptical about it. On the other hand, I can see why they might be true. When a country is ruled by forces that are propped up by self serving interests of other countries, these types of things could arise. So this piece of information did little to change my situation.

Then a different thought occurred to me. As I looked at Vibhat, Jing, Nandita and I, who all work for major power player corporations, I came to a different conclusion. The four of us were locally honest but globally dishonest and Wael was locally dishonest but at least on the surface not aligned with any forces of global dishonesty. Well how so? First we all live in a country that uses maximal power plays to get advantages to itself. BTW, this is not a statement about the US it is a statement about any country that is the most powerful - if India were to be the most powerful, all Indians will enjoy the abusive excesses of power. So while we ourselves might lead a honest life here, we are no doubt reaping the rewards of abuse of power at some level. So I convinced myself that we are no different from Wael.

So after feeling not so good about myself about wealth and power, I finally found a solution that made me feel better. I decided to give the guy a generous tip - 60 USD that seemed to make him happy. I was happier at not having to deal with the ethics of the situation, because the spot light started shining on me. So there in lies the moral of the story - Money, the cause of and solution to all of mans problems.

Arvind

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Editors comments: Parts of the above sound very like Noam Chomsky -- you are complicit in the wrong actions of your country. Chomsky's very sound response then is that you have to be highly subversive and work within the high degree of internal freedom that the US provides to mitigate the wrong actions. Is the final statement tongue-in-cheek ? If not it spoils an otherwise nice analyis. The point is not money but power.
Re ED: well its too much to expect analysis from Arvind without some nonsensical idiosyncractic neo-fascism creeping in.