The Desert

The desert view from staff house

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This is how most of the rural area of Egypt looks like. Very little of greens and lots of sand and dust. Infact, sand is almost everywhere in Egypt, even in the urban area of Cairo.

Cleaner is a very common job in Egypt, because if you don't clean your house daily, all your furniture will be covered by dust/sand, irregardless of whether you close all the windows. The cost of getting someone to clean your house is about 15LE/hour (less than SGD4). Best of all, they help you to wash your dishes also. :p

Most of the car owner get their car washed daily also. If they stay at the apartment, the security guard will clean it for you every morning. (Actuall, I really think that it's a waste of time to wash the car daily, because the car will be covered by layers of sand over the night again.)

Now, the security guard is not the type we see in Singapore. They are usually very poor people, being assigned by apartment owner to take care of the apartment with a tiny monthly sum, and they usually live in a small room on the ground level, sometime together with their family of 4 or 5.

They don't carry any guns/stick. They don't wear a uniform. But I think they are much much more useful than the Singapore one. The typical building security uncle in Singapore will usually fall asleep (or trying hard not to) at the counter, or give you a "don't ask me, I don't know" face when you try to ask for direction.

The Egyptian security will help you to wash your car, carry you groceries bag, help you to buy food, change new gas tank, carry your rubbish down....etc.

This guy at my apartment has helped me to carry my Queen size mattress all the way up to 7th storey by stairs! No lah, I am not taking advantage of people, it's just that the elevator at the apartment is too small for the QUEEN size mattress :p