Taxi
yesterday i got in a taxi.
i used to love travelling in taxi's because of the conversations i would always end up having with the drivers, which were mostly highly entertaining and from which i learnt a lot in my early days as a newbie in Cairo.
yesterday the journey was quite different.
i won't go into what the driver said, or how he complained, i will say that there was real, tangible anger there. it filled his taxi to the brim and flowed out of the open windows in thick, heavy waves.
just think of all those millions of taxi's out there, each one an isolated, cramped, polluted cage.
today i read this article, nothing new, but rounds it up nicely.
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6 comments:
eee... the last part of that article is the scariest piece. The army or the MB.... very scary scenarios.
yeah that hit a nerve with me too...
...but on the other hand, a global problem (soaring food prices all over the world + all-time high gas prices) is reduced, in Egypt, to failure of this government and this president. This is a load of crap, yes, the government for sure is responsible. But it's a global problem? It's not like Egypt messed up and the rest of the world is bathing in bread? Of course you can't ask a person to step back and look at the 'big picture' when she cant feed her kids.
Dude, the increase in prices in Egypt outstrips what the rest of the world is going through. Jimmy Mubarak recently admitted that the prices in some things have increased over 100%, and he also admitted that a large factor int he problems that Egypt had with bread were the result of corruption within the makhabiz, whee they would take the free/cheap flour and sell it for a profit.
The true problem here is that the only people feeling this are the ones lower down, all the fatcat businessmen and their crony politicos are safe in their ivory tower. Egypt is bizarre, and instead of a trickle-down effect, we seem to have a trickle-UP effect.
Back to topic, yeah that cab driver was pissed off but I gotta tell you, he's the norm now. He did get a bit carried away but no more than any other cab driver if you hit a nerve with them. The current emotion in Cairo is unfortunately rage, and because they can't take it out on how they actually feel rage for, they take it out on those around them instead.
Ew typos.
Well, I don't have the data, but a common theme to everyone is oil. Oil went 30$/barrel in 2003 to 60$ 2007 to 130$ now. Seeing as this is a base commodity that is needed to produce anything.. I am not surprised that some things saw 100% increase.
The bread-issue is very specific to Egypt and I agree to the corruption piece you mentioned. But consider this, corruption in the makhabiez has been around for years. Man we have 70's movies that talk about that! I don't think that in the last two years corruption had quadrupled. I think the soaring prices of everything globally just inflamed the issue more.
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