Pam in the Sand: First Years: What Day Is This and Where Am I?

First published January 13, 2009

It is 11:45 am and the family is sitting at an internet cafe in downtown Cairo. We have lived a LOT since my last note so I will try to briefly fill you in. My apologies for not corresponding sooner, but I didn't realize we would be out of internet range for 10 days. Learning....

When I last left you our last task was to find an apartment in Cairo. I'll give you a brief synopsis of our Sunday, January 4.

8:30-9:30 Eat breakfast at hotel cafe
9:30-10:30 Pam, Em, Aria pack up entire room and get ready for departure to Kenya for team meetings
10-10:30 John goes to get additional cash from an ATM.
10:30-11 All of us take a taxi to our language school. The taxi driver doesn't know where it is and he has to stop and ask 4 people. We find it and arrive right at 11 am.
11-11:15 We meet with the ILI assistant and she tells us that the man who will be showing us a selection of apartments (flats) will be running a little behind and it could be 1 to 2 hours. So we sit.
11:15-2:15 Heeshim arrives and whisks us off for our first tour of flats. Flat #1 is beautiful, quiet and spacious. Flat #2 is smaller and nice but has a German landlord that stares a hole through us the entire time we are there. Flat #3 is on hold because Heeshim says we should go to lunch and wait until the traffic clears before we go out again.
2:50-4:20 We go back to our hotel that has a Korean restaurant and we eat and hang there until it's time to go back out. John thought that he should exchange some USD into Egypt pounds so he took a taxi to find an exchange. He told me he would be back by 4:20 to meet Heeshim.
4:20 Heeshim arrives. No John. 4:40 John arrives and apologizes to Heeshim telling him that the taxi driver had to look for a while to get to an exchange. That is when Heeshim explains that there is an exchange at the end of our block. We didn't see it and the guys at the hotel front desk didn't volunteer. Live and learn.
4:45 We pile into Heeshim's car and he takes us to see Flat #3. This one is in the area of shopping and downtown. I think. To tell you the truth the way the drivers drive and the way the roads are designed I have no idea where anything is... Flat #3 is lovely. It's decorated in Arabic antiques and he tells us the landlady is a nice person. We sit as a family and decide to take Flat #3. We were laughing because it felt like an episode of International House Hunters with Suzanne Wang. We chose the "not so pricey, but charming" flat.
6:30-8:00 Heeshim tries to call the landlady, but runs out of minutes on his phone and we have to dodge and weave through the traffic until he can buy a phone card and replenish his minutes. He then calls her and she invites him over for the transaction.

Upon arrival, we all piled out of the car. Heeshim told me that the girls and I should probably head over to a local coffee shop while he and John take care of business because the landlady wouldn't be prepared to entertain. So we did. We walked over to a modern coffee shop with Arab MTV (divert eyes) and waited until they were through.

Around 8:30 they gave us the nod and we headed out to the car. By this time, we were feeling the crunch as our plane to Kenya was to leave at 11:45 pm and we were an hour away from the airport. We talked with Heeshim and he said that he would see to it that all our 24 totes made it to the new apartment and that the key would be waiting for us when we returned from Kenya. This sounds extremely optimistic but we had made friends with Mahmud (Nile cruise guy) and he was available to take 2 vans over to the hotel and meet Heeshim for the exchange. Now mind you, we just met these guys and they are going way above and beyond the call of duty to take care of us. I can only say God's favor was around us and before us.

Heeshim went on his way and we hailed a taxi to take us to the airport. We threw our Kenya luggage on top of his taxi and began the long trek. Around 9:40 we arrived and tried to check in. We were directed to 2 different desks until a man in a jacket who looked like he knew what was going on grabbed us and told us that we were at the wrong airport and he would take care of us.

Following him as I mutter prayers through the wrong airport, he calls a van and has him come take us to the right airport. We waited for a nail-biting 30 minutes until the ride came and he drove us over to the correct airport about 3 miles away. By now it is 10:15 pm. The man in the jacket grabs our passports and walks us through all of it. We were on the other side when I fully expected him to disappear. However, he requested a tip at the end of it and I'm not sure that angels would ask for such a thing.

Once on the other side, we grabbed a bite to eat and waited for boarding. Our flight took us from Cairo to Khartoum. In Khartoum we picked up a team member from Aslan and continued onto Nairobi. Once in Nairobi we were only 1 hour away from our final destination of Mombasa. Sadly, the visa line took way too long and we missed Flight #1. Then a family of 5 REALLY needed our seats on Flight #2 and I smiled, paused and told the attendant they could have them. Flight #3 came at 12:45 pm in the afternoon and they put us in business class for the 45 minute flight. We arrived with people waiting for us on the other side.

Our drive from the Mombasa airport was 2.5 hours because we had to cross a ferry and the ferry was at a very crowded time. So we sat in a safari truck for a while and waited our turn. We finally checked into our hotel room at 4:15 pm which gave us time to shower and get ready for the first meeting at 5 pm. We visited, ate dinner and finally hit the sack only 40 hours after our first initial breakfast in Cairo. Amazingly, we felt great and knew that everything that went right was due to the faithful prayers of family and friends.

Of course this doesn't even begin to cover what happened over the next 10 days, but this gives you a glimpse of what we've been up to. I'll include pictures of our apartment as soon as we have wifi at our house. Love to you!